362 



HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 



the milder the weather, the more risk there is of the bees 

 consuming their honey before the spring, and dying of hun- 

 ger ; 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° E. 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. 1 



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 con- 

 dition 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 2 (57° F.); which corresponds with 

 what Huber has observed (as quoted above) of the high tem- 

 perature of well-peopled hives, even in very severe weather. 

 We are 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 j)robably 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 



1 Reaum. v. 668. 



2 Ibid. 678. Compare also 673. 



