HYMENOPTEEA. 347 



which meet seize each other by the neck in the air. It happens 

 alsd that a bee, in a state of fury, throws itself on another who is 

 walking quietly and unsuspiciously along the edge of its hive. 

 When two bees are struggling in this manner they descend to the 

 ground, for in the air they would not be able to get purchase 

 enough to be sure of striking each other. They then engage in a 

 hand-to-hand fight, as the gladiators used formerly to do in the 

 circus. They are continually making stabs with their stings, but 

 almost always the point slips over the scales with which they are 

 covered. The combat is sometimes prolonged during an hour 

 before one of them has found the weak point in the other's natural 

 cuirasse and has buried its terrible weapon in the flesh. The 

 victor often leaves its sting in the wound which it has made, 

 and then dies, in its moment of triumph, through the loss of this 

 organ. Sometimes the two combatants, in spite of long and savage 

 assaults, cannot succeed in injuring cither's solid armour. In such 

 a case, they leave each other, tired of war, and fly away, despairing 

 of obtaining a victory. 



At the end of autumn, when the bees no longer find any flowers 

 in the fields to plunder, they finish rearing the eggs on the pollen 

 which they keep in store, and the queen ceases to lay. Numbed 

 by the cold of the winter, the workers cease to go out. Crowded 

 together, they mutually warm each other, and thus hold out, when 

 the cold is not too intense, against the rigour of the frosts. 

 Huddled up between the cakes of the honeycomb, they wait for the 

 return of fine weather, to recommence their labours at home and 

 abroad. After two or three years of this laborious existence the 

 bee dies, but to live again in a numerous posterity, as Virgil 

 says : 



" At genus immortale manet, multosque per annos 

 Stat fortuna domus, et avi numerantur avorum ! " 



There has been a good deal of discussion on the question 

 whether bees constitute monarchies or republics. According to 

 our opinion theirs is a true republic. As all the population is the 

 issue of a common mother, and as each bee of the female sex can 

 become a queen that is to say, a mother-bee, if it receives an 

 appropriate nourishment it is manifest that the title of queen has 

 been wrongly given to the mother-bee. After all, she is nothing 



