528 The Outline of Science 



The Humble-Bee 



The Humble-Bees (Bombus) live in communities which last 

 for one season only. The queen humble-bee, after her autumn 

 nuptial flight, creeps into a hole under a sun-warmed bank and 

 there lies torpid thoughout the cold weather. Spring awakens 

 her and she sets to work to prepare for her expected brood. She 

 secretes wax, makes a few cells, and lays her eggs in these. She 

 has herself to discharge the whole labour of foraging for honey 

 and pollen, keeping the cells clean, kneading the bee-bread, and 

 feeding and tending the hungry larva?. She is a queen in the 

 sense of being the mother of the whole colony, but she is a very 

 hard-working queen for a time. Later, when the first batch of 

 young ones, which are always workers, are fully developed, they 

 take the domestic details on themselves, and the queen can now 

 devote herself to her true business of motherhood. As in the 

 case of wasps, the community dissolves at the end of the summer, 

 workers and drones all dying, but a few young queens surviving 

 through the winter to found the colonies of the following year. 

 In this and in many similar cases it is difficult to know whether 

 one should speak of a large family or of an incipient society. 



The Story of Wasps' Nests 



Even Solitary Wasps instinctively provide for their young, 

 though they die before these hatch out. They deposit the eggs 

 in a shelter and leave with them a larder of fresh meat, in the 

 shape of living insects rendered unresisting by the paralysing 

 effect of the wasp's sting on their nerve-centres. The Social 

 Wasps live in communities which last from spring to autumn. 

 Winter is the time of inactivity, but in some secluded spot, a 

 cranny in a wall or a sheltered nook in a rubbish heap, the queen 

 wasp, who mated at the end of last season, is sleeping her winter 

 sleep, tiding over the hard months in a state of passiveness in 

 much the same attitude that her body assumed during the pupa 



