In some parts, only small portions, in other parts, large portions of a
rhombic plate were thus left between the opposed basins, but the work, from
the unnatural state of things, had not been neatly performed. The bees
must have worked at very nearly the same rate in circularly gnawing away
and deepening the basins on both sides of the ridge of vermilion wax, in
order to have thus succeeded in leaving flat plates between the basins, by
stopping work at the planes of intersection.
Considering how flexible thin wax is, I do not see that there is any
difficulty in the bees, whilst at work on the two sides of a strip of wax,
perceiving when they have gnawed the wax away to the proper thinness, and
then stopping their work. In ordinary combs it has appeared to me that the
bees do not always succeed in working at exactly the same rate from the
opposite sides; for I have noticed half-completed rhombs at the base of a
just-commenced cell, which were slightly concave on one side, where I
suppose that the bees had excavated too quickly, and convex on the opposed
side where the bees had worked less quickly. In one well-marked instance,
I put the comb back into the hive, and allowed the bees to go on working
for a short time, and again examined the cell, and I found that the rhombic
plate had been completed, and had become PERFECTLY FLAT: it was absolutely
impossible, from the extreme thinness of the little plate, that they could
have effected this by gnawing away the convex side; and I suspect that the
bees in such cases stand in the opposed cells and push and bend the ductile
and warm wax (which as I have tried is easily done) into its proper
intermediate plane, and thus flatten it.
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