HYMENOPTERA. 
37 
Similarly, no doubt, the colours of flowers have a greater or smaller degree of 
attraction for these insects. Indeed, it is beyond question that the fertilisation of 
flowers by the visitation of bees has tended to the development of the special 
colours patronised by the insects, while blossoms which were of less favourite hues 
have gradually disappeared. Black, white, and green flowers are not so common as 
yellow, orange, blue, or red; and black is less prevalent than either of the others. 
Although experiments to prove or disprove the sensibility of bees to sound have so 
far been negative, yet from the fact that they are exceedingly sensitive to a certain 
peculiar cry occasionally emitted by the queen, which acts like an electric shock, it 
would appear that hearing is likewise well developed. That bees and wasps are 
able to find their way, and to fly off apparently without hesitation straight for 
home, needs no proof. But this power does not necessarily indicate some mysterious 
sense of direction, enabling them to perceive their bearings by occult means. 
Bather may it be looked upon as due to the ordinary observance of conspicuous 
landmarks, such as are utilised for guidance even by man himself. Bees, for 
instance, have been taught the way to a store of honey by the repetition of single 
experiences, proving that they pass from the unaccustomed to the well-known, 
little by little. Naturally, the direction of a point to which whithersoever they 
may wander out, they must invariably return many times a day, soon passes from 
the sphere of calculation and enters the region of simple intuition; so rapid and 
unconscious are the various acts of perception involved. That these insects do 
thus take note of landmarks has been shown by Bates, who describes how a sand- 
wasp carefully marked the spot where half of a larva had been left by circling 
round and alighting in the vicinity. And even then, when it returned, though it 
flew many times straight to a certain conspicuous leaf close above the booty, 
doubtless a landmark yet it could not for a long while—and after repeated pounces 
in the wrong direction, and more it seemed by good luck at last—succeed in finding 
it. No one who has heard the cry of an angry wasp, and experienced the pain 
which has followed, will doubt that anger and malice have their places in the 
wasp’s nature. Often do these insects seem to make straight for an innocent 
bystander, and sting from pure spitefulness. Sympathy for the ailing and 
wounded, as amongst the ants, so amongst the bees, seems to be more noticeable 
than it is towards those actually in distress,—though uninjured. It has been 
doubted, indeed, whether bees show any affection for one another; the caressing 
antennae, as well as the personal attentions to each other so noticeable in the case of 
ants, are certainly lacking. As in ants, however, the antennae seem to be the chief 
organs of communication. 
As regards habits, there are two chief operations in which bees and wasps 
engage, namely, the procuring of food and the rearing of a progeny. This food is 
of two kinds,—honey gathered from the nectaries of flowers, and bee-bread, or 
flower-pollen moistened with honey, kneaded by the workers, and stored away, for 
feeding the larvae. The workers, or honey-gatherers, do not bring in more than 
one sort of pollen at the same time; and when the nurses, or domestic bees, receive 
the pollen from the honey-gatherers they keep it carefully separate. The sort of 
pollen is more nutritious than another, and a female larva fed on the more nutri¬ 
tious bee-bread will become a queen or fertile female, and one hive cannot afford 
