-6 9 - 



and true to her instinct, denies herself of necessary food, that she may 

 lay by the more for her future offspring. 



And now these creatures, happy in their deprivation, capable 

 of supplying their own wants with ease, insist on gathering food for the 

 mother-bee. She takes it with eagerness, tastes and stores it away. And 

 alter the young are hatched out, the like attempt to feed the mother-bee 

 results in feeding them. Thus this family have for a time a great ad- 

 vantage in the struggle for existence and there is a perfectly adequate 

 motive for the conduct of the kind little creatures who minister to the 

 wants of the mother-bee. 



Still this happy family is not precisely the foundation of our modern 

 bee-hive; it is really too affluent for complete success. 



The mother-bee, no longer overworked, recovers her health and un- 

 fortunately lays perfect eggs; with the help of the nursemaids she rears 

 her young without overtaxing her powers. Her family and any others 

 like it have very decided advantages over the old tvpe, to which never- 

 theless the}" inevitably revert, to fall into a state of starvation as before; 

 for, in this family, the nursemaids have and can have, no probable suc- 

 cessors while there is plenty to eat. 



If this happens to one family of bees, it will probably happen to mam- 

 families. The temporary affluence of one family caused by the pre- 

 sence of the helpers will itself increase the depth of poverty in the neigh- 

 boring families, and this poverty will give them helpers in undeveloped 

 bees in the next generation, by which in turn they will be raised to af- 

 fluence. Thus there will be alternating generations of bees, that is to 

 say generations with helpers, followed by generations without them. 



Among those that go forth from the mother-nest to find mates and 

 rear families of their own, are some that are congenitally weak in the re- 

 productive organs. The majority of these meet with sound mates and 

 the variation dies out. But some individuals thus congenitally imper- 

 fect, meet with like mates, The congenital weakness of the reproductive 

 organs is intensified in the offspring. The majority are perhaps so im- 

 perfect as not to be able to reproduce their kind. Any of these that 

 reach maturity will be glad helpers of the mother-bee. 



Their less imperfect brothers and sisters are defective in many de- 

 grees. The offspring of one never reach maturity. Those of another 

 nearly all thrive and there are a dozen reproductive females among them. 

 In their migrations at swarming time these bees sometimes become 

 established near less affluent families, congenitally perfect, and are some- 

 times crossed with them . 



Here we have the bees in a condition of the greatest variability as 



ENTOMOLOGICA AMERICANA. 11 



