It was really curious to note in cases of difficulty, as when two
pieces of comb met at an angle, how often the bees would entirely pull
down and rebuild in different ways the same cell, sometimes recurring
to a shape which they had at first rejected.
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 quite 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.
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