Homes Without Hands: Being a Description of the Habitations of Animals, Classed According to Their Principle of Construction

Now let us see how this beautiful lozenge is made. There is not the least difficulty in drawing it. Make any square, ABCD (Fig. 3), and draw the diagonal AC.

Produce BA toward F and AD, both ways to any distance. Make AE and AG equal to AC, and make AF equal to AB. Join the points EFGB, and you have the required figure.

Now comes a beautiful point. If we take AB as 1, being one side of the square on which the lozenge is founded, AE and AG will be equal to √2, and EF, FG, GB, and BE, will be equal to √3, as can be seen at a glance by any one who has advanced as far as the 47th proposition of the first book of Euclid.

Perhaps some of my readers may say that all these figures may be very true, but that they do not show how the cell is formed. If the reader will refer to Fig. 4, he will see how the theory may be reduced to practice. After he has drawn the lozenge-shaped figure which has just been described, let him draw upon cardboard nine of them, as is shown in the illustration (Fig. 4). Then let him cut out the figure, and draw his penknife half through the cardboard at all the lines of junction. He will then find that the cardboard will fold into an exact model of a bee-cell, the three lozenges which project from the sides forming the base, and the others the sides. This cell will, of course, have very short sides; but by the simple expedient of widening the lozenges which form the sides without altering the angles, the imitation cell can be made of any desired length.

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The best way of showing this beautiful structure is to make two models, one to lie flat or be folded and opened at discretion, and the other formed into a cell, and the angles written upon the cardboard. A little gummed paper will hold the sides together, so that the model can be handled without breaking. A very amusing puzzle may be formed by cutting out the nine lozenge-shaped pieces of cardboard, and by requesting that they be so put together as to form the model of a bee-cell.

We have not yet exhausted the wonders of the bee-comb. If we take a piece of comb from which all the cells have been removed and hold it up to the light, we shall see that the cells are not placed opposite each other, but that the three lozenges which form the base of one cell form part of the base of three other cells, as is seen in Fig. 2. Thus a still farther economy of material is attained, while the strength is enormously increased, each of the edges formed by the junction of two lozenges making a buttress which performs precisely the same office as the buttresses of architecture.

The same principle is observable throughout the cell, which even at its edges is supported by three cells, and gives partial support to three others. As the walls of the cells are extremely thin, the Bee always strengthens their mouths by a thick edging of harder wax than that with which the cell itself is made. The engineer who plans girders, boilers, and other objects of a similar character, acts in precisely the same manner, and strengthens the comparatively thin and yielding plates by flanges or angle-irons.

Many inquirers have asked themselves how the Bee constructs the comb, and on what principle it proceeds. To this question there have been several answers, none of which appear to be satisfactory. One ingenious entomologist remarked that, when the Bee placed the claws of its fore feet against each other, the limbs embraced a hexagonal space, of which the thorax formed one side. Another, a very popular solution of the question, is that which may be called the “sculpture” theory.

The Bee that commences the task is supposed to work a lump of wax on the stick or bar which supports a comb, and then to excavate a circular hole on one side, the interior of the hole being shaped like a concave lens. Round this hole or basin the Bee then excavates six other holes of equal diameter, so that their edges nearly touch each other. It then cuts away the wax from each basin until the material is reduced to the requisite thinness, and thus obtains the hexagonal cell. In the mean time, another Bee is working in the same manner on the opposite side of the wax, taking care, however, to make the centre of its first basin correspond with the union of three basins on the opposite side. A similar system of sculpturing is carried on, so that at last a series of hexagonal basins is formed, from which rise the walls of the future cells.

There is an amount of plausibility about this theory which is very attractive. It must, however, be remembered that the Bee is still supposed to execute problems which are as difficult as that which they are presumed to explain.

In the first place, the Bee must strike perfect circles from centres the distance of which from each other must be accurately adjusted. Again, these centres must be so placed that the centre of the circle sculptured on one side of the comb must be equidistant from the centres of the three adjacent circles on the other side—a problem of no easy accomplishment, even with the aid of rule and compass. Then, if the circles be not perfect, or their centres wrongly placed, or the hollow of one cut deeper than that of another, or the hemispherical form of the hollow not precisely just, the whole accuracy of the angles is destroyed, and the entire comb would be as distorted as the first essays of a young carpenter.

Then there is another explanation, which may be called the “equal pressure” theory. The Bee is, according to the advocates of this theory, supposed to construct all the cells of a cylindrical shape, and the cells are supposed to assume the hexagonal form by equal pressure in all directions. Every one knows that cylinders made of a yielding substance always become hexagonal if pressed together, and a similar process was supposed to cause the hexagonal shape of the bee-cell.

