TONGUE OP THE HONEY-BEE. 415 



This, however, will not account for the bee being able to re- 

 move such minute traces of honey as it undoubtedly can. The 

 hairs of the tongue Mall sweep backward the honey, that is to 

 say, will drive it away from the mouth, towards the end of the 

 tongue itself, and the ladle-shaped organ will then serve, as the 

 tongue is being withdrawn, to collect and drive into the tongue 

 the honey thus collected. "When within the tongue, the capil- 

 larity of the narrow groove, assisted by the action of the salivary 

 chamber, will aiford a means, which the larger opening would not 

 afford, of the sniallest particle of honey being sucked up. 



Professor Cook, in a paper reported in the Amer. Bee Journal, 

 Nov. 1879, gives the following account of some experiments 

 which support this view. He says : — " I have placed honey in 

 fine tubes and behind fine wire gauze, so that bees could just 

 reach it with the funnel [the ladle-shaped organ] at the end of 

 the rod. So long as they could reach it with the funnel, so long 

 would it disappear. I have in such cases seen the red axis when 

 the bee was sipping coloured syrup. Subsequent examination 

 by dissection revealed the red liquid still in the tube of the rod." 



Bees always apply the forward and lower side of the tongue 

 to the honey, even when it is put into a position in which almost 

 any other way would appear more convenient. 



The statement which has found its way into so many books 

 that bees obtain the honey by lapping*, appears to me to be 

 without foundation. The length and direction of the hairs, i. e. 

 all pointing away from the bee, is sufficient to condemn it. 



The next theory, — that propounded by Hermann Miiller, — is 

 as follows: — "The terminal whorls of hairs are filled with honey 

 by adhesion ; this honey is withdrawn into the sheath of the tongue 

 [formed by the meeting of the maxillse and the palpi], and is driven 

 towards the oesophagus by a double cause : first by the pressure 

 of the erect whorls of hairs, and secondly by suction." He else- 

 where says the whorls of hairs are erected rhythmically, and 

 that the suction here referred to is due to the action of the 

 stomach. I cannot, however, accept this explanation, for (1) 

 there does not appear to me to be any reason for supposing the 

 hairs of the tongue are capable of being voluntarily erected ; (2) 

 the tapering shape of the tongue and the direction and length 



* " Functionally this organ is a tongue and enables the bee to lap up the honey- 

 on which it feeds " (Huxley's ' Manual of Invertebrata ' p. 428). See also John 

 Hunter, in Enc. Brit. 1875, " Bees ; " Shuckard, ' British Bees,' 186H, p. 37 et seq. 



