HYMENOPTERA. 39 



at the sides, and six bees below are constantly encroaching and fitting in the sides 

 and corners of their own cells, around that of each single bee. Bees have proved 

 in practice what to the mathematicians is inevitable in theory. Nevertheless, bees 

 are not compelled to form their combs in this or that way without any power of 

 adaptation to special circumstances. They construct their comb and hang their 

 connections wherever the holding seems likely to be most secure, and thus, on a less 

 complicated plane of intelligence, carry out precisely what human beings accom- 

 plish under more complex conditions, namely, they adapt means to ends. The 

 difference is one of degree, not of kind. 



The fact that eggs are laid by a single female of unusual size is note- 

 worthy. Bee-colonies, however, unlike those of the social wasps, are permanent, 

 hibernating during the winter. Each wasp-colony or nest originates from a single 

 female, which survives through the winter and by herself lays the foundation of 

 a new colony. Among bees a certain number of workers, or non-fertile females, 

 are set apart as maids-in-waiting, who attend to the queen's wants in the matter of 

 food, which are considerable during the period of laying. A single egg is laid in 

 each cell, and, as mentioned above, larger cells are set apart for the queens ; the 

 difference between these and the non-fertile females being entirely brought about 

 by the difference in food. This, however, is not the case with the males, and it is a 

 disputed point whether the queen can control the sex of any particular egg, or 

 whether she can select a male egg as she proceeds with the laying. Certain it is, 

 at any rate, that when she reaches a drone or male-cell, which is larger, she 

 deposits an egg which will become a male. It has usually been asserted that 

 unfertilised eggs become males, while those which are fertilised turn out females. 

 This may be the case, and certainly would tend to bear out the general truth that 

 absence of nutrition tends to give the male element greater preponderance in the 

 progeny, though the immediate physical conditions on which the sex of the offspring 

 depends are imperfectly known. A superabundance of males is, as a rule, 

 associated with failing provisions and loss of bodily energy, and this is borne out 

 by the fact that when the queen is old she is apt to lay too many drone-eggs. 

 This, however, is a failing which the community cannot put up with, and if the 

 queen be unable to produce profitable offspring she is put to death. Still both 

 bees and queens well know that the one supreme calamity which can befall the 

 bee-community is to be left without a queen, not because they need her rule, 

 but because on her alone rests the future of the colony. And it has been 

 asserted that if two queens only remain, and are contesting for the mastery, 

 and each should simultaneously have the chance to deliver a sting which might 

 prove fatal to both, each releases the other, dreading to leave the hive queenless. 



Inseparable from these phenomena is that of swarming or the 

 budding off of new colonies from the mother-hive. Owing to the 

 instinct of the workers, who can arrest or accelerate development by regulating 

 the food-supply, a new queen is always ready when a swarm of bees is prepared 

 to leave the overcrowded hive. This queen is, however, not permitted to leave 

 her cell till the actual moment of flight ; and all along has to be protected from 

 the reigning queen, by whom, if opportunity were afforded she would be killed. 

 Indeed, when the swarming season is over, the actual sovereign is permitted to 



