Natural History of the Honeybee. 35 



bees used this large space for flying, therefore flew under the branches. A bee always 

 flies low to the forage unless obstacles are present or the distances are extraordinary; 

 and there is not the slightest discernible reason why the bees should not have used this 

 comfortable path if they flew mainly in the direction of the tree. It would have been 

 abnormal if they had not done so. That Bethe noticed the bees flying in under the branches 

 or through the top of the tree only after the tree was down is easily explained, since their 

 flight was much more visible, and the tree had not been cut down for the sake of obser- 

 vations but merely to remove the shade. The opinion might, therefore, be allowed that 

 the special kind of flying in had not before been accurately noticed. That bees fly through 

 bushes standing not very close together, or through trees which put out their leaves late 

 (as does the plane-tree), I have often observed. They maintain the accustomed flight as 

 long as possible. But there is no contradiction in saying that bees, and perhaps very many 

 of them, came down * ' perpendicularly between the tree and the house to the hive. " But 

 they surely did not fly out over the tree, but to the other side over the roof of the "little 

 house, ' ' or sidewise over the roof to the ' ' meadows ' ' lying in the ' ' south. ' ' I am strength- 

 ened in this opinion, by the following assertions of Bethe: "I have said that the bees 

 returning after I had cut down the plane-tree in front of the apiary, flew immediately 

 through the place where it had stood instead of, as before, coming down perpendicularly 

 in corkscrew lines. The outgoing bees conducted themselves in an entirely different way. 

 After the fall of the tree they corkscrewed upward penpendicularly just as if the tree still 

 stood. When I saw the bees fly for the last time in this year (it was on September: 14, 

 therefore about three months after the tree had fallen, June 14), all the outgoing bees 

 still flew upward perpendicularly in front of the house, as if the tree still stood. I am 

 wondering what they will do next year. There can be here no question of any perceptions 

 of the senses, of any deliberations ' ' (Bethe p. 92). 



Bethe here overlooks the fact that most likely all the bees which flew September 14th 

 had never seen the tree, since in summer bees live at most six or seven weeks. 107 The 

 cause of this singular flight was, therefore, certainly not the tree which fell fourteen 

 weeks before. There can, therefore, be no question in this case of "perceptions of the 

 senses, " as Bethe says with another significance. And then "the next year"! - 



Even if the foregoing observations are accurate, it is clear that the peculiar flight of 

 the bees has not been necessarily because of the tree, and therefore the demonstrative power 

 of these observations is very doubtful. 



Exact judgment is not possible in this case, since the other obstacles further away 

 perhaps, as there undoubtedly were, are not mentioned. 



I made the following control experiment: Close to my hexagonal bee-pavilion garden- 

 paths strike out to the east and southwest. In order that passers-by would not be troubled 

 by the bees, I was forced to plant bushes and treea so thickly in front, one-half to one 

 and a half meters, that the bees were compelled to fly high immediately. The majority 

 did me this kindness; but those which developed early in the spring, before the leaves 

 came out, picked out larger or smaller openings between the twigs or between the bushes 

 as pathways, and held to these paths even when the space became almost entirely covered 

 with leaves. Because of a birth-tree standing on the southwest side, six meters high 

 and about two meters wide, the lowest branches beginning only about a meter from the 

 ground (therefore a rather bush-like growth), the flying bees from a colony standing a 

 meter and a half away, and over one meter high, were forced to divide. Some of them 

 flew to the left, others to the right, since the young trees standing next had not yet 

 effected a closing. The birch was cut down, and I noticed as follows: No hesitation of 



107 "How great the death-rate is, especially at the time of forage, the following experiments prove: 

 I made several artificial swarms from pure German bees, with a pure Italian queen. In six weeks 

 there was not a single German bee left. July 17th I took a rather old German queen from a hive and 

 put in an Italian the third day after. Notwithstanding the fact that for three weeks the German brood 

 emerged, after six weeks, scarcely every twentieth bee was German." — Dzierzon in Bienenzeitung, IX., 

 No. 23. "The length of life of workers is usually very short. Those reared, in the spring and summer 

 live often hardly six to eight weeks." — Ludw. Huber, Die neue, nutzlichste Bitoenzucht, 13. Aufl., 

 Lahr, 1900, p. 16. In rich forage the bees live often only two or three weeks. Many personal obser- 

 vations sustain the foregoing. Queens usually reach the age of four or five years; but cases have been 

 known of queens which were six or seven years old (Bienenzeitung, 1882, p.* 78). 



