HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 525 
more temperate than out of doors during the greater part of winter, “is 
yet sufficiently cold to keep the bees in that species of torpidity which 
does away their need of eating.”! And lastly, he expressly says that the 
milder the weather, the more risk there is of the bees consuming their 
honey before the spring, and dying of hunger; and confirms his assertion 
by an account of a striking experiment, in which a hive that he transferred 
during winter into his study, where the temperature was usually in the 
day 10° or 12° R. above freezing (54° or 59° F.), though provided with a 
plentiful supply of honey, that if they had been in a garden would have 
served them past the end of April, had consumed nearly their whole stock 
before the end of February.? 
Now, how are we to reconcile this contradiction ? —for, if Huber be 
correct in asserting that in frosty weather bees agitate themselves to keep 
off the cold, and ventilate their hive, —if, as both he and Swammerdam 
state, they feed their young brood in the depth of winter,—it seems im- 
possible to admit that they ever can be in the torpid condition which 
Reaumur supposes, in which food, so far from being necessary, is injurious 
to them. In fact, Reaumur himself in another place informs us, that bees 
are so infinitely more sensible of cold than the generality of insects, that 
they perish when in numbers so small as to be unable to generate sufficient 
animal heat to counteract the external cold, even at 11° R. above freezing* 
(57° F,); which corresponds with what Huber has observed (as quoted 
above) of the high temperature of well-peopled hives, even in very severe 
weather, Weare forced, then, to conclude that this usually most accurate 
of observers has in the present instance been led into error, chiefly, it is 
probable, from the clustering of bees in the hives in cold weather; but 
which, instead of being, as he conceived, an indication of torpidity, would 
seem to be intended, as Huber asserts, as a preservative against the 
benumbing effects of cold. 
Bees, then, do not appear to pass the winter in a state of torpidity in 
our climates, and probably not in any others. Populous swarms inhabiting 
hives formed of the hollow trunks of trees, used in many northern regions, 
or of other materials that are bad conductors of heat, seem able to generate 
and keep up a temperature sufficient to counteract the intensest cold to 
which they are ordinarily exposed. At the same time, however, I think 
we may infer, that though bees are not strictly torpid at that lowest degree 
of heat which they can sustain, yet that when exposed to ¢hat degree they 
consume considerably less food than at a higher temperature; and conse- 
quently, that the plan of placing hives in a north aspect in sunny and mild 
winters may be adopted by the apiarist with advantage. John Hunter's 
experiment, indeed, cited above, in which he found that a hive grew lighter 
in a cold than in a warm week, seems opposed to this conclusion ; but an 
insulated observation of this kind, which we do not know to have been 
instituted with a due regard to all the circumstances that required atten- 
tion, must not be allowed to set aside the striking facts of a contrary de- 
scription recorded by Reaumur and corroborated by the almost universal 
sentiment of writers on bees, After all, however, on this point, as well as 
on many others connected with the winter economy of these endlessly- 
1 Reaum. v. 682. 2 Ibid. 668. 
5 Ibid, 678. Compare also 673, 
