Programming Hive

Colophon

The animal on the cover of Programming Hive is a European hornet (Vespa cabro) and its hive. The European hornet is the only hornet in North America, introduced to the continent when European settlers migrated to the Americas. This hornet can be found throughout Europe and much of Asia, adapting its hive-building techniques to different climates when necessary.

The hornet is a social insect, related to bees and ants. The hornet’s hive consists of one queen, a few male hornets (drones), and a large quantity of sterile female workers. The chief purpose of drones is to reproduce with the hornet queen, and they die soon after. It is the female workers who are responsible for building the hive, carrying food, and tending to the hornet queen’s eggs.

The hornet’s nest itself is the consistency of paper, since it is constructed out of wood pulp in several layers of hexagonal cells. The end result is a pear-shaped nest attached to its shelter by a short stem. In colder areas, hornets will abandon the nest in the winter and take refuge in hollow logs or trees, or even human houses, where the queen and her eggs will stay until the warmer weather returns. The eggs form the start of a new colony, and the hive can be constructed once again.

The cover image is from Johnson’s Natural History. The cover font is Adobe ITC Garamond. The text font is Linotype Birka; the heading font is Adobe Myriad Condensed; and the code font is LucasFont’s TheSansMonoCondensed.