174 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1792. 



in the summer is sufficient to keep them at home, more so than a shower in a 

 warm day: and if the hive is thin, and much exposed, they will hardly move in 

 it, but get as close together as the comb will let them, into a cluster. In this 

 manner they appear to live through the winter: however, in a fine day they be- 

 come very lively and active, going abroad, and appearing to enjoy it, at which 

 time they get rid of their excrement; for I fancy they seldom throw out their 

 excrement when in the hive. To prove this, I confined some bees in a small 

 hive, and fed them with honey for some days ; and the moment I let them out, 

 they flew, and threw out their excrement in large quantities; and therefore, in 

 the winter I presume they retain the contents of their bowels for a considerable 

 time: indeed, when we consider their confineinent in the winter, and that they 

 have no place to deposite their excrement, we can hardly account for the whole 

 of this operation in them. Their excrement is of a yellow colour, and accord- 

 ing to their confinement it is found higher and higher up in the intestine, al- 

 most as high as the crop. 



Their life at this season of the year is more 

 uniform, and may be termed simple existence, 

 till the warm weather arrives again. As they 

 now subsist on their summer's industry, they 

 would seem to feed in proportion to the cold- 

 ness of the season; for from experiment, I found 

 the hive grow lighter in a cold week, than it 1 777- Jan. 

 did in a warmer, which led to further experi- 

 ments. I first made an experiment on a bee 

 hive, to ascertain the quantity of honey lost 

 through the winter. The hive was put into the 

 scale November the 3d, 1776: 



Though an indolent state is very much the condition of bees through the 

 winter, yet progress is making in the queen towards a summer's increase. The 

 eggs in the oviducts are beginning to swell, and I believe in the month of March 

 she is ready to lay them, for the young bees are to swarm in June; which con- 

 stitutes the queen bee to be the earliest breeder of any insect we know. In con- 

 sequence of this, the labourers become sooner employed than any other of this 

 tribe of insects. This both queen and labourers are enabled to accomplish, from 

 living in society through the winter; and it becomes necessary in them, as they 

 have their colony to form early in the summer, which is to provide for itself for 

 the winter following. All this requires the process to be carried forward earlier 

 than by any other insect, for these are only to have young which are to take 

 caie of themselves through the summer, not being under the necessity of pro- 

 viding for the winter. 



