HYMENOPTERA 263 



all the drones in the district. The first to reach her copulates in 

 the air. All his sperms are passed into the queen, and in separating 

 from her he is so damaged that he dies. The other drones return 

 to the hive, but will after a time be killed or denied admittance 

 by the workers. The queen also returns, and from then on, until 

 it is her turn to swarm, does nothing but go from cell to cell 

 laying eggs. Her total life may be three or four years. 



It is probable that the workers go through a regular series of 

 duties in their life of less than two months, at first fanning the 

 hive and feeding the larvae, then building, and relieving other 

 workers of their honey and pollen, and lastly, going foraging. 

 It has recently been shown that when a foraging bee returns it 

 may perform a dance, which indicates to the other bees the 

 direction (relative to the sun) and distance away of the flowers 

 from which they have obtained the food. 



The social life of the ants, such as Formica nifa, the wood ant, 

 which builds large nests of pine needles or twigs, differs in many 

 respects from that of the bees. A nuptial flight occurs, but many 

 queens and males go together ; the female in copulation gets 

 a supply of sperms for life, and the male thereafter dies. The queen 

 sheds her wings by rubbing them off ; she may return to her 

 own nest, or go to another of the same species, where she joins the 

 existing community, or she may make a hole in the ground, lay 

 eggs, and wait for them to hatch. She feeds them by regurgitation 

 of material obtained from her own stores of fat, and in due course 

 they become sterile female workers. They build the nest, fetch 

 food, and establish a new colony in which the queen does nothing 

 but lay eggs, which she does every ten minutes for some six 

 years. The general duties in the nest — feeding the larvae and 

 queens, building, and so on — parallel those of the worker bees, 

 but differs in detail. The food is largely, but not entirely, vegetable 

 matter, and many ants are fond of the Hquid which exudes from 

 the anus of aphides. Because of the acquisition of new queens 

 the life of the community is indefinite. A new community is 

 sometimes founded by a group of members of an old colony 

 marching out to build a new nest. The workers of many species 

 of ant, including Formica rufa, are of more than one type ; 

 morphological differences correspond to differences in duties. 

 It is probable, but not proven, that, as in the honey bee, the cause 

 which determines whether a female e^g shall become a worker 

 or a queen is the nutrition which it receives. 



