SAGE. 



391 SCENT OF BEES. 



STE31S AND BLOSSOMS OF CALIFORNIA AVHITE SAGE. 



failed to crystullize it. This is a very valua- 

 ble quality, although it does not invariably 

 remain clear. 



Most of the white-sage honey, so called, 

 comes from the black and button sages. 

 The honey from these two is fully the equal 

 of that from the white sage in body and 

 color; hence the yield of all three varieties 

 is known as white "sage honey'' in the great 

 markets. 



SAINFOIN. See Clover. 



SELF-SFACING FRAMES. See head 

 Frames, Self-spacing. 



SCENT OF BEES.— Any one who has ob- 

 served bees has seen that they are guided 

 very largely in their movements by the 

 sense of smell. They have been known to 

 fly a mile or more over water to reach flow- 

 er.s on an opposite bank towai d which they 

 could be guided only by scent. 



The celebrated naturalist Huber fir.st dis- 

 covered that the organs of smell in the bee 

 are located in the antennae, and he perform- 



ed some interesting experiments by cutting 

 them off and thus depriving the bees of 

 their power to detect odors. We have 

 recently repeated some of his experiments 

 on workers, drones, and queens, with some 

 modifications, and all our results confirm 

 his position. 



Concerningthe queen, Huber says, "When 

 one of her antennae is cut off, no change 

 takes place in the behavior of the queen. 

 If you cut off botli antennae near the head, 

 this mother, formerly held in such high con- 

 sideration by her people, loses all her influ- 

 ence, and even the maternal instinct disap- 

 pears. Instead of laying her eggs in the 

 cells she drops them here and there." As 

 is well known, a young virgin queen is nor- 

 mally accepted without difficulty by any 

 colony which has been queenlesslong enough 

 to know its queenless condition. In experi- 

 menting along this line we cut the antennae 

 irom a virgin queen about three hours old 

 and put her on the comb of an observatory 

 hive, and she was at once balled. This was 

 repeated in another hive. She was then res- 



