HYBERNATION OF. INSECTS, 447 
winter, the heat ina well-peopled hive continues 4. 24° 
or 25° of Reaumur (86° Fahrenheit), when it is several 
degrees below zero in the open air; that they then 
cluster together and keep themselves 2 motion in order 
to preserve their heat*; and that in the depth of winter 
they do not cease to ventilate the hive by the singular 
process of agitating their wings before described’. He 
asserts also that, like Reaumur, he has in winter found 
in the combs brood of all ages; which, too, the observant 
Bonnet says he has witnessed°; and which is confirmed 
by Swammerdam, who expressly states that bees tend 
and feed their young even in the midst of winter’. To 
all these weighty authorities may be added that of John 
Hunter, who, as before noticed, found a hive to grow 
lighter in a cold than in a warm week of winter; and 
that a hive from November 10th to February 9th lost 
more than four pounds in weight*; whence the con- 
clusion seems inevitable, that bees do eat in winter. 
On the other hand, Reaumur adopts (or rather, per- 
haps, has in great measure given birth to) the more 
commonly received notion, that bees in a certain degree 
of cold are torpid and consume no food. ‘These are his 
words :—“ It has been established with a wisdom which 
we cannot but admire,—with that wisdom with which 
every thing in nature has been made and ordained,— 
that during the greater part of the time in which the 
country furnishes nothing to bees, they have no longer 
need to eat. The cold which arrests the vegetation of 
plants, which deprives our fields and meadows of their 
flowers, throws the bees into a state in which nourish- 
a Huber, 1. 134. b [bid. ii. 344. 358. See above, p. 194— 
¢ Bonnet On Bees, 104. 4 Huber, i, 354. ° Phil. Trans. 1790. 161. 
