According to De Fravière, bees have a number of different notes or tones which they emit from the stigmata of the thorax and abdomen, and by which they communicate information. He says:—
As soon as a bee arrives with important news, it is at once surrounded, emits two or three shrill notes, and taps a comrade with its long, flexible, and very slender feelers, or antennæ. The friend passes on the news in similar fashion, and the intelligence soon traverses the whole hive. If it is of an agreeable kind—if, for instance, it concerns the discovery of a store of sugar or of honey, or of a flowering meadow—all remains orderly. But, on the other hand, great excitement arises if the news presages some threatened danger, or if strange animals are threatening invasion of the hive. It seems that such intelligence is conveyed first to the queen, as the most important person in the state.
This account, which is quoted from Büchner, no doubt bears indications of imaginative colouring; but if the observation as to the emission of sounds is correct—and, as we shall see, this point is well confirmed by other observers—it is most likely concerned in communicating by tone a general idea of good or harm: probably in the former case it acts as a sign, 'follow me;' and in the latter as a signal of danger. Büchner further says that, according to Landois, if a saucer of honey is placed before a hive, a few bees come out, which emit a cry of tut, tut, tut. This note is rather shrill, and resembles the cry of 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 possessed 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 antennæ and lightly 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 antennæ by a striking experiment. He divided a hive into two quite separate 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 feelers. In this case all remained quiet, and no attempt was made to build royal cells: the queen could also be clearly seen crossing her antennæ with the workers on the other side of the trellis.
Apparently the feelers are also connected with the exceedingly 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 water 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.[53]
Lastly, under the present heading I shall quote one other observation, for which I am also indebted to Büchner's very admirable collection of facts relating to the psychology of Hymenoptera:—
Herr L. Brofft relates, in 'der Zoologische Garten' (XVIII. Year, No. 1, p. 67), that a poor and a rich hive stood next each other on his father's bee stand, and the latter suddenly lost its queen. Before the owner had come to a decision thereupon the bees of the two hives came to a mutual understanding as to the condition of their two states. The dwellers in the queenless hive, with their stores of provisions, went over into the less populous or poorer hive, after they had assured themselves, by many influential deputations, as to the state of the interior of the poor hive, and, as appeared, especially as to the presence of an egg-laying queen!