54 AUSTRALASIAN 



or simply through its mouth; but the statement of Muller, that 

 when gathering pollen from some kinds of flowers the bee 

 ejects a little honey on the anthers through its suction tube — 

 which in another part of his work he calls the " proboscis " for 

 shortness — would incline us to suppose that the honey may be 

 ejected into the cells in the same manner. 



The maxillse, or so-called lower jaws, form the under sheath 

 of the ligula and palpi when at rest, and the whole organ is 

 then folded under the lower part of the head. 



THE ANTENNA. 



The antennae, or " feelers," as they are commonly and not 

 inappropriately called, are very sensitive organs of touch-sen- 

 sations, and, beyond all donbt, of vital importance to the 

 insect. Huber tried experiments with queens deprived of the 

 antennae, and found that the loss of one was not very injurious; 

 but when both were gone, the bee became apparently delirious, 

 avoided the worker bees, dropped her eggs at random about 

 the hive, and rushed towards the opening, as if to escape. 

 Having introduced a second queen, similarly mutilated, it was 

 found that they had both lost their natural instinct for a com- 

 bat, and met several times without exhibiting the smallest 

 resentment. The worker bees did not seem to distinguish 

 their own mutilated queen from the strange one, and both were 

 left to do as they liked ; but when Huber introduced a third 

 unmutilated queen, the workers seized her, bit her, and confined 

 her so closely that she could hardly move. When he removed 

 this last and one of the others, and left one fertile but muti- 

 lated queen in charge of the hive, she left it, and tried to fly 

 away, but being unable, she fell and died on the ground. Mr. 

 Harris mentions also that worker bees, if deprived of the 

 antennas, and allowed to fly, become incapable of recognising 

 their own hive again, and are hopelessly lost as to their where- 

 abouts. Huber tried other experiments by dividing the bees 

 of one stock by two fine wire gratings placed so far apart that 

 the antennae of the bees on each side could not meet, and after- 

 wards removing one of the gratings, so that they could touch 

 each other ; and from the results of these experiments he drew 

 the conclusion that they could actually communicate intelligence 

 to each other by means of their autennse. There is, at all 



