OF HARTING. 367 



having special duties to perform distinct from those 

 of the other two. The queen bee, for instance, is 

 endowed with all the instincts and faculties of a perfect 

 female capable of producing fertile eggs and becoming 

 the parent of other queens, drones, and neuters ; the 

 drones are the males taking no share whatever in the 

 labours of the community, and the neuters, commonly 

 called "workers," are, speaking generally, imperfectly 

 developed females. The latter are the indefatigable 

 architects and builders of that wondrous structure, the 

 honey-comb, the secretors of the wax of which it is 

 composed, the untiring collectors of the honey and 

 pollen with which many of the cells are stored, and 

 the careful attendants of the larvae or young brood 

 that are to be found in others. Although it is known 

 to entomologists that there are two kinds of queens, a 

 larger and a smaller one, two kinds of drones, of 

 different sizes, and two kinds of neuters, the wax pro- 

 ducers and the nurses of the young grubs, we limit 

 our remarks on these insects to the outline we have 

 here given, and to the following passage in their 

 history. This is so startlingly suggestive of reflective 

 faculty, foresight, and appreciation of their various pro- 

 ceedings, as evidenced in the intelligent application of 

 the resources within their reach to a sudden emergency, 

 that we cannot omit it. We have stated that three 

 distinct individual forms are found among the social 

 bees, in reality they consist normally of males and 

 females only, but the industrious members of the com- 

 munity, in the ordinary exercise of their wonderful 

 instinct, know how to check the development of the 

 latter by a special treatment which results in the pro- 

 duction of workers. If by any accident they are 

 deprived of their queen, they not only soon discover 

 their loss, but without unnecessary delay set to work 

 in a very scientific manner to provide themselves with 

 another. Who without a long entomological prepara- 

 tion could accept upon trust the statement that, to 



