66 AGRICULTURE OF MAINE. 



interesting point. Notice the size of this nerve which runs to 

 the eye in the male. Notice the size of the ner\^e which nuts 

 to the eye in the queen, which is smaller, and notice the size 

 of the nerve which runs to the eye in the worker, which is 

 still smaller. The nerve in the male is large because the male 

 has but one use for his eye in his whole lifetime and that is 

 to follow the queen in her flight and mate with her, so he 

 must have keen vision. The same thing can be said of the 

 nerves which run to the feelers or antennae, those parts of the 

 bee which allow him to find out about the objects which he 

 meets by feeling of them and smelling of them. The nerve 

 in the male is large, in the female is large, in the worker small. 

 That is, the worker in order to do all of its work does not need 

 to have so keen a sense of smell as the male in order that he 

 may in connection with his sight follow the female and thus 

 mate with her. Up here you have the face of the bee shown. 

 In the middle you see these three small dots. Those are the 

 three small eyes ; on the sides you see those great prominences, 

 which are the compound eyes. They exist on many birds. The 

 small eyes of course see objects near by. The large eyes see 

 objects farther away, but in a blurred .'^ort of way, not clear 

 as our eyes see. You also see the feelers or the bee's nose. 

 Now imagine, if you please, if you had a nose as long as your 

 arm and could move it about, what could you do with it. Well, 

 you could feel out blossoms, plants that have fragrance, and of 

 course you could get your food from them, and that is just 

 precisely what the bee does. It has keen sense of smell be- 

 cause that nose is all covered with fine hollows and it goes 

 to the plants that are fragrant. I spoke a while ago of the de- 

 sirability of having bees with a long tongue. European peoples 

 accuse us in this country of not caring anything a1x)ut the kind 

 of bees which we breed. We don't care what breed of bees 

 ,we have. We don't spenrl much time and knowledge in getting 

 a fine breed of bees or in developing good stock. We take 

 what we can get. If we could develop a bee with a long tongue, 

 that bee would be much more useful to us in the pollenization 

 of our plants. Tt is said that the honey, bees' wax, etc., pro- 

 duced in the United States are worth annually S20,ooo,ooo. 

 It is also said that the value of the bee to the apple grower 



