MOTION OF THE WINGS OF BEES. 177 



The cause of the motion of the wings of the bees, which 

 is so rapid that the wings themselves cannot be distinguished, 

 has long been an object of investigation amongst naturalists, 

 and, as may be supposed, it has been attributed to various 

 causes. It has been generally ascribed to a habit of the 

 bee, desirous to promote the circulation of air, and thereby 

 mitigate the heat of the hive ; we are, however, inclined to 

 attribute it to an expression of joy. We have experienced 

 this so often after the recovery of bees chilled with snow, or 

 suffocated in any glutinous substance, even in honey itself, 

 as almost to set all doubt at rest on that subject. On a 

 summer evening, ten or a dozen bees will be often seen stand- 

 ing in the attitude of fanning with their wings, and some of 

 them at that distance from the entrance, that no possible bene- 

 fit could accrue from the motion; we, however, never returned 

 a chilled or a recovered bee to the hive, but it immediately 

 began to express its joy by fanning its wings ; and in fact, 

 when we have had forty or fifty bees in a tumbler before the 

 fire, recovering them from the torpor occasioned by the cold, 

 we could always tell to which hive the bees belonged, by the 

 motion of their wings as soon as they were put to the 

 entrance. 



We will here disabuse the mind of all apiarians of the pre- 

 valent opinion, that the queen bee makes a chirping or any 

 other noise preparatory to her placing herself at the head of a 

 swarm. The German apiarians give a singular reason for 

 the notes, which are alleged to be uttered by the queen, for 

 they assert that this noise denotes the existence of some 

 rival queen in the hive, who at the moment when the 

 mother queen is in the act of coition with a drone, makes a 

 chirping shrill noise as a mark of jealousy and envy. 



The queen is in reality destitute of all organs of sound. In 

 the perusal, however, of the following account, which Huber 

 gives of the departure of a young queen with a swarm, all 

 gravity must be laid aside, but at the same time, a deep feel- 



i 



