When bees have a place on which they can stand in their proper positions
for working--for instance, on a slip of wood, placed directly under the
middle of a comb growing downwards, so that the comb has to be built over
one face of the slip--in this case the bees can lay the foundations of one
wall of a new hexagon, in its strictly proper place, projecting beyond the
other completed cells. It suffices that the bees should be enabled to
stand at their proper relative distances from each other and from the walls
of the last completed cells, and then, by striking imaginary spheres, they
can build up a wall intermediate between two adjoining spheres; but, as far
as I have seen, they never gnaw away and finish off the angles of a cell
till a large part both of that cell and of the adjoining cells has been
built. This capacity in bees of laying down under certain circumstances a
rough wall in its proper place between two just-commenced cells, is
important, as it bears on a fact, which seems at first subversive of the
foregoing theory; namely, that the cells on the extreme margin of
wasp-combs are sometimes strictly hexagonal; but I have not space here to
enter on this subject. Nor does there seem to me any great difficulty in a
single insect (as in the case of a queen-wasp) making hexagonal cells, if
she were to work alternately on the inside and outside of two or three
cells commenced at the same time, always standing at the proper relative
distance from the parts of the cells just begun, sweeping spheres or
cylinders, and building up intermediate planes.
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