VOL. LXXxri.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. ISQ 



claiming it as his right : a hundred may be about the same drop of honey, if it is 

 beyond the boundaries of their own right ; but what they have collected they de- 

 fend. It is easily known when they mean to sting ; they fly about the object of 

 their anger very quickly, and by the quickness of their motion evade being struck 

 or attacked ; which is discovered by the sound of their wings, as if going to give 

 a stroke as they fly, a very different noise from that of the wings when coming 

 home of a fine evening loaded with farina, or honey ; it is then a soft contented 

 noise. When a single bee is attacked by several others, it seems the most pas- 

 sive animal possible, making no resistance, and even hardly seeming to wish to 

 get away; and in this manner they allow themselves to be killed. They are per- 

 haps the only insect that feeds in the winter, and therefore the only one that lays 

 up external store ; and as all animals, whether insects or not, that keep quiet in 

 the winter, without either eating at all, or eating very little in proportion to what 

 they do in the summer, grow fat and muscular in the summer, which I term in- 

 ternal store, we see why the common bee need not be fatter at one time than an- 

 other ; and accordingly we find them nearly of the same fatness the year round. 



There are accidents befalling hives of bees, that are not easily accounted for. 

 I had a hive which in the month of November was become quite empty of bees, 

 and on examination had no honey in it, which was strong in the summer, and 

 had violent attacks made on it in October by wasps belonging to a nest in the 

 garden, but appeared quiet when that nest was removed. On examining this 

 hive, I found only 5 dead bees, and not a drop of honey in any one cell : there 

 was a good deal of bee bread in difi'erent cells scattered up and down the comb, 

 which was become white with mould on its surface. On the other hand, I have 

 had swarms die in the winter in the hives, while there was great plenty of honey 

 in the combs : what seemed remarkable, they all died with their probosces elon- 

 gated, and in those which I opened, I found the stomachs full of honey, and 

 their intestines full also of excrement, especially the last part. 



Of the heat of bees. — Bees are perhaps the only insect that produces heat with- 

 in itself, and were therefore intended to have a tolerably well-regulated warmth, 

 without which, of course, they are very uncomfortable, and soon die ; and which 

 makes not only a part of their internal economy respecting the individual, but a 

 part of their external, or counnon economy, and is therefore necessary to be 

 known. The heat of bees is ascertainable by the thermometer, and I shall give 

 the result of experiments made at two difl"erent seasons of the year. July 18th, 

 at 10 in the evening, wind northerly, thermometer at 54°, in the open air, I in- 

 troduced it into the top of a hive full of bees, and in less than 5 minutes it rose to 

 82°. I let it stand all night ; at 5 in the morning it was down at 79° ; at 9 the 

 same morning, it had risen to 83°, and at 1 o'clock to 84° ; and at 9 in the even- 

 ing it was down to 78°. — Dec. 30th, air at 35°, bees at 73°. 



