The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-11-13 00:00:00

ANTS AND BEES.

Sir John Lubbock has favoured The Time with the
following abstract of a paper, entitled "Observations on
Bees and Wiums," read by him at a meeting of the Linnean
Society on Thursday evening in last week :
"This is a continuation of my previous papers on
the same subject. In them I recorded various experi-
ments tending to show that, in many cases, ants and
bees which have found a store of food or of larvm
certainly do not communicate the information to
their friends. This unexpected observation was re-
ceived with so much surprise, and, indeed, was so un-
expected to myself, that I determined to repeat the
experiments, which I have now done, with, however,
the same result. To take one as an illustration. I
placed an F. flava (the small red ant) to a heap of
larvm, which, as is well known are fleshy, legless
grubs, incapable of motion. I placed them about two
feet from the entrance to her nest I then watched
her from eleven in the morning till after seven in the
evening, during which time she made 86 journeys from
the nest to the heap of larvm, carrying one off each
time; but although she had so much work to do, and
though the precious larvre were lying for so long ex-
posed to so many dangers And to the weather, she
brought-no other ant to assist her in carrying them off.
One of the ante, I observed, in this way carried off,
one by one, no less than IBT larvm in a day. In other
instances, on the contrary, the opposite result occurred.
I was for some time uncertain, in the latter cases,
whether the ants purposely brought friends to their
assistance, or whether, as the ante are sociable insects,
it merely happened that the one accompanied the
other, as it were, by accident. To teat this question,7
I took two ants, aud placed them under similar cis.?
cumstances, the one to a heap of larvm, the other to 's
group of two or three; always, however putting one
in place of any that was carried off, and it was quite
clear that the ants which were placed to the large
group of larvm brought far more friends to their assist-
ance than those which had apparently only two or
three larvm to move. Of 30 ants which were observed,
those placed to a large number of larvre brought 250
friends, while those placed to two or three larvm, under
similar circumstances, only brought 80.
"One account much relied on as showing the intelli-
gence of ants, has been the following observation made
by Mr. Lund, in Brazil.
'Passing one day under a tree which stood almost
by itself, be was surprised to hear the leaves falling
like rain. On examining the cause of this, he found
that a number of ants had climbed the tree, and were
cutting off the leaves, which were then carried away
by companions waiting for them below. Of course it
insight be said that the leaves which dropped fell by
accident- in which case they would naturally be car-
zied off by the ants below. It occurred to me, how-
ever, that this was an observation which might easily
be repeated. I placed, therefore a number of larvm
on a slip of glass which I suspended by a tape, so that
it, Lung uno-Gliird Of an inch from the surface of one of
my artificial nests; isolating it, however, in lola' a
it for an ant to walk to the nest she would
to go 13 feet round. I then placed some'
ants (F. nigra) on the glass with the larvm.
jh of them took a larva in the usual way, and
then endeavoured to go by the quickest way home.
They leaned over the glass, and made every effort
to reach down, but of course in vain, though the
distance was so small that they could all but touch the
nest with their antennm, and even, in one or two cases,
succeeded in getting down by stepping on to the back
of an ant below. Those, however, which did not meet
with any assistance, gradually, though at first requir-
ing some help from me, found their way round to the
nest, and after a short time there was quite a string of
ants passing to and fro from the nest to the larvm,
although it would have been so easy for them to throw'
the larvm over the edge of the glass, or to go straight
home, if they would have faced a drop of, say, one-
tenth of an inch. Moreover, I placed some of,,
mould
within half an inch of the glass, so that it would have
been eau for the ants, by literally one minute's labour,
to have constructed for themselves a stepping stone up
to the glass yet they did not adopt any of these ex-
pedients, but for hours together, and by hundreds, con-
tinued to make the long journey round. I confess this
experiment, which I repeated on several occasionsS)
surprised me very much. •
" As my previous experiments which showed that
bees did not by any means in all cases bring their
friends to share stores of food which they had dis-
covered, have been much questioned by bee keepers, I
have repeated them again.
"No doubt if honey is put in an exposed place, so
that it is found by one bee, it is most natural that
others should also find their way to it; but this does not,
acoording to my experience, happen if the honey is
concealed. For instance, I put a bee to some honey in
a flower pot placed on its side, and so arranged that
the bee bad only a small orifice through which to
enter. Under these circumstances from a quarter to
seven in the morning till a quarter past seven in the
evening, she made 59 journeys, and during the whole
of this time only one other bee found her way to the-
honey.
"I found that bees soon accustomed themselves to
look for honey on papers of particular colours. For
instance, on September 13, I placed a bee to some
honey on a slip of glass on green paper, and after she
had made 12 journeys to and from the hive, I put red
paper where the green had been, and placed another
drop of honey on a green paper, at a distance of about
a foot. The bee returned, however, to the honey on
the green paper. I then gently moved the green paper,
with the bee on it back to the old place. When the
bee had gone, I replaced the green paper by a yellow
one, and put the green again a foot off. After the
usual interval, she returned again to the green. I re-
peated the same proceeding, but with orange paper
instead of green. She returned again to the green. I
now did the !same with white paper; she returned
again to the green. Again I tried her with blue; she
again came to the green. I then reversed the positions
the blue and green papers, but still she returned to the
green. I repeated this experiment with other bees,
and with the same result, though it seemed to me that
in some cases they did not distinguish so clearly
between green and blue, as between green and other
colours. In other respects they seemed to adhere
equally closely to any colour to which they were made
accustomed.

I manner tha,
' obliged

As regards wasps, my experiments fully confirmed
those previously made, and justified everything which
I have said with reference to their great industry.
Indeed, they pegin to work earlier in the morning and
cease later in the evening than bees, continuing all day
with the utmost assiduity. Thus, a wasp whichl
watched on the 10th of September, worked from seven
in the morning until seven in the evening without a
moment's intermission, during which time she made
no less than 94 visits to the honey. As is the case
with bees, if a wasp is put to exposed honey, others
soon come. To determine this, if possible, I trained
a wasp to come to some honey which I placed in a box
communicating with the outside of an indiarubber
tube six inches in length, and one-third by an inch in
diameter. She came to this honey continuously for
three days' during which time no other wasp found the
honey. As regards colour, I satisfied myself, by ex-
periments like those made with bees, that they are
capable of seeing colour, though they appear to be less
influenced by it than are bees.