Wasps, Bees, and Ants 533 



observation, as there are no side-by-side frames between which it can crawl 

 and thus be hidden from view. To keep either of such hives in the house it 

 is only necessary to substitute for a pane of glass in a window a thin wooden 

 pane in which is cut a narrow horizontal opening, the size of the regular hive- 

 opening (if the latter is too broad it can be closed for a few inches at each 

 end). Or a narrow board strip of the full width of the window can be inserted 

 so that the lower sash of the window, w-hen closed, will rest on this strip. 

 In the strip cut a narrow opening of the width or less of the hive-opening. 

 Set the observation-hive on a table or shelf against the window so that the 

 hive-opening corresponds with that in the window-pane or window-strip. 

 Or, better, place it six or seven inches from the window and connect hive and 

 window-opening by a shallow broad tunnel of wooden bottom and sides but 

 glass top. Over the glass top of this tunnel lay a sheet of black cardboard, 

 which will keep the tunnel dark normally, but which can be simply lifted 

 off whenever it is desired to see what is going on at the entrance. Here can 

 be seen the departure of the foragers and their arrival with pollen, propohs, 

 or honey, the alertness of the guards, the repelling of robbers and enemies, 

 the killing of drones, the ventilating, etc., etc. Through the glass sides of 

 the hive itself can be seen all the varied indoors businesses in their very under- 

 taking; the life-history of each kind of individual can be followed in detail; 

 the wa.x-making and comb-building, the storing of the food-cells, the feeding 

 of the young by the nurses, the e.xcitements, the joys, and the discourage- 

 ments, the whole course of life in this microcosm. 



The natural questions of the thoughtful observers of honey-bee life touch- 

 ing the probable origin and causal factors of this elaborate train of behavior 

 will be found, not answered, to be sure, but discussed, at the end of this chap- 

 ter. For before undertaking any consideration of the much-discussed prob- 

 lem of reflexes, instincts, and inteUigence in the communal-living insects, 

 we should examine the life and ways of the ants, the most specialized of all 

 the social animals. 



ANTS. 



Unlike the wasps and bees, the two other great groups of Hymenoptera 

 that contain communal-living species, the ants (superfamily Formicina) 

 include no solitary .species at all, every one of the twenty-five hundred or 

 more known ant species hving in communities. The development or evolu- 

 tion of social life in persistent communities is accomplished for the whole 

 group; no connecting or gradatory forms living in annually destroyed com- 

 munities (like those of the bumblebees and social wasps) or in simple colonies 

 of gregarious individuals (like Halictus and other mining-bees) exist to con- 

 nect the ants with the solitary or independent life common to the great 



