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Eyes, Antenne, and Brain: Blunt-faced-Bees

The bee's antennæ are as necessary as its eyes in the search for honey, and more necessary in other walks of life. "And he shall sing how, once upon a time, the great chest prisoned the living goat-herd, by his lord's infatuate and evil will, and how the Blunt-faced-Bees, as they came up from the meadow to the fragrant cedar chest, fed him with food of tender flowers, because the Muse still dropped sweet nectar on his lips."

Thus sang Lycidas concerning the shepherd Comatas, who in his zeal to serve the Muses sacrificed to them his master's goats, and was therefore put in a cedar chest and shut up, but, as the song relates, kept alive for the space of a year, and until his release, by the ministrations of the Blunt-faced-Bees.

Wise indeed have these insects been accounted from all time, and wonderful is the organization which enables them to accomplish their manifold and clever tasks.

Whether they fed Comatas in his cedar chest some may question; but this cannot be questioned, that if they did feed him, they found him there not by the sense of sight or by means of any organ such as we possess, but because they were endowed with the most mysterious and remarkable of organs, the antennæ or feelers. Between the eyes of the "Blunt-faced-Bees" reach out the feelers, and these several-jointed organs, as has been intimated, are matters of importance.

With them the bee hears. With them it smells, and by means of them it converses. Deprived of them, it becomes a stricken thing, helpless, deaf, dumb, and despairing.

Huber experimented by cutting off the antennæ.

The removal of one antenna produced no observable effect. Not so the removal of both, for then the bee became little more than an idiot or lunatic and, unable to perform the necessary duties of the hive, soon perished.

The queen-bee, when deprived of her antennæ entirely lost her maternal instinct, moved aimlessly about, avoided Eyes, Antennæ, and Brain the bees, dropped her eggs anywhere, and did not resent the presence of another queen. The workers did not seem to recognize her; and when finally she left the hive, they did not follow her, and she returned no more. Drones and workers behaved in a similar manner, stood idly near the door of the hive, apparently attracted by the light, and at length went away, doubtless soon to die.

Without its antennæ, the bee must soon starve, being unable to find the fragrant nectar that is its food, or even to take honey that is close at hand. Huber's queen-bees after losing their antennæ thrust their tongues all about the head of the worker that was trying to feed them without being able to find its open mouth.

Watch the captive bees when honey is given them. It is the feelers that investigate the delicacy proffered under such suspicious circumstances, and it is the feelers that, moving this way and that, direct the more distant bees to the feast. It is the feelers that first lightly investigate the blossom upon which the bee is placed, and direct it to the nectary, or cause it to flee quickly from some distasteful bloom. The feelers can be moved easily in any direction, as they are attached to the head by a convenient ball-and-socketlike arrangement. Their first joint is long and acts as an arm to turn in every direction the remainder of the organ, which is composed in the case of the worker bee of eleven short movable joints. So the outer portion of each antenna is flexible, and can be curved or moved within limits.

The eight lower joints are covered by extremely delicate sensory hairs that give to the antennæ their peculiar sensitiveness as organs of touch, even, it is believed, enabling them to serve the purpose of extra eyes in performing the labors of the dark hive.

There are other coarser hairs, more abundant near the extremities of the antennæ, which are supposed to be highly specialized feeling-organs.