HIVES FOR BEES. 
33 
On our hottest days, since its services would be 
unnecessary, it would break up altogether ; but with 
the sinking of the thermometer, as the sun approaches 
the horizon, the bees would hasten to re-form the ex- 
ternal mantle, its thickness growing most rapidly on 
the side of the cone most exposed to the chilling 
influences of any air-current. The working population 
is thus in a hive the sides of which are formed of living 
bees, who would appear from this to be the most 
ancient hive-makers. This observation teaches us at 
once the primal advantage of the covering, whatever be 
its form, in which our bees are kept. It is, as Fig. 5 
will make clear, to diminish, or even to make needless, 
the inactive peripheral crust, by substituting for it 
walls such bad heat conductors that, by their help, the 
workers alone may keep up the necessary tempera- 
ture for wax-working and brood-raising; so that the 
greatest number, or even all, of the population may 
be disposable for active service. In temperate lati- 
tudes, bees can sustain themselves year after year in 
clefts of rocks, or hollow trees, but in the open never, 
as the former situations alone liberate the main body 
for remunerative labour. The advantage of some 
cover is even observable in hot climates. The Apis 
dorsata of India commonly builds beneath the branches 
of trees, and here the comb is always single, with 
dense clusters of bees on each side of it ; but should 
this species begin to build in a rock crevice, the 
side protection releases so many for work that the 
combs are duplicated, and the colony becomes un- 
usually numerous. Those hives, then — other things 
being equal — will give the best results which most 
VoL. II. D 
