. 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. IIONEY-COMB. 144 HONEY-COMB. mal heat of the brood, they must be closely packed together. This is not only the case with the unhatched bees, but with the bees of a whole colony in winter ; when each bee is snugly ensconced in a cell, they occupy less room than they could by any other ar- rangement
. 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. IIONEY-COMB. 144 HONEY-COMB. mal heat of the brood, they must be closely packed together. This is not only the case with the unhatched bees, but with the bees of a whole colony in winter ; when each bee is snugly ensconced in a cell, they occupy less room than they could by any other ar- If the cells were round, they could be grouped together much in the same way as they are now ; viz., one in the center, and 6 all around it, equally distant from the cen- tral one, and from each other, like the cut, in the figure, A ; but even then, the circles will leave much waste room in the corners, that the bees would have to fill with B A WHY THE CELLS OF THE HONEY-COMB ARE MADE G-SIDED. At B, we see the cells are nearly as com- fortable for the young bee as a round one would be—of course, I mean from our point of view, for it is quite likely that the bees know just what they need a great deal bet- ter than we do—and, at the same time, they come together in such a way that no space is left to be filled up at all. The bees, therefore, can make the walls of their cells so thin that they are little more than a silky covering, as it were, that separates each one from its neighbor. It must also be remem- bered that a bee, when in his cell, is squeezed up, if we may so term it, so as to occupy much less space than he otherwise would; and this is why the combined animal heat of the cluster is so much better economized in winter, when the bees have a small circle of empty cells to cluster in, with sealed stores all around them. But, my friends, this is not half of the in- genuity displayed about the cell of the bee. These hexagonal cells must have some kind of a wal
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectbeecult, bookyear1884
