Chap. viii. Cell-making Instinct 225 



inch in thickness ; whereas the basal rhomboidal plates are thicker 

 nearly in the proportion of three to two, having a mean thickness 

 from twenty-one measurements, of -^ of an inch. By the above 

 singular manner of building, strength is continually given to the 

 comb, with the utmost ultimate economy of wax. 



It seems at first to add to the difficulty of understanding how 

 the cells are made, that a multitude of bees all work together • one 

 bee after working a short time at one cell going to another, so that, 

 as Huber has stated, a score of individuals work even at the com- 

 mencement of the first cell. I was able practically to show this 

 fact, by covering the edges of the hexagonal walls of a single cell, 

 or the extreme margin of the circumferential 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 it 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 edo-es 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 difficulty, as when two pieces of comb met at an angle, 

 how often the bees would 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 adjoin- 

 ing cells has been built. This capacity in bees of laying down 

 under certain circumstances a rough wall in its proper place between 

 two just-commenced cells, is important, as it bears on a fact, which 

 seems at first subversive of the foregoing theory ; namely, that the 

 cells on the extreme margin of wasp-combs are sometimes strictly 



Q 



