202 PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 
inquiring in all directions; and the queen was observed 
answering these anxious inquiries of her subjects in the 
most marked manner; for she was always fastened by 
her feet to the grate, crossing her antennze with those of 
the inquirers. Various other experiments, which are 
too long to relate, prove the importance of these organs 
as the instrument of communicating with each other, as 
well as to direct the bee in all its proceedings?. Besides 
their antenne, the bees also cause themselves to be un- 
derstood by certain sounds, not indeed produced by the 
mouth, but by other parts of their body :—but upon this 
subject I shall have occasion to enlarge hereafter. 
That bees can remember agreeable sensations at least, 
is evident from the following anecdote related by Huber. 
—One autumn some honey was placed upon a window 
—the bees attended it in crowds. ‘The honey was taken 
away, and the window closed with a shutter all the win- 
ter. In the spring, when it was re-opened, the bees re- 
turned, though no fresh honey had been placed there”. 
From the earliest times our little citizens of the hive 
have had the character of being an irritable race. Their 
anger is without bounds, says Virgil; and if they are 
molested, this character is no exaggeration. Some in- 
dividuals, however, they will suffer to go near their - 
hives, and to do almost any thing: and there are others 
to whom they seem to take such an antipathy, that they 
will attack them unprovoked. A great deal will proba- 
bly depend upon this—whether any thing has happened 
to put them out of humour. The bees usually do not 
attack me; but I remember one day last year, when the 
* Huber, ii, 407— > Ibid. 375, 
