134 Insect Architecture. 



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 

 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 

 subordination, 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 indi- 

 vidual bee commences each operation, and several others 

 successively apply themselves to accomplish the same pur- 

 pose. Each bee appears, therefore, to act individually, 

 either as directed by the bees preceding it, or by the state 

 of advancement in which it finds the work it has to proceed 

 with. If there be anything like unanimous consent, it is 

 the inaction of several thousand workers while a single 

 individual proceeds to determine and lay down the foun- 

 dation of the first comb. Reaumur 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 examina- 

 tion of the cells when completed, than from actual observa- 

 tion. The ingenuity of Huber, even under all the disadvan- 

 tages of blindness, succeeded in tracing the minutest operations 

 of the workers from the first waxen plate of the foundation. 

 We think the narrative of the discoverer's experiments, as 

 given by himself, will be more interesting than any abstract 

 of it which we could furnish : 



