26 Natural History of the Honeybee. 



1. If young bees able to fly (brood-nurses), which have not yet had their flight of 

 orientation, are let fly not far from the apiary, none find their way back to the hive. 75 It 

 is also significant that first swarms, which are almost entirely made up of old bees, in 

 the loss of the queen quickly re-enter the mother colony, while an after-swarm, for the 

 most part composed of young bees, buzzes about for a long time, finally entering strange 

 colonies. 



2. If old bees are let fly at a much greater distance they all find their way back. 



3. If a colony is brought from a place more than seven kilometers away, and the 

 old bees are let fly only thirty or forty meters from their hive before they have been able 

 to make their flight of orientation, none find, their way back into the hive, supposing that 

 (in such a short distance) houses or trees intervene between it and the place from which 

 they were set free. 



4. I had two colonies placed in the garden of the Zoological Institute in Jena for 

 the purpose of further investigation. At the end of the summer semester of 1899 they 

 were taken to the apiary of a bee-keeper about two thousand meters distant. Since the 

 colonies were not stupefied, it was presumed that many of the old flight bees would return 

 to the Institute apiary, and, for the refuge of these homeless ones, I placed a hive with 

 some empty frames exactly where their home had stood. Many hundreds returned, which, 

 in spite of complete freedom of flight, loitered around the empty hive uneasily for two 

 days. They were afterward chloroformed, and preserved in formaline, for purposes of 

 demonstration. Their memory of locality had led them back. 



Naturally and easily, the varied conduct of bees in these four cases is explained if 

 we accept the theory of an orientation with the eyes^ through memory pictures, while the 

 unknown force entangles us in contradictions and inextricable mysteries. 76 



It seems remarkable that Bethe attempts throughout to explain "how bees find their 

 way home, ' ' but never, how they find their way away from the hive. With regard to their 

 finding their way back to a place outside of the hive, he says only the following (Bethe, 

 1. c, p. 90): "The place where a honey supply has been found is again sought, I? think, 

 not because of memory of locality, but because of a reaction of the same force unknown 

 to us, etc." Bethe here refers to the observations of Lubbock (1. c.) and Forel 77 who put 

 down vessels containing honey, and observed that marked bees always returned to them. 



Because of these assertions, Bethe's theory is still more complicated, and more difficult 

 to understand. We must not conclude, therefore, that "bees follow a force which causes 

 them to return to the place in space from which they flew, which place is generally,' but 

 not necessarily, the hive, ' ' for in an acceptance of this opinion the bees would have to 

 swing to and fro like a pendulum forced always between their dwelling and the honey 

 supply, whether there is any honey there or not. If they have flown from the hive or 

 from the place where the honey-receptacle was, the unknown force "impels" them to 

 return to both places. 78 



75 As is well known, young bees fly for the first time about ten to fourteen days after they emerge. 

 During the first two weeks their existence is that of "house beds," "nurses," who perform all the house- 

 keeping and feed the larvae. This is, I might say, the firmly established management, from which there 

 is no deviation. Yet we can modify this activity substantially. For example, if we* form a colony of 

 bees which have just emerged, and give it a fertile queen, brood, and frames of honey, then we would 

 see that part of the young bees become "field bees" in five or six days, thus taking up the outside work 

 considerably earlier, even if everything* is present in the hive, which is necessary for the existence of the 

 colonv. 



76 Bethe refers at different times to Fabre's investigations on Chalicodoma (Fabre, Souvenirs ento- 

 mologiques: Paris, 1879; Fabre, NouveaAix souvenirs entomol. ; Paris, 1882.). Yet as early as 1895 

 Weismann (Weismann, Wie sehen die Insekten? Deutsche Rundschau, 1895, pp. 434-452), had over- 

 thrown, in a very interesting paper, Fabre's view concerning the sense of direction. Weismann comes 

 to the following conclusions: "The only correct solution of the enigma of path-finding by Chalicodoma 

 is that the insects find their way back with their eyes." 



77 Morel, Recueil zoologique Suisse, 1 Serie, T 4, 1886-88. 



78 If an objection were here to be made, that very probably bees are compelled by the unknown 

 force to return to the place where honey or some stimulus is placed, just as long as the stimulus is 

 present, and that the action of the unknown force could cease with the disappearance of the stimulus, 

 such an exception might appear unauthorized for the following reasons: We should have two entirely 

 different kinds of unknown forces according to this view, since the one leading the bees back to the 

 hive, in fact, forces them to return to the place where the hive stands or no longer stands. Here the 

 stimulus, therefore, is acting in spite of the fact that the means of stimulation have been removed. Then 

 we should have a second force which vanishes with the disappearance of the means of stimulation. Some- 

 thing very different from Bethe's definition, which is not consistent, and decidedly not all conclusive, 

 occurs, for the observation may be made frequently that food or meal remains unnoticed, and is not 

 carried in, if Nature opens stores of honey and pollen (Dathe, 1. c, p. 176). Here the bees no longer 



