■OBSER VA TION OF BEES. 121 



Thus through the glass you will easily and plainly 

 see the queen, as she walks over the combs laying her 

 eggs, and surrounded by her attendants ; and you 

 will see all the care of the nurse-bees — how they feed 

 the larvae, and how the comb is made, and the cells 

 filled with honey and pollen. And as these observatory 

 hives are generally kept in a room, and have a way 

 for the bees to go out and come in through a little 

 hole in the wall, there is no difficulty about observing 

 everything without danger of being stung. 



How to manage one of these hives you will 

 perhaps learn at a future day from other books. 

 These hives are a comparatively modern invention, 

 but even Huber had something of the kind, which he 

 called a ' leaf-hive.' It was made like a book with 

 three or four leaves, each so-called leaf containing 

 one little comb, the bees getting into the leaves by a 

 common entrance at, what we may call, the back of 

 the book. Although far inferior to the modern ob- 

 servatory hives it was another, proof of his great skill 

 and ingenuity. 



We will now conclude this part of our book with 

 one more example of what can be done by observation. 



Sir John Lubbock, who, as I described before, 

 made such interesting experiments as to the daily 

 work of bees, and who has made many others re- 

 specting their hearing, smelling, and affection for one 

 another, was anxious to determine how far bees, as 

 they fly from flower to flower, can distinguish one 

 colour from another ; and he contrived to discover it 

 in the following ingenious manner. 



First of all, he got a bee from one of his hives to 



