"He put under a bell-glass about a dozen humble-bees, without any
store of wax, along with a comb of about ten silken cocoons, so
unequal in height that it was impossible the mass should stand firmly.
Its unsteadiness disquieted the humble-bees extremely. Their affection
for their young led them to mount upon the cocoons for the sake of
imparting warmth to the inclosed little ones, but in attempting
this the comb tottered so violently that the scheme was almost
impracticable. To remedy this inconvenience, and to make the comb
steady, they had recourse to a most ingenious expedient. Two or three
bees got upon the comb, stretched themselves over its edge, and with
their heads downwards fixed their fore-feet on the table upon which it
stood, whilst with their hind-feet they kept it from falling. In this
constrained and painful posture, fresh bees relieving their comrades
when weary, did these affectionate little insects support the comb
for nearly three days. At the end of this period they had prepared a
sufficiency of wax, with which they built pillars that kept it in a
firm position; but, by some accident afterwards, these got displaced,
when they had again recourse to their former manœuvre for supplying
their place; and this operation they perseveringly continued, until M.
Huber, pitying their hard task, relieved them by fixing the object of
their attention firmly on the table."
Lardner quotes from Kirby the following curious illustration of the
habits of the clothier-bee:--
"Kirby mentions the example of nests of this kind found by himself and
others, constructed in the inside of the lock of a garden-gate.
"A proceeding has been ascertained on the part of these insects
in such cases, which it is extremely difficult to ascribe to mere
instinct, independent of some intelligence. Wherever the nest may be
constructed, the due preservation of the young requires that until
they attain the perfect state, their temperature should be maintained
at a certain point So long as the material surrounding their nest is
a very imperfect conductor of heat, as earth or the pith of wood is,
the heat developed by the insect, being confined, is sufficient to
maintain its temperature at the requisite point. But if, perchance,
the mother-bee select for her nest any such locality as that of the
lock of the gate, the metal, being a good conductor of heat, would
speedily dissipate the animal heat developed by the insect, and thus
reduce its temperature to a point incompatible with the continuance of
its existence. How then does the tender mother, foreseeing this, and
consequently informed by some power of the physical quality peculiar
to the metal surrounding the nest, provide against it? How, we may
ask, would a scientific human architect prevent such an eventuality?
He would seek for a suitable material which is a non-conductor of
heat, and would surround the nest with it. In fact, the very thing
has occurred in a like case in relation to steam-engine boilers.
The economy of fuel there rendered it quite as necessary to confine
the heat developed in the furnace, as it is to confine that which
is developed in the natural economy of the pupa of the bee. The
expedient, therefore, resorted to is to invest the boiler in a thick
coating of a sort of felt, made for the purpose, which is almost a
non-conductor of heat. A casing of sawdust is also used in Cornwall
for a like purpose. By these expedients the escape of heat from the
external surface of the boiler is prevented.
"The bee keeps its pupa warm by an expedient so exactly similar, that
we must suppose that she has been guided either by her own knowledge,
or by a power that commands all knowledge, in her operations. She
seeks certain woolly-leaved plants, such as the _stachys lamata_ or
the _agrostemma coronaria_, and with her mandibles scrapes off the
wool. She rolls this into little balls, and carrying it to the nest,
sticks it on the external surface by means of a plaster, composed of
honey and pollen, with which she previously coats it. Thus invested,
the cells become impervious to heat, and consequently all the heat
developed by the little animal is confined within them.
"The name of _upholsterers_ has been given by Kirby to certain species
of bees, who, having excavated their nest in the earth, hang its
walls with a splendid coating of flowers and leaves. One of the most
interesting of these varieties is the _megachile papareris_, which has
been described by Reaumur. It chooses invariably for the hangings of
its apartments the most brilliant scarlet, selecting as its material
the petals of the wild poppy, which the insect dexterously cuts into
the proper form.
"Her first process is to excavate in some pathway a burrow cylindrical
at the entrance, but enlarged as it descends, the depth being about
three inches. After having polished the walls, she next flies to a
neighbouring field, where she cuts out the oval parts of the poppy
blossoms, and seizing them between her hind legs returns with them
to her cell. Sometimes it happens that the flower from which she
cuts these, being but half-blown, has a wrinkled petal. In that
case she spreads out the folds, and smoothers away the wrinkles,
and if she finds that the pieces are too large to fit the vacant
spaces on the walls of her little room, she soon reduces them to
suitable dimensions, by cutting off all the superfluous parts with
her mandibles. In hanging the walls with this brilliant tapestry she
begins at the bottom, and gradually ascends to the roof. She carpets
in the same manner the surface of the ground round the margin of the
orifice. The floor is rendered warm sometimes by three or four layers
of carpeting, but never has less than two.
"Our little upholsterer having thus completed the hangings of her
apartment, fills it with a mixture of pollen and honey to the height
of about half an inch. She then lays an egg in it, and wraps over
the poppy lining, so that even the roof may be furnished with this
material. Having accomplished this, she closes the mouth of the
nest.[A]
[Footnote A: Reaumur, vi. 139 to 145.]
"It is not every insect of this class which manifests the same
showy taste in the colours of their furniture. The species called
leaf-cutters hang their walls in the same way, not with the blossoms
but the leaves of trees, and more particularly those of the rose-tree.
They differ also from the upholsterer described above, in the
external structure of their nests, which are formed in much longer
cylindrical holes, and consist of a series of thimble-shaped cells,
composed of leaves most curiously convoluted. We are indebted likewise
to Reaumur for a description of the labours of these.
"The mother first excavates a cylindrical hole in a horizontal
direction eight or ten inches long, either in the ground or in the
trunk of a rotten tree, or any other decaying wood. She fills this
hole with six or seven thimble-shaped cells, composed of cut leaves,
the convex end of each fitting into the open end of the other. Her
first process is to form the external coating, which is composed of
three or four pieces of larger dimensions than the rest, and of an
oval form. The second coating consists of portions of equal size,
narrow at one end, but gradually widening towards the other, where the
width equals half the length. One side of these pieces is the serrated
edge of the leaf from which it was taken, which, as the pieces lap
over each other, is kept on the outside, the edge which was cut being
within.
"The little animal next forms a third coating of similar material,
the middle of which, as the most skilful workman would do in a like
case, she places over the margins of those that form the first side,
thus covering and strengthening the junctions by the expedient which
mechanics call a break-joint. Continuing the same process, she gives a
fourth and sometimes a fifth coating to her nest, taking care at the
closed end, or narrow extremity of the cell, to bend the leaves so as
to form a convex termination.
"After thus completing each cell, she proceeds to fill it to within
the twentieth of an inch of the orifice with a rose-coloured sweetmeat
made of the pollen collected from thistle-blossoms mixed with honey.
Upon this she lays her egg, and then closes the orifice with three
pieces of leaf, one placed upon the other, concentrical and also
so exactly circular in form, that no compasses could describe that
geometrical figure with more precision. In their magnitude also they
correspond with the walls of the cell with such a degree of precision,
that they are retained in their situation merely by the nicety of
their adaptation.
"The covering of the cell thus adapted to it being concave,
corresponds exactly with the convex end of the cell which is to
succeed it; and in this manner the little insect prosecutes her
maternal labours until she has constructed all the cells, six or seven
in number, necessary to fill the cylindrical hole.
"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."