CREATION BY EVOLUTION 



Fig. 8. 



—Bee larva. (After 

 Fleischman.) 



settles down. But she does not quit the hive till nearly a 

 week after her emergence from the cocoon. Yet all the time 

 she is kept busy helping the older workers. When she first 

 leaves the hive she may attempt only small flights. She has 



to learn her way home before she 

 sets out to collect honey from the 

 sugar glands of plants or pollen 

 from the pollen sacs of flowers. 

 She may make as many as a hun- 

 dred flights a day (Fig. 9), 

 bringing back beebread, or pol- 

 len, and honey, which are stored 

 in separate cells and used as food 

 for the inhabitants of the hive. Through long ages the 

 flowers and the bees have evolved together and they are now 

 fitted to each other as hand to 

 glove. 



It will be observed that the life 

 of the whole colony is based on 

 the principles of pure socialism, 

 and that the social system is 

 superior to ours. There is no 

 unemployment in a hive; there 

 are no strikes, no lock-outs. Ex- 

 cept the drones everyone works 

 continuously and at high pres- 

 sure. A vast majority of the bees 

 live as workers, entirely renounc- 

 ing individual rights in their effort to continue the swarm — to 

 make sure that another queen bee may always be ready when 

 her predecessor dies. Self-preservation and self-propagation 

 are completely transcended that the swarm — the social unit — 

 may be continued. Sometimes bees act as foragers, collect- 



[192] 



Fig, 9. — A bee upon the 

 wing, showing the position 

 of the middle legs when 

 they touch and pat down 

 masses of pollen. (After 

 Casteel.) 



