THE BEE NATION. 273 



CHAPTER XXII. 



CELL-BUILDING. 



THIS same point of view must be taken, as for all else, in 

 studying the famous pyramidal and hexagonal cell- 

 building of the bees already described, although in this 

 people have mistakenly tried to find an irrefutable truth of 

 an intelligence and a mathematical knowledge impossible in 

 them. We have seen that the bees often build cells of other 

 shapes as well, and that they mutually correct and improve 

 each other in the building itself. We know that they utilise, 

 for the support and upholding of their combs, bits of stick 

 artificially introduced into the hive : yes, that they will use 

 artificially-prepared combs, or old ones emptied of their 

 honey by human hands, as though they were their own : or 

 that they will continue combs artificially begun, as though 

 they themselves had commenced them.* Different races of 

 bees, such as German and Italian, show considerable dif- 

 ference in their work, but it is surely impossible that there 

 can be a German and an Italian instinct. 



But with all this, the remarkable shape of the individual 

 cells, so exactly agreeing with geometrical laws, is not itself 

 explained, and on this point we should be obliged either to 

 confess our ignorance or to allow that the believers in 

 instinct are right, if we were compelled to admit that the 

 bees have always, since the first origin of their race, built 

 such cells as we see to-day. But the great and important 

 law of gradual evolution, to which the whole organised world 

 owes its origin, here again solves the problem for us, and 

 teaches us that the present shape of the bee-cells has arisen 



* If a plate of wax, with artificially-made commencements of cells of 

 the size and shape of ordinary bee cells, be hung in a hive, the bees 

 will build on this artificial foundation ; bee-masters utilise this to 

 shorten the long introductory labor in the hive, since such manufac- 

 tured articles have been sold. 



