"The process which one of these bees employs in cutting the pieces of leaf that compose her nest, is worthy of attention. Nothing can be more expeditious, and she is not longer about it than one would be in cutting similar pieces with a pair of scissors. After hovering for some moments over a rose-bush, as it were to reconnoitre the ground, the bee alights upon the leaf which she has selected, usually taking her station upon its edge, so that its margin shall pass between her legs. She then cuts with her mandibles, without intermission, in such a direction as to detach from the leaf a triangular piece. When this hangs by the last fibre, lest its weight should carry her to the ground, she spreads her little wings for flight, and the very moment the connection of the part thus cut off with the leaf is broken, she carries it off in triumph to her nest, the detached portion remaining bent between her legs in a direction perpendicular to her body. Thus, without rule or compass, do these little creatures measure out the material of their work into ovals, or circles, or other pieces of suitable shapes, accurately accommodating the dimensions of the several pieces of these figures to each other. What other architect could carry impressed upon the tablet of his memory such details of the edifice which he has to erect, and, destitute of square or plumb-line, cut out his materials in their exact dimensions without making a single mistake or requiring a single subsequent correction?
"But of all the varieties of this insect, that of which the architectural and mechanical skill is transcendently the most admirable is the bee-hive. The most profound philosopher, says Kirby, equally with the most incurious of mortals, is filled with astonishment at the view of the interior of a bee-hive. He beholds there a miniature city. He sees regular streets, disposed in parallel directions, and consisting of houses constructed upon the most exact geometrical principles, and of the most symmetrical forms. These buildings are appropriated to various purposes. Some are warehouses in which provisions are stored in enormous quantities; some are the dwellings of the citizens; and a few of the most spacious and magnificent are royal palaces. He finds that the material of which this city is built is one which man with all his skill and science cannot fabricate, and that the edifices which it is employed to form are such that the most consummate engineer could not reproduce, much less originate; and yet this wondrous production of art and skill is the result of the labour of a society of insects so minute, that hundreds of thousands of them do not contain as much ponderable matter as would enter into the composition of the body of a man. Quel abime aux yeux du sage qu'une ruche d'abeilles! Quelle sagesse profonde se cache dans cet abime! Quel philosophe osera le sonder! Nor has the problem thus solved by the bee yet been satisfactorily expounded by philosophers. Its mysteries have not yet been fathomed. In all ages naturalists and mathematicians have been engrossed by it, from Aristomachus of Soli and Philiscus the Thracian, already mentioned, to Swammerdam, Reaumur, Hunter, and Huber of modern times. Nevertheless, the honey-comb is still a miracle which overwhelms our faculties."
Kirby writes:—
"Besides the saving of wax effected by the form of the cells, the bees adopt another economical plan suited to the same end. They compose the bottoms and sides of wax of very great tenuity, not thicker than a sheet of writing-paper; but as walls of this thickness at the entrance would be perpetually injured by the ingress and egress of the workers, they prudently make the margin at the opening of each cell three or four times thicker than the walls. Dr. Barclay discovered, that though of such excessive tenuity, the sides and bottom of each cell are actually double, or in other words, that each cell is distinct, separate, and in some measure an independent structure, agglutinated only to the neighbouring cells; and that when the agglutinating substance is destroyed, each cell may be entirely separated from the rest. This, however, has been denied by Mr. Waterhouse, and seems inconsistent with the account given by Huber, hereafter detailed; but Mr. G. Newport asserts, that even the virgin-cells are lined with a delicate membrane."
Dr. Bevan relates of Mr. Knight, an acute and accurate apiarian:—
"On one occasion he observed from twenty to thirty bees paying daily visits to some decayed trees, about a mile distant from his garden; the bees appeared to be busily employed in examining the hollow parts, and particularly the dead knots around them, as if apprehensive of the knots admitting moisture. In about fourteen days these seeming surveyors were followed by a large swarm from his apiary, which was watched the whole way, till it alighted in one of these cavities. It was observed to journey nearly in a direct line from the apiary to the tree. On several similar occasions the bees selected that cavity which Mr. Knight thought best adapted to their use."
"Insects give proofs without number of the possession of the faculty of memory, without which it would be impossible to turn to account the results of experience. Thus, for example, each bee, on returning from its excursions, never fails to recognise its own hive, even though that hive should be surrounded by various others in all respects similar to it.
"This recognition of home is so much the more marked by traces of intelligence rather than by those of instinct, inasmuch as it depends not on any character merely connected with the hive itself, whether external or internal, but from its relation to surrounding objects; just as we are guided to our own dwellings by the recollection of the particular features of the locality and neighbourhood. Nor is this faculty in the bee inferred from mere analogies; it has been established by direct experiment and observation. A hive being removed from a locality to which its inhabitants have become familiar, they are observed, upon the next day, before leaving for their usual labours, to fly around the hive in every direction, as if to observe the surrounding objects, and obtain a general acquaintance with their new neighbourhood.
"The queen in like manner adopts the same precaution before she rises into the air, attended by her numerous admirers, for the purpose of fecundation."—Lardner.
"The attention," says Lord Brougham,[B] "which has been paid at various times to the structure and habits of the bee, is one of the most remarkable circumstances in the history of science. The ancients studied it with unusual minuteness, although being, generally speaking, indifferent observers of fact, they made but little progress in discovering the singular economy of this insect Of the observations of Aristomachus, who spent sixty years, it is said, in studying the subject, we know nothing; nor of those which were made by Philissus, who passed his life in the woods, for the purpose of examining this insect's habits; but Pliny informs us that both of them wrote works upon it. Aristotle's three chapters on bees and wasps[C] contain little more than the ordinary observations, mixed up with an unusual portion of vulgar and even gross errors. How much he attended to the subject is, however, manifest from the extent of the first of these chapters, which is of great length. Some mathematical writers, particularly Pappus, studied the form of the cells, and established one or two of the fundamental propositions respecting the economy of labour and wax resulting from the plan of the structure. The application of modern naturalists to the inquiry is to be dated from the beginning of the eighteenth century, when Maraldi examined it with his accustomed care; and Reaumur afterwards, as we have seen, carried his investigations much farther. The interest of the subject seemed to increase with the progress made in their inquiries; and about the year 1765 a society was formed at Little Bautzen in Upper Lusatia, whose sole object was the study of bees. It was formed under the patronage of the Elector of Saxony. The celebrated Schirach was one of its original members; and soon after its establishment he made his famous discovery of the power which the bees have to supply the loss of their queen, by forming a large cell out of three common ones, and feeding the grub of a worker upon royal jelly; a discovery so startling to naturalists, that Bonnet, in 1769, earnestly urged the society not to lower its credit by countenancing such a wild error, which he regarded as repugnant to all we know of the habits of insects; admitting, however, that he should not be so incredulous of any observations tending to prove the propagation of the race of the queen-bee without any co-operation of a male,[D] a notion since shown by Huber to be wholly chimerical. In 1771 a second institution, with the same limited object, was founded at Lauter, under the Elector Palatine's patronage, and of this Riem, scarcely less known in this branch of science than Schirach, was a member.