PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 401 



Bat when the air grows milder, especially if the rays of the sun fall upon 

 the hive and warm it, they awake from their lethargy, shake their wings, 

 and begin to move and recover their activity ; with which their wants re- 

 turning, they then feed upon the stock of honey and bee-bread which they 

 have in reserve. The lowest cells are first uncovered, and their contents 

 consumed ; the highest are reserved to the last. The honey in the lowest 

 cells being collected in the autumn, probably will not keep so well as the 

 vernal. 



The degree of heat in a hive in winter, as I have just hinted, is great. 

 A thermometer near one, in the open air, that stood in January at 6| 

 below the freezing point, upon the insertion of the bulb a little way into 

 the hive rose to 22^ above it ; and could it have been placed between the 

 combs, where the bees themselves were agglomerated, the mercury, Reau- 

 mur conjectures, would have risen as high as it does abroad in the warm 

 days in summer. 1 Huber says that it stands in frost at 86 and 88 in 

 populous hives. 2 In May, the former author found in a hive in which he 

 had lodged a small swarm, that the thermometer indicated a degree of heat 

 above that of the hottest days of summer. 3 He observes that their motion, 

 and even the agitation of their wings, increases the heat of their atmo- 

 sphere. Often, when the squares of glass in a hive appeared cold to the 

 touch, if either by design or chance he happened to disturb the bees, and 

 the agglomerated mass in a tumult began to move different ways, sending 

 forth a great hum, in a very short time so considerable an accession of 

 heat was produced, that when he touched the same squares of glass he felt 

 them as hot as if they had been held near a fierce fire. By teasing the 

 bees, the heat generated was sometimes so great as to soften very much the 

 wax of the combs, and even to cause them to fall. 4 



The above conclusions, however, of Reaumur and Huber, as to the 

 great temperature of the interior of bee-hives in winter, are contrary to the 

 results obtained by George Newport, Esq., from his minute and very valu- 

 able series of experiments to determine this point, which will be further 

 adverted to in directing your attention to the hibernation of insects ; but 

 this excellent comparative anatomist, of whose labours British entomology 

 is so justly proud, has not only fully confirmed what these entomologists 

 have advanced as to the extra heat generated by bees in their hives in 

 summer, but, after showing that all insects have a temperature greater 

 than that of the surrounding atmosphere, and that this temperature, as in 

 vertebrate animals, is intimately dependent on the volume and velocity of 

 their circulation, and the quantity and activity of their respiration, has 

 proved that it is in consequence of the greater energy of this last function 

 in bees and humble-bees, owing to the superior development and capacity 

 of their tracheae and vesicular dilatations, that their power of producing 

 heat is so much greater than that of most other insects. If, as happened 

 to myself a few days ago, a wild bee should chance to drop on a newspaper 

 you are reading in the open air, and you observe it attentively, you will see 

 it pant like a greyhound after a chase, the alternate rapid contraction and 

 expansion of its abdominal segments corresponding with the numerous 

 and rapid acts of respiration which the exertion of its recent flight has 

 caused ; and Mr. Newport found that in the hive-bee, when very mode- 



i v. 671. i. 354. note *. 



s Ubi supr. * Reaurn. v. 672. 



