MUTUAL AID AND COMMUNAL LIFE AMONG ANIMALS 387 



We are accustomed to think of honeybees as the inhabitants 

 of beehives, but there were bees before there were hives. The 

 "bee tree" is familiar to many of us. The bees, in Nature, 

 make their home in the hollow of some dead or decaying tree- 

 trunk, and carry on there all the industries which characterize 

 the busy communities in the hives. A honeybee community 

 comprises three kinds of individuals (Fig. 241) namely, a 

 fertile female or queen, numerous males or drones, and many 

 infertile females or workers. These three kinds of individuals 

 differ in external appearance sufficiently to be readily recogniz- 

 able. The workers are smaller than the queens and drones, 

 and the last two differ in the shape of the abdomen, or hind 

 body, the abdomen of the queen being longer and more slender 

 than that of the male or drone. In a single community there 

 is one queen, a few hundred drones, and ten to thirty thousand 

 workers. The number of drones and workers varies at different 

 times of the year, being smallest in winter. Each kind of 

 individual has certain work or business to do for the whole 

 community. The queen lays all the eggs from which new bees 

 are born; that is, she is the mother of the entire community. 

 The drones or males have simply to act as royal consorts ; upon 

 them depends the fertilization of the eggs. The workers 

 undertake all the food-getting, the care of the young bees, the 



FIG. 241. Honeybee: o, Drone or male; 6, worker or female; c, queen or fertile female. 



comb-building, the honey-making all the industries with which 

 we are more or less familiar that are carried on in the hive. 

 And all the work done by the workers is strictly work for the 

 whole community; in no case does the worker bee work for 

 itself alone ; it works for itself only in so far as it is a member of 

 the community. 



How varied and elaborately perfected these industries are 

 may be perceived from a brief account of the life history of a 



