NATURE NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20229, 13 April 1929, Page 1 (Supplement)

NATURE NOTES.

BEES AND THEIR WAYS.

BI J. DRCJIMOND, F.L.S., F.Z.S.

A correspondent, " A.H.," at St. Clair, Dunedin, asks if the humble bee, as well as the honey-bee, stings. An apiarist with a wide experience states that the humble bee stings, and stings badly, but only in defence of its life, while the honey-bee stings on the slightest provocation, sometimes without any provocation whatever. The honey-bee will go forth to attack an intruder; the humble bee waits until it is handled. All bees in New Zealand, including the natives, sting, or, at least, have stings. There are some 250 stingless bees, but they belong to only warm countries. Four-fifths of the species are in the tropical parts of America. The others are in India, the Malay Archipelago, parts of Australia and parts of Africa. It is hardly correct to call even thes» stingless bees, as all have vestigial stings. Their stings are useless for defence. Many species in South America are so harmless that they are called by residents little angels. Some of them* are far from being angelic. If they are disturbed, they swarm at the intruder and bury themselves in his hair and his eyebrows. Others fly into a person's eyes, ears and nostrils; others crawl over the face and hands, feeding on the perspiration, or they bite unpleasantly. A few species spread caustic secretion over the skin, burning it off in patches. A colony of stuigless bees may contain no fewer "than 80,000 individuals. The workers not only collect nectar and pollen, but also gather many kinds of resin, gum and sticky substances exuded by plants. They like to visit offal. One species is believed to eat meat. Stingless bees, although social, have retained unaltered the ancient plan of rearing their young in closed cells, followed by all solitary bees, or they have reverted to it after using a plan like the hutnble bees or th'e honeybees. Dr. W. M. Wheeler, an eminent American student of bees, believes that stingless bees have never passed through the stage of mutual exchange of food between adults and their grubs. The food and the egg are simply sealed up in a cell: and contact between adults and grubs is impossible. A bee's sting is merely a development of the ovipositor, the instrument used in the laying of eggs. As described by Professoi J. A. Thomson, Aberdeen, the sting consists of two pointed and barbed needles, which play up and down a director, constructed in the form of a gouge. This has a bead for each needle to run upon a groove on the ueedle fitting on to the head. The needle is worked up or down by muscles attached to its upper end. Near the top of the needle there is a kind of piston, which plays inside the cavity of the director. Poison-glands open into the cavity. The poison, forced down into the cavity by the piston, is injected when the needles are thrust into a person's skin. The poison-glands are two slender, coiled tubes. They unite and open into a large poison-bag. When a bee stings the skin first is pierced. The wound then is deepened by the barbed and pointed needles, while the poison is steadily pumped down the channel and is poured through minute openings at the bases of the needles. The poison is formic acid, with, Professor Thomson believes, something more»deadly. In any case, the sting is a very perfect piece of mechanism, and the poison is conveyed by a highly complex set of, modifications of all its parts. The common honey-bee. Apis mellifera, is almost a cosmopolitan. A German entomologist has put forth a theory based on the honey-bee's fossils in fairly recent rock, that it originated in Germany. This seems to Dr. Wheeler so startling that he presumes that the German student, like other Germans, is the victim of a desire to make the Fatherland the source of all good things. Dr. Wheeler's investigations, show that, the honey-bee's ancestors migrated from Asia to .Europe. The honey-bee's distribution to the uttermost parts of the earth is accepted as evidence of its amazing adaptabity to the most diverse flowers and to a "great range of temperature, to its habits of storing large quantities of honey, and to its ability to maintain a somewhat high temperature in its hives during cold weather. Except in the development of her ovaries, the queen honey-bee, quoting Dr. Wheeler again, is a degenerate female, " a mere egg-laying machine, entirely dependent on her worker progeny." The pollen-collecting device on her hind legs, characteristic of queen humble bees, is undeveloped; her sting and her tongue are shortened, her brain is small; she is devoid of the honey-bee worker's saiivarv glands. As a grub, she is fed on only royal jelly, a highly nutritious secretion from the glands of the worker nurses. She develops much more rapidly than the honey-bee worker and drone, who, after a few days, are given honey and pollen. The main object of the rich and abundant food given to the grub of the honey-bee queen is believed to be the rapid development of her ovaries, in order that she may begin to lay eggs soon after her emergence into the perfect stage. The number of eggs that may bo laid by a vigorous fecundated honey-bee queen during her lifetime is estimated at about 1,500,000. Most species of bees are regarded by entomologists <:s merely a group of wasps, which have become strictly vegetarian, feeding almost exclusively on the pollen and nectai- ot flowers. Some German entomologists call them flower-wasps. There is evidence that they have descended directly from at least two different ancestral groups of solitary wasps. All the. bee's organs and habits bear the impress of their long and intimate association with flowers, and botanists believe that many flowers, responding to the bee's efforts, have been modified in structure, arrangement, colour and perfume, in oi dor to secure Tho bee's help in crosspollination. Jies do not gather honey, they gather nectar and manufacture honey the nectar, while it is being transported to the nest, is stored in a large bag, part of the alimentary tract, whose walls are furnished with muscles. Using these, a bee. regurgitates the nectar in the form or ITonev. In the bag, the nectar is mixed with a small quantity of ferment, and undergoes a chemical change. A plant found in a sheltered place on a high road-bank, about 1500 ft. above sealevel, in the Motu Valley, Poverty Bay, ov Miss Winifred Jordan, is Dianella. Itiis is its botanical name. It has no popular name, apparently, but it may be known by its Maori name, turutu. As Miss Jordan states, its bright bluishpurple berries, hanging from long slender ! stem, are conspicous, and are its greatest beauty. It is found mostly in open fern lands and in the woods By its botanical title it has bc«u dedicated to Diana, goddess of the woods. Literally, it is little Diana. Its full title is Dianella intermedia, the second word distinguishing it from other Dianellas. Plentiful in New Zealand from the Three Kings Islands and North Cape to Foveaux Strait it takes in Norfolk Island and Polynesia as its abode. Most of its relatives are Australians, but some of them favour the Mascarene Islands and tropical parts of Asia. It seems to put all its artistic efforts into producing its very beautiful blue berries; its flowers I arc small, greenish or purplish-white, and I inconspicuous.