THE SOCIAL INSECTS 



Melipona has a rather wasteful and inefficient method of 

 providing the necessary proportion of new queens. In most 

 groups of social insects the argument whether castes are 

 dependent on hereditary constitution or are due to differ- 

 ential feeding has continued for the last fifty years. In most 

 groups, the weight of the evidence is in favour of control by 

 diet. It will be rather startling if the stingless bees turn out 

 to be an exception, or if our ideas on all the other groups 

 turn out to be wrong. 



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