$50 °* Tn E ECONOMY OF BEES. 



II. 



On the Economy of fyes. In a Letter from Thomas An- 

 drew Knioht, Esq. F.R.S. to the Right Honourable 

 Sir Joseph Banks, Bart. KB. P.R.S.* 



My dear Sir, 



I 



N the prosecution of those experiments on trees, accounts 

 of which you have so often done me the honour to present 

 to the Royal Society, my residence has necessarily been al- 

 most wholly confined to the same spot ; and I have thence 

 been induced to pay considerable attention to the economy 

 of bees, amongst other objects ; and as some interesting 

 circumstances in the habit of these singular insects appear 

 to have come under my observation, and to have escaped the 

 notice of former writers, I take the liberty to communicate 

 my observations to you. 

 Friendly inter- It is, I believe, generally supposed, that each hive, or swarm, 



course takes Q f these insects remains at all times wholly unconnected with 

 place bet.veen ....... . . / . ... 



bees of differ- other colonies in the vicinity; and that the bee never distin- 



«it swarms. guishes a stranger from an enemy. The circumstances which 



I shall proceed to state will, however, tend to prove, that these 



opinions are not well founded, and that a friendly intercourse 



not unfrequently takes place between different colonies, and 



is productive of very important consequences in their political 



economy. 



Evening visits Passing through one of my orchards rather late in the 



between two ^ venm g m the month of August, in the year 1801, I ob- 



served, that several bees passed me in a direct line from the 



hives in my own garden to those in the garden of a cottager, 



which was about a hundred yards distant from it. As it was 



considerably later in the evening than the time when bees 



usually cease to labour, I concluded, that something more 



than ordinary was going forward. Going first to my own 



garden, and then to that of the cottager, I found a very 



considerable degree of bustle and agitation to prevail in one 



hive in each : every bee, as it arrived, seemed to be stopped 



* PhUos. Trans, for 1807, Part II, p. 234. 



and 



