THE SONG OF THE HIVES 103 
had been an apiarist the nearest bee-garden would 
have been as sure a guide to him, in respect of the 
time of year at least, as the sun’s declining arc in 
the heaven is to the tired reapers in respect of the 
hour of day. 
Most people—and with these must be included 
even lifelong country-dwellers—are wont to regard 
the humming of the hive-bee as a simple monotone, 
produced entirely by the rapid movement of the 
wings. But this conception halts very far short of 
the actual truth. In reality, the sound made by a 
honey-bee is threefold. It can consist either of a 
single tone, a combination of two notes, or even a 
grand triple chord, heard principally in moments of 
excitement, such as when a swarming-party is on the 
wing, or in late autumn and early spring, when civil 
war will often break out in an ill-managed apiary. 
The actual buzzing sound is produced by the wings; 
the deeper musical tones by the air alternately 
sucked in and driven out through the spiracles, 
which are breathing-tubes ranged along each side 
of a bee’s body; while the shrill, clarinet-like note 
comes from the true voice-apparatus itself. In 
ordinary flight it is the wings and the respiration- 
tubes conjointly which produce the steady volume 
of sound heard as the honey-makers stream over the 
hedgetop towards the distant clover-fields; and this 
is the note also that pervades the bee-garden through 
every sunny hour of the working-day. The rich, 
soft murmur coming from the spiracles is probably 
never heard except when the bee is flying, but both 
the true voice and the whirring wing-melody are 
familiar as separate sounds to every bee-keeper 
who studies his hives. 
