HYBERNATTON OF INSECTS. 525 



more temperate than out of doors during the greater part of winter, " is 

 yet sufficiently cold to keep the bees in that species of torpidity which 

 does away their need of eating." 1 And lastly, he expressly says that the 

 milder the weather, the more risk there is of the bees consuming their 

 honey before the spring, and dying of hunger; and confirms his assertion 

 by an account of a striking experiment, in which a hive that he transferred 

 during winter into his study, where the temperature was usually in the 

 day 10 or 12 R. above freezing (54 or 59 F.), though provided with a 

 plentiful supply of honey, that if they had been in a garden would have 

 served them past the end of April, had consumed nearly their whole stock 

 before the end of February. 2 



Now, how are we to reconcile this contradiction ? for, if Huber be 

 correct in asserting that in frosty weather bees agitate themselves to keep 

 off the cold, and ventilate their hive, if, as both he and Swammerdam 

 state, they feed their young brood in the depth of winter, it seems im- 

 possible to admit that they ever can be in the torpid condition which 

 Reaumur supposes, in which food, so far from being necessary, is injurious 

 to them. In fact, Reaumur himself in another place informs us, that bees 

 are so infinitely more sensible of cold than the generality of insects, that 

 they perish when in numbers so small as to be unable to generate sufficient 

 animal heat to counteract the external cold, even at 1 1 R. above freezing 3 

 (57 F. ) ; which corresponds with what Huber has observed (as quoted 

 above) of the high temperature of well-peopled hives, even in very severe 

 weather. We are forced, then, to conclude that this usually most accurate 

 of observers has in the present instance been led into error, chiefly, it is 

 probable, from the clustering of bees in the hives in cold weather ; but 

 which, instead of being, as he conceived, an indication of torpidity, would 

 seem to be intended, as Huber asserts, as a preservative against the 

 benumbing effects of cold. 



Bees, then, do not appear to pass the winter in a state of torpidity in 

 our climates, and probably not in any others. Populous swarms inhabiting 

 hives formed of the hollow trunks of trees, used in many northern regions, 

 or of other materials that are bad conductors of heat, seem able to generate 

 and keep up a temperature sufficient to counteract the intensest cold to 

 which they are ordinarily exposed. At the same time, however, I think 

 we may infer, that though bees are not strictly torpid at that lowest degree 

 of heat which they can sustain, yet that when exposed to that degree they 

 consume considerably less food than at a higher temperature ; and conse- 

 quently, that the plan of placing hives in a north aspect in sunny and mild 

 winters may be adopted by the apiarist with advantage. John Hunter's 

 experiment, indeed, cited above, in which he found that a hive grew lighter 

 in a cold than in a warm week, seems opposed to this conclusion ; but an 

 insulated observation of this kind, which we do not know to have been 

 instituted with a due regard to all the circumstances that required atten- 

 tion, must not be allowed to set aside the striking facts of a contrary de- 

 scription recorded by Reaumur and corroborated by the almost universal 

 sentiment of writers on bees. After all, however, on this point, as well as 

 on many others connected with the winter economy of these endlessly- 



1 Reaum. v. 682. 2 Ibid. 668. 



5 Ibid. 678. Compare also 673. 



