It was most interesting to observe that, wherever several bees had
begun to excavate these basins near together, they had begun their work at
such a distance from each other that by the time the basins had acquired
the above stated width (i.e. about the width of an ordinary cell), and were
in depth about one sixth of the diameter of the sphere of which they formed
a part, the rims of the basins intersected or broke into each other. As
soon as this occurred, the bees ceased to excavate, and began to build up
flat walls of wax on the lines of intersection between the basins, so that
each hexagonal prism was built upon the scalloped edge of a smooth basin,
instead of on the straight edges of a three-sided pyramid as in the case of
ordinary cells.
I then put into the hive, instead of a thick, rectangular piece of wax, a
thin and narrow, knife-edged ridge, coloured with vermilion. The bees
instantly began on both sides to excavate little basins near to each other,
in the same way as before; but the ridge of wax was so thin, that the
bottoms of the basins, if they had been excavated to the same depth as in
the former experiment, would have broken into each other from the opposite
sides. The bees, however, did not suffer this to happen, and they stopped
their excavations in due time; so that the basins, as soon as they had been
a little deepened, came to have flat bases; and these flat bases, formed by
thin little plates of the vermilion wax left ungnawed, were situated, as
far as the eye could judge, exactly along the planes of imaginary
intersection between the basins on the opposite side of the ridge of wax.
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