HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 4'17 



when it is several degrees below zero in the open air ; 

 that they then cluster together and keep themselves in 

 motion in order to preserve their heat* ; and that in the 

 depth of winter they do not cease to ventilate the hive by 

 the singular process of agitating their wings before de- 

 scribed •*. He asserts also that, like Reaumur, he has 

 in winter found in the combs brood of all ages ; which, 

 too, the observant Bonner says he haswitnessed*^; and 

 which is confirmed by Swammerdam, who expressly 

 states that bees tend and feed their young even in the 

 midst of winter*^. To all these weighty authorities 

 may be added that of John Hunter, who, as before no- 

 ticed, found a hive to grow lighter in a cold than in a 

 warm week of winter ; and that a hive from Novem- 

 ber 10th to February 9th lost more than four pounds 

 in weight*^; whence the conclusion seems inevitable, 

 that bees do eat in winter. 



On the other hand, Reaumur adopts (or rather, per- 

 haps, has in great measure given birth to) the more 

 commonly received notion that bees in a certain degree 

 of cold are torpid and consume no food. These are his 

 vrords : — " It has been established with a wisdom which 

 we cannot but admire, — with that wisdom with which 

 every thing in nature has been made and ordained, — 

 that during the greater part of the time in which the 

 country furnishes nothing to bees, they have no longer 

 need to eat. The cold which arrests the vegetation of 

 plants, which deprives our fields and meadows of their 

 flowers, throws the bees into a state in which nourish- 

 ment ceases to be necessary to them : it keeps them in 



* Tluber, i. 134. " Ibid. ii. 344. 358. See above, p. 193— 



'Bonner On B^rv, )04. "" JIuber, i. 35!. " Phil Tram. 1790. 161. 



