210 SCIENCE REMAKING THE WORLD 



honey-bee, for example, goes to an extreme hardly 

 dreamed of yet by man as possible to him. If he did 

 dream of it, it would be a bad dream. The worker 

 honey-bees literally kill themselves working for the 

 community. The summer foragers fly back and forth 

 between hive and the flowers from which they bring 

 pollen and nectar until they can fly no more. They 

 often fall dead with their loads at the very entrance to 

 the hive. They have no children of their own; the 

 royal mother produces all the children; they take care 

 of them. The males do nothing but act as royal con- 

 sorts in the summer and then they die or are killed by 

 the workers, as useless individuals, when winter comes 

 on. The queen never works. She simply lays eggs. 

 And so on. Not a kind of social organization we want, 

 but a successful one, biologically. 



The insects go in strongly for parasitism, also a bio- 

 logically successful way of making a living. But we try 

 to discourage it in human society. Some of the ants 

 do nothing but fight and rob. They have even given 

 up caring for their own young. They enslave other 

 ants to act as nurses and to collect food for the whole 

 community. Other ants convert some of their com- 

 munity members into living honey-jars, which stuff 

 themselves with honey until their stomachs are so full 

 and their bodies so swollen that they can hardly move 

 and simply lie in a gallery or room in the ant nest ready 

 to give up some of their honey by regurgitation to the 

 active workers who come and tap them with their 

 antennae. 



Insect sociology is interesting, but most of its teach- 



