Page:Jardine Naturalist's library Bees.djvu/60

 honey-harvest. Very striking proofs of the acuteness of this sense may be observed within the limits of the apiary. Early in spring, when the bee-master begins feeding his colony, he has reason to marvel at the instantaneous notice which this organ gives them of his approach. Arriving amongst his hives, though from the chillness of a spring morning, not a bee is seen stirring out of doors, he has not time to fill the feeding-troughs from the vessel in his hand, before he is surrounded by hundreds; and in the space of five minutes or less, the float-board of every trough is covered with a dense mass of eager feeders. In feeding a newly-lodged swarm during unfavourable weather in summer, it is curious to observe through the glass, in pushing in the sliding-trough which runs flush with the floor, the motionless hemispherical mass at the ceiling of the hive, becoming instantaneously elongated, and changed into the form of an inverted living pyramid, having its apex resting on the float-board, while a score or two of stragglers, who have in the confusion been separated or have fallen from the mass above, hasten along the floor, snuffing the grateful fragrance, ranging themselves in a line on the edge of the trough, and eagerly plunging their probosces into the liquid. It is to their exquisite sense of smell also, in all likelihood, that we must attribute their capability, of distinguishing friend from foe among their own species. If a stranger-bee by mistake enter a hive, and this sometimes happens in consequence of some slight alteration in the arrangement of the apiary, his close resemblance to his