SOCIAL COMMUNITIES OF BEES AND ANTS 209 
first act is to go round to the other royal cells, tear them open, 
and sting to death the helpless occupants. Meanwhile the old 
queen may have led off the surplus population in a swarm, and 
the new queen reigns in her stead. Idle drones have also been 
emerging from their cells ; and when the young queen starts 
forth on her nuptial flight she is followed by the drones, mates 
with one of them, and returns a potential mother of thousands. 
So long as there is abundance of food the useless drones are 
tolerated ; but when there is scarcity they are ejected, and 
drone eggs, larvee, and pupz are said to be destroyed. 
In the works of Huber and others, further marvels of hive- 
life, some well-authenticated, others more or less doubtful, are 
duly set forth. But enough has here been said to show that 
a social community of bees presents problems of animal be- 
haviour which are sufficiently difficult of explanation. How 
far is the behaviour instinctive? How far is it due to ex- 
perience individually acquired ? Are we constrained to admit 
a rational factor? If so, is it, like human reason, the result 
of generalization from experience of the relationships of 
phenomena ? Or are there features of insect psychology which 
differ from any of which we have firsthand knowledge? These 
questions are more easily put than answered. As in the case 
of bird-migration, so too in that of the social life of bees, 
there is much that honesty forces us to confess our inability 
satisfactorily to explain. 
So, too, is it in the social life of ants. Among these insects 
the males and perfect females bear wings, though these appen- 
dages may be subsequently shed. In some kinds, however, there 
are also wingless males or females capable of exercising the re- 
productive function. The workers are wingless, and are often of 
two or three kinds, differing in form and appearance, and in some 
cases playing different parts in the social economy. There is also, 
in some cases, a separate class of large-headed soldier ants ; so 
that differentiation of structure among the sterile females is 
earried further in ants than in bees. Their nests generally 
consist of an elaborate system of chambers and passages, either 
built with pine-needles, as in our common wood ant, or 
Pp 
