No. 6. DEPARTMENT OP AGRICULTURE. 681 



their antenna?. Whenever she approaches a worker as she moves 

 over the comb the worker turns toward her and at once begins 

 touching her with its antenna?. So much all observers see, but here, 

 they separate. One says the workers hold the queen in greatest 

 respect and that they care for her and caress her because they 

 know that on her depends the life of the colony; another observer 

 denies all ability of a worker bee to feel any affection or similar 

 emotion. Now who is right? No one can tell, for at the present 

 time this is unverifiable. The actual movements are verifiable by 

 any observer, but when we try to explain the inner feelings of an 

 insect we enter the realm of unverifiable truth, where our imagina- 

 tions are our only guides, and consequently our results are worse 

 than worthless. This is the rock on which many observers of bees 

 are shipwrecked. If only there were some way to eradicate the 

 unverifiable* statements from the books on bees what a marvelous 

 advance it would be. The very best writers are at fault here and 

 scarcely a bee journal appears that does not contain some such 

 statements. 



As another example of this, allow me to quote from one of the 

 more recent works, the author of which may perhaps remain un- 

 mentioned. 



"The antenna?, in some mysterious way, afford means of communi- 

 cation. By them the bee says all it feels to its friends and rela- 

 tives. 



"Watch two bees meet on a window frame; they instantly cross 

 feelers, and if they come from the same hive there ensues such an 

 outpouring of bee talk, such a tremor of crossed antenna?, such an 

 evident condition of excitement all through their bodies, as might 

 well fill the most practised gossip with envy. 



"One can imagine the graphic terms in which they relate the recent 

 awful experience of their capture, how they were suddenly and 

 rudely jerked from a sweet blossom, and after indescribable shak- 

 ing about in a strange thing made of bands too close together for 

 them to get through and too tough for them to bite through, finally 

 found themselves, as they supposed, free. 



"The joy after the fear! but alas, their happiness was of short 

 duration; for when they attempted to return to the clover field 

 visible in the distance, they found themselves suddenly checked in 

 mid-career by what seemed a wall of thickened air, a strange, hard, 

 fold, transparent nightmare of a barrier which they could see 

 through, but could not pass. 



"Poor little bees. No wonder their antenna? fly in the discussion 

 of such strange facts, and how fortunate that the ears of the ogre, 

 their captor, are not attuned to the remarks of their antenna?, as 

 they express their opinion concerning him morally, mentally and 

 physically." 



Truly this author has wandered far afield in the realm of the 

 unverifiable! I am not one of those who would eliminate all the 

 poetic from our daily life nor would I fetter the imagination as 

 long as it leads to the truth, but to put such an array of obvious 

 fabrication into a book which is intended to instruct us on bees is 

 far from justifiable. It is just this sort of thing which has caused 

 many persons to look with disfavor on much of the so-called "Nature 

 Studv" of our schools. It is really a pity that this author did not 

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