THE HIVE ODOR AND THE REACTIONS RESULTING FROM IT. 



In the first section of "Investigations on Bees, " Bethe (1. c.) treats the question as to 

 how bees recognize the hive, and concludes that the recognition results solely from an 

 odorous chemical compound (Geruehsstoff) which he calls the "hive substance" (Nest- 

 stoff). 14 He avoids the term "hive odor," because he thinks bees have no sense of smell. 

 I use the expressive term "hive odor" (colony odor, exhalation odor) under which I com- 

 prehend only the existence o-f gaseous substances disseminated in a colony, the presence 

 of which is detected by the bees ' sense of smell. 



I believe that the following odors are present in a colony of bees: 



1. The Individual odor. It can be easily 'demonstrated that the queen odor (see p. 7) 

 varies with different individuals, and on the same ground .(germinal variation), an indi- 

 vidual odor should be assigned to the workers. 



2. All offspring of one mother (queen) have a common inherited family odor in addi- 

 tion to the individual odors, belonging only to the progeny of one queen. 



3. The brood and chyle odor (p. 9). 



4. The drone odor (p. 10). 



5. The wax odor. Since the wax is a granular secretion, an exuded product, it may be 

 safely taken for granted that, considered apart 1 from the specific odor of wax, the indi- 

 vidual odors of the wax-generators adhere to the honey-comb. Accordingly the wax 

 structures of different colonies have different odors. 



6. The honey odor. That the honey of each colony (mixed with a secretion of the 

 salivary glands) has its specific odor is readily seen from the old practice of bee-keepers 

 to which Bethe also ^alludes. If a queen be daubed with honey from ai queenless colony, 

 she will be accepted readily by that colony when inserted. 



7. The hive odor (exhalation odor, colony odor). The hive odor is composed normally 

 by a mixture of the preceding odors, or of some of them. Single bees, therefore, besides 

 their individual odors, possess the family odor and especially the common adhering hive 

 odor, which forms the dominant factor in the various actions toward hive mates and 

 hive strangers — that is, in mutual recognition between bees. 



If a strange queen is put into a queenless colony in a cage, a confinement of twenty- 

 four hours is usually sufficient for the queen tk) have received the ' ' hive substance, ' ' as 

 Bethe calls it; that is, she has become "scented." 15 The external adherence of the colony 

 odor therefore suffices to make the bees permanently friendly with the foreign queen. If 

 a swarm is made of the bees hanging in front of several hives, 16 which in strong colonies 

 often form great clusters (beards), by scooping them up in a ladle, there will probably 

 be bees from ten, twenty, or thirty different hives. If they are put into a hive and given 

 a queen, with the observance of proper precautions, these bees from, let us say, thirty differ- 

 ent hives, form a peaceful colony in a few hours, which adjusts itself in its new dwelling 

 and takes up the ordinary tasks of the day. Here we have thirty family odors, and about 



14 According to Bethe we must consider the existence of this "hive substance" as a 'family odor." 

 "I believe that these family odors, common to all the members of one family, and differing slightly from 

 those of other families of the same species, play an important part in the life-history of the social hymenop- 

 tera. This family difference is due to the varying proportions of the constituent odors" (1. c, p. 3*1). 

 This "hive substance" must be inherited, as Jager likewise maintains (ZeitschrSft fur wissensch. Zoologie, 

 Bd. 27, 1876, p. 327). 1 might mention here that I find no proof in Jager's paper that he concludes the 

 "exhalation odor" of a colony to be solely a "f amity odor" as Bethe does, and still less proof that he 

 considers this common odor to be "inherited," because it is a mixture of many thousands of inherited indi- 

 vidual odors. 



Bethe includes, under the term "hive substance," two separate substances, one giving the family odor 

 and the other causing the "various reactions toward hive mates and hive strangers." That this conception 

 will not cover all cases, I believe I can demonstrate in the course of my paper. 



35 Further on I shall show that in many cases the bees very likely became familiar with the odor of the 

 queen, whir-h is a mixture of the queen odor and the hive odor. 



16 G. Dathe, Lehrbuch der Bienenzucht, 5 Aufl., Bensheim, 1892; Bienenzeitung, 7 Jahrg., No. 19. 



