44-2 HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 



to preserve their heat a ; and that in the depth of winter 

 they do not cease to ventilate the hive by the singular 

 process of agitating their wings before described b . He 



asserts also that, like Reaumur, he has in winter found 







in the combs brood of all ages ; which, too, the observant 

 Bonnet says he has witnessed c ; and which is confirmed 

 by Swammerdam, who expressly states that bees tend 

 and feed their young even in the midst of winter d . To 

 all these weighty authorities may be added that of John 

 Hunter, who, as before noticed, found a hive to grow 

 lighter in a cold than in a warm week of winter ; and 

 that a hive from November 10th to February 9th lost 

 more than four pounds in weight e ; whence the con- 

 clusion 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 

 words : " 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 a 

 sort of torpidity (engourdi$sement\ in which no tran- 

 spiration from them takes place; or, at least, during 



a Huber i. 134. ' Ibid. ii. 344. 358. See above, p. 192-. 



c Bonnet On Bees, 104. d Huber, i. 354. 



c Phil. Trans. 1700. 161. 



