20 
city. By this extension the intervals between 
the combs are unavoidably contracted; but in 
winter well-stored magazines are essential, while 
from their state ot comparative inactivity spa- 
cious communications are less necessary. On 
the return of spring, however, when the cells 
are wanted for the reception of eggs, the bees 
contract the elongated cells to their former 
dimensions, and thus re-establish the just dis- 
tances between the combs which the care of 
their brood requires. But this is not all. Not 
only do they elongate the cells of the old combs 
when there is an extraordinary harvest of honey, 
but they actually give to the new cells which 
they construct on this emergency, a much 
greater diameter as well as a greater depth. 
“ The queen-bee, in ordinary circumstances, 
laces each egg in the centre of the pyramidal 
ttom of the cell, where it remains fixed by 
its natural gluten: but in an experiment of 
Huber, one whose fecundation had been re- 
tarded, had the first segments of her abdomen 
so swelled that she was unable to reach the 
bottom of the cells. She therefore attached her 
eggs (which were those of males) to their lower 
side, two lines from the mouth. As the larve 
always pass that state in the place where they 
are deposited, those hatched from the eggs in 
uestion remained in the situation assigned 
them. But the working bees, as if aware that 
in these circumstances the cells would be too 
short to contain the larve when fully grown, 
extended their length, even before the eggs 
were hatched. 
“ The working bees, in closing up the cells 
containing larve, invariably give a convex lid 
to the large cells of drones, and one nearly flat 
to the smaller cells of workers; but in an ex- 
periment instituted by Huber to ascertain the 
influence of the size of the cells on that of the 
included larve, he transferred the larve of 
workers to the cells of drones. What was the 
result? Did the bees still continue blindly to 
exercise their ordinary instinct? On the con- 
trary, they now placed a nearly flat lid upon 
these large cells, as if well aware of their being 
occupied by a different race of inhabitants.” 
But the most extraordinary of all these varia- 
tions of the operations of bees are seen in two 
cases which have been ofien produced for the 
sake of experiment, and of which the result 
appears to have been repeatedly and carefully 
observed. — 
“ If a hive be in possession of a queen duly 
fertilized, and consequently sure, the next sea- 
son, of a succession of males, all the drones, 
towards the approach of winter, are massacred 
by the workers with the most unrelenting fero- 
city. This would seem to be an impulse as 
naturally connected with the organization and 
very existence of the workers, as that which 
leads them to build cells or store up honey. 
But however certain the doom of the drones if 
the hive be furnished with a duly fertilized 
queen, their undisturbed existence through the 
winter is equally certain if the hive has lost 
its sovereign, or if her impregnation has been 
so retarded as to make a succession of males in 
the spring doubtful ; in such a hive the workers 
INSTINCT. 
do not destroy a single drone, though the hot 
test persecution rages in all the hives around 
them.” 
Again, “ in a hive which no untoward event 
has deprived of its queen, the workers take no 
other active steps in the education of her su 
cessors,—those of which one is to a el 
place when she has flown off at the of a 
new swarm in spring,—than to prepare a certam 
number of cells of extraordinary capacity fe 
their reception while in the egg, and to feed 
them when become grubs with a peculiar food 
until they have attained maturity. ‘This, th 
fore, is their ordinary instinct ; and it may hap 
pen that the workers of a hive may have no neces= 
sity, for a long series of successive generations, 
to exercise any other. But suppose them tol 
their queen. Far from sinking into that imac 
tive despair which was formerly attributed t 
them, after the commotion which the rapidly- 
circulated news of their calamity gave birth to 
has subsided, they betake themselves with an 
alacrity from which man, when under misfe 
tune, might deign to take a lesson, to the repa- 
ration of their loss. Several ordinary cells are 
without delay pulled down and converted into 
a variable number of royal cells, capacic 
enough for the education of one or more queen 
grubs selected out of the unhoused working 
grubs—which in this pressing et y are 
mercilessly sacrificed—and fed with ppre 
priate royal food to maturity. Thus sure of 
once more acquiring a head, the hive return te 
their ordinary labours, and in about sixte 
days one or more queens are produced, one 
which steps into day and assumes the reins of 
state.” if 
There can be no doubt that the perfect order 
and regularity seen in all the operations ¢ 
these societies of insects could not be main- 
tained without some mode of communication 
among the different individuals concerned in~ 
these operations ; and it appears di hi 
such means of communication exist, that 
it is in consequence of their being exercised, 
for example, that a swarm of bees, when it 
leaves a hive, takes the direction to a spot pre~ 
viously fixed on, and carefully examined, oy a 
small number of scouts, as 0 by I 
Knight.* \ ht} 
duly considered, we 
When such rig eh cons te 
cannot be surprised to find so intelligent a na- 
turalist as Mt. Spence acknowledging that he 
had at one time arranged them as indications 
of reason in these Peper on further 
consideration, we shall probably see cause to 
acquiesce in ‘his later and more matured judg 
ment, which cere reg to strictly ix oa 
tive, although singularly varying propensities; — 
chiefly on foo grounds, which exactly corre-— 
sean to what was stated in the beginning of 
this paper as the most distinctive characters of — 
instinct: 1. that although various contrivances 
are fallen on by all bees to enable them to con- — 
tinue their usual operations under varying ex- — 
ternal circumstances, yet there is no such v: 4 
observed either in the conduct of individuals © 
» +18 
* Phil. Trans. 1807. 
