General Intelligence.
Beginning with Sir John Lubbock's observations on this head, I shall first quote his statements with regard to way-finding:—
I have found, he says, that some bees are much more intelligent in this respect than others. A bee which I had fed several times, and which had flown about in the room, found its way out of the glass in a quarter of an hour, and when put in a second time came out at once. Another bee, when I closed the postern door, used to come round to the honey through an open window.
Bees seem to me much less clever in finding things than I had expected. One day (April 14, 1872), when a number of them were very busy on some barberries, I put a saucer with some honey between two bunches of flowers; these were repeatedly visited, and were so close that there was hardly room for the saucer between them, yet from 9.30 to 3.30 not a single bee took any notice of the honey. At 3.30 I put some honey on one of the bunches of flowers, and it was eagerly sucked by the bees; two kept continually returning till past five in the evening.
One day when I came home in the afternoon I found that at least a hundred bees had got into my room through the postern and were on the window, yet not one was attracted by an open jar of honey which stood in a shady corner about 3 feet 6 inches from the window.
One day (29th April, 1872) I placed a saucer of honey close to some forget-me-nots, on which bees were numerous and busy; yet from 10 A.M. till 6 only one bee went to the honey.
I put some honey in a hollow in the garden wall opposite the hives at 10.30 (this wall is about five feet high and four feet from the hives); yet the bees did not find it during the whole day.
On the 30th March, 1873, a fine sunshiny day, when the bees were very active, I placed a glass containing honey at 9 in the morning on the wall in front of the hives; but not a single bee went to the honey the whole day. On April 20 I tried the same experiment, with the same result.
September 19.—At 9.30 I placed some honey in a glass about four feet from and just in front of the hive; but during the whole day not a bee observed it.
As it then occurred to me that it might be suggested that there was something about this honey which rendered it unattractive to the bees, on a following day I placed it again on the top of the wall for three hours, during which not a single bee came, and then moved it close to the alighting-board of the hive. It remained unnoticed for a quarter of an hour, when two bees observed it; and others soon followed in considerable numbers. . . . . On the whole, wasps seem to me more clever in finding their way than bees. I tried wasps with the glass mentioned on p. 124 [i.e. the bell-jar], but they had no difficulty in finding their way out.