HYMENOPTEEA. 349 



pillars and flying buttresses of wax a piece of the honeycomb 

 which had fallen down. At the same time, put on their guard by 

 this sad accident, they set to work to fortify the principal frame- 

 work of the other combs, and to fasten them more securely to the 

 roof o f the hive. This took place in the month of January, and 

 therefore not during the working season, and when, to provide 

 against a distant eventuality was the only question. M. Walond 

 has reported an analogous observation. Is there not here, in the 

 first place, a true and excellent reasoning, then an act, an opera- 

 tion, a work, executed as the result of this reasoning ? Now, an 

 operation which is performed as the result of reasoning, is attribut- 

 able to intelligence. Again, the bees give different sorts of food 

 to the different sorts of larvae. They know how to change this 

 food when an accident has deprived the hive of its queen, and it 

 is necessary to replace her ; this is another proof of intelligence. 



But it is, above all, in the face of an enemy that the intellectual 

 faculties of these insects show themselves. There are always at 

 the entrance of every hive three or four bees, which have nothing 

 else to do but to guard the door, to keep a watch over incomers 

 and outgoers, and to prevent an enemy or an intruder from 

 slipping into the community. When one of them perceives an 

 enemy on the borders of the hive, it dashes forwards towards it, 

 and by a menacing and significant buzzing warns it to retire. 

 If it does not understand the warning, which is a rare occurrence, 

 for men, horses, dogs, and animals of all kinds know perfectly 

 well the danger to -which they expose themselves by approaching 

 too near to a hive in full operation,* the bee gets a reinforcement 

 and very soon returns to the combat with a determined battalion. 

 All this is, it seems to us, intelligence. 



M. de Frariere, in his work on bees and bee-keeping, tells the 

 following anecdote : A bee-keeper had an apiary in his garden. 

 But he very soon found out that certain birds, called bee-eaters 

 or wasp-eaters, had made their home near it. Perched on the 

 trees, they eat all the bees they could seize on in their pro- 



* The bee's sting may lead to very serious consequences. It often happens 

 that large animals, such as horses or oxen, tied up in the neighbourhood of a bee- 

 hive, and which have disturbed the bees, die in consequence of stings received from 

 them. 



