PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS; 213 
which they have in reserve. The lowest cells are first 
uncovered, and their contents consumed ; the highest are 
reserved to the last. The honey in the lowest cells be- 
ing collected in the autumn, probably will not keep so 
well as the vernal. 
The degree of heat ina hive in winter, as I have just 
hinted, is great. A thermometer near one, in the open 
air, that stood in January at 63° below the freezing point, 
upon the insertion of the bulb a little way into the hive, 
rose to 221° above it; and could it have been placed be- 
tween the combs, where the bees themselves were agelo- 
merated, the mercury, Reaumur conjectures, would have 
risen as high as it does abroad im the warm days in sum- 
mer*. Huber says that it stands in frost at 86° and 88° 
in populous hives®. In May, the former author found, 
in a hive in which he had ledged a small swarm, that the 
thermometer indicated a degree of heat above that of the 
hottest days of summer’. He observes that their motion, 
and even the agitation of their wings, increases the heat 
of their atmosphere. Often, when the squares of glass 
in a hive appeared cold to the touch, if either by design 
or chance he happened to disturb the bees, and the ag- 
glomerated mass in a tumult began to move different 
ways, sending fortha great hum, in a very short time so 
considerable an accession of heat was preduced, that when 
he touched the same squares of glass, he felt them as hot 
as if they had been held near a fierce fire. By teasing 
the bees, the heat generated was sometimes so great as to 
soften very much the wax of the combs, and even to 
cause them to fall’. This generation cf heat in bee-hives 
€ ubi supr. “ Reaum, v. 672, 
