268 THE BEE NATION. 



food, wherein they generally do not succeed, being sent back 

 by the guard. The Australian experience also that bees 

 taken there from Europe quite gave up storing honey for the 

 winter after the lapse of a few years, because they learned 

 by experience that the continual summer rendered such 

 action unnecessary, while they otherwise kept their hives in 

 the most perfect order is irreconcilable with the idea of an 

 inborn or irresistible work instinct. 



This opinion comes to sad shipwreck on the so-called 

 robber bees, which try to lighten or quite to spare their 

 labor by falling in crowds upon other already-filled hives, 

 mastering the guards and the inhabitants, robbing the hives 

 and carrying off the stores thereof to their own dwelling. 

 If this plan has succeeded once or more, they, like men, find 

 more pleasure in robbery and in plunder than in their own 

 work, and become at last formidable robber states. Single 

 bees also go out robbing, and try to penetrate into a strange 

 hive undiscovered and in cautious fashion, showing by their 

 whole behavior that they are perfectly conscious of their 

 bad conduct, whereas the workers belonging to the, hive fly 

 in quickly and openly in full consciousness of their right. 

 If the solitary robbers and sweet-stealers succeed in their 

 attempt they lead other bees from their hive into the same 

 theft. These are always followed by more tempted ones, 

 so that finally the robber state is formed. The bee-masters, 

 therefore, in order to avoid injury from robbery, are obliged to 

 put an end to the mischief as soon as possible, before the bad 

 example has infected others. The inhabitants of an attacked 

 hive naturally defend themselves with all their strength, so 

 that the burglary generally is only successful in sick or weak 

 hives. In powerful, well-organised communities, the robbers 

 are, as a rule, flung back by the guards and pursued. If, 

 however, they find a hive from the mouth of which they are 

 not driven away, but are let to slip in, they eat the honey, 

 carry it off to their hive, manifest their delight at their own 

 entrance, and offer their proboscides to their sisters to let 

 them taste the new store. They soon return in increased 

 numbers and more eager than before, and try to get into the 

 hive in every way, by crevices and so on. Arrived within, 

 they try before all else to kill the queen, for they well know 

 that the assailed hive will then lose unity and power of 

 resistance, and that the inhabitants will weakly surrender 



