524 HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 



mentioned in a former letter, living in an absolute solitude in the desert of 

 Africa. 



The common hive-bee, too, is probably never, strictly speaking, torpid, 

 though with regard to the precise state in which it passes the winter a con- 

 siderable difference of opinion has obtained. 



Many authors have conceived that it is the most natural state of bees in 

 winter to be perfectly torpid at a certain degree of cold, and that their 

 partial reviviscency, and consequent neefl of food in our climate, are owing 

 to its variableness and often comparative mildness in winter ; whence they 

 have advised placing bees during this season in an ice-house, or on the 

 north side of a wall, where the degree of cold being more uniform, and thus 

 their torpidity undisturbed, they imagine no food would be required. So 

 far, however, do these suppositions and conclusions seem from being war- 

 ranted, that Huber expressly affirms that, instead of being torpid in winter, 

 the heat in a well-peopled hive continues + 24 or 25 of Reaumur (86 

 or 88 Fahrenheit), when it is several degrees below zero in the open air ; 

 that they then cluster together and keep themselves in motion in order to 

 preserve their heat 1 ; 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. 2 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 3 ; and which is confirmed by Swammerdam, who expressly 

 states that bees tend and feed their young even in the midst of winter. 4 

 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 5 ; whence the conclusion seems 

 inevitable, that bees do eat in winter. 



On the other hand, Reaumur adopts (or rather, perhaps, 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 nou- 

 rishment ceases to be necessary to them : it keeps them in a sort of 

 torpidity (engourdissemen) y in which no transpiration from them takes 

 place ; or, at least, during which the quantity of that which transpires is 

 so inconsiderable that it cannot be restored by aliment without their lives 

 being endangered. In winter, while it freezes, one may observe without 

 fear the interior of hives that are not of glass ; for we may lay them on 

 their sides, and even turn them bottom upwards, without putting any bee 

 into motion. We see the bees crowded and closely pressed one against 

 the other : little space then suffices for them." 6 In another place, speak- 

 ing of the custom in some countries of putting bee-hives during winter 

 into out-houses and cellars, he says that in such situations the air, though 



i Huber, i. 134. 2 Ibid. ii. 344. 358. 



3 Bonnet On Bees, 104. * Huber, i. 354, 



* Phil. Trans. 1790, 161. Eeaum. v. 667. 



