ORDER VI.——VEIN-WINGED INSECTS. 273 
pain and tumefaction caused by the venom of bees ; but cold 
water or spirits of hartshorn (volatile alkali) is perhaps 
the best application after the sting has been extracted. 
This latter remedy we have often proved, and always carry 
a phial of it when making entomological excursions; we 
have found it universally successful in relieving the effects 
of the sting of bees, wasps, mosquitoes, and snakes, partic- 
ularly in tropical countries. Laudanum, or onion-juice 
mixed with salt, is also an excellent remedial application. 
The stings of bees are their weapons of offense as well as 
of defense; with them they fight their battles, murder their 
rivals, and massacre the drones. During the autumn and 
winter the drones are a useless burden to the community in 
the hives, as they do not work, and could only remain idle 
consumers of the honey which the working bees have man- 
ufactured and stored up for their own use; hence they are 
murdered by wholesale every autumn—the workers killing 
them with their stings. In this respect they are not unlike 
the ancient Spartans, whose laws allowed them to kill their 
children if they were deformed; or the Chinese, who are 
permitted to destroy each new-born infant that they deem 
themselves unable to support; or the savages, who believe 
it their religious duty to kill all the superannuated or infirm 
among them, and thus put them out of misery. 
Besides this annual massacre of the drones, the working- 
bees fight battles among themselves in the hives, where one 
throws herself with great fury upon another; then, coming 
out of the hive, they fall to the ground, and wrestle together 
head to head, continually trying to sting one another, until 
at last one or the other succeeds in thrusting its sting be- 
tween two ringlets, or into the head of the other, and thus 
kills her. Very often, however, the sting of the victor re- 
mains in the wound of the slain, and, if so, she also soon 
perishes. Such a battle sometimes continues only a few 
minutes, while at others it lasts for hours before the fatal 
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