46 A Modern Bee-Farm 
her requirements at the start, they are liable to reach 
winter with no stores on hand. 
I have here shown in a general way the natural condition 
of a swarm during one year of its existence, but under 
modern management the state of things would be much 
altered ; at the same time I hope the foregoing will enable 
the uninitiated reader the better to understand and follow 
such methods as will hereafter be described. ° 
The Sense of Touch and Communication. 
How do bees work in the dark? How does each 
home-coming worker find the cells used for storing the 
newly-gathered pollen around the margin of the brood 
nest; or the new honey in cells still farther from the 
slight ray of light given by the comparatively small 
entrance, and where thousands of laborers are moulding 
fresh waxen cells, to receive the rapidly incoming store? 
And how do they find the eggs, the just hatched larvee, or 
those nearly ready for sealing over—each requiring little or 
more food in proportion to age? Do they continually 
appear to be looking into each cell out of mere idle 
curiosity ? Certainly not ; everything, is done systemati- 
cally, and with intelligent purpose, just as the queen mother 
will investigate every cell before she will deposit an egg 
therein. 
How do they build the marvellous waxen cells, in 
hexagonal shape, or at all; and how do they know when 
to cap them if in semi-darkness? How do they know an 
enemy at the entrance, even in the darkness, while 
immediately recognising a friend? The answer is that 
they know all, and do all of these things by the one sense 
of touch, by the aid of those wonderful feelers, or antennz. 
A worker on guard at the entrance will often rush 
towards another just alighting ; they cross feelers, and in 
