THE BEE NATION. 275 



from each other and symmetrically in a double layer, and 

 tried to save as much space and wax as possible, its structure 

 would then be almost as perfect as that of the hive bee. Let 

 it now be remembered that the bees always begin with 

 circular holes in a thick wall of wax, and later erect the 

 single partition-walls,- and in order to make the greatest 

 possible room within for the reception of honey and to use 

 as little as possible of the costly and precious wax, they 

 work out the corners sharply, so that each bee carries on its 

 gnawing to the highest admissible extent of thinness of the 

 partition-wall ; let it further be remembered that the 

 mathematical exactitude of the cells has been much 

 exaggerated, and that some are very regular and others very 

 irregular, and that some five and four-cornered cells re 

 found, and we shall then easily come to the conclusion that 

 early ancestors of our honey bees built in as imperfect 

 fashion as the Melipona and only gradually worked on 

 to a perfect system of architecture.* In any case we 

 must disagree with those who think that there is nothing 

 to show such an improvement in our honey bees, and that 

 these rather build their cells to-day exactly as they built 

 them two or three thousand years ago, and as they will 

 probably build to all eternity. But apart from the fact that 

 it would be exceedingly difficult to prove the justice of this 

 contention it is forgotten that bees are not three thousand, 

 but hundreds of thousands of years old, and that on this 

 road they have long attained a grade of perfection which is 

 thoroughly sufficient for their wants and therefore cannot be 

 improved. What Hackel (" On Division of Labor," 1869) 

 says in this connexion of ants is quite as true of bees : 

 " These rude aboriginal ants, which lived many thousands 

 of years ago, perhaps even during the chalk age, had as 

 little idea of the advanced division of labor of the various 

 modern ant States as had our German ancestors of the Stone 

 Age of the high culture of the nineteenth century. These, 



* According to Graber (loc. cit. ii., p. 78) Heinrich Miiller has shewn 

 it to be in the highest degree probable that our present bees are 

 descended from certain digging wasps, from those ro liber Hymenoplera 

 which themselves live on dower-juices, but feed their young, brought 

 up in holes, with insects. Gradually they camo to substitute vegetable 

 matter for the flesh-food which was often only to be obtained with 

 difficulty. 



