[CHAPTER XXXIV.]
ON THE ARCHITECTURE OF BEES.
“Quel abime aux yeux du sage qu’une ruche d’abeilles? Quel sagesse profonde se cache dans cet abime! Quel philosophe osera le fonder!”—Bonnet.
The combs of a bee-hive comprise a congeries of hexagonal cells, formed by the bees, as receptacles for honey or for embryo bees. A honey-comb is allowed to be one of the most striking achievements of insect industry, and an admirable specimen of insect architecture. It has attracted the admiration of the contemplative philosopher in all ages, and awakened speculation not only in the naturalist, but also in the mathematician: so regular, so perfect, is the structure of the cells, that it satisfies every condition of a refined problem in geometry. Still a review of their proceedings will lead to the conclusion, as Huber has observed, that “the geometrical relations, which apparently embellish the productions of bees, are rather the necessary result of their mode of proceeding, than the principle by which their labour is guided.” “We must therefore conclude, that the bees, although they act geometrically, understand neither the rules nor the principles of the arts which they practise so skilfully, and that the geometry is not in the bee, but in the great Geometrician who made the bee, and made all things in number, weight and measure[Z].”
[Z] Reid.
Before the time of Huber, no naturalist had seen the commencement of the comb, nor traced the several steps of its progress. After many attempts, he at length succeeded in attaining the desired object, by preventing the bees from forming their usual impenetrable curtain, by suspending themselves from the top of the hive; in short, he obliged them to build upwards, and was thereby enabled, by means of a glass window, to watch every variation and progressive step in the construction of comb.
Each comb in a hive is composed of two ranges of cells backed against each other: these cells, looking at them as a whole, may be said to have one common base, though no one cell is opposed directly to another. This base or partition between the double row of cells is so disposed as to form a pyramidal cavity at the bottom of each, as will be explained presently. The mouths of the cells, thus ranged on each side of a comb, open into two parallel streets (there being a continued series of combs in every well filled hive). These streets are sufficiently contracted to avoid waste of room and to preserve a proper warmth, yet wide enough to allow the passage of two bees abreast. Apertures through different parts of the combs are reserved to form near roads, for crossing from street to street, whereby much time is saved to the bees.
“These in firm phalanx ply their twinkling feet,
Stretch out the ductile mass, and form the street,
with many a cross-way path and postern gate.
That shorten to their range the spreading state.”