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 perfectly flat
surfaces, according as the cell adjoins two, three or more other
cells. When one cell comes into contact with 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 basis 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 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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