BEES 
their senses must not only be liable to 
great inaccuracy, but may often be totally 
inadequate representations of the truth. 
A finer organization and more subtle per- 
ceptions would alone suffice to extend the 
sphere of the ordinary senses to an in- 
conceivable degree, as the telescope and 
the microscope would with our vision. 
But they possess, in all probability, other 
organs appropriated to unknown kinds of 
impressions which must open to them 
avenues to knowledge of various kinds to 
which we must ever remain strangers. 
Art has supplied us with many of the 
properties of matter which nature has 
not immediately furnished us with the 
means of detecting, but who will compare 
our thermometers, spectroscopes, hygrom- 
eters, however elaborately constructed, 
with those refined instruments with 
which the lower animals, and particularly 
insects, are so elaborately provided.” 
The antennae which is so generally ob- 
served in this class of animals, look like 
horns, and yet are so delicately adjusted 
that they are believed to be the organs of 
both feeling and hearing, and are most 
highly sensitized. They are believed to 
be sensitive to all the vibrations and 
changes in the air; they are exceedingly 
flexible, and may be the organs also of 
some sense of which we know nothing. 
Aided by these the bee works in the 
darkness with perfect accuracy, and 
builds its comb, pours honey into its 
magazines, feeds the larvae, and commu- 
nicates its impressions. With this organ, 
it speaks a kind of language which seems 
capable of various modifications, capable 
of supplying every sort of information of 
which they are possessed. They have the 
sense of vision, but during the night they 
seem guided by a sense located in the 
antennae; they have the sense of smell, 
and are attracted by the aroma of the 
flowers or repelled by disgusting odors 
or a bad atmosphere. Their perceptions 
of heat and cold are exceedingly delicate. 
The influence of the sun’s rays excites 
them to vigorous action; a moderate de- 
gree of cold will reduce them to a state 
of torpor, and even the slight changes 
from heat to cold are unpleasant to them. 
Forty degrees of temperature will so be- 
583 
numb a bee as to deprive it of the powers 
of flight. It is this, more than anything 
else, we believe, that in the Pacific North- 
west in the spring of 1911 prevented the 
pollination of the orchards. For weeks 
together at the time the blossoms were 
forming the cold was, for that season of 
the year, unusually severe, and it was 
only occasionally that the mercury rose 
above 40 degrees of temperature. Not 
being able to work, the bees could not 
therefore carry the pollen from one tree 
to another, and many of the trees were 
not pollinated. In the hive where the 
bees are in their usual winter quarters 
they will live in a temperature 20 de- 
grees below zero, and trom the condensed 
vapor in the hive they are often found 
in a solid lump of ice; yet, with returning 
spring, they awake to activity. They are 
exceedingly sensitive to changes in the 
humidity of the atmosphere, as well as 
to changes of heat and cold, and can even 
portend approaching storms when no 
human sense can detect it. Perhaps the 
least sensitized of their organs is that of 
taste. They will extract their food from 
various things that, from our viewpoint, 
would be exceedingly disgusting, but 
otherwise perhaps not more so than many 
things which we relish. 
The Sociology of the Bee 
In a colony of bees there are proper 
divisions of labor, each class doing that 
to which it is by nature best adapted, and 
all doing something. There are no use- 
less classes in a hive of bees. It has been 
said that the drones are parasites and 
are practically useless because they are 
not workers. It has been charged against 
them that they feed on the product of the 
labor of the workers without rendering a 
just equivalent for what they receive. 
This is true only in the sense that the 
useful period of the drones passes with 
the fertilization of the queen, and when 
their work is done it may be said that 
they are no longer useful. After this 
work is completed, before entering into 
winter quarters the drones are cast out 
of the hive or mercilessly killed. This 
is perhaps an economic measure, and 
seems to be performed in order to leave 
sufficient food to the workers and to the 
