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!XVII. On the (Economy of Bees. In a Letter from Tho- 

 mas Andrew Knight, Esq. F. R. S. to the Right Ho- 

 noiirahle Sir Joseph Banks, Bart., K.B. P.R.S.* 



I MY DEAR SIR, 

 N the projecurion of those cxperimenis on trees, accounts 

 of which you have so often done me the honour to present 

 to the Royal Society, my residence has necessarily been al- 

 most wholly confined to the same spot, and I have thence 

 been induced to pay considerable attention to the oeconoiny 

 of bet's amongst other objects; and as some interesting cir- 

 cumstances in the habit of these singular insects appear to 

 have come under my observation, and to have escaped the 

 notice of former writers, 1 take the liberty to cort^municate 

 my observations to you. 



It is, I believe, generally supposed that each hive, or 

 swarm, of these insects remains at all times wholly uncon- 

 nected with other colonies in the vicinity ; and that the bee 

 never distinguishes a stranger from an enemy. The circum- 

 stances which I shall proceed to state, will, however, tend 

 to prove that these opinions are not well founded, and that 

 a friendly intercourse not unfrcquently takes place between 

 different colonies, and is productive of very important con- 

 sequences in their political ceconomy. 



Passing through one of my orchards rather late in the 

 evening in the month of August, in the year 1801, I ob- 

 served that several bees passed me in a direct line from the 

 hives in my own garden to those in the garden of a cottager, 

 which was about a^hundred yards distant from it. As it 

 was considerably later in the evening than the time when 

 bees usually cease to labour, I concluded that something 

 more than ordinary was going forward. Going first to my 

 own garden, and then to that of the cottager, I found a very 

 considerable degree of bustle and agitation to prevail in one 

 hive in each : every bee, as it arrived, seemed to be stopt and 

 questioned at the mouth of each hive; but I could not dis- 

 cover any thing like actual resistance, or hostility, to take 



• From the Traasactions of the Rc^al Scciciu, part ii. for 1807. 



place ^ 



