56 
THE SENSES OF BEES. 
honey-harvest. Very striking proofs of the acuteness 
of this sense may be observed within the limits of 
the apiary. Early in spring, when the bee-master 
begins feeding his colony, he has reason to marvel 
at the instantaneous notice which this organ gives 
them of his approach. Arriving amongst his hives, 
though from the chillness of a spring morning, not a 
bee is seen stirring out of doors, he 1ms not time to 
fill the feeding-troughs from the vessel in his hand, 
before he is surrounded by hundreds ; and in the 
space of five minutes or less, the float-board of every 
trough is covered with a dense mass of eager feeders. 
In feeding a newly-lodged swarm during unfavour- 
able weather in summer, it is curious to observe 
through the glass, in pushing in the sliding-trough 
which runs flush with the floor, the motionless hemi- 
spherical mass at the ceiling of the hive, becoming 
instantaneously elongated, and changed into*the form 
of an inverted living pyramid, having its apex resting 
on the float-board, while a score or two of stragglers, 
who have in the confusion been separated or have 
fallen from the mass above, hasten along the floor, 
snuffing the grateful fragrance, ranging themselves in 
a line on the edge of the trough, and eagerly plung- 
ing their probosces into the liquid. It is to their ex- 
quisite sense of smell also, in all likelihood, that we 
must attribute their capability of distinguishing friend 
from foe among their own species. If a stranger-bee 
by mistake enter a hive, and this sometimes happens 
in consequence of some slight alteration in the arrange- 
ment of the apiary, his close resemblance to his 
