78 The Study of A nimal Life part i 



prolific egg-laying, and perhaps after a time to lead off 

 another swarm. During the busy summer, when food is 

 abundant, the lazy males are tolerated ; but when their 

 function is fulfilled, and when the supplies become scarce, 

 they are ruthlessly put to death. " No sooner does income 

 fall below expenditure, than their nursing sisters turn 

 their executioners, usually by dragging them from the hive, 

 biting at the insertion of the wing. The drones, strong for 

 their especial work, are, after all, as tender as they are 

 defenceless, and but little exposure and abstinence is 

 required to terminate their being. So thorough is the war 

 of extermination, that no age is spared ; even drone eggs 

 are devoured, the larvae have their juices sucked and their 

 ' remains ' carried out — a fate in which the chrysalids are 

 made to take part, the maxim for the moment being, He 

 that will not work, neither shall he eat." This Lycurgan 

 tragedy over, the equilibrium of the hive is more secure, 

 and the winter comes. 



The social life of hive -bees is of peculiar interest, 

 because it represents the climax of a series of stages. 

 Hermann Miiller has traced the plausible history of the 

 honey-bee from an insect like the sand -wasp, and has 

 shown in other kinds of bees the various steps by which 

 the pollen-gathering and nectar-collecting organs have been 

 developed. The habits of life gradually lead up to the 

 consummately social life of the hive. Thus Prosopis, which 

 lays its eggs in the pith of bramble-stems ; the wood-boring 

 Xylophaga ; and the leaf-cutting Megachile, which lines its 

 burrows with circles cut from rose leaves, are solitary bees. 

 The various species of humble- or bumble-bee (^Bombus), so 

 familiarly industrious from the spring, when the willows 

 bear their catkins, till the autumn chill benumbs, are half- 

 way to the hive-bees ; for they live in societies of mother, 

 drones, and workers during summer, while the sole surviv- 

 ing queens hibernate in solitude. From the humble-bee, 

 moreover, we gain this hint, that the home is centred in 

 the cradle, for it is in a nest wath honey and pollen stored 

 around the eggs that the hive seems to have begun. 



6. Ants. — Even more suggestive of our o\vn social organ- 



