82 



THE BEE-KEEPER'S REVIEW 



bees, and both with the desire of adding 

 to the entertaining- character of this work 

 and relieving the demonstrator of the 

 monotony of the same repeated perform- 

 ances, countless experiments have been 

 undertaken under all possible conditions. 

 It has been discovered in the course of 

 these experiments that many things can 

 be done with bees, through expert 

 manipulation, under conditions so adverse 

 as to be naturally prohibitive. 



THE MORE BEES ARE SHAKEN. THE MORE 

 TRACTABLE THEY BECOME. 



All demonstrators of any experience 

 now understand that the more the bees 

 are shaken up, the more tractable they 

 become, and that the feats which appear 

 the most hazardous are often invested 

 with the least risk to the operator, but 

 the underlying principle which governs 

 this matter is not so generally known. 

 Let us assume, for the purposes of the 

 experiment, that bees are endowed with 

 a reasoning faculty, or, at least, with a 

 degree of conscious intelligence akin to 

 that of the human. This assumption 

 may or may not be correct, but it es- 

 tablishes a hypothetical basis for the 

 investigation of the phenomena incident 

 to an unusual handling of the occupants 

 of the hive. 



THE SIMILARITY OF THE CROWD -WHETHER 

 BEES OR HUMAN. 



Upon this line of reasoning the problem 

 becomes purely psychological and is 

 demonstrable upon the same grounds as 

 the psychology of human action under 

 analogous conditions. The presumptive 

 mental state of a mass of beas utterly 

 confused by a vigorous manipulation at 

 the hands of an expert demonstrator is 

 so markedly like that of a crowd of 

 human beings under similar conditions as 

 to be striking in the extreme. The crowd 

 of humans, individually endowed with 

 superior intelligence and power of will, 

 has now but one mind— one impulse- 

 that of the crowd, whether the thought 

 of that composite mind be one of pleasure 



or of panic. This submergence of the 

 individual intelligence in the mob-move- 

 ment of the crowd gives rise to one of 

 the most interesting of psychological 

 problems. 



In my opinion much the same condi- 

 tion prevails when the bees are vigorous- 

 ly shaken, or otherwise handled in the 

 mass so as to confuse them. What may 

 be termed "a suspension of judgment" 

 ensues. The individnal sense of defense 

 or the individual manifestation of any of 

 the marvelous faculties of the insect are 

 submerged by the calamity which has so 

 suddenly overtaken them, and the only 

 impulse is that of a panic-stricken crowd. 



AND HYPNOTISM, TOO. 



From psychology to hypnotism is only 

 a short journey, and with this I must 

 close, before some of my patient readers 

 begin to see spooks around the bee hive. 

 The psychology of the panic-stricken 

 crowd may explain the mental state of a 

 colony of bees suddenly overtaken by an 

 unforseen calamity like that outlined 

 above, but how reconcile the repeated 

 recurrence of such a calamity with the 

 sense of memory with which the bee is 

 so plentifully endowed, and which would 

 naturally lead the colony to resent a 

 second attack so disturbing to their 

 domestic economy? 



The continued manipulation of a colony 

 of bees for days, sometimes for weeks, 

 in succession, in the confinement of a 

 screened cage, surrounded with crowds 

 of curious people, the very atmosphere 

 being such as to naturally provoke bee- 

 wrath, and this sort of thing going on by 

 day or under the glare of electric light in 

 all sorts of weather, in winter as well as 

 in summer, with the bees continually 

 growing more docile and susceptible to 

 the will of the operator, is explainable 

 only by a condition which would be called 

 hypnotic control were the subjects 

 humans instead of insects. But this is 

 another story which must be left for 

 subsequent telling. 



Lincoln, Nebraska, Nov. 8. 1909. 



