OLFACTORY SENSE OF THE HONEY BEE 267 



the lives of his bees, but as yet he is able to profit by such a belief 

 in only a few ways. For example, by the use of smoke he is able to 

 control these insects while working with them. Sometimes a bee 

 keeper uses a strong-smelling chemical while uniting colonies or 

 in other manipulations. 



Many entomologists have had something to say about the 

 seat of the organs of smell in insects, but most of the views are 

 purely speculative. A few have done extensive and thorough 

 experimental work to determine the location of this sense. How- 

 ever, since they have failed to study sufficiently the behavior of 

 the insects investigated, the responses observed have misled them 

 in determining the seat of the olfactory organs. It is now generally 

 believed that the antennae bear the organs of smell, but as all 

 the antennal organs are covered with a hard membrane the objec- 

 tion has been raised that such organs can not receive olfactory 

 stimuli. Hicks ('57) discovered some peculiar organs on the 

 bases of the wings and on the legs of insects and suggested 

 that these organs have an olfactory function. They have been 

 neglected since 1860, when Hicks presented his third and last 

 paper on them. About the same time several investigators be- 

 gan to work seriously on the antennal sense organs. This branch 

 of work was later carried on by others, but the olfactory organs of 

 Hicks have seemingly been forgotten. 



MATERIAL AND METHODS 



The Italian honey bee, mixed more or less with the black or 

 German race, has been used in all the following experiments and 

 observations. For the purposes of this paper workers are divided 

 into four groups according to age; (1) One-day-old bees. They 

 are gray, relatively inactive, and do none of the work of the hive 

 but eat freely; (2) Young bees, between one and four days old. 

 They are active, have begun to do certain work in the hive, and 

 are still rather gray; (3) Middle-aged bees, from the age of four 

 days to that at which they become black and shiny. This period 

 includes the greater part of the bee's life. They have lost their 

 gray appearance and the thorax is still quite hairy, having the 

 same general color as other parts of the body; (4) Old bees 



