SOCIAL COMMUNITIES OF BEES AND ANTS 207 
or egg-laying females, and workers or ineffective females, in 
which the development of the reproductive organs is arrested 
or modified. Distinct modes of behaviour are correlated with 
these structural differences. When a swarm of bees leaves a 
hive it generally consists of the old queen-mother and a 
certain number of the workers which are her offspring. When 
they have found new quarters, or have been safely housed 
under domestication, the workers busy themselves in making 
the cells in which the queen may lay her eggs, and in which 
food may be stored. In doing this the bees act in concert, 
Fia. 24.—Wood ant. 1, Queen; 2, male; 3, worker (from Shipley). 
and though the mathematical accuracy of the form and size 
of the cells has been much exaggerated, the comb which 
results is a very beautiful and well-adapted product of mutual 
co-operation in joint labour. And though intelligence may, 
under special circumstances, modify the method of procedure 
there can be little doubt that comb-building is primarily due 
to inherited instinct. The cells are not, however, all of the 
same size, those for the drones being somewhat larger than 
the cells in which the workers are reared, while much larger 
and differently shaped cells are prepared for the future queens. 
If instinctive therefore—as it seems to be in the main—the 
behaviour runs into different lines, the immediate causes of 
which, internal or external, we are not able accurately to 
assign. 
The reproductive behaviour of egg-laying in the queen- 
mother is also instinctive. It is believed that the drones are 
developed from eggs from which the queen bee withholds the 
fertilizing fluid, which she retains for months or years after the 
