VENTILATION OF THE BEE-HIVE. 183 



372. In very hot weather, the bees are specially careful 

 not to cluster on new combs containing sealed honey, which, 

 from not being lined with cocoons, and from the extra 

 amount of wax used for their covers, melt more readily than 

 the breeding-cells. 



373. Apiarists have noticed that bees often leave their 

 honey-cells almost bare, as soon as they are sealed; but it 

 seems to have escaped their observation, that this is abso- 

 lutely necessary in very hot weather. In cool weather, they 

 may frequently be found clustered among the sealed honey- 

 combs, because there is then no danger of their melting. 



Few things are so well fitted to impress the mind with their 

 admirable sagacity, as the truly scientific device by which 

 they ventilate their dwellings. In this important matter, 

 the bee is immensely in advance of the great mass of those 

 who are called rational beings. It has, to be sure, no ability 

 to decide, from an elaborate analysis of the chemical con- 

 stituents of the atmosphere, how large a proportion of oxy- 

 gen is essential to the support of life, and how rapidly the 

 process of breathing converts it into a deadly poison. It 

 cannot, like Liebig, demonstrate that God, by setting the 

 animal and the vegetable world, the one over against the 

 other, has provided that the atmosphere shall, through all 

 ages, be as pure as when it first came from His creating 

 hand. But shame upon us! that with all our boasted intel- 

 ligence, most of us live as though pure air was of little or 

 no importance; while the bee ventilates with a philosophical 

 precision that should put to the blush our criminal neglect. 



It is said that ventilation cannot, in our case, be had 

 without cost. Can it then be had for nothing, by the indus- 

 trious bees? Those ranks of bees, so indefatigably plyiag 

 their busy wings, are not engaged in idle amusement; nor 

 might they, as some shallow utilitarian may imagine, be 

 better employed in gathering honey, or superintending some 

 other department in the economy of the hive. At great ex- 

 pense of time and labor, they are supplying the rest of the 



