I have several specimens showing clearly that they can
do this. Even in the rude circumferential rim or wall of wax round a
growing comb, flexures may sometimes be observed, corresponding in position
to the planes of the rhombic basal plates of future cells. But the rough
wall of wax has in every case to be finished off, by being largely gnawed
away on both sides. The manner in which the bees build is curious; they
always make the first rough wall from ten to twenty times thicker than the
excessively thin finished wall of the cell, which will ultimately be left.
We shall understand how they work, by supposing masons first to pile up a
broad ridge of cement, and then to begin cutting it away equally on both
sides near the ground, till a smooth, very thin wall is left in the middle;
the masons always piling up the cut-away cement, and adding fresh cement on
the summit of the ridge. We shall thus have a thin wall steadily growing
upward but always crowned by a gigantic coping. From all the cells, both
those just commenced and those completed, being thus crowned by a strong
coping of wax, the bees can cluster and crawl over the comb without
injuring the delicate hexagonal walls. These walls, as Professor Miller
has kindly ascertained for me, vary greatly in thickness; being, on an
average of twelve measurements made near the border of the comb, 1/352 of
an inch in thickness; whereas the basal rhomboidal plates are thicker,
nearly in the proportion of three to two, having a mean thickness, from
twenty-one measurements, of 1/229 of an inch.
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