Community Life in the Animal Kingdom. 11 



of ants. Thus the queen of the bee-hive becomes in a 

 higher degree the principle of union for the workers 

 of her colony and for the regulated exercise of their 

 instincts. For this very reason but one full-grown 

 qu€en is tolerated in a bee-hive, while in ant nests 

 several may be found. What follows may ultimately 

 account for the fact. 



The workers among ants live much longer than 

 among bees. According to my observations, our 

 Formica species, as a rule, attain an age of two, some- 

 times of three years, whilst the workers among bees 

 die after a few weeks or months. For this reason a 

 colony of ants can continue to exist for several years 

 without a queen, and even produce males through 

 parthenogenesis. This longer duration of life with 

 workers among ants may perhaps explain, why they 

 are less dependent on their queen than bees, and fairly 

 accounts for the fact, that, with ants, queens are 

 needed as the unitive principle of the colony in a far 

 inferior degree. Hence in a community of ants the 

 number of generating, impregnated females may be 

 almost unlimited. In a populous nest of the hill-ant 

 {Formica rufa) near Exaten (Holland), I once found 

 more than sixty full-grown queens. A similar num- 

 ber I met with in a nest of the small, red stinging 

 ant (Myrmica scabrinodis) . In fact, by far the 

 greater part of European ant species have, as a rule, 

 several queens in every colony of long standing. 

 With foreign ants the case is pretty much the same. 



A community of bees, therefore, having only one 

 queen, may aptly be compared with a monarchy. But 

 on account of the great number of oviparous mem- 



