668 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



again the hive in which they belong. Others have said that the noise 

 of those nearest the hive is heard by the bees farther away, and they 

 know where the colony is located. Whether bees can hear or not is a 

 question which need not be discussed here, but these conclusions are 

 inaccurate because the observations are incomplete. If you will care- 

 fully notice this particular action at the next opportunity you will see 

 that the abdomen is raised to an angle of about forty-five degrees and 

 that the last segment is bent down, exposing a light yellow strip between 

 it and the next anterior segment. On this yellow area there appears 

 a glistening drop of some fluid, and when the bee begins to fan a very 

 peculiar odor is easily detected even by the human nose. Bees are, as 

 is well known, governed largely by scent, and this particular action 

 consists in the fanning back of the odor produced by this liquid. The 

 difficulty in earlier observations was that the whole attitude and action 

 was not observed, and consequently the conclusions were incorrect. It is 

 not so much because this is hard to see, but because the observers were 

 satisfied with a partial observation, that we long remained ignorant of 

 this important habit. We pride ourselves on our ability to see things, 

 yet any person who has investigated the subject knows how difficult it 

 is to get two people to tell the same story concerning any observation; 

 and this is not because their eyes do not see alike, but because they 

 perceive only part of the event and let their imaginations fill up the 

 gaps. In no place is this human fault more noticeable than in work on 

 observation of habits, and as a result I feel free to say that this is one 

 of the most difficult problems in the study of animals. 



A second difficulty is that of giving reasons for the things observed. 

 We are not satisfied with meje observations of actions unless we can 

 see why they are performed, for otherwise the action is meaningless. 

 Since the bee is constructed on a plan so totally different from ourselves, 

 we often are unable to interpret the habits and doubtless many important 

 things are still unknown for this reason. 



A third difficulty, and one to which too much attention cannot be 

 called, is the difficulty of distinguishing between verifiable and unverifiable 

 truth. As an example, let us take the action of the worker bees toward 

 the queen. The actual observation is this: The workers surround the 

 qUeen on the comb and touch her with their antennae. Whenever she 

 approaches a worker as she moves over the comb the worker turns toward 

 her and at once begins touching her with its antennae. 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 imaginations 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 



