343 THE INSECT WORLD. 



anything to fear from rivals. Let us remark, in passing, that man is 

 not much behind these insects whose savage exploits in cruelty we 

 have just related. Among certain tribes of Ethiopians the first care 

 of the newly-crowned chief is to put in prison all his brothers, so as 

 to prevent wars by pretenders to the throne. Delivered from all dread 

 of rivals, our queen sets to work with an indefatigable zeal ; and the 

 workers, animated by the hope of a numerous progeny, heap up 

 provisions around them. 



But now a new tragedy is about to be enacted. The drones, that 

 is to say, the males, are now no longer wanted in the colony : their 

 mission is over. By an inexorable law of Nature they must be got 

 rid of, and the working bees proceed to make general massacre of 

 them. It is in the months of July and August that this frightful 

 carnage takes place. The workers may be seen furiously giving 

 chase to the males, and pursuing them to the extremity of the hive, 

 where these unfortunate insects seek a place of safety. Three or four 

 workers dash off in the pursuit after a male. They seize hold of 

 him, pull him by his legs, by his wings, by his antennae, and kill him 

 with their stings. This pitiless massacre includes even the larvae and 

 pup^e of the males. The executioners drag them from their cells, nm 

 them through with their stings, greedily suck the liquids contained in 

 their bodies, and then cast their remains to the winds. This slaughter 

 goes on for many days, continuing till the males have been completely 

 got rid of, they not being able to defend themselves, as they have no 

 stings. 



They are allowed to live, however, when they are fortunate enough 

 to inhabit a hive deprived of its queen. There they even find a place 

 of perfect safety when they have been driven out of another hive, and 

 may be met with in this refuge until the month of January. In like 

 manner the lives of the males are spared in those hives which, 

 instead of a true queen, have only a female half impregnated, which 

 lays only male eggs ; but a hive of this kind, whose active population 

 cannot be increased, ends by being abandoned by its inhabitants. 

 The sterility or absence of the queen entails the dissolution of the 

 society. She is, in fact, the life and soul of the hive ; and without 

 her there is no hope, no courage, no activity. The populace, 

 abandoned to itself, falls into anarchy. Famine, pillage, ruin, and 

 death are at its doors. Having no j^rogeny to set their hopes on, the 

 bees live from one day to another without a care for the morrow 

 They leave off working, and live entirely on theft and rapine, anc 

 at last they disappear entirely. It is a society become rotten anc 

 broken up for the want of a moral tie. 



