878 THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 



score of individuals work even at the commencement of 

 the lirst celL I was able practically to show tliis fact, 

 by covering the edges of the hexagonal walls of a single 

 cell, or the extreme margin of the circumferential rim of 

 a growing comb, with an extremely thin layer of melted 

 vermilion wax; and I invariably found that the color was 

 most delicately diffused by the bees — as delicately as a 

 painter could have done it with his brush — by atoms of 

 the colored wax having been taken from the spot on 

 which it had been placed and worked into the growing 

 edges of the cells all round. The work of construction 

 seems to be a sort of balance struck between many bees, 

 all instinctively standing at the same relative distance 

 from each other, all trying to sweep equal spheres, and 

 then building up, or leaving ungnawed, the planes of 

 intersection between these spheres. It was really curi- 

 ous to note in cases of difficulty, as when two pieces 

 of comb met at an angle, how often the bees would 

 pull down and rebuild in different ways the same cell, 

 sometimes recurring to a shape which they had at first 

 rejected. 



When bees have a place on which they can stand in 

 their proper positions for working— for instance, on a slip 

 of wood, placed directly under the middle of a comb 

 growing downward, so that the comb has to be built 

 over one face of the slip — in this case the bees can lay 

 the foundations of one wall of a new hexagon, in its 

 strictly proper place, projecting beyond the other com- 

 pleted cells. It suffices that the bees should be enabled 

 to stand at their proper relative distances from each other 

 and from the walls of the last completed cells, and then, 

 by striking imaginary spheres, they can build up a wall 



