I have already mentioned with reference to the attachment which bees have been said to show for one another, that though I have repeatedly seen them lick a bee which had smeared herself in honey, I never observed them show the slightest attention to any of their comrades who had been drowned in water. Far, indeed, from having been able to discover any evidence of affection among them, they appear to be thoroughly callous and utterly indifferent to one another. As already mentioned, it was necessary for me occasionally to kill a bee; but I never found that the others took the slightest notice. Thus on the 11th of October I crushed a bee close to one which was feeding—in fact, so close that their wings touched; yet the survivor took no notice whatever of the death of her sister, but went on feeding with every appearance of composure and enjoyment, just as if nothing had happened. When the pressure was removed, she remained by the side of the corpse without the slightest appearance of apprehension, sorrow, or recognition. It was, of course, impossible for her to understand my reason for killing her companion; yet neither did she feel the slightest emotion at her sister's death, nor did she show any alarm lest the same fate should befall her also. In a second case exactly the same occurred. Again, I have several times, while a bee has been feeding, held a second bee by the leg close to her; the prisoner, of course, struggled to escape, and buzzed as loudly as she could; yet the selfish eater took no notice whatever. So far, therefore, from being at all affectionate, I doubt whether bees are in the least fond of one another.
Réaumur, however ('Insects,' vol. v., p. 265), narrates a case in which a hive-bee was partly drowned and so rendered insensible; the others in the hive carefully licked and otherwise tended her till she recovered. This seems to show that bees, like ants, are more apt to have their sympathies aroused by the sight of ailing or injured companions than by that of healthy companions in distress; but Sir John Lubbock's observations above quoted go to prove that even in this case display of sympathy is certainly not the rule.
Powers of Communication.
Huber says that when one wasp finds a store of honey 'it returns to its nest, and brings off in a short time a hundred other wasps;' and this statement is confirmed by Dujardin, who witnessed a somewhat similar performance in the case of bees—the individual which first found a concealed store informing other individuals of the fact, and so on till numberless individuals had found it.
Although the systematic experiments of Sir John Lubbock have not tended to confirm these observations with regard to bees and wasps, we must not too readily allow his negative results to discredit these positive observations—more especially as we have seen that his later experiments have fully confirmed the opinion of these previous authors with respect to ants. His experiments on bees and wasps consisted in exposing honey in a hidden situation, marking a bee or wasp that came to it, and observing whether it afterwards brought any companions to share the booty. He found that although the same insect would return over and over again, strangers came so rarely that their visits could only be attributed to accidental and independent discovery. Only if the honey were in an exposed situation, where the insects could see one another feeding, would one follow the other to the food.
But we have the more reason not to accept unreservedly the conclusion to which these experiments in themselves might lead, because the very able observer F. Müller states an observation of his own which must be considered as alone sufficient to prove that bees are able to communicate information to one another:—
Once (he says[51]) I assisted at a curious contest, which took place between the queen and the other bees in one of my hives, which throws some light on the intellectual faculties of these animals. A set of forty-seven cells have been filled, eight on a newly completed comb, thirty-five on the following, and four around the first cell of a new comb. When the queen had laid eggs in all the cells of the two older combs she went several times round their circumference (as she always does, in order to ascertain whether she has not forgotten any cell), and then prepared to retreat into the lower part of the breeding-room. But as she had overlooked the four cells of the new comb, the workers ran impatiently from this part to the queen, pushing her, in an odd manner, with their heads, as they did also other workers they met with. In consequence the queen began again to go around on the two older combs; but as she did not find any cell wanting an egg she tried to descend, but everywhere she was pushed back by the workers. This contest lasted for a rather long while, till the queen escaped without having completed her work. Thus the workers knew how to advise the queen that something was as yet to be done, but they knew not how to show her where it had to be done.
Again, Mr. Josiah Emery, writing to 'Nature,'[52] with reference to Sir John Lubbock's experiments, says that the faculty of communication which bees possess is so well and generally known to the 'bee-hunters' of America, that the recognised method of finding a bees' nest is to act upon the faculty in question:—
Going to a field or wood at a distance from tame bees, with their box of honey they gather up from the flowers and imprison one or more bees, and after they have become sufficiently gorged, let them out to return to their home with their easily gotten load. Waiting patiently a longer or shorter time, according to the distance of the bee-tree, the hunter scarcely ever fails to see the bee or bees return accompanied with other bees, which are in like manner imprisoned till they in turn are filled, when one or more are let out at places distant from each other, and the direction in each case in which the bee flies noted, and thus, by a kind of triangulation, the position of the bee-tree proximately ascertained.
Those who have stored honey in their houses understand very well how important it is to prevent a single bee from discovering its location. Such discovery is sure to be followed by a general onslaught from the hive unless all means of access is prevented. It is possible that our American are more intelligent than European bees, but hardly probable; and I certainly shall not ask an Englishman to admit it. Those in America who are in the habit of playing first, second, and third fiddle to instinct will probably attribute this seeming intelligence to that principle.