There is another theory, which I believe to be entirely original, which is suggested by the well-known mathematician and crystallographer above mentioned. Mr. Mitchell writes to me as follows: “It may not be out of place to remark that the bee-cell forms a mould, as it were, of the natural form of a crystal. There is in nature a great variety of crystals, hexagonal prisms terminated by three planes, like the bee-cell. These have many different angles. But there is one form, called the rhombic dodecahedron (Fig. 6), very frequently found in natural crystals of the garnet, which has precisely the same angles as the bee-cell.

“Certain crystals split naturally into planes precisely like the lozenges which have already been described in giving the key to the structure of the bee-cell. May it not, therefore, be possible that wax, which is a crystalline substance, cleaves in this particular direction, and does the Bee use this property in forming its cell? Though this vague conjecture should prove to be true, we shall not less admire the marvelous instinct which combines this fact with the structure of the cell.”

It would, of course, be easy to fill many pages with the account of the Hive-bee and its habits; but as this work is restricted to the habitations of animals, we can only look upon the Bee as a maker of social habitations. It will, however, be necessary to mention the material of which the comb is made.

The other hymenoptera obtain their materials from external sources. The hornet and wasp have recourse to trees and branches, and bear home in their mouths the bundles of woody fibres which they have gnawed away. The upholsterer and leaf-cutter Bees are indebted to the petals and leaves of various plants, and various wood-boring insects make their homes of the woody particles which they have nibbled away. The Bee, however, obtains her wax in a very different manner.

If the body of a worker Bee be carefully examined, on the under sides of the abdomen will be seen six little flaps, not unlike pockets, the covers of which can be easily raised with a pin or needle. Under these flaps is secreted the wax, which is produced in tiny scales or plates, and may be seen projecting from the flaps like little semilunar white lines. Plenty of food, quiet, and warmth are necessary for the production of wax, and as it is secreted very slowly, it is so valuable that the greatest economy is needed in its use. It is, indeed, a wonderful substance; soft enough, when warm, to be kneaded and to be spread like mortar, and hard enough, when cold, to bear the weight of brood and honey. Moreover, it is of a texture so close that the honey can not soak through the delicate walls of the cells, as would soon be the case if the comb were made of woody fibre, like that of the hornet or wasp.

Indeed, it is a most remarkable fact that the Bee should be able to produce not only the honey, but the material with which is formed the treasury wherein the honey is stored. Honey itself is again scarcely less remarkable than wax. The Bee goes to certain flowers, inserts its hair-clad proboscis into their recesses, sweeps out the sweet juice, passes the laden proboscis through its jaws, scrapes off the liquid, and swallows it. The juice then passes into a little receptacle just within the abdomen, called the “honey-bag,” which is apparently composed of an exceedingly delicate membrane, and seems to discharge no other office than that of a vessel in which the juice can be kept while the Bee is at work.

As soon as the honey-bag is filled, the Bee flies back to the hive and disgorges the juice into one of the cells. But, during that short sojourn in the insect, the juice has undergone a change, and been converted into honey, a substance which is quite unlike that from which it was formed, and which has an odor and flavor peculiarly its own. How this change is wrought is at present unknown, for the little bag in which the transformation is made is composed of a membrane that seems incapable of exerting any influence upon the substance contained within it.

All food that is eaten by the Bee passes through the honey-bag, which is closely analogous to the crop of a bird, and it would seem that the honey ought rather to pass into the stomach than be disgorged at the will of the insect. However, it is well known that many birds feed their young by disgorging food, and the Bee is enabled to perform the same operation by means of a little valve which leads from the honey-bag into the stomach, and is plainly perceptible even with the unassisted eye. Under ordinary circumstances, the valve just allows the food to pass gently and gradually into the stomach; but the violent effort which is made in ejecting the food closes the valve, and only allows the honey to flow upward through the mouth.

The office of the worker and drone cells is twofold—first, to act as nurseries for the insects while passing through their preliminary stages, and, next, to serve as repositories for food, whether liquid or solid. The egg of the queen bee is placed nearly at the bottom of the cell, exactly on the angle where the points of the lozenges meet. It is soon hatched into a little white grub, which is assiduously fed by the nurses, and grows with wonderful rapidity. As soon as it has eaten its last larval meal, it spins a silken cover over the cell, and remains there until it has become a perfect insect. It then bites its way out, and after a day or so devoted to hardening and strengthening its limbs, it leaves the hive and joins in the labors of the community.