166 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE, 



a time before the social instincts became so complex or 

 consolidated, and when, therefore, bees lived in lesser 

 communities. Probably this is the explanation, although 

 I think we might still have expected that before this 

 period in their evolution had arrived bees might have de- 

 veloped a compensating instinct, either not to allow the 

 queen to lay so many drone eggs, or else to massacre the 

 drones while still in the larval state. But here we must re- 

 member that among the wasps the males do work (chiefly 

 domestic work, for which they are fed by their foraging 

 sisters) ; so it is possible that in the hive-bee the drones 

 were originally useful members of the community, and 

 that they have lost their primitively useful instincts. But 

 whatever the explanation, it is very curious that here, 

 among the animals which are justly regarded as exhibiting 

 the highest perfection of instinct, we meet with perhaps 

 the most flagrant instance in the animal kingdom of 

 instinct unperfected. It is the more remarkable that 

 the drone-killing instinct should not have been better de- 

 veloped in the direction of killing the drones at the most 

 profitable time namely, in their larval or oval state 

 from the fact that in many respects it seems to have been 

 advanced to a high degree of discriminative refinement. 

 Thus, to quote Biichner, 



That the massacre of the drones is not performed entirely 

 from an. instinctive impulse, but in full consciousness of the 

 object to be gained, is proved by the circumstance that it is 

 carried out the more completely and mercilessly the more fer- 

 tile the queen shows herself to be. But in cases where this 

 fertility is subject to serious doubt, or when the queen has been 

 fertilised too late or not at all, and therefore only lays drones' 

 eggs, or when the queen is barren, and new queens, to be fer- 

 tilised later, have to be brought up from working-bee larvae, 

 then all or some of the drones are left alive, in the clear pre- 

 vision that their services will be required later. . . . This wise 

 calculation of consequences is further exemplified in that some- 

 times the massacre of the drones takes place before the time for 

 swarming, as, for instance, when long-continued unfavourable 

 weather succeeds a favourable beginning of spring, and makes 

 the bees anxious for their own welfare. If, however, the 

 weather breaks, and work again becomes possible, so that the 



