The
Melipona itself is intermediate in structure between the hive and humble
bee, but more nearly related to the latter: it forms a nearly regular
waxen comb of cylindrical cells, in which the young are hatched, and, in
addition, some large cells of wax for holding honey. These latter cells
are nearly spherical and of nearly equal sizes, and are aggregated into an
irregular mass. But the important point to notice is, that these cells are
always made at that degree of nearness to each other that they would have
intersected or broken into each other if the spheres had been completed;
but this is never permitted, the bees building perfectly flat walls of wax
between the spheres which thus tend to intersect. Hence, each cell
consists of an outer spherical portion, and of two, three, or more flat
surfaces, according as the cell adjoins two, three or more other cells.
When one cell rests on three other cells, which, from the spheres being
nearly of the same size, is very frequently and necessarily the case, the
three flat surfaces are united into a pyramid; and this pyramid, as Huber
has remarked, is manifestly a gross imitation of the three-sided pyramidal
base of the cell of the hive-bee. As in the cells of the hive-bee, so
here, the three plane surfaces in any one cell necessarily enter into the
construction of three adjoining cells. It is obvious that the Melipona
saves wax, and what is more important, labour, by this manner of building;
for the flat walls between the adjoining cells are not double, but are of
the same thickness as the outer spherical portions, and yet each flat
portion forms a part of two cells.
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