BEES AND WASPS — POWERS OF COMMUNICATION. 159 
an attacked bee. Hereupon a large number of bees come 
out of the hive to collect the offered honey. 
Again, — 
The best way to observe the power of communication pos- 
sessed by bees by means of their interchange of touches, is to 
take away the queen from a hive. In a little time, about an 
hour afterwards, the sad event will be noticed by a small part 
of the community, and these will stop working and run hastily 
about over the comb. But this only concerns part of the hive, 
and the side of a single comb. The excited bees, however, soon 
leave the little circle in which they at first revolved, and when 
they meet their comrades they cross their antennae and light* y 
touch the others with them. The bees which have received some 
impression from this touch now become uneasy in their turn, 
and convey their uneasiness and distress in the same way to 
the other parts of the dwelling. The disorder increases rapidly, 
spreads to the other side of the comb, and at last to all the 
people. Then arises the general confusion before described. 
Huber tested this communication by the antennae by a 
striking experiment. He divided a hive into two quite sepa- 
rate parts by a partition wall, whereupon great excitement 
arose in the division in which there was no queen, and this 
was only quieted when some workers began to build royal cells. 
He then divided a hive in similar fashion by a trellis, through 
which the bees could pass their feejers. In this case all re- 
mained quiet, and no attempt was made to build royal cells : 
the queen could also be clearly seen crossing her antennae with 
the workers on the other side of the trellis. 
Apparently the feelers are also connected with the exceed- 
ingly fine scent of the bees, which enables them, wonderful as 
it may seem, to distinguish friend and foe, and to recognise 
the members of their own hive among the thousands and 
thousands of bees swarming around, and to drive back from the 
entrance stranger or robber bees. The bee-masters, therefore, 
when they want two separate colonies or the members of them 
to unite in one hive, sprinkle waiter over the bees, or stupefy 
them with some fumigating substance, so as to make them to a 
certain extent insensible to smell, in order to attain their 
object. It is always possible to unite colonies by making the 
bees smell of some strong-smelling stuff, such as musk. 1 
Lastly, under the present heading I shall quote one 
o her observation, for which I am also indebted to 
: Log . cit . 
12 
