HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 559 



Other : little space then suffices for them."^ In another place, speaking 

 of the custom in some countries of putting bee-hives during winter into 

 out-houses and cellars, he says that in such situations the air, though more 

 temperate than out of doors during the greater part of winter, " is yet 

 sufficiently cold to keep the bees in that species of torpidity which does 

 away their need of eating."^ And lastly, he expressly says that the 

 milder the weather, the more risk there is of the bees consuming their 

 honey before the spring, and dying of hunger ; and confirms his assertion 

 by an account of a striking experiment, in which a hive that he trans- 

 ferred during winter into his study, where the temperature was usually in 

 the day 10° or 12° R. above freezing (54° or 59° F.), though provided 

 with a plentiful supply of honey, that if they had been in a garden would 

 have served them past the end of April, had consumed nearly their whole 

 stock before the end of February.^ 



Now, how are we to reconcile this contradiction ? — for, if Huber be 

 correct in asserting that in frosty weather bees agitate themselves to keep 

 off the cold, and ventilate their hive, — if, as both he and Swammerdam 

 state, they feed their young brood in the depth of winter, — it seems 

 impossible to admit that they ever can be in the torpid condition which 

 Reaumur supposes, in which food, so far from being necessary, is injurious 

 to them. In fact, Reaumur himself in another place informs us, that bees 

 are so infinitely more sensible of cold than the generality of insects, that 

 they perish when in numbers so small as to be unable to generate sufficient 

 animal heat to counteract the external cold, even at 11° R. above freez- 

 ing"* (57° F.) ; which corresponds with what Huber has observed (as 

 quoted above) of the high temperature of well-peopled hives, even in 

 very severe weather. We are forced, then, to conclude that this usually 

 most accurate of observers has in the present instance been led into error, 

 chiefly, it is probable, from the clustering of bees in the hives in cold 

 weather ; but which, instead of being, as he conceived, an. indication of 

 torpidity, would seem to be intended, as Huber asserts, as a preservative 

 against the benumbing effects of cold. 



Bees, then, do not appear to pass the winter in a state of torpidity in 

 our climates, and probably not in any others. Populous swarms inhabit- 

 ing hives formed of the hollow trunks of trees, used in many northern regions, 

 or of other materials that are bad conductors of heat, seem able to gene- 

 rate and keep up a temperature sufficient to counteract the intensest cold 

 to which they are ordinarily exposed. At the same time., however, I 

 think we may infer, that though bees are not strictly torpid at that lowest 

 degree of heat which they can sustain, yet that when exposed to thai 

 degree they consume considerably less food than at a higher temperature ; 

 and consequently, that the plan of placing hives in a north aspect in 

 sunny and mild winters may be adopted by the apiarist with advantage. 

 John Hunter's experiment, indeed, cited above, in which he found that a 

 hive grew lighter in a cold than in a warm week, seems opposed to this 

 conclusion ; but an insulated observation of this kind, which we do not 

 know to have been instituted with a due regard to all the circumstances 

 that required attention, must not be allowed to set aside the striking facts 



1 Reaum. v. 667. 2 ibid. 682. 



3 Reaum. v. 668. * Ibid. 678, Compare also 673. 



