AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 661 



and with nervous tissue equal to ours in proportion to weight. We need, not, there- 

 fore, so much wonder that this industrious little insect thinks and reasons, and lays 

 out her work with mathematical accuracy, exercising that exquisitely fine little 

 brain with such extraordinary results. After watching, admiring, handling, and 

 studying the honey-bee for thirty years, no one need tell me that this wonderful 

 little creature is void of reason and intelligence, and is guided solely by what is 

 called instinct. She, of course, acts much from instinct, as that word is popularly 

 understood, the same as the higher animal does. But new conditions and exigencies 

 arise in which there has been no experience, and where there is, therefore, no in- 

 stinct adequate to guide. It is then we see unmistakably the exercise of reason in 

 the bee to adapt herself to the new environment. 



But the honey-bee, like human beings with reason, makes mistakes ; and, in- 

 deed, these very occasional mistakes furnish evidence of my contention, for, if the 

 bee were solely guided by an "unerring instinct," she would make no mistakes. 

 Allow me to note here one or two of her natural blunders. A colony of bees left to 

 themselves will, for instance, swarm themselves to death— that is, they will cast so 

 many swarms in the one season that the parent colony is left so weak that it dies in 

 the winter ; and the last two swarms cast (say of four altogether) are also so we^ 

 and late as to be unable to gather enough stores for winter, and they, too, perish. 

 This, of course, is a great mistake ; for, did they swarm but once or twice, all would 

 be strong and in good condition to face the winter. This mistake they make in a 

 state of nature, in a hollow tree in the woods, as well as in the model hive of 

 modern bee-keeping. 



I once had a colony which, in the latter part of winter, being dissatisfied with 

 its queen, began to rear young queens to supersede the old one long before there 

 was any prospect or possibility of having drones to mate with the young queen. 

 This certainly was a mistake, as it meant the depopulation and extinction of the 

 colony; whereas the old queen could have carried them safely through to the proper 

 time to supersede her. I may say here, by way of explanation, that when a colony 

 of bees finds its queen failing in fecundity, from age or other causes, the workers, 

 foreseeing a gradual depopulation of the hive, set about warding oflf the impending 

 ill by superseding their mother and queen — that is, by rearing a young queen to 

 take her place. In the case just noted the object was all right, and the means to 

 attain it all right, but, like ourselves sometimes, they were doing their work at the 

 wrong time. 



A normal colony of bees consists of one queen, some drones — more or less — and 

 from 30,000 to 50.000 workers. The queen is the mother of the whole family — 

 of the workers, the drones, and even her rivals, the young queens, which are to take 

 her place in the hive, and they sometimes dispatch her in superseding her. The 

 workers, as their name implies, do all the work of gathering honey, rearing brood, 

 etc. The drones, like the drones in the human hive, do next to nothing, but do it 

 well, with this difference, that the human drone fails to do well what little he does do. 



The conclusion I have reached is this : the horse, the cow, the dog, the honey- 

 bee, and other animals have a certain degree of reason and intelligence as well as 

 instinct, and also have, some of them, strong social and domestic feelings, and are 

 therefore entitled to greater consideration and kinder treatment at the hands of 

 man than they sometimes get. I have also come to the conclusion, viewing the 

 multitude of mistakes and follies of the higher animal, man, that his superior rea- 

 son and more exalted faculties are not on the whole turned to as good account as 

 the inferior reason and faculties of the so-called "brute beasts." — Popular Science 

 Monthly. Selby, Ont. 



