3398 Insects. 



Another Buzz from the Bees.— When I first read the account of Mr. Langstroth's 

 discovery, — viz : that bees will work as well in hives exposed to the full light of day, 

 as in those from which the light has been carefully excluded, I was disposed to be very 

 sceptical ; or at least to suspect that a too general conclusion (rather a pet mistake of 

 bee-keepers) had been formed from a single and peculiar exception to an allowed rule : 

 nor am I yet prepared — while I see some ground for hoping that the alleged discovery 

 may be a genuine one — to accept it as yet fully established, till we have received some 

 more definite and detailed account of it. Naturalists must not be over hasty in ac- 

 cepting as "truth'' presumed facts, which like that before us appear to rest on no 

 better foundation than mere newspaper statement. Having delivered myself of this 

 wise maxim, I will go on to observe that your valued correspondent, Mr. Newman, 

 seems to me to err somewhat against my axiom, in assenting too readily to the truth 

 of the discovery alluded to, but, as I cannot but believe, from a misapprehension of 

 the alleged discovery itself! Ts he, I would ask, prepared to affirm that bees will carry 

 on their labours permanently in transparent hives with as much good will, and the same 

 success, as they do in those from which the light, as at present, is jealously excluded ? 

 I do not gather so much from his remarks in your last number (Zool. 3358). Nor 

 certainly do I think he has made out a sufficiently strong case from his own detailed 

 experience to warrant either himself or his readers in accepting it as " conclusively 

 settled " that bees " do not require the light to be carefully excluded from their habita- 

 tions." I have kept bees now a considerable time, and have bestowed, of late years, a 

 very particular attention on several colonies of these insects so located, in " glass 

 hives,'' as to afford me unusual facilities for close and uninterrupted observation ; but 

 though my experience tallies in every particular with Mr. Newman's, as stated in the 

 'Zoologist' of last month, I should still feel disposed to believe that, in general, bees 

 do require the light to be excluded from their habitations. Perhaps I may be per- 

 mitted to give the result of my own observations on this point in my own words. 

 Three things I have observed, and that invariably — 1st, that, when in a state of inac- 

 tivity or repose (I do not say of sleep), be it summer or winter, bees are in no way in- 

 commoded by the (even sudden) admission of light. The only indication which I 

 have observed them give under such circumstances, of their being aware of anything 

 unusual, has been by a rapid but momentary fanning of the wings, — the insects other- 

 wise remaining immovable. Still less (which is the second fact) are they concerned 

 by the admission of light in the height of the busy season, — those of them, at least, 

 who are engaged in the in-door business of the hive. I have had bell-glasses or hive- 

 windows exposed to the light for an hour together without detecting any perceptible 

 influence which it had on the bees. Thus I have narrowly watched the process of 

 comb-making ; seen the queen traverse and retraverse both drone and worker comb, 

 depositing her eggs one while, or fed and cleaned by the bees another, and observed 

 the common bees tend their young, as uninterruptedly by the strong glare of 

 Palmer's double-wicked candle-lamp at midnight (for bees in summer-time are as 

 busy by night as by day), as by the full blaze of noon-day. So far my own experi- 

 ence would tend to corroborate Mr. Langstroth's discovery, but I can go no further, 

 for I have enjoyed this uninterrupted view of the different interior processes of the 

 hive only at night, or during weather by day, which compelled the bees to remain at 

 home. If on the contrary (which is the third observation), the weather was fair anc 

 invited to out-door occupations (of which the bees very quickly become aware), all 

 who were anxious to get out thronged the windows whose shutters were withdrawn, ii 



