[Footnote: Translated from an article entitled "Ueber eine doppelrolle
des stachels der honigbienen" in _Deutschamerikanische Apotheker
Zeitung_, 15 Jan., 1885, Jahrg. 5, p. 664; there reprinted from _Ind.
Blatter_.]
Very important and highly interesting discoveries have recently been
made in regard to a double role played by the sting of the honey bee.
These discoveries explain some hitherto inexplicable phenomena in the
domestic economy of the ants. It is already known that the honey of our
honey bees, when mixed with a tincture of litmus, shows a distinct red
color, or, in other words, has an acid reaction. It manifests this
peculiarity because of the volatile formic acid which it contains. This
admixed acid confers upon crude honey its preservative power. Honey
which is purified by treatment with water under heat, or the so-called
honey-sirup, spoils sooner, because the formic acid is volatilized. The
honey of vicious swarms of bees is characterized by a tart taste and a
pungent odor. This effect is produced by the formic acid, which is
present in excess in the honey. Hitherto it has been entirely unknown in
what way the substratum of this peculiarity of honey, the formic acid in
the honey, could enter into this vomit from the honey stomach of the
workers. Only the most recent investigations have furnished us an
explanation of this process. The sting of the bees is used not only for
defense, but quite principally serves the important purpose of
contributing to the stored honey an antizymotic and antiseptic
substance.
The observation has recently been made that the bees in the hive, even
when they are undisturbed, wipe off on the combs the minute drops of bee
poison (formic acid) which from time to time exude from the tip of their
sting. And this excellent preservative medium is thus sooner or later
contributed to the stored honey. The more excitable and the more ready
to sting the bees are, the greater will be the quantity of formic acid
which is added to the honey, and the admixture of which good honey
needs. The praise which is so commonly lavished upon the Ligurian race
of our honey bees, which is indisposed to sting--and such praise is
still expressed at the peripatetic gatherings of German bee-masters--is
therefore from a practical point of view a false praise. Now we
understand also why the stingless honey bees of South America collect
little honey. It is well known that never more than a very small store
of honey is found in felled trees inhabited by stingless _Melipona_.
What should induce the _Melipona_ to accumulate stores which they could
not preserve? They lack formic acid. Only three of the eighteen
different known species of honey bees of northern Brazil have a sting. A
peculiar phenomenon in the life of certain ants has always been
problematical, but now it finds also its least forced explanation. It is
well known that there are different grain-gathering species of ants. The
seeds of grasses and other plants are often preserved for years in their
little magazines, without germinating. A very small red ant, which drags
grains of wheat and oats into its dwellings, lives in India. These ants
are so small that eight or twelve of them have to drag on one grain with
the greatest exertion. They travel in two separate ranks over smooth or
rough ground, just as it comes, and even up and down steps, at the same
regular pace. They have often to travel with their booty more than a
thousand meters, to reach their communal storehouse. The renowned
investigator Moggridge repeatedly observed that when the ants were
prevented from reaching their magazines of grain, the seeds begun to
sprout. The same was the case in abandoned magazines of grain. Hence the
ants know how to prevent the sprouting of the grains, but the capacity
for sprouting is not destroyed. The renowned English investigator John
Lubbock, who communicates this and similar facts in his work entitled
"Ants, Bees, and Wasps," adds that it is not yet known in what way the
ants prevent the sprouting of the collected grains. But now it is
demonstrated that here also it is only the formic acid, whose
preservative influence goes so far that it can make seed incapable of
germination for a determinate time or continuously.
It may be mentioned that we have also among us a species of ant which
lives on seeds, and stores these up. This is our _Lasius niger_, which
carries seeds of _Viola_ into its nests, and, as Wittmack has
communicated recently to the Sitzungsberichte der gesellschaft
naturforschender freunde zu Berlin, does the same with the seeds of
_Veronica hederaefolia_.
Syke states in his account of an Indian ant, _Pheidole providens_, that
this species collects a great store of grass-seeds. But he observed that
the ants brought their store of grain into the open air to dry it after
the monsoon storms. From this it appears that the preservative effect of
the formic acid is destroyed by great moisture, and hence this drying
process. So that among the bees the honey which is stored for winter
use, and among the ants the stores of grain which serve for food, are
preserved by one and the same fluid, formic acid.