HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 



361 



is confirmed by Swammerdam, who expressly states that bees 

 tend and feed their young even in the midst of winter. 1 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 2 ; whence the conclusion seems inevitable, 

 that bees do eat in winter. 



On the other hand, Reaumur adopts (or rather, perhaps, 

 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 meadoAvs 

 of their flowers, throws the bees into a state in which nour- 

 ishment ceases to be necessary to them : it keeps them in a 

 sort of torpidity (engourdissemeni), in which no transpiration 

 from them takes place ; or, at least, during which the 

 quantity of that which transpires is so inconsiderable that it 

 cannot be restored by aliment without their lives being en- 

 dangered. In winter, while it freezes, one may observe 

 without fear the interior of hives that are not of glass ; for 

 we may lay them on their sides, and even turn them bottom 

 upwards, without putting any bee into motion. We see the 

 bees crowded and closely pressed one against the other : little 

 space then suffices for them." 3 In another place, speaking 

 of the custom in some countries of putting bee-hives during 

 winter into out-houses and cellars, he says that in such 

 situations the air, though more temperate than out of doors 

 during the greater part of winter, c< is yet sufficiently cold to 

 keep the bees in that species of torpidity which does away 

 their need of eating." 4 And lastly, he expressly says that 



i Huber, i. 354. 

 3 Reaum. v. 667. 



2 Phil. Trans. 1790, 161. 

 * Ibid. 682. 



