June, 1907 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



225 



keep their wings in continual movement in order to ventilate 

 the hive and remove the water vapor due to the evaporation 

 of the freshly gathered honey. 



3. The scavengers (Fig. i, 3). These are most con- 

 spicuous early in the morning when they are seen carrying 

 out of the hive all waste matter and debris, the bodies of bees 

 that have died during the night (the daily mortality may 

 be from 500 to 1200), badly formed larvae, etc. The 

 scavengers also kill or expel the ill or wounded workers 

 deemed incapable of further service to the community. 



4. The harvesters (Fig. i, 4 and 5, and Fig. 12). 

 Large numbers of these are observed emerging from the 

 hive, flying swiftly and directly toward their destinations, 

 returning laden with honey and other things, and alighting 

 heavily on the platform of the hive before entering. There 

 is a further division of labor among these harvesters, for 

 the different materials collected for the use of the colony 

 are never brought in together by the same bee. 



Most of the harvesters return laden with nectar, which is 

 stored in the crop, or expansion of the alimentary canal. 

 Others bring in pollen which they have gathered from the 

 stamens of flowers (Fig. i, 5), and packed, in two little 



10 — A comb of brood cells, covered with bees 

 acting as brooders 



colored pellets, in the spoon-shaped hollows of their hind 

 feet (Fig. 8). Still others, especially when nectar is scarce, 

 fill their crops with water which is used to mix with honey 

 and pollen to form the paste on which the larvse are fed. 

 A few of the harvesters, again, pack their hollow feet, not 

 with pollen, but with a wax-like and adhesive substance ob- 

 tained from the buds of the fir and the poplar (Fig. 9). 

 This is the raw material of the "propolis," with which the 

 combs of wax are attached to their supports. Finally, if 

 the bees that leave the hive early in the morning are observed 

 with care, it will be discovered that some of them, instead 

 of going directly to definite objective points, fly about irregu- 

 larly, making a peculiar sound with their wings. These are 

 the explorers which examine all plants and other objects in 

 search of substances worth gathering. 



In the interior of the hive the duties of the bees are even 

 more diversified. We may distinguish: the wax workers 

 which, clinging to each other in regular clusters, knead the 

 wax secreted between the segments of their abdomens and 

 construct cells of various types; the nurses, which assemble 

 on the combs over the cells which contain cocoons and thus 

 maintain the temperature required for pupation (Fig. 10) ; 

 and the store keepers, which fill cells with honey containing 



-Old workers, recognizable by their 

 wings 



not more than 25 per cent, of water, adding an antiseptic to 

 prevent fermentation, cover the filled cells with wax, etc. 



A classical experiment by Doenhof proves clearly that 

 the same bee can discharge successively all the duties which 

 have been enumerated and that, in general, the younger bees 

 act as guards, ventilators and wax-workers, and the older 

 bees as harvesters and explorers. In regard to the nurses 

 and brooders, Doenhof's observations are not free from 

 uncertainty. 



The experiment was 

 made by replacing the 

 queen of a hive of common 

 black bees with a laying 

 Italian queen. The Italian 

 or ligular bees are easily 

 recognized, even at a con- 

 siderable distance, by the yellow color of the first three seg- 

 ments of the abdomen. The new queen at once began to lay 

 eggs of the Italian bee in a hive that contained only common 

 black bees. Three weeks after her introduction the first 

 yellow bees emerged from their cocoons. By following the 

 development of the new population it was learned that all 

 Italian bees, during the first fortnight of their adult life, 

 were assigned to various occupations within the hive and 

 at its entrance, but did not go to the harvest field, so that 

 in the two weeks following the appearance of the first yel- 

 low bees not one such bee was seen gathering nectar or 

 pollen. 



M. de Layens and I repeated this experiment with the 

 same result, but we also discovered a very remarkable fact 

 while we were closely watching a hive, which contained no 

 Italian bees more than two weeks old, on a sunny day when 

 the bees were engaged in the exercise which bee-keepers call 

 the "pin-wheel." In this curious performance numerous 

 workers fly in smaller or larger circles about the entrance of 

 the hive toward which their heads are always turned. The 

 observation was made about ten days after the preparation 

 of the first Italian bees. None of them had yet gone out 

 to gather honey but the pin-wheel was found to consist 

 almost entirely of them, though it also contained a few 

 black bees, which, being the offspring of the deposed queen, 

 were necessarily older than the Italians. When the pin- 

 wheel broke up several of these black bees, after resting 

 for a moment on the platform, 

 flew straight to the harvest field, 

 but all the younger yellow bees 

 re-entered the hive. 



This observation shows that 

 the pin-wheel is an exercise in 

 which the young workers, before 

 they are old enough or strong 

 enough to go out to gather 

 honey, learn to recognize the en- 

 trance of the hive and its sur- 

 roundings. It appears to prove 

 also that the exercise is per- 

 formed under the direction of 

 older workers, familiar with the 

 entrance of the hive, which re- 

 turn to their task of harvesting 

 as soon as the exercise is finished. 



A few days later we saw a few 

 Italian bees beginning work as 

 harvesters. Following them 

 from flower to flower we ob- 

 served that they alighted with 

 hesitation and often walked 



around a corolla without extract- . , ... ,, , 



r.,. ... ,, IZ — A tiarvester visiting a blossom ot 



ing nectar. 1 hey did not collect viper's Bugloss (Echium). 



nectar in the normal manner un- (Magnified) 



