Mutual aid and communal life among animals :^9>7 



We are accustomed to think of lioncyl^ees as the inhabuam* 

 of beehives, but there were bees before there were hives. The 

 "bee tree" is famihar to many of us. Tiie bees, in Nature, 

 make their home in the liollow of some dead or decaying tree- 

 trunk, and carry on there all the industries which characterize 

 the busy communities in the liives. A honeyl)ee communitv 

 comprises three kinds of individuals (Fig. 241) — namely, a 

 fertile female or queen, numerous males or drones, and many 

 infertile females or workers. These three kinds of individuals 

 differ in external appearance sufficiently to be reathly recogniz- 

 able. The workers are smaller tlian the (pieens and drones, 

 and the last two differ in the shape of the abdomen, or hind 

 body, the abdomen of the queen lacing longer and more slender 

 than that of the male or drone. In a single conununity there 

 is one queen, a few hundred drones, and ten to thirty thousand 

 workers. The number of drones and workers varies at different 

 limes of the year, being smallest in winter. Each kind of 

 individual has certain work or business to do for the wliole 

 community. The cpieen lays all the eggs from which new bees 

 are born; that is, she is the mother of the entire conununity. 

 The drones or males have simply to act as royal consorts; u})()n 

 them depends the fertilization of the eggs. The workers 

 undertake all the food-getting, the care of the young bees, the 



Fig. 241.— fHoneybee: a, Drone or male; 6, worker or female; r, queen «)r fertile female. 



comb-building, the honey-making — all the industries with which 

 we are more or less familiar that are carried on in the hive. 

 And all the work done by the workers is strictly work for the 

 whole community; in no case does tlie worker bee* work for 

 itself alone; it works for itself only in so far as it is a member of 



the community. 



How varied and (>laborately jn-rfected th(\se industries are 

 may be perceived from a brief account of the life history of a 



