BEES AND WASPS GENEKAL INTELLIGENCE. 187 



where they are, come out of the hole again without 

 depositing their loads, fly off, look most carefully round 

 the stand to assure themselves that they have made no 

 mistake, and go in once more when convinced that they 

 are at the right place. The same thing is repeated over 

 and over again, until the bees at last bow to the incom- 

 prehensible and unavoidable, lay down their loads, arid 

 set to work at those tasks made necessary by the new 

 circumstances of the hive. But as all the newly arriving 

 bees behave in similar fashion, the disturbance lasts till 

 late in the evening, and the uncertainty and anxiety of 

 the bees is so great that the bee-master cannot contem- 

 plate it without deep sympathy.' Under such circum- 

 stances the bees take quickly to a substituted queen ; ' for 

 the feeling of the first comers that they have no right to 

 the new dwelling, having, as they suppose, made some 

 inexplicable mistake which they cannot remedy, prevents 

 them from feeling any hostility to the new queen which 

 they find ; they probably consider themselves as merely on 

 sufferance, and feel that they should be grateful that no 

 action is taken against them for their illegal entry, as 

 generally happens in bee-experience.' Hence the writer 

 adopts this device when he desires to exchange or substi- 

 tute queens. 



Buchner, after alluding to this case, supplements it 

 with the following : 



The wind threw down from the stand of a bee-master a 

 friend of the author's, whose name will soon become known 

 a straw beehive, the inmates of which were surprised in full 

 work, and no small disorder in the interior was the result. The 

 owner repaired the hive, put the loose comb back in its place, 

 and replaced it in such a manner that the wind could not again 

 catch it, hoping that the accident would have no further results. 

 But when he examined the hive a few days later, he found that 

 the bees had left their old home in the lurch, and had tried to 

 enter other hives, clearly because they could no longer trust the 

 weather, and feared that the terrible accident might again be- 

 fall them. 



Dr. Erasmus Darwin, in his * Zoonomia,' asserts that 

 bees, when transported to Barbadoes, where there is no 



