128 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



vigour and industry in the beehive. And on the whole, until wc 

 probe beneath the surface, the beehive, like the ant-hill or the 

 termitarv, shows a smooth-working, harmonious, well- integrated 

 social life. Indeed, the social organisation of the hive is a marvel 

 which angels might desire to look into. What then is wrong? 



In the first place, the hive-bee community depends on a specialised 

 reproductive female caste, the non-productive queens, who have a 

 tongue too short to reach almost any floral nectary. They have 

 no apparatus for collecting or carrying pollen, and as they have 

 no wax-glands they could not make any honeycomb. Yet a ripe 

 queen ma>' lay three thousand eggs in a day, and she may continue 

 egg-laying at the proper season for about three years. In the second 

 place, there is the specialised caste of reproductive males or drones, 

 wastefuUy numerous, mostly quite futile even in their masculinity, 

 an expense to the community, and with a harsh, if not painful, 

 ending. As long as food is abundant they are treated good-naturedly, 

 but as the pinch of opening autumn begins to be felt, they are met 

 somewhat grudgingly. More and more they get the cold shoulder; 

 and if they do not take the broad hint to keep away from the hive, 

 they are expelled by force. Some die by violence and others from the 

 early frost. Only in rare cases, according to von Frisch, is there 

 anything approaching the often-described massacre of the drones; 

 but there is no doubt as to the grim reality of cold-shouldering. 



In the third place, the whole economy of the hive rests on the 

 vast multitude of arrested females, usually non-reproductiye. They 

 have better brains than the queens, but their brain-cells go steadily 

 out of gear from over-fatigue; they are models of the virtues, but 

 they are "Robots" wound up to over-industry. The shining hour 

 does not improve the busy bee, for though summer-bees can live, 

 as Dr. John Anderson has shown, for three months, they do not 

 usually attain to more than four or six weeks. 



8. When an attempt is made to envisage the evolution of the 

 social habit in animals, it .seems useful to distinguish as precon- 

 ditions (a) some measure of kin-sympathy and .sensitiveness in 

 recognising kindred; (b) a certain fineness of nervous system, 

 whether of the little-brain or big-brain type, which need not be 

 thought of, esj^ecially among birds and mammals, without its 

 psychical correlate; and (c) some considerable power of prolifu- 

 rejiroduction, since a very small society is all but a contradiction 

 in terms. Yet, as we have .seen, the last precondition may be 

 dispensed with when there is a seasonal combination of many familir 

 as in the ])ack of wolves, or a permanent combination as in rooks. 

 To put it negativelv. an animal society is not likely to ari.se among 

 tyjx's of animals that are sensorily or emotionally indifferent to 

 their kith and kin. or among types with a low type of nervous 

 system and a dull mentality, or among types that do not occur 



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