232 PROGRESSIVE INTELLIGENCE IN BEES 



not in all, that the throats of every sage blossom had 

 been bitten across, and the honey burglariously abstracted. 

 I said that I suspected the bumble-bees, having observed 

 that they treated the long spurs of yellow toadflax in this 

 way ; and this suspicion has now been carried to convic- 

 tion. Last week, for the first time, I detected a bumble- 

 bee flagrante delicto. She was most business-like at her 

 work, hurrying from flower to flower, wasted no time 

 fooling about the front door, but went straight to the 

 same place in each, just where the blue becomes paler 

 at its insertion in the calyx. A hole was ^bitten at the 

 side of the throat, and the honey extracted in less time 

 than it takes to write about it. 



One particular remains to be noted. Cut across the 

 tube of a salvia, and you get, not a circular section, but 

 an oblong one, slightly compressed at the sides. When I 

 first noticed the throat-cutting, several years ago, it was 

 always performed across the front of the tube, at its 

 greatest diameter, leaving a gaping wound. Now I can 

 find no flowers treated in this way. The incision is always 

 effected at the side, where the diameter is smallest, and 

 so close to the calyx that it is not visible on the corolla 

 after the bee has left it. This looks as if the bumble-bees 

 had improved upon their earlier practice. The blue 

 salvia, a somewhat uncommon exotic, must have come 

 upon former generations of British bumbles as a surprise, 

 and he must have gained considerable kudos who first 

 devised the knack of getting at the honey. But invention 

 is progressive ; it seems to have been only within the last 

 few years that the bees have discovered that it saves 

 trouble to bite through the tube at its smallest diameter 

 instead of its greatest, thereby getting nearer to the honey 



