HYBERNATION OF INSECTS. 



363 



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 that de- 

 gree they consume considerably less food than at a higher 

 temperature ; and consequently, 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 attention, must not be 

 allowed to set aside the striking facts of a contrary description 

 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-wonderful insects, there is 

 evidently much yet to be observed, and many doubts which 

 can be satisfactorily dispelled only by new experiments. 1 



1 Mr. Newport, from his numerous experiments on the temperature of the 

 interior of bee-hives in winter, recorded in his valuable paper in the Philosophical 

 Transactions, " On the Temperature of Insects," has come to the conclusion that 

 Huber is altogether in error in assigning a heat of 86° or 88° Fahr. to a populous 

 hive, which, he contends, has its temperature sometimes (though rarely) lower 

 than that of the freezing point (p. 303.), and in the winter months does not 

 average more than from 7 to 9 degrees above that of the atmosphere, or about 52° 

 (Table XVI. p. 335.), though merely tapping on the outside of the hive, by 

 exciting the bees, will, at any time, greatly increase the heat ; in one instance 

 (Feb. 2.) to 102°, when the temperature of an adjoining hive was only 48° '5 

 (p. 304.); and it is from this circumstance that he supposes Huber's error to 

 have arisen, as the mere excitement caused by introducing a thermometer is 

 sufficient to raise the heat to the point (86° or 88°) which that observer men- 

 tions. Mr. Newport admits that hive-bees are never strictly torpid, but pass 

 the winter in a state of hybernating sleep, liable to constant interruption by 

 considerable external variations of temperature or accidental excitement (p. 300. ). 

 — Without entering on a discussion which would require much greater space than 

 can here be given, it may be remarked that something more than thermometrical 

 observations seems required, before the express assertions, as above quoted, of 

 such careful observers as Swammerdam and Bonnet — that bees feed and tend 

 their young even in the midst of winter, and those of Huber, that bees then 

 cluster together and keep themselves in motion in order to preserve their heat, 

 that they do not cease to ventilate the hive, and, on an emergency, set themselves 

 to work in the middle of January — can be put aside as wholly unfounded. It 

 may be true that Huber was deceived as to the actual thermometrical heat of 

 the interior of his hive, yet the results of Mr. Newport's own observations show 



