. The ABC of bee culture: a cyclopaedia of every thing pertaining to the care of the honey-bee; bees, honey, hives, implements, honey-plants, etc., facts gleaned from the experience of thousands of bee keepers all over our land, and afterward verified by practical work in our own apiary. Bee culture. Mathematicians were naturally delighted with the result of the investigation, for it showed how beau- tifully practical science could be aided by theoreti- al knowledge; and the construction of the bee-cell became a famous problem in the economy of na- ture. In comparison with the honey which the
. The ABC of bee culture: a cyclopaedia of every thing pertaining to the care of the honey-bee; bees, honey, hives, implements, honey-plants, etc., facts gleaned from the experience of thousands of bee keepers all over our land, and afterward verified by practical work in our own apiary. Bee culture. Mathematicians were naturally delighted with the result of the investigation, for it showed how beau- tifully practical science could be aided by theoreti- al knowledge; and the construction of the bee-cell became a famous problem in the economy of na- ture. In comparison with the honey which the cell is intended to contain, the wax is a rare and. costly substance, secreted in very small-quantities, and requiring much time and a large expenditure of honey for its production. It is, therefore, essential that the quantity of wax employed in making the comb should be as little, and that of the honey which could be stored in it as great, as possible. For a long time these statements remained un- controverted. Any one with the proper instruments could measure the angles for himself, and the cal- culations of a mathematician like Koenig would hardly be questioned. However, Maclaurin, the well-known Scotch mathematician, was not satis- fied. The two results very nearly tallied with each other, but not quite, and he felt that, in a mathe- matical question, precision was a necessity. So he tried the whole question himself, and found Mural- di's measurement correct—namely, 109 J28', and 70°32'. He then set to work at the problem which was worked out by Koenig, and found that the true the- oretical angles were 109D28' and 70°32', precisely cor- responding with the actual measurement of the bee-cell. Another question now arose. How did this dis- crepancy occur? On investigation, it was found that no blame attached to Koenig, but that the error lay in the book of Logarithms which he used. Thus a mistake in a mathematical work was accidentally discovered by measuring the angles o
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectbeecult, bookyear1884
