July 1956 School Magazine

Br.isbane Girls' Grammar School Magazine

July, 1956

Brisbane Girls' Grammar School Magazine

July. 1956

She picks out various landmarks by which she is able to find her way home. If however her first flight was across water she would be lost. As she becomes an established forager she develops a sense of the distance travelled and a sense of the direction relative to the sun, travelled on her outward journey in search of food. I have actually proved this myself by carrying out a simple experiment with a few bees from a colony whose hive is situated in an open field. I managed to entice the bees to a dish containing a syrup of sugar and water. The dish was placed on the ground a hundred yards due north of the hive. The bees, after sucking up as much as they could carry of the syrup, flew in a straight line back to the hive. They soon returned in greater numbers to the dish which I picked up without disturbing the bees and placed on the ground about t~enty yards due east of its original position. The bees on satisfying themselves of the syrup, flew a hundred yards due south before realizing they were lost. Even if the dish were placed on top of the hive, the bees would still fly a hundred yards due south. A very interesting feature of bee behaviour is the way in which one bee, having found a source of food, communicates her findings to the bees. The language of bees is the language of dances. So far I have not been able to watch a bee execute her dance as it is performed en the vertical combs in the darkness of the hive. An observation hive with glass. windows would be necessary to watch the dance. The dances are of two types. The first type is a "round dance" in which the dancing bee traces out a circle. This dance is performed only if the source of food is located at a distance of less than a hundred yards from the hive. If the distance is greater than a hundred yards a "wag tail" dance is executed. In this case the dancing bee traces out a figure of 8, the two loops of the 8 being separated from each other by a straight run of varying length. During the dance the bee wags her abdomen rigorously. By means of the "wag tail" dance the bee is able to show the direction in which the food source· lies. Direction is indicated by the angle to the perpendicular at which she makes the straight run of the figure 8. Thus the per- formance of the worker bee is that of elementary map marking and map reading. It is remarkable that the heading toward the sun is the direction of flight selected to correspond with an upward move- ment during the straight component of the wagging dance. We may be sure that this meaningful relationship has developed 15

KENDALL BROADBENT NATURAL HISTORY ESSAY, 1955 THE HONEY BEE. In view of writing this essay I visited a bee hive in order io make observations for myself, and to carryout certain simple experiments about which I had redd and the results of which I shall explain my essay. When a hive is examined in the spring there will be found three kinds of bees-the queen, drone .and the worker. The honey bee, living in its beehive, is a social insect, each insect playing his own particular role in the economy of the hive. All of the members of the colony are equally servants of the "spirit of the hive". There is only one fully developed female or queen and her sole duty within the society is to produce eggs irom which new members develop. The workers are sterile females and they benefit the society by doing all the work in ihe hive . They feed the community, build the honey-comb, tend the young and clean and ventilate the hive. Their mouth parts are modified for collecting nectar and moulding wax, and their limbs for collecting pollen. The mature males or drones are necessary for the continuation of the race and are large, plump and a little stupid and lazy. It is the queen who determines whether the egg, as she lays it will be fertilized or not. The unfertilized eggs produce drones; the fertilized ones queens or workers. Whether the larvae which emerges from the fertilized egg will develop into a queen or worker is determined by the food with which it is supplied by the attendant workers. All larvae on hatching are ied for the first few days on the so called "royal jelly" - a secretion produced by the worker. After this period the larvae which are to be drones or workers are fed on a mixture of honey and pre-digested pollen, but the future queens are fed continu- ously on the "royal jelly". The division of labour in a bee colony is based on the de- velopment and age of the bee. The average length of life of a worker is five to six weeks, during which half her time is spent in the hive and half in the field. It is not until the worker is three weeks old that the first orientation flight is made. By this time the bee knows the position of objects relative to the hive. The worker is then a field bee and spends the rest of her 1ifs foraging in the field. I have so far given a brief outline of the social life of the hive. The rest of the eswy I shall devote to bee behaviour, colour sense and smell. If a bee about three weeks old is released a short distance away from her hive, she finds her way home largely by sight. 14