274 HABITATIONS OF INSECTS. 



that the great angles of the rhombs should be 109 26', and of the small 

 angles 70 34/ 1 What a surprising agreement between the solution of the 

 problem and the actual admeasurement ! 2 



Besides the saving of wax effected by the form of the cells, the bees adopt 

 another economical plan suited to the same end. They compose the bottoms 

 and sides of wax of very great tenuity, not thicker than a sheet of writing- 

 paper. But as walls of this thinness at the entrance would be perpetually 

 injured by the ingress and egress of the workers, they prudently make the 

 margin at the opening of each cell three or four times thicker than the walls. 

 Dr. Barclay discovered that, though of such excessive tenuity, the sides 

 and bottom of each cell are actually double, or, in other words, that each cell 

 is a distinct, separate, and in some measure an independent structure, agglu- 

 tinated only to the neighbouring cells, and that when the agglutinating sub- 

 stance is destroyed, each cell may be entirely separated from the rest. 3 



You must not imagine that all the cells of a hive are of precisely similar 

 dimensions. As the society consists of three orders of insects differing in 

 size, the cells which are to contain the larva? of each proportionally differ, 

 those built for the males being considerably larger than those which are 

 intended for the workers. The abode of the larva? of the queen bee differs 

 still more. It is not only much larger than any of the rest, but of a quite 

 different form, being shaped like a pear or Florence flask, and composed 

 of a material much coarser than common wax, of which above one hundred 

 times as much is used in its construction as of pure wax in that of a com- 

 mon cell. The situation, too, of these cells (for there are generally three 

 or four, and sometimes many more, even up to thirty or forty, in each hive) 

 is very different from that of the common cells. Instead of being in a 

 horizontal they are placed in a vertical direction, with the mouth down- 

 wards, and are usually fixed to the lower edge of the combs, from which 

 they irregularly project like stalactites from the roof of a cavern. The 

 cells destined for the reception of honey and pollen differ from those which 

 the larvae of the males and workers inhabit only by being deeper, and thus 

 more capacious; in fact, the very same cells are successively applied to 

 both purposes. When the honey is collected in great abundance, and 



1 Reaum. v. 390. 



2 Father Boscovich observes, that all -the angles that form the planes which 

 compose the cell are equal, i.e. 120; and he supposes that this equality of inclina- 

 tion facilitates much the construction of the cell, which may be a motive for pre- 

 ferring it, as well as economy. He shows that the bees do not economise the wax 

 necessary for a flat bottom in the construction of every cell, near so much as MM. 

 Kb'nig and Reaumur thought. 



MacLaurin says, that the difference of a cell with a pyramidal from one with a 

 flat bottom, in -which is comprised the economy of the bees, is equal to the fourth 

 part of six triangles, -which it -would be necessary to add to the trapeziums, the faces 

 of the cell, in order to make them right angles. 



M. L'Hullier, professor of Geneva, values the economy of the bees at Jj of the 

 whole expense ; and he shows that it might have been one-fifth if the bees had no 

 other circumstances to attend to ; but he concludes, that if it is not very sensible in 

 every cell, it may be considerable in the -whole of a comb, on account of the mutual 

 setting of the two opposite orders of cells. Huber, Nouvelles Observations, &c., 

 ii. 34. 



3 Memoirs of the Wernerian Society, ii. 259. This, however, has been denied by 

 Mr. Waterhouse, and seems inconsistent with the account given by Huber hereafter 

 detailed ; but Mr. G. Newport asserts that even the virgin cells are lined with a 

 delicate membrane. Westwood, Mod. Class, of Ins. ii. 284. 



