INSECT SOCIOLOGY 203 



some as ventilators, and some as guards at the en- 

 trance of the hive. The queen, on the other hand, never 

 does any work at all except to lay eggs. The drones 

 simply act as consorts for the queens. The founding 

 of a new community by the swarming away of a new 

 (or the old) queen with several thousand workers is very 

 different from the establishing of new wasp or bumble- 

 bee communities, in which an unaided queen does all 

 the work necessary to get the community started, 

 making a beginning nest herself and caring for the first 

 brood of young. 



There are two other kinds of communal insects, 

 namely the termites, or "white ants/* with a number of 

 different species mostly limited to the tropics and semi- 

 tropics, and the true ants, with a great many species, 

 occurring abundantly all over the world. The true ants 

 have often been called the most successful and, because 

 of their high structural and economic specialization, 

 the "highest" insects. Both the termites and the ants 

 have more different "castes," or kinds of individuals, 

 belonging to a species than the social wasps and bees, 

 which have only three castes, that is, males (drones) 

 fertile females (queens) and infertile females (workers). 



The termites have usually two and sometimes three 

 kinds of workers, namely, minim and major woikers 

 and soldiers, and they have, besides, both "comple- 

 mentary" or reserve males and females in addition to 

 the regular males and queens. These complementary 

 forms can replace the regular males and queens in cases 

 of emergency. 



The true ants also have varying numbers of castes and 



