HONEY DANCE OF THE BEE

Evening Star, Issue 19274, 12 June 1926, Page 19

HONEY DANCE OF THE BEE

‘The Drama of Animal Life’ was the subject of an address which Professor J. Arthur Thomson delivered to the members of the Trinity Literary Society in Glasgow several weeks ago. At the outset he referred to the state of the. world in its earliest days, and remarked that it had been said that if ono could make a film and divide it so that each of the biological ages had its proper length of time, allowing for every hour of unfolding a period of 50,000,000 years, and if they began to unfold the film at 0 o’clock in the morning, and slowly unfolded it through the day and evening, man would come on at ten minutes to midnight. Even then his period would only bo ten minutes in the whole stretch of the day. Continuing, ho said) that almost every drama swung on the pivots of broad-winning and love-making. Among tho stories of wild life which he told was what he described as the honey dance of the bee. When a working hive bee, he said, discovered treasure trove in a paten of purple clover she earned off as much of tho nectar as tho could to the hive. About half an hour la.tor other beos visited the clover, and tho old idea had been that tho discoverer guided the newcomers to it. But that was just what she did not do. When she got back to tho hive she had to stay there a considerable lime, but she executed a peculiar dance, and when tho reeling workers saw it they came forward and scented her, and with the clue of tho scent of the flower they sot off to find the treasure trovo.