<'M ON ENTOMOLOGY. 



wax, but merely, as he imagined, to recruit themselves by rest for renew- 

 ing- their labours. The Bees composing the festooned curtain, are 

 individually motionless, but this curtain is notwithstanding kept moving 

 by the proceedings in the interior, for the nurse Bees never form any 

 portion of it and continue their activity ; a distinction with which 

 Reaumur was unacquainted. Although there are many thousand 

 labourers in a hive, they do not commence foundations for combs in 

 several places at once ; but wait till an individual Bee has selected a site 

 and laid the foundation of a comb, which serves as a directing mark for 

 all that are to follow. Were we not so expressly told by so accurate an 

 observer as Huber, we might hesitate to believe that Bees, though united 

 in what appears to be an harmonious monarchy, are strangers to sub- 

 ordination and subject to no discipline. Hence it is, that though many 

 Bees work on the same comb they do not appear to be guided by any 

 simultaneous impulse. The stimulus which moves them is successive. 

 An individual Bee commences each operation, and several others suc- 

 cessively apply themselves to accomplish the same purpose ; each Bee 

 appears, therefore, to act individually, either as directed by the Bees pre- 

 ceding it, or by the state of advancement in which it finds the work it 

 has to proceed with. If there be any thing like unanimous consent, it 

 is the inaction of several thousand workers, while a single individual 

 proceeds to determine and lay clown the foundation of the first comb. 

 Ileaumur regrets, that though he could by snatches detect a Bee at work 

 in founding cells, or perfecting their structure, his observations were 

 generally interrupted by the crowding of other Bees between him and 

 the little builder. He was, therefore, compelled rather to infer the 

 different steps of their procedure, from an examination of the cells when 

 completed, than from actual observation. 



The ingenuity of Huber even under all the disadvantages of blindness 

 succeeded in tracing the minutest operations of the workers from the 

 first waxen plate of the foundation. I think the narrative of the dis- 

 coverer's experiments as given by himself, will be more interesting 

 than any abstract of it. Having taken a large bell-shaped glass receiver, 

 we glued their wooden slips to the arch at certain intervals, because the 

 glass itself was too smooth to admit of the Bees supporting themselves 

 on it. A swarm consisting of some thousand workers, several hundred 

 males and a fertile queen was introduced, and they soon ascended to 

 the top ; those first gaining the slips fixed themselves there by the fore 

 feet, others scrambling up the sides joined them by holding their legs 

 with their own, and they thus formed a kind of chain fastened by the 

 two ends to the upper parts of the receiver, and served as ladders or a 

 bridge to the workers enlarging their number ; the latter were united in 

 a cluster, hanging like an inverted pyramid from the top to the bottom 

 of the hive. The country then affording little honey, we provided the 

 Bees with syrup of sugar, in order to hasten their labour ; they crowded 

 to the edge of a vessel containing it, and having 1 satisfied themselves, 



