PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 205 



In St. Petersbiirgh (?o travellers tell us) a fire-engine 

 playing upon them does not always cool their choler ; 

 but were a few hives of bees thus employed, their dis- 

 comfiture would be certain. The experiment has been 

 tried. Lesser tells us, that in 1525, during the confu- 

 sion occasioned by a time of war, a mobof peasants as- 

 sembling in Hohnstein (in Thuringia) attempted to pil- 

 lage the house of the minister of Elende ; who having 

 in vain employed all his eloquence to dissuade them 

 from their design, ordered his domestics to fetch his 

 bee-hives, and throw them in the middle of this furious 

 mob. The effect was what might be expected; they were 

 immediately put to flight, and happy if they escaped un- 

 stung\ 



The anger of bees is not confined to man ; it is not 

 seldom excited against their own species. From what 

 I have said above respecting the black bees'* and their 

 fate, it seems not improbable that, when the workers 

 become too old to be useful to the community, they are 

 either killed, or expelled tlie society. Reaumur, who 

 observed that the inhabitants of the same hive had often 

 mortal combats, was of opinion that this was their ob- 

 ject in these battles'^, which take place, he observes, in 

 fine or warm weather. On these occasions the bees 

 are sometimes so eager, that examining them with a 

 lens does not part them : — their whole object is to pierce 

 each other with their sting, the stroke of which, if once 

 it penetrates to the muscles, is mortal. In these en- 

 gagements the conqueror is not always able to extri- 

 cate this weapon, and then both perish. The duration 

 of the conflict is uncertain ; sometimes it lasts an hour, 

 * Lesser, L. ii. 171. " Sec above, p. 128. "■ Kcaum. v. 300-31)5. 



