OLFACTORY SENSE OF THE HONEY BEE 277 



the bees while those of the ninth bee were unmutilated. With 

 all of these clipping showed no effect; this is true for both workers 

 and drones. Of the former 405 were employed and of the latter 

 99. 



To test this further and to ascertain if a greater number of 

 bees in the same case makes any perceptible difference, 100 mid- 

 dle-aged workers wepe distributed equally in four large observa- 

 tion cases. Both wings of each bee were cut off close to the 

 thorax. The bees always ate freely, seemed normal in every 

 way, and lived from 18 hours to 27 days with an average of 10 

 days and 15 hours. Judging from these results, clipping the 

 wings of workers and drones does not shorten their lives, and the 

 increase in the number of bees in each observation case makes 

 little* if any perceptible difference. We may infer that the clip- 

 ping of a queen's wings to keep her from going away with the 

 swarm does not shorten her life, as some bee keepers have claimed. 



Later many wings of all three classes were studied microscopic- 

 ally and it was found that the base of the wing contains a large 

 nerve, many sense cells, and a tracheal branch, but no muscle 

 extends beyond the base of the wing. When a wing is cut off 

 close to the body, leaving only a short stump, the removal does 

 not injure the structures enumerated above because the scissors 

 pass beyond all of them. This subject will be discussed further 

 in the section devoted to the distribution and structure of the 

 olfactory pores, pages 299 to 333. 



EFFECTS OF LIGHT ON LONGEVITY 



In the experiments with the bees in observation cases and with 

 those kept in the cases used for the experiments with bees hav- 

 ing the wings clipped, no appreciable difference in the length of 

 life is noticed. The bees in the observation cases were always 

 kept in a bright light, while those in the other cases were always 

 kept in a dark table drawer. The average length of life for the 

 bees exposed to light was 9 days and 2 hours and for those kept 

 in darkness 9 days and 3 hours. It may be inferred, therefore, 

 that in captivity light does not shorten a bee's life. 



