ANIMAL SOCIETIES — SNODGRASS 437 



workers) and the males from dorsal glands of the abdomen. The 

 nest has a brood compartment in which the larvae are reared, and 

 a food-stora<2:e compartment equipped with waxen pots for honey 

 and pollen. The brood combs are horizontal, one above the other, 

 like those of the paper-making wasps except that the cells open up- 

 ward. The larvae are fed as are those of the solitary bees with one 

 supply of food put into the cell with an egg, after which the cell is 

 pennanently sealed. The queen of the colony becomes so distended 

 with eggs that she cannot fly out. New colonies therefore are formed 

 by young females and a swann of workers. With the honey bee 

 {Apk) it is the old queen that leaves with a swarm. Though the 

 stingless bees do not sting, as honey producers they have no eco- 

 nomic value. 



The honey tees. — The best Imown of the social insects is the ordi- 

 nary honey bee, A'pls mellifera. The modern honey bees live a some- 

 what artificial life in hives prepared for them by the beekeeper and 

 furnished with prefabricated comb foundation. Formerly the bees 

 made their homes in hollow tree trunks or suspended their combs 

 from the branches, as some still do, but their nature has not been 

 changed by civilization. The beekeeper has taught nothing new to 

 the bees, and is forced to adapt his apicultural practice to the un- 

 changeable ways of the insects. 



The honey bees have developed the most strongly organized society 

 of all the social insects, and we must concede that their system at 

 least works better in some ways than our own. They have assured 

 uniformity of inheritance by the workers through limiting reproduc- 

 tion to the queen, and they have eliminated juvenile delinquency by 

 rearing the young in indivddual cells. Since the worlvers are steri- 

 lized, there are no illegitimate children. The bee colony has no crime 

 problem, no strikes, no revolutions, and hence no need of a police 

 force except for external defense. It may be argued, of course, that 

 since no superbee can be produced, the race has no chance of advance- 

 ment; but the bee society is probably already as nearly perfect as it 

 needs to be for the bees themselves. The beekeepers, however, think 

 that for their purposes they might improve their stock by controlled 

 mating of the queen. When a virgin queen leaves the hive to consort 

 with males, she flies up in the air and accepts the first male that 

 catches her, and she may even mate with several males in succession. 

 To counteract this promiscuity on the part of tlie young queens, the 

 beekeepers have now perfected an instrument for artificial insemina- 

 tion of a queen from a selected male. The results have not yet been 

 publicized. 



The personnel of the beehive is fairly simple, there beiTig only three 

 castes — the queen, the workers, and the males, or drones. The workers 



