190 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
for this purpose, enters the large cells of the males, and 
continues in them without motion a very long time. 
Even then the workers form a circle round her, and 
brush the uncovered part of her abdomen. ‘The drones 
while reposing do not enter the cells, but cluster in the 
combs, and sometimes remain without stirring a limb for 
eighteen or twenty hours?. 
Reaumur observes, that in a hive the population of 
which amounts to 18,000, the number that enter the hive 
in a minute is a hundred ; which, allowing fourteen hours 
in the day for their labour, makes 84,000: thus every 
individual must make four excursions daily, and some 
five. In hives where the population was smaller, the 
numbers that entered were comparatively greater, so as 
to give six excursions or more to each bee>. But in 
this calculation Reaumur does not seem to take into the 
account those that are employed within the hive in build- 
ing or feeding the young brood; which must render the 
excursions of each bee still more numerous. He pro- 
ceeds further to ground upon this statement a calcula- 
tion of the quantity of bee-bread that may be collected 
in cne day by such a hive; and he found, supposing 
Huber’s opinion, that it has no connexion with it, the ordinary tem- 
perature of the hive being sufficient for this purpose; and the cir- 
cumstance of their entering unoccupied cells proves that this attitude 
has no particular connexion with the eggs. Huber, i. 212.—“ When 
large pieces of comb,” says Wildman (p. 45), “ were broken off and 
lefc at the bottom of the hive, a great number of bees have gone 
and placed themselves upon them.” This looks like incubation. 
Reaumur however athims (p. 591) that if part of a comb falls and 
loses its perpendicular direction, the bees, as if conscious that they 
would come to nothing, pull out and destroy all the larve. They 
might perhaps remain perpendicular in the case observed by Wildman. 
@ Reaum.yv. 431. Huber, 13. 212. b Reaum. vy. 432— 
