. A book about bees. Their history, habits, and instincts; together with the first principles of modern bee-keeping for young readers. tion of the works of nature, that, as re-lated by Bevan in his work on the Honey-bee :— Upon examining the edge of a very keen razor by the mi-croscope it appears as broad as the back of a pretty thick knife,rough, uneven, and full of notches and furrows. And an ex-ceedingly small needle being also examined, the point thereofappeared above a quarter of an inch in breadth, not round norflat, but irregular and unequal, and the surface, though ex-tremely smooth an
. A book about bees. Their history, habits, and instincts; together with the first principles of modern bee-keeping for young readers. tion of the works of nature, that, as re-lated by Bevan in his work on the Honey-bee :— Upon examining the edge of a very keen razor by the mi-croscope it appears as broad as the back of a pretty thick knife,rough, uneven, and full of notches and furrows. And an ex-ceedingly small needle being also examined, the point thereofappeared above a quarter of an inch in breadth, not round norflat, but irregular and unequal, and the surface, though ex-tremely smooth and bright to the naked eye, seemed full ofruggedness, holes, and scratches ; in short, it resembled aniron bar out of a smiths forge. But the sting of a bee, viewedthrough the same instrument, showed everywhere a polish amaz-ingly beautiful, without the least flaw, blemish, or inequality,and ended in a point too fine to be discovered, yet this is onlythe case or sheath of an instrument still more exquisite. And now, passing by many wonderful thingsin the structure of the bee, such as the system by 84 STRUCTURE ADAPTED TO Head and Antennoe. which it breathes, and the formation of the eye, andthe internal organs, I will only say something of theantennae. All the uses of these most important organs weprobably do not know, but, amongst other uses, theyare certainly means by whichthe bees communicate onewith another, and for this pur-pose are most exquisitely anddelicately formed. When beesmeet and, as their custom is,cross their antennae, they un-doubtedly speak to one an-other, whatever their is also evidently by the touch of the antennaethat they distinguish friends from enemies, and alsoby their use that they appear able to move, andwork in the darkness of the hive just as easily as ifthey could see everything plainly. A queen-bee that had lost its antennae was ob-served by Huber to be itself as one that was lost inthe hive—not to know its way about its
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1880, booksubjectbees, bookyear1886
