1872.] 



THE AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



Instinct in Bees. 



We give below various extracts from a recent 

 work by Prof. Chadbourne on Instinct. 



" In the bee and wasp and hornet, we have the 

 instrument for defence, the poisonous secretion, 

 and the instinct to render them effective. But 

 in the honey-bee, we have much more than these 

 provisions for defence. Its instinct leads it to 

 store honey for use in winter. We pass now 

 the complicated but special aparatus that enables 

 the bee to gather the honey, to consider the con- 

 ditions that enable her to store it. After being 

 gorged with honey, she secretes scales of wax 

 under the wings of the body. This substance 

 essential to the economy of the bee-hive, is not 

 produced by any work of instinct, but by a pe- 

 culiar function of the body. These scales of wax 

 the bee softens, undoubtedly, by another pecu- 

 liar secretion, and then fashions them into a 

 ceil that has challenged the admiration of the 

 world. 



Let us trace this process through. There is 

 an instinct for gathering honey and, answering 

 to it, an instrument just fitted for drawing it up 

 from the nectaries of flowers. There is also a 

 sack for holding it and for producing certain 

 changes iu it. There is an instinct for storing 

 this honey and a substance secreted that can be 

 moulded into cells to hold it. There are instru- 

 ments given for using the substance to the best 

 possible advantage, and instinct to guide in the 

 best use of both instruments and substance. 



Instinct comes in the proper place to link all 

 these agencies together. Let a single link be 

 wanting and all other parts of the chain are use- 

 less as a means of preserving the species. And 

 complicated as this whole process is, it is only a 

 part of a connected series of functional and in- 

 stinctive adjustments, absolutely essential to 

 houey-bee life, as the species now exist. 

 ***** 



But we may now come to consider certain so- 

 cial animals that cannot exist, except as com- 

 munities. There is, in some species, such differ- 

 ence in structure and function, and instinct in 

 individuals of the same communities, that there 

 is a division of labor marked out, and made 

 necessary by the very nature of these individ- 

 uals. The peculiarities found in some species 

 that make the organization of the community 

 most efficient, are destructive to isolated indi- 

 vidual life. 



Of such animals, the honey-bee is a good ex- 

 ample, and the best known. We have in this 

 species, the queen-mother, the drones or males, 

 and the workers ; in the latter of which there is 

 no power of reproduction. Without the queen- 

 mother there could be no continuance of the 

 species, as she alone produces all the eggs for 

 the swarming hive. 



The queen and the drone, it would seem, 

 would alone be sufficient to secure the contin- 

 uance of the species. But not so ; for they do 

 not even collect honey for themselves, to say 

 nothing of their numerous progeny. To com- 

 plete the organization of the hive, there must be 

 another class, the workers, which shall collect 



food and do all the work of building for them- 

 selves, the queen and young. The conditions 

 for an organized community are now complete. 

 The great mass of individuals in the hive, gaiu 

 their reputation for industry by working for the 

 common good, — for queen and drone and young, 

 — as well as for themselves. 



And to this complicated organization, the in- 

 stincts of each individual are adjusted, so that 

 each performs its part, as each organ of the body 

 performs its office or each official would perforin 

 his part in a perfectly organized kingdom. 

 * * * * " * 



Mr. Darwin thinks the wonderful instinct of 

 the honey-bee, by which it builds cells that he 

 acknowledges, could not be improved upon, 

 might be accounted for in this way : The mak- 

 ing of wax takes a great deal of honey ; and so 

 it would come to pass that those swarms of bees 

 which build with the least wax, would have 

 most honey left for winter, and so be most 

 likely to live. The best builders would in this 

 way be preserved, while all the poor builders 

 would in time die off. 



Here it will be observed that the theory does 

 not go back far enough to account for the 

 whole case. At most, it simply offers an ex- 

 planation of the preservation of those swarms 

 made up of the best builders. But we want to 

 know how the bee became a builder at all? And 

 how the instinct to build cells and the function 

 of secreting wax fitted for the work began to- 

 gether? And how the honey-bee got along be- 

 fore it had either the function or the instinct, 

 both of which now seem essential to its very 

 existence ? Then we have also to observe that it 

 is the neuter bees that secrete the wax and build 

 the cells ; and since the neuter bees are sterile, 

 the characteristics they possess and the skill 

 they acquire, cannot be transmitted. All the 

 bees that build cells and gather honey, have de- 

 scended thousands of years, at least, from parents 

 that never did anything of the kind. 



Now this, Mr. Darwin would probably say 

 was a case of corelation. That is, it is true the 

 parents do not do these things, but these powers 

 of the neuters are so corelated to the needs of 

 the community that the whole species become 

 good builders by natural selection, because these 

 swarms alone are preserved where such neuters 

 are produced as get along with little wax and 

 consequently with little loss of honey. He 

 makes his explanation of the existence of the in- 

 stinct that constructs hexagonal cells, and turns 

 on the fact that the bees must live over winter. 



But let us consider the work of the wasps in 

 the light of this theory. They do not use up 

 honey in making their cells, and they do not live 

 over the winter, so that natural selection has no 

 chance to preserve the best builders through any 

 such means as might be urged in the case of the 

 honey-bee. The wasps perish every fall, except- 

 ing a few fertile females that desert the nest and 

 live in some hiding place, as we have before ex- 

 plained, to commence the new colonies the next 

 year ; and yet several species of wasps and 

 hornets build six sided cells, like the honey-bee. 



There is nothing that aids at all, in the selec- 

 tion theory, even as Mr. Darwin has attempted 



