738 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Sir .1. Liil)))ock's New Book on Bees. 



ANTS. Bees and WAgp.s. A Record of Observa- 

 tiona, on the Habits of Social Hymenoptera. By 

 SIR John IjUBBock, M. P., F. R. 8., etc. New 

 Yorli : D. Appieton & Co. 1882. Price, $2.00. 



We have received from the publish- 

 ers the above worlc for review iu tlie 

 American Bee Journal. 



As stated by the author, it is a 

 "record of observations" which were, 

 doubtless, made with much care, but 

 not for the purpose of sustaining any 

 theory regarding them, but to ascer- 

 tain existing facts. In his preface, 

 the author says: "My object has 

 been not so much to describe the 

 usual habits of these insects as to test 

 their mental condition and powers of 

 sense." And, in another place, he 

 says : " I have endeavored, therefore, 

 by actual experiments, which anyone 

 may^ and I hope others will, repeat 

 and verify, to throw some light on 

 these interesting questions." 



But few scientific workers have 

 spread their interests over so wide a 

 lield as Sir John Lubbock; but we 

 may easily discover that a thread of 

 continuity runs through all of them. 

 His researches into the habits of bees, 

 wasps and ants, deal with the evolu- 

 tion of social communities from the 

 lower types of life. He holds that the 

 ants are the nearest to man in social 

 organization and general intelligence, 

 though the apes are nearer in bodily 

 structure. Ants even show some in- 

 dication of progressive development 

 among themselves. Some of them 

 live by the chase, as do hunting sava- 

 ges ; others, more highly evolved, re- 

 semble the pastoral races of men, be- 

 cause they have domesticated the 

 aphides ; the harvesting ants have 

 risen still higher in civilization, and 

 reach the agricultural man. He (inds 

 in their iiests, analogy to human soci- 

 eties, in their marked division of labor, 

 their elaborate architecture, their reg- 

 ular roadways, and in their peculiar 

 institution of slavery. In some of 

 these things, bees, also, show their 

 near approach to man's intelligence. 



At first. Sir John Lubbock intended 

 to confine his experiments to bees and 

 wasps, but he found these insects with 

 wings were unpleasantly excitable in 

 temper and could easily elude his 

 watchfulness. This led* him to deal 

 more particularly with the ants, 

 which were much easier to observe 

 from every point of view. 



Hour after hour did the author 

 watch his bees and wasps with un- 

 ceasing care, and he has recorded their 



movements with minuteness in this 

 volume. 



The author thinks that bees and 

 ants have, in their antenna.', some 

 means of communication with one 

 another. His experiments on the per- 

 ception of color by the bees show that 

 they can distinguish all the hues as 

 well as can man, and these observa- 

 tions will, in some measure, at least, 

 account for the origin and develop- 

 ment of the prismatic hues of flowers. 



In order to show the author's exper- 

 iments in detail on many mooted 

 points, we will here give some extracts 

 from Chapter X. Sir John Lubbock 

 says : 



As already mentioned, the current 

 statements with reference to the lan- 

 guage of social insects depend much 

 on the fact that when one of them, 

 either by accident or in the course of 

 its rambles, has discovered a stock of 

 food, in a very short time many others 

 arrive, to profit by the discovery. 

 This, however, does not necessarily 

 imply any power of describing local- 

 ities. If the bees or iints merely fol- 

 low their more fortunate comrade.the 

 matter is comparatively simple ; if, 

 on the contrary, others are sent, the 

 case becomes very different. 



In order to test this I proposed to 

 keep lioney in a given place for some 

 time, in order to satisfy myself that 

 it would not readily be found by the 

 bees ; and then, after bringing a bee 

 to the honey, to watch whether it 

 brought others, or sent them— the lat- 

 ter of course implying a much higher 

 order of intelligence and power of 

 communication. 



I therefore placed some honey in a 

 glass, close to an open window in my 

 sitting-room, and watched it for sixty 

 hours of sunshine, during which no 

 bees came to it. 



