42 SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL. 65 



The bee probably first recognizes the candy as food by smelling it 

 before touching it. After smelling the candy the first reaction of the 

 bee is to move toward it, to extend the tongue and to examine the 

 food with the sense hairs on the tip of the tongue. The extending of 

 the mentum (fig. 10, Mt) is accomplished by muscles not shown in 

 figure 10. The tongue is unfolded from beneath the mentum by 

 the contraction of a pair of muscles (M 2 ), attached to a pair of hard 

 chitinous processes (Pr). The tongue is folded beneath the men- 

 tum by means of two muscles (fig. 10, M x ) pulling on a pair of chi- 

 tinous rods (-^1) which are the two forks of the chitinous rod (R) 

 extending the full length of the glossa through the center. When the 

 tongue is extended and as quickly as the bee recognizes that the food 

 must be dissolved, the salivary syringe (SS) forces its supply of saliva 

 to the exterior, at the point marked 6" in figures 7 and 10. The saliva 

 runs forward along the groove between the two groups of olfactory 

 pores (fig. 7, Por) and passes around the notches (Nt) to the ventral 

 side of the tongue, where it enters the proximal end of the groove (fig. 

 8, Gv) which extends the full length of the glossa. The extreme prox- 

 imal end of the groove is wide and shallow, and at this place there is no 

 distinction between the gfroove (fig. 3 A, Gv) proper and the canal 

 (Can) formed by the rod (R) . Not far from the notches the wide 

 groove becomes narrow and deep and the canal is distinctly separated 

 from the groove. A portion of the ventral surface of the mentum 

 extends as a fleshy tongue (fig. 8, Tn) along the roof and through 

 the center of the wide groove. The end of this tongue terminates 

 where the canal is separated from the groove. Now the saliva, in 

 traveling from the external opening of the salivary syringe on the 

 dorsal side of the tongue to the ventral side of the tongue by capillary 

 attraction, is guided into the canal by means of the fleshy tongue just 

 described. From this place to the tip of the tongue the canal is com- 

 pletely separated from the groove by minute interlocking pseudo-hairs 

 (fig. 3 A, Hr 3 ) which point toward the tip of the tongue. According 

 to the law of capillarity the saliva, aided by the pseudo-hairs, passes 

 through the canal as rapidly as oil climbs a wick. The saliva, after 

 reaching the tip of the tongue, spreads over the surface of the spoon- 

 shaped labellum (fig. 8, Lbl) which is used for scraping the candy. 

 The scraping and changing of the sugar to liquid is facilitated by the 

 many forked pseudo-hairs on the labellum. When the food is dis- 

 solved, it enters the grqove at the tip of the tongue, passes through 

 the entire length of the groove to the base of the tongue, where it 

 then passes through the notches to the dorsal side of the tongue and 



