Page:How to Keep Bees.djvu/83

Rh rhombic pyramids are fortuitous! The fact that the combs are rarely perfect in construction proves naught against the mathematical prowess of the bees; it simply proves that the bees are a practical race, and not bigoted, and are therefore unwilling to sacrifice everything for the sake of precision. The construction of their waxen cells is for economic purposes rather than for proving mathematical formulae. Honey-comb shows how economy of room, building materials and mathematical theories may coincide, and shows also that the bees have taken advantage of the fact. Some of the savants have asserted that the rectangle or the equilateral triangle would have been quite as efficient as working plans for constructing cells for storing honey. But probably the bees, originally, made their cells to fit their brood and would not thus build a cell which would surround a larva with unfilled corners. The hexagonal cell was better fitted for their needs, so they developed it.

After a piece of the central portion of comb has been constructed the bees begin, usually, at the centre and pull out the sides of the cells from the foundation. Experiments in coloured foundation shows that this may, if thick, be pulled almost to the margin of the cell. This is why bees so readily utilise machine-made foundation; they pull out the edges of these pressed combs and thus save themselves much labour in wax-making. The worker-cells are a little more than one-fifth of an inch in diameter, and a little less than one-half an inch deep; the