74 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



We now come to the honey-bee — last in the list, and the small- 

 est, but by no means the least. Insignificant in size as she is, the 

 honey-bee can put any or all of these other big animals to flight 

 in very short metre ! In her marvelous powers of delicate mech- 

 anism she can also distance them all, and even cast us in the 

 shade. Hers is one of the fine arts in animal mechanics. As 

 diminutive as she is, she, too, has a brain and nervous system, 

 with ganglions similar to those of the human brain, and with 

 nervous tissue equal to ours in proportion to weight. We need 

 not, therefore, so much wonder that this industrious little insect 

 thinks and reasons, and lays out her work with mathematical 

 accuracy, exercising that exquisitely fine little brain with such 

 extraordinary results. After watching, admiring, handling, and 

 studying the honey-bee for thirty years no one need tell me that 

 this wonderful little creature is void of reason and intelligence 

 and is guided solely by what is called instinct. She, of course, 

 acts much from instinct, as that word is popularly understood, 

 the same as the higher animal does. But new conditions and 

 exigencies arise in which there has been no experience, and 

 where there is, therefore, no instinct adequate to guide. It is 

 then we see unmistakably the exercise of reason in the bee to 

 adapt herself to the new environment. 



But the honey-bee, like human beings with reason, makes mis- 

 takes; and, indeed, these very occasional mistakes furnish evi- 

 dence of my contention, for, if the bee were solely guided by an 

 " unerring instinct," she would make no mistakes. Allow me to 

 note here one or two of her natural blunders. A colony of bees 

 left to themselves will, for instance, swarm themselves to death — 

 that is, they will cast so many swarms in the one season that the 

 parent stock is left so weak that it dies in the winter ; and the 

 last two swarms cast (say of four altogether) are also so weak and 

 late as to be unable to gather enough stores for winter, and they, 

 too, perish. This, of course, is a great mistake ; for, did they 

 swarm but once or twice, all would be strong and in good condi- 

 tion to face the winter. This mistake they make in a state of na- 

 ture, in a hollow tree in the woods, as well as in the model hive of 

 modern bee-keeping. 



I once had a colony which, in the latter part of winter, being 

 dissatisfied with its queen, began to raise young queens to super- 

 sede the old one long before there was any prospect or possibility 

 of having drones to mate with the young queen. This certainly 

 was a mistake, as it meant the depopulation and extinction of the 

 colony ; whereas the old queen could have carried them safely 

 through to the proper time to supersede her. I may say here, by 

 way of explanation, that when a colony of bees finds its queen 

 failing in fecundity, from age or other causes, the workers, fore- 



