HO BEES AND BEE-KEEPING. 



the evidence that these are marvellously sensitive 

 to some emanation from the female is universally 

 accepted. But what of our bees ? Let us compare the 

 antennae of the sexes. The flagellum, which is the 

 sensory part of the antenna, I find, by careful measure- 

 ment of many individuals, to be, on an average, in the 

 queen, y^-g-in. in diameter, yyin- long ; worker, j^in. 

 diameter, -§in. long ; drone, -g^in. diameter, i-in. long. 

 So that the sensory surfaces in the three cases are very 

 nearly in the ratio — queen i, worker 2, drone 3. Yet 

 the male, as his habits would lead us to suppose, has 

 only about 2000 feeling hairs, being the one-sixth or 

 one-eighth of the number of those possessed by the 

 worker. But what of the smell hollows? In the case 

 of the worker, the eight active joints have an average 

 of fifteen rows of twenty smell hollows each, or 2400 

 on each antenna. The queen has a less number, 

 giving about 1600 on each antenna. If these organs 

 are olfactory, we see the reason. The worker's neces- 

 sity to smell nectar explains all. We, perhaps, exclaim 

 —Can it be that these little threads we call antennae 

 can thus carry thousands of organs, each requirino- its 

 own nerve end? But greater surprises await us, and 

 I must admit that these examinations astonished me 

 greatly. In the drone antenna (Fig. 20) we have 

 thirteen joints in all, of which nine are barrel-shaped 

 and special, and these are covered completely by 

 smell hollows, before and behind, as at C, Fio-. 22 • 

 each hollow, beside, is somewhat less than those of 

 both queen and worker, being about ^^in. in length, 

 and ToW 11 - in diameter. An average of thirty rows 

 of these, seventy in a row, on the nine joints of the 



