v SOCIAL LIFE OF ANIMALS 81 



fellows, will pair with a queen in her nuptial flight, him- 

 self to die soon after, saved at least from the expulsion 

 and massacre which await the residue of the sex when 

 supplies run short in autumn. The queen and drones 

 are important only so far as multiplication is concerned. 

 The sustained life of the hive is wholly in the hands of 

 the workers, who in brains, in activity, and general 

 equipment are greatly superior to their " queen." The 

 queen has lost her domestic arts, which the worker pos- 

 sesses in a perfection never attained by the ancestral 

 types ; while the worker has lost her maternal functions, 

 although she still possesses the needed organs in a rudi- 

 mentary state." 



What a busy life is theirs, gathering nectar and pollen 

 unwearyingly, while the sunshine lasts, neatly slipping 

 into the secrets of the flowers or stealing their treasures 

 by force, carrying their booty home in swift sweeping 

 flight, often over long distances unerringly, unloading the 

 pollen from their hind-legs and packing it into some cells 

 of the comb, emptying out the nectar from their crop 

 or honey-sac into store-cells, and then off again for more 

 such is their socialised mania for getting. But, besides 

 these " foragers ' -for the most part seniors there are 

 younger stay-at-home " nurses," whose labours, if less 

 energetic, are not less essential. For it is their part to 

 look after the grubs in their cradles, to feed them at first 

 with a " pap ' of digested nectar, and then to wean 

 them to a diet of honey, pollen, and water ; to attend 

 the queen, guiding her movements and feeding her while 

 she lays many eggs, sometimes 2,000 to 3,000 eggs in a 

 day. Mr. Cheshire, in his incomparably careful book on 

 Bees and ~Beekeeping, laughs at the " many writers who 

 have given the echo to a mediaeval fancy by stating that 

 the queen is ever surrounded by a circle of dutiful sub- 

 jects, reverently watching her movements, and liable to 

 instant banishment upon any neglect of duty. These 

 it was once the fashion to compare to the twelve Apostles, 

 and, to make the ridiculous suggestion complete, their 

 number w r as said to be invariably twelve ! ' But Mr. 



mt 



Cheshire's own account of the nurses' work, and of the 



