824 GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. July 1 



DISAPPEARANCE OF THE MEMORY FOR LOCATION THROUGH NARCOTIZATION. 



If bees are deafened with chloroform, ether, saltpeter, puff-ball, etc., the memory 

 for location entirely disappears. After waking from the stupor they may be taken from 

 the hive and they will not fly back to the place in space in which they are "accustomed 

 to find it." They no longer recognize their own home nor the place where it stands; 

 they have forgotten everything previously known. But an animal that can forget must 

 have possessed something to remember. The memory pictures are wiped away. We 

 see that the "unknown force" is identical with the memory for location which builds 

 up memory pictures." 



It is necessary to mention that bees which have been stupefied become entirely 

 normal again — that is, they orient themselves with regard to their new home, and gather 

 new memory pictures by which they find once more the places for nectar and pollen as 

 well as their new hive. 



Bees, therefore, have capacity for learning — a fact which Bethe disputes. 



Let us look more closely at the quintessence of Bethe's investigations. Upon pages 

 8i and 89 he formulates the view about the "unknown force," the counterpart of which 

 is stated in this chapter (see p. 19). On page 94 we find further conclusions in the 

 following words: "Yet I must repeat: Bees follow a force which is entirely unknown 

 to us, and which causes them to return to the place in space from which they flew. 

 This place is usually the hive, but it need not necessarily be. The influence of this force 

 reaches over a circle of only a few kilometers." 



But here we have no "repetition" of what has been said, but something that, on 

 closer examination, shows statements which are contradictory among themselves, and 

 which contradict earlier assertions, if one takes into consideration the observations which 

 Bethe uses in formulating this conclusion (Bethe, p. 93). We shall now look somewhat 

 more closely at these observations. 



THE BOX EXPERIMENT. 



If the unknown force acts at a distance around the hive of only three or four kilo- 

 meters, as Bethe asserts, then all the bees of this colony which were set free within 

 this circle must return unresistingly to the place from which they flew which "draws 

 like a magnet." But this is not the case, as Bethe himself proves in the experiment 

 given on page 93. He says : "In my first experiment with letting bees fly from other 

 places I observed the following : I placed the box, in which the bees were transported, 

 on one of the large pieces of sandstone lying around in a stone-cutter's yard and opened 

 the lid. The bees all flew out ; and most of them, after a few circles in the air, went 

 in the direction of the Institute. Two bees mounted to a height of about three meters, 

 made a few circles of four or five meters in diameter, and then alighted on the box. 

 I drove them away into the air again. They flew in large circles around it, and then 

 again alighted on the box. Now I took the box away and put it on another stone, having 

 driven the bees into the air once more. Both bees flew so high that I could no longer 

 see them; but a few seconds later they sank again and gradually flew around the place 

 where the box had stood." 



We see, then, that a few bees were influenced by the unknown force, but others were 

 not. This changing condition Bethe can not and does not attempt to explain. 



That the bees alighted on the stone where the box had been (which fact Bethe tells 

 with astonishment) is very easily understood, and furnishes further proof of the excellent 

 sense of locality in bees, for their admirable orientation with their eyes. Bethe's objection, 

 "if they had been influenced by chemical or light reaction, then they would have flown 

 to the stone only two meters distant, and easily visible, on which the box was placed. 

 But they flew back to the place from which they had flown," signifies anthropomorphism 

 brought in in its highest potentiality. It is not possible to conclude for bees that they 

 would look for a box two meters away, which before had stood in the other place. Their 



'1 T might ask our ant-investigators to take up similar experiments with ants. It would be of great 

 interest to know whether a similar condition can be demonstrated. 



