HIVE-BEES. 115 



in several places at once, but wait till an individua. 

 bee has selected a site, and laid the foundation of. a 

 comb, which serves as a directing: mark for all that 

 are to follow. Were we not expressly told by so 

 accurate an observer as Huber, we might hesitate to 

 believe that bees, though united in what appears to 

 be a harmonious monarchy, are strangers to sub- 

 ordination, and subject to no discipline. Hence it 

 is, that though many bees work on the same comb, 

 they do not appear to be guided by any simultaneous 

 impulse. The stimulus which moves them is suc- 

 cessive. An individual bee commences each opera- 

 tion, and several others successively apply themselves 

 to accomplish the same purpose. Each bee appears, 

 therefore, to act individually, either as directed by the 

 bees preceding it, or by the state of advancement in 

 which it finds the work it has to proceed with. If 

 there be anything like unanimous consent, it is the 

 inaction of several thousand workers while a single 

 individual proceeds to determine and lay down the 

 foundation of the first comb. Reaumur regrets, that, 

 though he could by snatches detect a bee at work in 

 founding cells or perfecting their structure, his ob- 

 servations were generally interrupted by the crowding 

 of other bees between him and the little builder. 

 He was therefore compelled rather to infer the dif- 

 ferent steps of their procedure from an examination 

 of the cells when completed, than from actual ob- 

 servation. The ingenuity of Huber, even under all 

 the disadvantages of blindness, succeeded in tracing 

 the minutest operations of the workers from the first 

 waxen plate of the foundation. We think the narra- 

 tive of the discoverer's experiments, as given by him- 

 self, will be more interesting than any abstract of it 

 which we could furnish. 



" Having taken a large bell-shaped glass receiver, 

 we glued thin wooden slips to the arch at certain in- 



