BEES AND WASPS — GENERAL INTELLIGENCE. 187 
where they are, come out of the hole again without 
depositing their loads, fly off, look most carefully round 
the stand to assure themselves that they have made no 
mistake, and go in once more when convinced that they 
are at the right place. The same thing is repeated over 
and over again, until the bees at last bow to the incom- 
prehensible and unavoidable, lay down their loads, and 
set to work at those tasks made necessary by the new 
circumstances of the hive. But as all the newly arriving 
bees behave in similar fashion, the disturbance lasts till 
late in the evening, and the uncertainty and anxiety of 
the bees is so great that the bee-master cannot contem- 
plate it without deep sympathy.’ Under such circum- 
stances the bees take quickly to a substituted queen ; 4 for 
the feeling of the first comers that they have no right to 
the new dwelling, having, as they suppose, made some 
inexplicable mistake which they cannot remedy, prevents 
them from feeling any hostility to the new queen which 
they find ; they probably consider themselves as merely on 
suff ■ ance, and feel that they should be grateful that no 
action is taken against them for their illegal entry, as 
generally happens in bee-experience. ? Hence the writer 
adopts this device when he desires to exchange or substi- 
tute queens. 
Biichner, after alluding to this case, supplements it. 
with the following : — 
The wind threw down from the stand of a bee-master — a 
friend of the author’s, whose name will soon become known — 
a straw beehive, the inmates of which were surprised in full 
work, and no small disorder in the interior was the result. The 
owner repaired the hive, put the loose comb back in its place, 
and replaced it in such a manner that the wind could not again 
catch it, hoping that the accident would have no further results. 
But when he examined the hive a few days later, he found that 
the bees had left their old home in the lurch, and had tried to 
enter other hives, clearly because they could no longer trust the 
weather, and feared that the terrible accident might again be- 
fall them. 
Dr. Erasmus Darwin, in his 6 Zoonomia,’ assert s that 
bees, when transported to Barbadoes, where there is no 
