ON THE ECONOMY OF BEES. 



excluded from their nest would neither defend it. nor themselves, at a 

 very early period of my life ; and I profited so often by the discovery as 

 a schoolboy, that I am quite certain of the fact I state ; and I do not 

 entertain any doubt, though I speak from experiments less accurately 

 made, that the actions of bees under similar circumstances would be the 



III. ON SOME CIRCUMSTANCES RELATING TO THE ECONOMY OF BEES, 



[Read before the ROYAL SOCIETY, May 22nd, 1828.] 



IN a paper which I had the honour to address to the Royal Society 

 about twenty years ago (in the year 1807) upon the Economy of Bees, I 

 stated, that having adapted cavities in hollow trees for the reception of 

 swarms of those insects, I had observed that several days previous to the 

 arrival of a swarm, a considerable number of bees were constantly 

 employed in examining the state of the tree, and particularly of every dead 

 knot above the cavity which appeared likely to admit water into it. At 

 that period it appeared to me rather extraordinary, that animals so 

 industrious as bees, and so much disposed to make the best use of their 

 time, should, at that important season of the year, waste so much of it in 

 apparently useless repetitions of the same act : for I, at that time, sup- 

 posed that on different days, and at different periods of the same day, I 

 saw only the same individuals. But in a case which at a subsequent 

 period came under my observation, where the cavity into which the bees 



* A curious circumstance relative to wasps attracted the notice of some of my friends last 

 year, and has not, I believe, been satisfactorily accounted for. A greater number of female 

 wasps were observed in different parts of the kingdom, in the spring and early part of the 

 summer of that year, than at almost any former period ; yet scarcely any nests, or labouring 

 wasps, were seen in the following autumn ; the cause of which I believe I can explain. Attend- 

 ing to some peach-trees in my garden, late in the autumn of the year 1805, on which I had been 

 making experiments, I noticed, during many successive days, a vast number of female wasps, 

 which appeared to have been attracted there by the shelter and warmth of a south wall ; but I 

 did not observe any males. At length, during a warm gleam in the middle of one of the days, a 

 single male appeared, and selected a female close to me ; and this was the only male I saw in 

 that season. The male wasp, which is readily distinguishable from the female and labourer, 

 by his long antennae and shining wings, and by a blacker and more slender body, is rarely seen 

 out of the nest, except in very warm days, like the drone bee ; and the nests of wasps, though 

 very abundant in the year 1805, were not formed till remarkably late in the season ; and thence 

 I conclude that the males had not acquired maturity till the weather had ceased to be warm, 

 and that the females, in consequence, retired to their long winter sleep without having had any 

 intercourse with them. 



