270 



THE AMERICAN APICULTURIST. 



off the dust or other impurities ; 

 they give each other honey with 

 their tongues, will defend each 

 other with the utmost courage and 

 are in this respect all for one and 

 one for all. Their love for cleanli- 

 ness in their dwellings has not its 

 equal. 



Regarding their natural language 

 (if I may so express myself), thous- 

 ands of observations prove and 

 their auditory sense shows that 

 they have simple signals by which 

 they communicate to each other 

 their wants and little passions. It 

 is only remotefy analogous to our 

 language as we are enabled to make 

 known our ideas and sentiments 

 to others by artificial signs or 

 words. These simply natural signs 

 of course differ as widely from our 

 artificially composed words as the 

 animal passion differs from our 

 reasoning, as we are reasoning, in- 

 telligent beings capable of self- 

 inspection and of ascending to our 

 divine Creator. 



Moreover, if a bee meets for the 

 first time with a cup of honej', or 

 makes other similar discoveries, we 

 see the manifestation of joy and 

 satisfaction through the vibration 

 of the wings and by a certain mo- 

 notonous tone : by this means num- 

 erous others soon arrive and before 

 long a cloud of bees will be gath- 

 ered to the common work. 



"We notice further the irritated 

 noise with which they will fly about 

 the ear of an observer by whom 

 they believe themselves offended. 

 They will call their fellows, and 

 we notice how by this note of a- 

 larm, the delicate nerves of the brain 



are acted upon and they become 

 inflamed with the mutual desire for 

 revenge and how by it they recog- 

 nize the cause and are awakened 

 to action. 



THE LENGTH OF LIFE OF THE BEES. 



With respect to the longevity of 

 the bee, the workers will not live 

 over one year,i for all insects pro- 

 vided with light veil wings and 

 those which multiply rapidly gen- 

 erally live but a short time. It is 

 however well known that the queen 

 may live several years, because in 

 her domestic life, she is not subject 

 to such hard labor as the worker 

 bees. Her nature is also more 

 hardy and enduring than that of 

 her children, and for that reason 

 she has shown more endurance 

 when subjected to various treat- 

 ments and experiments. The ne- 

 cessity ofthis is quite apparent when 

 we consider that the life and pros- 

 perity of the colony depend upon 

 the mother bee. 



But the worker-bee which is 

 young this summer is old the fol- 

 lowing season and will, as a rule, 

 die before the end of August ; rare- 

 ly will she survive until September. 

 We notice in June and July that 

 the body of the old bee begins to 

 shrink and grow smaller. The hair 

 becomes gray and the bee generally 

 has no longer tlie size or appear- 

 ance or the brilliant lustre common 

 to the young bee. The wings 



litis now well understood that the average 

 life of the workers during tlie summer season 

 is about six to eight weeks, depending upon 

 their activity and the amount of labor per- 

 formed; while tliose liatched late in the season 

 live over until spring, but are replaced by 

 young bees before the working season. 