I then, at 10 a. m., on a beautiful 

 morning in June, went to my hives, 

 and took a bee which was just starting 

 out, brought it in my hand up to my 

 room (a distance of somewhat less 

 than 200 yards), and gave it some 

 honey, which it sucked with evident 

 enjoyment. After a few minutes it 

 flew quietly away, but did not return ; 

 nor did any other bee make its ap- 

 pearance. 



The following morning I repeated 

 the same experiment. At 7:15 I 

 brought up a bee, which sipped up the 

 honey with readiness, and after doing 

 so for about four minutes flew away 

 with no appearance of alarm or an- 

 noyance. It did not, however, return ; 

 nor did any other bee come to my 

 honey. 



On several other occasions I re- 

 peated the same experiments with a 

 like result. Altogether I tried it 

 more than twenty times. Indeed, I 

 rarely found bees to return to honey 

 if brought any considerable distance 

 at once. By taking them, however, 

 some twenty yards each time they 

 came to the honey, I at length trained 

 them to come to my room. On the 

 whole, however, I found it more con- 



venient to procure one of Marriott's 

 observatory hives, both on account of 

 its construction, and also because I 

 could have it in my room, and thus 

 keep the bees more immediately under 

 my own eye. My room issquaA,with 

 three windows, two on the southwest 

 side, where the hive was placed, and 

 one on the southeast. Besides the 

 ordinary entrance from the outside, 

 the hive had a small postern door 

 opening into the room ; this door was 

 provided with an alighting-board, and 

 closed by a plug ; as a general rule the 

 bees did not notice it much unless the 

 passage was very full of them. 



I then placed some honey on the 

 table close to the hive, and from time 

 to time fed certain bees on it. Those 

 which had been fed soon got accus- 

 tomed to come for the honey ; but 

 partly on account of my frequent ab- 

 sence from home, and partly from the 

 difHculty in finding their way about, 

 and their tendency to lose themselves, 

 I could never keep any marke<l bee 

 under observation for more than a 



few days I might give some 



other similar cases, but these are, I 

 think, sutTicient to show that bees do 

 not bring their friends to share any 

 treasure they have discovered, so in- 

 variably as might be assumed from 

 the statements of previous observers. 

 Possibly the result is partly due to the 

 fact that my room is on the top floor, 

 so that the bees coming to it flew at a 

 higher level than that "generally used 

 by their companions, and hence were 

 less likely to be followed. 



Indeed, I have been a good deal sur- 

 prised at the difficulty which bees ex- 

 perience in finding tlieir way. 



For instance, I put a bee into a bell- 

 glass 18 inches long, and with a mouth 

 6+ inches wide, turning the closed end 

 to tlie window; she buzzed about for 

 an hour, when, as there seemed no 

 chance of her getting out, I put her 

 back into the hive. Two flies, on the 

 contrary, which I put in with her, got 

 out at once. At 11:30 I put another 

 bee and a fly into the same glass : the 

 latter flew out at once. For half an 

 hour the bee tried to get out at the 

 closed end ; I then turned the glass 

 with its open end to the light, when 

 she flew out at ouce. To make sure, I 

 repeated the experiment once more, 

 with the same result. 



Some bees, however, have seemed to 

 me more intelligent in this respect 

 than others. A bee which I had fed 

 several times, and which had flown 

 about in the room, found its way out 

 of the glass in a quarter of an hour, 

 and when put in a second time came 

 out at once. Another bee, when I 

 closed the postern door which opened 

 from my hive directly into my room, 

 used to come round to the honey 

 through an open window. 



One day (April 14, 1872), when a 

 number of them were very busy on 

 some berberries, I put a saucer with 

 some honey between two bunches of 

 flowers ; these flowers were repeatedly 

 visited, and were so close that there 

 was hardly room for the saucer be- 

 tween them, yet from 9:30 to 3:30 not 

 a single bee "took any notice of the 

 honey. At 3:30 I put some honey on 

 one of the bunches of flowers, and it 



