1921 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



363 



ready for the honey flow. Thus he 

 goes on year by year, with long expla- 

 nations as to why he got no crop or 

 a poor one, but of one thing he is 

 certain, the fault is not his. 

 British Columbia. 



THE HONEY COMB 



By Will H. Gray 



The beekeeper must often wonder 

 where and how the bee developed the 

 idea of comb. If one asks the aver- 

 age beeman where he has seen a sim- 

 ilar formation he will, most likely, be 

 unable to answer. If he has visited 

 or seen pictures of those more or 

 less rare occurrences such as the 

 Giant's Causeway, in the north of 

 Ireland, he will be at once struck by 

 the resemblance to bee cells. 



One does not have to travel to meet 

 numerous cases in natui'e of the hex- 

 agonal cell, for we are surrounded by 

 them on every side. We do not see 

 them. Why? Because they are too 

 small. 



When the student sets up hi j micro- 

 scope and examines a bee's eye he is 

 at once struck by the fact, or coinci- 

 dence, that it looks just like a piece ot 

 dai'k, regular comb. Later on he finds 

 many other cases: the stem cf a lily 

 and the pith of the elder show six 

 sided cells. Our interest being stimu- 

 lated, we look at many other things. 

 The outer coat of a holly berry is 

 made up of four, five and six-sicied fig- 

 ures, with many transition cells that 

 at once remind us of those we see in 

 brace combs, and between drone ana 

 worker cells. 



There is a family of tiny water in- 

 sects called rotifers ; some of them in- 

 case themselves in a tube which is 

 built up of little bricks made from 

 their own waste food. These bricks 

 are sometimes of hexagonal shape. If 

 the little inmate is fed with food 

 stained with different colored dyes, 

 the protecting tube will have the ap- 

 pearance of layer cake. 



I have, somewhere, a lump of chain 

 coral that was dug up in Ontario. It 

 is made up of small oval cells all 

 joined together; quite an ideal home 

 for little insects other than those who 

 made it hundreds of millions of years 

 ago; and, who knows? perhaps the an- 

 cestors of the honeybee at one time or 

 another found a vegetable or mineral 

 abode which suited their purpose dur- 

 ing a stage of their wonderful devel- 

 opment. 



If we turn to the sea, whence the 

 bee probably came, and look with the 

 microscope at some of those b"autiful 

 little plants known as marine diatoms, 

 we find one, at least, that looks famil- 

 iar: this is the Honeycombed Tricera- 

 tium, with its cells, though slightly 

 elongated, as regular as an aluminum 

 comb. 



British Columbia. 



(On this subject of the shape of the 

 cells, Messrs. Langstroth and Charles 

 Dadant had this to say (Hive & Honey 

 Bee, paragraphs 212-213) : 



"An equilateral triangle would have 

 been impossible for an insect with a 

 round body to build. A circle seems 

 to be the best shape for the develop- 

 ment of the larvae; but such a figure 

 would have caused a needless sacri- 



fice of space, materials and streng^th. 

 The body of the immature insect, as 

 it undergoes its changes, is charged 

 with a superabundance of moisture, 

 which passes off through the reticu- 

 lated cover of its cell ; may not a 

 hexagon, therefore, while approach- 

 ing so nearly to the shape of a circle 

 as not to incommode the young bee, 

 furnish in its six corners, the neces- 

 cary vacancies for a more thorough 

 ventilation? 



"Is it credible that these little in- 

 sects can unite so many requisites in 

 the construction of their cells? 



"The fact is that the hexagonal 

 shape of the cells is naturally pro- 

 duced, and without any calculation, 

 by the bee. She wants to build each 

 cell round, but as every cell touches 

 the next ones, and as she does not 

 wish to leave any space between, 

 each one of the cells flattens at the 

 contact, as would soap bubbles if all 

 of the same diameter. It is the same 

 for the lozenges of the bottom. The 

 bee, wanting the bottom of the cell 

 concave inside, makes it, naturally, 

 convex on the outside. As this con- 

 vexity projects on the opposite side 

 of the median line, the bee who 

 builds the opposite cells begins, nat- 

 urally, on the tip of the convexity, 

 the walls of cells just begun, since she 

 wants also to make their bottom con- 

 cave. The final result is that one- 

 third of the bottom of each of three 

 cells makes the bottom of one cell op- 



CelU f-rom Stem of Lvlu 



Outer Coit of H»U>|-0«rTi| 



posite, and each one of the lozenges 

 is flattened, so as not to encroach in 

 the opposite cells." 



Thus it is plain that, whether it is 

 the bee's comb, or the bee's composite 

 eye, or the stem of the lily, or the 

 chain of coral, etc., those six-sided 

 shapes are the* result of rounded 

 bodies, of similar diameter, pressing 

 against each other and assuming the 

 only shape that will make them fit 

 together without any spaces or waste 

 material between them. — Editor.) 



BEEKEEPING KNOWLEDGE 



By Prof. H. F. Wilson 

 It is almost impossible to succeed 

 with any business without a fair un- 

 derstanding of the basic principles of 

 that business. No single movement 

 has been more productive of better 

 conditions among beekeepers than the 

 extension work carried on over the 

 entire United States during the past 

 four years by both National and State 

 offcials. 



Individual beekeepers have from 

 time to time worked out new methods 

 of manipulation, but the study of bee 

 behavior has mostly been done by 

 trained investigators who were able 

 to properly interpret the results, be- 

 cause of a knowledge of such sub- 

 jects as Physics, Chemistry, Zoology, 

 etc. 



Progress depends upon knowledge. 

 First the facts must be discovered 

 and then they must, by means of books 



Ch««.in CovaI 



Hon*«con\()e(l TriCCTA.tiu'n 



SvTf^te \af Bees €ye 



Hniicy-comh sinnlai'iltc> in Xalurc 



