232 INSTINCT. Chap. VII. 



of a single cell, or the extreme margin of the circumfer- 

 ential rim of a growing comb, with an extremely thin 

 layer of melted vermilion wax ; and I invariably found 

 that the colour was most delicately diffused by the bees 

 — as delicately as a painter could have done with his 

 brush — by atoms of the coloured wax having been taken 

 from the spot on which it had been placed, and worked 

 into the growing edges of the cells all round. The work 

 of construction seems to be a sort of balance struck 

 between many bees, all instinctively standing at the 

 same relative distance from each other, all trying to 

 sweep equal spheres, and then building up, or leaving 

 ungnawed, the planes of intersection between these 

 spheres. It was really curious to note in cases of diffi- 

 culty, as when two pieces of comb met at an angle, how 

 often the bees would entirely pull down and rebuild in 

 different ways the same cell, sometimes recurring to a 

 shape which they had at first rejected. 



When bees have a place on which they can stand in 

 their proper positions for working, — for instance, on a 

 slip of wood, placed directly under the middle of a comb 

 growing downwards so that the comb has to be built over 

 one face of the slip — in this case the bees can lay the 

 foundations of one wall of a new hexagon, in its strictly 

 proper place, projecting beyond the other completed 

 cells. It suffices that the bees should be enabled to 

 stand at their proper relative distances from each other 

 and from the walls of the last completed cells, and then, 

 by striking imaginary spheres, they can build up a wall 

 intermediate between two adjoining spheres ; but, as far 

 as I have seen, they never gnaw away and finish off the 

 angles of a cell till a large part both of that cell and of 

 the adjoining cells has been built. This capacity in 

 bees of laying down under certain circumstances a 

 rough wall in its proper place between two just-com- 



