70 INSECT ARTIZANS AND THEIR WORK 



they are bound to concentrate their efforts upon 

 one spot. 



By marking some of these bees with paint and 

 taking them away to a distance of four kilometres 

 (that is, over a quarter of a mile) before releasing 

 them, Fabre found that their homing instinct was 

 so good that they were back working on their 

 unfinished nests next morning. But though their 

 sense of locality was thus proved to be very good, 

 he found that when he transposed neighbouring 

 nests they were unable to distinguish their own 

 property, for a bee set to work at the nest which 

 now occupied the site of its own previous labours. 

 If this spot was left blank by the removal of the 

 nest only a slight distance, the bee returned to the 

 spot and showed great concern, but failed to recog- 

 nize its nest, though it had passed over it in its 

 homeward flight. 



Some of the results of Fabre's experiments were 

 rather ludicrous, and showed that the bee does 

 not modify its actions according to circumstances 

 as Honey Bees do. If he substituted a built and 

 partially provisioned cell for one that had only just 

 been commenced, the bee would proceed from 

 that point in its own operations at which it had 

 left off, and would make the cell much longer than 

 necessary ; but when it had made the cell a third 

 larger it appeared to realize the absurdity of its 

 action and left off. If such a substituted cell is 

 already provisioned but not closed in, and the nest 

 taken away was beginning to be filled with honey 



