PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 401 
But when the air grows milder, especially if the rays of the sun fall upon 
the hive and warm it, they awake from their lethargy, shake their wings, 
and begin to move and recover their activity ; with which their wants re- 
turning, they then feed upon the stock of honey and bee-bread 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 being collected in the autumn, probably will not keep so well as the 
yernal. 
The degree of heat in a hive in winter, as I have just hinted, is great. 
A thermometer near one, in the open air, that stood in January at 6%° 
below the freezing point, upon the insertion of the bulb a little way into 
the hive rose to 223° above it ; and could it have been placed between the 
combs, where the bees themselves were agglomerated, the mercury, Reau- 
mur conjectures, would have risen as high as it does abroad in the warm 
days in summer. Huber says that it stands in frost at 86° and 88° in 
opulous hives.? In May, the former author found in a hive in which he 
fad lodged 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 atmo- 
sphere. 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 agglomerated mass in a tumult began to move different ways, sending 
forth a great hum, in a very short time so considerable an accession of 
heat was produced, 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.* 
The above conclusions, however, of Reaumur and Huber, as to the 
great temperature of the interior of bee-hives in winter, are contrary to the 
results obtained by George Newport, Esq., from his minute and very valu- 
able series of experiments to determine this point, which will be further 
adverted to in directing your attention to the hybernation of insects; but 
this excellent comparative anatomist, of whose labours British entomology 
is so justly proud, has not only fully confirmed what these entomologists 
have advanced as to the extra heat generated by bees in their hives in. 
summer, but, after showing that all insects have a temperature greater 
than that of the surrounding atmosphere, and that this temperature, as in 
vertebrate animals, is intimately dependent on the volume and velocity of 
their circulation, and the quantity and activity of their respiration, has 
proved that it is in consequence of the greater energy of this last function 
in bees and humble-bees, owing to the superior development and capacity 
of their trachew and vesicular dilatations, that their power of produces 
eat is so much greater than that of most other insects. If, as happene 
to myself a few days ago, a wild bee should chance to drop on a newspaper 
you are reading in the open air, and you observe it attentively, you will see 
It pant like a greyhound after a chase, the alternate rapid contraction and 
expansion of its abdominal segments corresponding with the numerous 
and rapid acts of respiration which the exertion of its recent flight has 
caused; and Mr. Newport found that in the hiye-bee, when very mode- 
1 y. 671. 2 i, 354, note *. 
3 Ubi supr. 4 Reaum. v. 672. 
