THE INDUSTRIES OF THE HIVE 55 



rhombic pyramids are fortuitous! The fact that the 

 combs are rarely perfect in construction proves 

 naught against the mathematical prowess of the 

 bees; it simply proves that the bees are a practical 

 race, and not bigoted, and are therefore unwilling to 

 sacrifice everything for the sake of precision. The 

 construction of their waxen cells is for economic 

 purposes rather than for proving mathematical 

 formulae. Honey-comb shows how economy of 

 room, building materials and mathematical theories 

 may coincide, and shows also that the bees have 

 taken advantage of the fact. Some of the savants 

 have asserted that the rectangle or the equilateral 

 triangle would have been quite as efficient as working 

 plans for constructing cells for storing honey. But 

 probably the bees, originally, made their cells to 

 fit their brood and would not thus build a cell which 

 would surround a larva with unfilled corners. The 

 hexagonal cell was better fitted for their needs, so 

 they developed it. 



After a piece of the central portion of comb has 

 been constructed the bees begin, usually, at the 

 centre and pull out the sides of the cells from the 

 foundation. Experiments in coloured foundation 

 shows that this may, if thick, be pulled almost to the 

 margin of the cell. This is why bees so readily 

 utilise machine-made foundation; they pull out the 

 edges of these pressed combs and thus save them- 

 selves much labour in wax-making. The worker- 

 cells are a little more than one-fifth of an inch in diam- 

 eter, and a little less than one-half an inch deep; the 



