. British bee journal & bee-keepers adviser. Bees. 152 THE BRITISH BEE JOURNAL. [April Us, 1901. queen from one of my nuclei into a wire- cloth cage with twelve workers. " I went to the cage and shook it. All the workers hummed and protruded mem- brane. A very sweet odour was noticeable, coupled with " seaweed odour''—sweet odour more noticeable. " When quiet I fed the bees with a drop or two of syrup, and opened cage. Four or five bees were standing round queen with membranes exposed, wings standing out ; some vibrating feebly almost Without sound. Some bees got
. British bee journal & bee-keepers adviser. Bees. 152 THE BRITISH BEE JOURNAL. [April Us, 1901. queen from one of my nuclei into a wire- cloth cage with twelve workers. " I went to the cage and shook it. All the workers hummed and protruded mem- brane. A very sweet odour was noticeable, coupled with " seaweed odour''—sweet odour more noticeable. " When quiet I fed the bees with a drop or two of syrup, and opened cage. Four or five bees were standing round queen with membranes exposed, wings standing out ; some vibrating feebly almost Without sound. Some bees got out. " One bee dropped on to the floor, and ran about as if searching for something. I held cage, with queen and workers in it, near her. She did not notice the cage for a long time. The bees in the cage hummed occasion- ally. This did not perceptibly attract her more. After five minutes' searching, when the bees were quite silent, she discovered her proximity to them. She was then fully l£ in. off. She exposed her membrane, elevated her abdomen, and hummed. Other bees did not follow suit. She continued humming for about ten minutes, gradually working nearer till she reached cage, then she ran over it and tried to get ; The membrane in question appears to have been first noticed so long ago as the year 1883, when Nassonoff, a naturalist of Moscow, described the organ, and an account of his description was sent by Zoubareff to the Swiss Bulletin d? Apiculture (translated by Mr. Frank Benton in the British Bee Journal of Dec. 15, 1883). The organ is described as a canal. " At the bottom of this canal a large num- ber of small glands open, each one of which has an oval cell with a well- defined globule. From each cell a fine duct starts out and extends to the bottom oi the canal.'' Nas- sonoff further says that the walls of the ducts are of a chitinous tex- ture. He assigns a secretory function to the glands, sug- gesting that they produce the per- spi
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