Gilbert White shouts at bees

Sitting out on the towpath with some folk from Australia, who keep bees near Melbourne and took a keen interest in the size and variety of the bumble bees that were busy along the hedge, I recalled this episode from Gilbert White’s Natural History of Selborne; here, in Letter 38 to Daines Barrington, he considers echos and examines the effect of sound on bees, by shouting at them

“One should have imagined that echoes, it not entertaining, must at least have been harmless and inoffensive; yet Virgil advances a strange notion, that they are injurious to bees. After enumerating some probable and reasonable annoyances, such as prudent owners would wish far removed from their bee-gardens, he adds

... aut ubi concava pulsu

Saxa sonant, vocisque offensa resultat imago.

Or where the arching rocks reverberate when struck, and the sound, hurled back, rebounds in an echo

Georgics, IV, 49

"This wild and fanciful assertion will hardly be admitted by the philosophers of these days; especially as they all now seem agreed that insects are not furnished with any organs of hearing at all. But if it should be urged, that though they cannot hear yet perhaps they may feel the repercussion of sounds, I grant it is possible they may. Yet that these impressions are distasteful or hurtful, I deny, because bees, in good summers, thrive well in my outlet, where the echoes are very strong: for this village is another Anathoth, a place of responses or echoes. 

Besides, it does not appear from experiment that bees are in any way capable of being affected by sounds: for I have often tried my own with a large speaking-trumpet held close to their hives, and with such an exertion of voice as would have hailed a ship at the distance of a mile, and still these insects pursued their various employments undisturbed, and without showing the least sensibility or resentment.”