PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 423 



with a cement composed of bees' wax and turpentine ; finding this to 

 their purpose, they attacked it, detaching it from the tree by their mandi- 

 bles, and then, as usual, passing it from the first leg to the second, and so 

 to the third. When one bee had thus collected its load, another often 

 came behind and despoiled it of all it had collected ; a second and third 

 load were frequently lost in the same manner ; and yet the patient animal 

 pursued its labors without showing any signs of anger.^ 



Bees in their excursions do not confine themselves to the spot imme- 

 diately contiguous to their dwelling, but, when led by the scent of honey, 

 will go a mile from it. Huber even assigns to them a radius of half a 

 league round their hive for their ordinary excursions ; yet from this dis- 

 tance they will discover honey with as much certainty as if it was within 

 their sight. To prove that it is by their scent that bees find it out, he 

 put some behind a window-shutter, in a place where it could not be seen, 

 leaving the shutter just open enough for insects, if they liked, to get at it. 

 In less than a quarter of an hour four bees, a butterfly, and some house- 

 flies had discovered it. At another time he put some into boxes, with 

 little apertures in the lid, into which pieces of card were fitted, which 

 he placed about two hundred paces from his hives. In about half an 

 hour the bees discovered them, and traversing them very industriously, 

 soon found the apertures, when, pushing in the pieces of card, they got to 

 the honey. That contained in the blossom of many plants is quite 

 as much concealed, yet the acuteness of their scent enables them to 

 detect it. 



These insects, especially when laden and returning to their nest, fly in 

 a direct line, which saves both time and labor. How they are enabled 

 to do this with such certainty as to make for their own abode without 

 deviation, I must leave to others to explain. Connected with this circum- 

 stance, and the acuteness of their smell, is the following curious account, 

 given in the Philosophical Transactions for 1721, of the method practiced 

 in New England for discovering where the wild hive-bees live in the 

 woods, in order to get their honey. The honey-hunters set a plate con- 

 taining honey or sugar upon the ground in a clear day. The bees soon 

 discover and attack it : having secured two or three that have filled them- 

 selves, the hunter lets one go, which, rising into the air, flies straight to 

 the nest : he then strikes ofl:" at right angles with its course a few hundred 

 yards, and letting a second fly, observes its course by his pocket-compass, 

 and the point where the two courses intersect is that where the nest is 

 situated.'^ 



The natural station of bees is in the cavities of decayed trees ; such 

 trees, Mr. Knight tells us, they will discover in the closest recesses, and 

 at an extraordinary distance from the hive ; in one instance it was a mile : 

 and at swarming, they sometimes are inclined to settle in such cavities. 

 After the discovery of one, from twenty to fifty, who are a kind of scouts, 

 may be found examining and keeping possession of it. They seem to 

 explore every part of it and of the tree with the greatest attention, even 

 surveying the dead knots and the like.-^ When a hive stands unemployed, 

 a swarm will also sometimes send scouts to take possession of it. 



1 Philos. Trans. 1807, 242. 2 xxxi. 148. 



3 Knight ia Fhilos. Trans, for 1807, 237. Marshall, Agricult. of Norfolk. 



