EIGHTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK— PART X. 667 



It may be profitable for us to review together for a short time some 

 of the things that we know about bees, and it has occurred to me that 

 possibly it might be even more profitable to find out what we do not 

 know. There yet remains much to be done along the line of observations 

 on the habits of the bee, and lest we forget that we do not yet know 

 all that is to be known, let us first examine the difliculties in the way of 

 observation and then hastily review our present knowledge in so far as 

 our time will allow. 



First of all, let us give credit to the men who in the past have spent 

 their time in observation, for by their labor we of the present are enabled 

 to read in a short time the results of years of work and profit in the 

 practical work of apiculture by their recorded results. He would be an 

 ignorant bee-keeper indeed who would fail to acknowledge his debt of 

 gratitude to the men who have worked on the habits of the bee, for api- 

 culture is founded on their work and would not exist today as a science 

 were it not for such workers. The name of Aristotle, Swammerdam, 

 Reaumur, Bonnet, Schirach, Huber and others well known to you must 

 ever be venerated by beekeepers for the light these men threw on the 

 activities in the hive. Huber, with his loss of sight, stands out among 

 these as an example of a man who could do work of the greatest value 

 in spite of an afiliction which would make most men of little value to 

 mankind at large. Later we come to the names of Dzierzon, the founder 

 of the theory of Parthenogenesis, Von Berlepsch, Von Siebold and "Weie- 

 mann. We must also include Langstroth, Cowan and possibly Cheshire 

 in the list, for they have done much in apiculture. There are many more 

 men whose work has helped, but we cannot enumerate all of them. 

 I regret to say that relatively few Amer^ans have done much toward 

 a scientific study of the bee, but what this nation lacks on that side has 

 been more than made up in practical appliances and methods. The source 

 to which every beekeeper should go for a knowledge of the habits of the 

 bee is not a book written by any of the men that I have named, nor of 

 any other man, but the one place to study the habits is beside a bee hive. 

 First-hand information, properly obtained, is worth more than any amount 

 of second-hand facts, and here, as everywhere, we can profitably follow 

 the advice of the celebrated naturalist Agassiz, "Study Nature, not 

 Books." 



The study of the behavior of animals is not easy. I am well aware 

 that many persons think that they could not want an easier task than 

 to study the habits of the bee, but there are difliculties which make 

 such work very trying and unsatisfactory. 



In the first place, it is often hard to see just what a bee is doing. 

 Let us take as an example what happens when we shake the bees from 

 a frame in front of the hive entrance. In a short time a few bees nearest 

 the entrance turn their heads toward the opening and begin to fan their 

 wings; others soon do the same, and before long almost every bee is 

 fanning as if its very life depended on it. Gradually they begin to move 

 toward the entrance and enter the hive. Every beekeeper has seen this 

 repeatedly, especially when hiving a swarm, but how many could tell 

 what is going on among the bees? This action has been referred to 

 as the "joyful hum" of the bees as expressive of their pleasure at finding 



