VI SOCIAL ORGANISATION OF BEES 275 



community has taken place, while the humble-bees, and 

 similarly the social wasps, only reach the status of a large 

 family. The bees sacrifice the welfare of the individual with 

 relentless determination to the advantage of the state, in that 

 they kill their drones when they have become useless, while 

 these among the humble-bees perish gradually. The humble- 

 bee queen dies in her second year ; but the bee queen in her 

 second year, when she has reared offspring, is compelled in 

 the interest of the state to leave the hive and found for her- 

 self a new state. But this state -organisation has, for the 

 mother of the whole and for the workers, the advantage that 

 their life is secured for a longer time, for the workers among 

 the humble-bees do not survive the winter, while those of 

 the bees do. 



In these respects we have in wasps conditions similar to 

 those of the humble-bees. 



The foundation of this essential difference between humble- 

 bees, or wasps, and the economy of the bees, obviously consists 

 in the fact that the reasoning instinct, i.e. the forethought 

 for the future — in this case primarily for food — is far greater 

 in hive -bees than in humble-bees and wasps, which provide 

 no winter store, and whose females have to pass the winter 

 in seclusion. 



The state -organisation of bees and ants has often been 

 praised as the ideal of social and political arrangements. 

 But it must be remembered that in these animal communities 

 the individual is unconditionally responsible to the state for 

 all its activity, as the state's servant, and if it does not fulfil 

 this responsibility, or if it has served its purpose, it is 

 expelled or destroyed. The queen -bee does not begin to 

 provide for the reproduction of the hive until there are a 

 sufficient number of workers to secure adequate maintenance 

 for two hives, and the female humble-bee or wasp likewise 

 begins her family by providing workers. This is according 



