L— MISCELLANEOUS— continued. 



Art. LIX. — On a Supposed Magnetic Sense of Direction in 



Bees. 



By F. W. Hilgendorf, M.A., B.Sc. 



[Read before the Philosopliical Institute of Canterbury, 26th Novem- 

 ber, 190:i.] 



At the close of Captain Hutton's address on " Our Migratory 

 Birds," delivered at the annual meeting of this society on 

 the 3rd April, 1901, Dr. Farr suggested that birds might be 

 possessed of a magnetic sense by which they were guided in 

 their migrations, and he also suggested that it was by some 

 such sense that bees found their way back to their hives. 



The suggestions passed from my memory until I read Mr. 

 Hudson's presidential address on " The Senses of Insects," 

 delivered before the Wellington Philosophical Society in the 

 same year.* There Mr. Hudson detailed Eomanes's experi- 

 ments on the sense of direction, and repeated the conclusion 

 to which Eomanes and Lord Avebury independently came — 

 viz., that ants and bees do not find their way home by any 

 special sense of direction, but by a knowledge of the district 

 in which they are working. During the same week I was 

 working with my bees, and in the busy time of the day, 

 when many of the bees were out foraging, I had occasion to 

 move a hive 3 ft. to one side. In a few minutes a number of 

 bees had alighted on the former site of the hive, and crawled 

 about there, or rose and circled round the spot, without 

 making any attempt to enter the hive standing only a foot 

 or two away. All those that were out at work when the 

 hive was moved came back to the old site, and stayed 

 there until night fell, when they perished of cold ; and this 

 experience is not exceptional, but is familiar to all bee- 

 keepers. 



On the face of it, it does not seem that the bees find their 

 way to their hive by sight, or they should see their hive and 

 fly to it, instead of flying to a place where there is no hive 

 to be seen. It would rather look as if they felt by some 

 unknown sense the direction in which they set out, and 



* Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. xxxiv., p. 18. 



