THE HEAD OF THE BEE AND ITS APPENDAGES. 35 



revealed the fact that not one of the mutilated beetles had found the 

 carcasses. Repeated experiments gave the same results — no beetle 

 without its antennae was ever found on the dead animals, although at 

 each examination new individuals of the several species were present. 

 It might be supposed that the mutilation itself distracted the beetles 

 to such an extent that they did not care to eat. In order to test this 

 point Forel next cut off all the feet on one side of the body from a 

 dozen intact beetles and changed the location of the dead bodies again. 

 The next day five of this lot were found on the carcasses. 



The same results have been obtained from experiments on other 

 insects. Ants distinguish between their comrades and enemies by 

 means of their antennal sense organs. Males of the silkworm moth 

 and many other moths and butterflies perceive the presence of 

 the females and are guided to them by an evident sense of smell 

 located on the antennse, for they fail completely to find them when 

 these appendages are removed, although one immediately recognizes 

 a female when placed in contact with her. 



Similar experiments have been made on the bee, testing the ability 

 of the workers to find honey hidden from their sight. The results, 

 according to Forel, seem, curiously enough, to indicate that bees can 

 perceive odors but a very short distance from their heads. Forel 

 found that hungry bees in a cage would pass and repass hundreds of 

 times within a few millimeters of some honey concealed from their 

 sight by a lattice without discovering it. They ate it greedily, how- 

 ever, when the lattice was removed, though it had been perfectly 

 accessible to them all the time. Forel believes that " bees guide them- 

 selves almost exclusively by vision," and Lubbock holds the same 

 opinion. At the same time it would probably be a very difficult mat- 

 ter to convince many practical bee keepers that bees do not " smell " 

 from long distances. It is a well-known fact that at times when nec- 

 tar is scarce bees are attracted in large numbers to the houses of an 

 apiary where honey is stored, though, when the natural flow is suf- 

 ficient, they pay no attention to it. Tests of the olfactory sense should 

 undoubtedly be made under natural conditions. Bees inclosed in a 

 box with some honey concealed from their sight might not be able to 

 locate it in such close quarters though they might be smelling it all 

 the time. An odor in a room may so fill the air that it does not seem 

 to come from any particular direction and we ourselves would have 

 to exert our intelligence to discover its source. 



While, then, it does not seem probable that bees have such limited 

 olfactory powers as some investigators claim their experiments indi- 

 cate, it may be accepted as proved that the organs of smell are located 

 principally on the antennae. It has already been stated that the sense 

 of touch also is very highly developed on these organs, although in a 

 less sensitive degree it is distributed over most of the other parts of 



