HABITS AND INTELLIGENCE OF BEES 135 



with the stings of hundreds of bees, which had 

 sacrificed themselves in a vain and senseless revenge 

 upon its offensive presence. As the little creatures 

 always die from the injury caused by the loss of the 

 sting, the destruction must have been considerable 

 amongst the bees, who in this case fell victims to 

 their own extreme sensitiveness of smell. 



It is often assumed that bees possess the power 

 of communicating to each other ideas of a complex 

 nature ; for instance, it has been stated that if a 

 bee finds a store of honey, she will return with the 

 news to her companions, who soon accompany her 

 to share in the find. This is undoubtedly true of 

 ants, but in their case the explanation is obvious, 

 and observation and experiment leave no doubt 

 that ants are guided principally by the sense of 

 smell in following up the traces of a companion to 

 the source from whence she has brought the food. 

 This explanation, however, cannot be accepted in 

 the case of bees, for it is not to be supposed that 

 they could follow the track of a companion through 

 the air by scent. It has not, however, been proved 

 beyond doubt that a bee will lead her companions 

 to a store of food in this way, though experiments 

 point to the conclusion that bees can bring friends, 

 though they have not the power of directing them, 

 to treasures at a distance. 



As we owe to the bees' taste in colours most of 

 the artistic arrangement of tints in our bright- 

 coloured flowers, experiments on the colour-sense 

 in bees have attracted considerable attention. Ex- 

 periments show that blue is essentially the bees' 

 favourite colour ; after which come, in order of 

 preference, white, yellow, red, green, and orange. 



