160 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE. 



Biichner's very admirable collection of facts relating to the 

 psychology of Hymenoptera : — 



Herr L. Broffib relates, in * der Zoologische Garten ' (XVIIT. 

 Year, No. 1, p. 67), that a poor and a rich hive stood next each 

 other on his father's bee-stand, and the latter suddenly lost its 

 •queen. Before the owner had come to a decision thereupon the 

 bees of the two hives came to a mutual understanding as to the 

 condition of their two states. The dwellers in the queenless 

 hive, with their stores of provisions, went over into the less 

 populous or poorer hive, after they had assured themselves, by 

 many influential deputations, as to the state of the interior of 

 the poor hive, and, as appeared, especially as to the presence of 

 an egg-laying queen ! 



General Habits, 



The active life of bees is divided between collecting 

 food and rearing young. We shall therefore consider 

 these two functions separately. 



The food collected consists of two kinds, honey (which, 

 although stored in the ' crop ' for the purpose of carriage 

 from the flowers to the cells, appears to be but the con- 

 densed nectar of flowers) and so-called ' bee-bread.' This 

 consists of the pollen of flowers, which is worked into a kind 

 of paste by the bees and stored in their cells till it is re- 

 quired to serve as food for their larvae. It is then partly 

 digested by the nurses with honey, so that a sort of chyle 

 is formed. It is observable that in each flight the ' carrier 

 bees ' collect only one kind of pollen, so that it is possible 

 for the ' house bees ' (which, by the way, are the younger 

 bees left at home to discharge domestic duties with only 

 a small proportion of older ones, left probably to direct 

 the more inexperienced young) to sort it for storage in 

 different cells. In the result there are several different 

 kinds of bee-bread, some being more stimulating or nu- 

 tritious than others. The most nutritious has the effect, 

 when given to any female larva, of developing that larva 

 into a queen or fertile female. This fact is well known 

 to the bees, who only feed a small number of larvae in this 

 manner, and the larvae which they select so to feed they 

 place in larger or ' royal ' cells, with an obvious fore- 



