1878. 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTUEE. 



223 



HOrJS'Sr COSUfflB.— Every body knows 

 that the cells of the honey comb are 6 sided, 

 and I presnme most people know why they 

 are 6 sided. If they were siiuare, the young 

 bee would have a much more uncomfortable 

 cradle, in which to grow up, and it would 

 take a much greater space to accommodate 

 a given nimiber of bees. This last would, 

 of itself, be a fatal objection ; for to have 

 the greatest benetit of the accumulated ani- 

 mal heat of the brood, they must be closely 

 packed together. Tliis is not only the case 

 with the unhatched bees, but with the bees 

 of a whole colony in winter ; when each bee 

 is snugly ensconced in a cell, they occupy 

 less room than they could by any other ar- 

 rangement. 



If the cells were round, they could be 

 grouped together much in the same way as 

 they are now ; viz., one in the centre, and 6 

 all aroimd it, equally distant from the cen- 

 tral one, and from each other, like the cut, 

 A, in the ligure below ; but even then, the 

 circles will leave much waste room in the 

 coi'uers, that the bees would have to till with 

 wax. 



WHY THE CELLS OF THE HONEY COMB ARE 

 MADE 6 SIDED. 



At B, we see the cells are nearly as com- 

 fortable for the young bee, as a round one 

 would be— of course I mean from our point 

 of view, for it is quite likely that the bees 

 know just what they need a great deal bet- 

 ter than we do — and, at the same time, 

 they come together in such a way that no 

 space is left to be filled up at all. The bees, 

 therfore, can make the walls of their cells 

 so thin that they are little more than a silky 

 covering, as it were, that separates each one 

 from its neighbor. It must also be remem- 

 bered that a bee, wiien in his cell, is squeezed 

 up, if we may so term it, so as to occupy 

 much less space than he otherwise would ; 

 and this is why the combined animal heat of 

 the cluster is so much better economized in 

 winter, when the bees have a small circle of 

 empty cells to cluster in, with sealed "stores 

 all around them. 



But, my friends, this is not half of the in- 

 genuity displayed about the cell of the bee. 



These hexagonal cells must have some kind 

 of a wall or partition between the inmates 

 of one series of cells, and those in the cells 

 on the opposite side. If we had a plane 

 partition running across the cells at right 

 angles with the sides, the cells would have 

 flat bottoms which would not fit the rounded 

 body of the bee, besides leaving useless 

 corners, just as there would have been, if 

 the cells had been made rovmd or square. 

 Well, this problem was solved in much the 

 same way, by making the bottom of the cell 

 of three little lozenge shaped plates. In 

 the figure below we give one of these little 

 plates, and also show the manner in which 

 three of them are put together to form the 

 bottom of the cell. 



HOW THE BOTTOM OF THE CELL IS MADE. 



Now, if the little lozenge plates were 

 square, we should have much the same ar- 

 rangement, but the bottom would be too 

 sharp pointed, as it were, to use wax with 

 the best economy, or to best accommodate 

 the body of the infantile bee. Should we, on 

 the contrary, make the lozenge a little long- 

 er, we should have the bottom of the cell 

 too nearly flat, to use wax with most econo- 

 my, or for the comfort of the young bee. 

 Either extreme is bad, and there is an exact 

 point, or rather a precise proportion that the 

 width of this lozenge should bear to the 

 length. This proportion has been long ago 

 decided to be such that, if the width of the 

 lozenge is equal to the side of a square, 

 the length should be exactly equal to the di- 

 agonal of this same square. Tjiis has been 

 proven, by quite an intricate geometrical 

 problem ; but a short time ago, while get- 

 ting out our machine for making the fdn., 

 I discovered a much shorter way of working 

 this beautiful problem. 



In the figure above, let A B C D represent 

 the lozenge at the bottom of the cell, and 

 A C the width, while B D is the length of 

 said lozenge. Now the point I wish to 

 prove is, that C D bears the same proportion 



