274 THE BEE NATION. 



gradually in perfectly mechanical fashion from pressure of 

 space and mutual flattening from the originally imperfectly 

 shaped cells, and that the need of economy in space and in 

 wax was the impelling reason for the prosperity and propa- 

 gation of such hives as gradually advanced to the conception 

 of the perfect cell form. That this is. no theory, but fact, 

 is proved by the transition shapes and gradations between 

 perfect and imperfect cells among the nearest relations of 

 the honey bees, such as humble bees, mason bees, Anthophora, 

 Melipona, wasps, etc., which are met to-day in great numbers 

 and variety. According to Darwin, the humble bees are at 

 the extreme end of the scale on the imperfect side ; these 

 use their old cocoons or pupa-cases for the reception of 

 honey, sometimes adding short wax cylinders, and, in addi- 

 tion, making a few separate irregular rounded cells of wax. 

 These cells, which may best be compared to eggs with the 

 point cut smoothly off, or to the open end of a narrow 

 thimble, generally lie irregularly together, or are at the best 

 laid on a short horizontal platform, raised on pillars, so that 

 a humble bee's nest in comparison with a beehive is, to 

 borrow Reaumur's expression, like an irregularly-built village 

 compared with a well laid-outcity. " Regular order, beauty, 

 and grace of form are just as little to be found in our towns, 

 where this house stands one way and its neighbor the other" 

 (Giebel). 



Between these imperfect nests and cells of the humble bee 

 and the perfect ones of the hive, or honey bee, there is a 

 countless number of gradations amonir the various species of 

 bees, as well as among their nearest relations the wasps, 

 with their numberless species and sub-species. Darwin 

 notes among those gradations as specially remarkable the 

 architecture of the Mexican Melipnna dumextlca, an American 

 species of bee, which makes an almost regular waxen comb 

 in the cylindrical cells wherein the young are tended. It 

 also builds for the storage of honey a number of larger 

 cells of almost spherical shape, and of nearly the same 

 size, which are pressed so closely together that at the 

 places of contact the rounded form is lost and a flat sheet 

 of wax forms the partition-wall instead ; this is the begin- 

 ning of a mutual flattening of the previously spherical 

 cells. If the Melipona, like our hive bee, made its 

 spherical cells of the same size and at given equal die-tance& 



