The Life of the Individual 123 



"The next day other searchers came. The seven marked 

 bees continued their visits. I took some pollen from the 

 stamens of Lycium and put it in a mass below the nectar of 

 one flower. When bee 'C arrived at that flower, she 

 stretched out her proboscis as usual to suck up the sweet 

 liquid but saw that it was not there and that something 

 different was in the flower; she examined it carefully for 

 more than a minute, did not collect the pollen but renounced 

 it and went to pump nectar in the neighboring flowers. I 

 made the inverse experiment and bathed the pollen of one 

 flower in nectar; 'F,' after pollen, came to this flower, 

 found the sweet liquid on the anthers, examined it, did not 

 touch the anthers of that flower, but renounced it and went 

 to continue her collecting on the neighboring flowers." 



Bonnier further found that certain bees confined their 

 visits to a certain limited portion of a row of plants which 

 were all in bloom. He concludes as follows: "They thus 

 accomplish on the whole, the collection of the most in the 

 least possible time of the substances necessary to all colonies 

 of bees in the same region." 



If division of labor as described by Bonnier is even par- 

 tially true, it may help us to understand why it happens 

 that the flowers visited on a single trip are usually of one 

 species. It is to be hoped that these interesting observations 

 may be repeated by other investigators. 



Pollen gathering. 



Pollen is carried to the hive in the pollen baskets or cor- 

 biculse (Fig. 63) situated on the outer surface of the tibise of 

 the third pair of legs. The activities of the bees in collect- 

 ing pollen have been admirably described by Casteel.^ In 

 collecting from a flower, the worker not only secures pollen 

 on its mandibles and tongue but also on the hairs of the legs 



the visit is disturbed by the arrival of wild Hymenoptera as numerous." 

 — Bonnier. 



1 Casteel, D. B., 1912. The behavior of the honey bee in pollen collect- 

 ing. Bui. No. 121, Bureau of Entomology, 36 pp. 



