On October 29, 1873, I removed a hive of bees in my garden, after it was quite dark, for a distance of 12 yards from the place in which it had stood for several months; and between its original situation and the new one there was a bushy evergreen tree, so that all sight of its former place was obstructed to a person looking from the new situation of the hive.
Notwithstanding this change, the bees every day flew to the locality where they formerly lived, and continued flying around the site of what had been their home until, as night came on, they many of them sank upon the grass exhausted and chilled by the cold. Numbers, however, returned alive to their new position, after having looked in vain for their hive in its old place. At night I picked the exhausted bees up, and having restored warmth to them (by leaving them for a time on my coat-sleeve), I returned them to their companions.
Here was an illustration that the faculty of memory was superior to that of observation; but that was not all. Nearly every bee which I picked up during the 23 days through which this effort of memory lasted was an old one, as was easily deduced from observing the worn edges of the wings; showing that whilst the young insects were quick in receiving new impressions and in correcting errors, the nervous system of the old bees continued acting in the direction which early habit had effected. So true it is that 'one touch of nature makes the whole world kin.'
A closely similar observation has been told me by a friend, Mr. George Turner. He found that when he removed a beehive only a yard or two from its accustomed site, the bees, on returning home, flew in swarms around the latter, and for a long time were unable to find the hive. And several other similar cases might be adduced. Lastly, Thompson says:—
It is highly remarkable that they [bees] know their hive more from its locality than from its appearance, for if it be removed during their absence and a similar one be substituted, they enter the strange one. If the position of a hive be changed, the bees for the first day take no distant flight till they have thoroughly scrutinised every object in its neighbourhood.[47]
On the other hand, the writer of the article on 'Bees' in the 'Encyclopædia Britannica' says that in certain parts of France it is the habit of bee-keepers to place a number of hives upon a boat, which, in charge of a man, floats slowly down a river. The bees are thus continuously changing their pasture-ground, and yet do not lose their locomotive hives.
It may be here worth while to add, parenthetically, as the only authentic observation with which I am acquainted concerning the distance that bees are accustomed to forage, the following statement of Prof. Hugh Blackburn. Writing from Glasgow University to 'Nature,'[48] he says that bees are found in a certain peach-house every spring at the time of blossom, although, so far as he can ascertain, the beehives nearest to the peach-house in question are his own, and these are at a distance of ten miles.
On the whole, then, and in the absence of further experiments, we must conclude it to be probable that the sense of direction with which hymenopterous insects are, as shown by some of Sir John Lubbock's experiments, unquestionably endowed, is of no small use to them in finding their way from home to food and vice versâ; although it appears certain, from other of his experiments, that this sense of direction is not in all cases a sufficient guide, and therefore requires to be supplemented by the definite observation of landmarks.
But the most conclusive evidence on this latter point is afforded by a highly interesting observation of Mr. Bates on the sand-wasps at Santurem, which may here be suitably introduced, as the insects are not distantly allied. He describes these animals as always taking a few turns in the air round the hole they had made in the sand before leaving to seek for flies in the forest, apparently in order to mark well the position of the burrow, so that on their return they might find it without difficulty. This observation has been since confirmed in a striking manner by Mr. Belt, who found that the sand-wasp takes the most precise bearings of an object the position of which she desires to remember. This observation is so interesting that it deserves to be rendered in extenso:—