Live Stock, 



54 



[Jan. 1908. 



days from the time of their hatching. Daring all this period their abdo- 

 men is much more broad and rounded except in the case of the queen. 

 As the integuments solidify and become coloured sub-triangular form become 

 more and more marked. The noise made by the workers in ventilating the 

 nest is very strident and may be heard at a distance of 2 or 3 metres. The author 

 does not believe in the visits of inspection, leave-takings, blessings by the queen and 

 bowings by the workers, all of which are described by other observers. The queen 

 and the other bees move in all directions very often in a disorderly way and without 

 any motive other than the need for keeping moving. In their different movements 

 the queen and the workers pass and repass and mingle together without any 

 attention, and one must have a very strong imagination to discover the least sign of 

 respect. The author concludes by a remark applicable to all these kinds of bves. 

 The honey of all has the same taste and the same colour. With the Trigones it is 

 true you find some of a special quality, but the bulk of their provisions is composed 

 of honey resembling that of the others. For whom is it that these bees gather their 

 honey. This is a more difficult problem than you would generally believe. The 

 exact Reaumur, even, seems not to have troubled himself about it. He says, "We 

 know well enough that it is not for us that the bees store up honey, and that 

 there are days, even seasons, which do not permit them to go in search of it,* and in 

 which they would moreover go in vain." According to this savant, therefore, the 

 bees gather honey entirely to avoid famine, and this opinion is so universally 

 received that authors who have had to raise the same question in the case of 

 Melliponce of New Granada (a country where there is no winter) give the same reply, 

 They say that in that country there are two seasons of the year — May and June. 

 November and December— when plants bear much less flowers, so the Melliponce are 

 forced to make a reserve in order not to suffer from scarcity. This does not explain 

 to one the reason for the great excess of honey over that required for the bees' needs 

 to the cases in which the bees can go out and gather at least what is necessary for 

 them from day to day. As a matter of fact in this country they go out almost 

 equally all the year round and always find a full supply on the low flowers, and above 

 all on the palm trees, but, nevertheless, they do keep up a surplus store. Moreover, 

 who has not heard speak of wild swarms of bees which have enormous quantities of 

 honey piled up during years to which they do not cease to add in the ordinary way. 

 The notion of a fixed idea and of a mania inherited from their ancestors is untenable, 

 as their centres of origin lie in countries where there is little or no winter, g The 

 Hindus, noticing this fact, explain it by saying that the bees do so to have the means 

 of making one good feast a month, and that they choose the day of the new-moon. 

 The meal is so copious and the guests are so excited, especially in the ease of Apis 

 dorsata, that the honey frequently falls down and passes by. Of course it is said that 

 every one has seen this or seen people who have seen it, and it would only be a retro- 

 grade Oriental who would not believe it. The author prefers to believe with Reaumur 

 that nothing is accidental in nature, and that an instinct so admirable and so pro- 

 ductive as this must have some object which he believes to be a deliberate design of 

 the Creator and Organiser of the Universe to establish a bond of union between these 

 workers and other beings living round and able to benefit by their product. Con" 

 sidering the general harmony of Nature, it is a mistake to think that there is no 

 special object except cases in which the agent is itself conscious of it, and backward 

 or retrograde as people may think this theory, the author prefers in the case of 

 hypotheses those which do not exclude Almighty. 



(The paper concludes with a plate of illustrations, one of a nest of Apis 

 dorsata and another of that of Apis florea or Socialis, and the third of a nest in a tree 

 trunk of Trigonus irridipennis, all being drawn from nature by Father H. 

 Sautnier, S.J. For the English abstract of the paper and copy of illustrations, the 

 Society is indebted to Mr. S, G. Roberts of the Indian Civil Service,) 



