278 THE BEE NATION. 



among the ants that their whole education is completed in 

 the course of a few days.* 



There is indeed a difficulty touching the inborn and inhe- 

 rited building tendency of the bees, or possibly of an inherited 

 idea of a certain cell-form (which last opinion will not be 

 dealt with further owing to the great obscurity which still 

 surrounds the facts and laws of psychical and psychical 

 heredity), which might be absolutely fatal to such a sup- 

 position. How can we speak of inheritance, it is asked, 

 among creatures which, like the neuter bees and ants, or 

 like the merely working members of the insect colonies, 

 close the cycle of their whole existence with their personal 

 activity, without being able to bequeath their acquired capa- 

 bilities, habits, or talents to their posterity ? while, on the 

 other hand, such a transmission is impossible on the part of 

 the real parents, the non-working fertile females and males 

 of the colony, which are far behind the workers in intelligence 

 and skill ! 



A glance at the historical origin and the past of the bee 

 nation will give the answer to this apparently difficult ques- 

 tion. For there can be no doubt that, as already partly 

 explained, the present organisation of this State and especially 

 its highly developed division of labor, which saves the real 

 founders of the colony from all work, is only the gradual 

 and slowly-ripened product of historical evolution, and that 

 the organisation has not always been that which it is to-day. 

 We find transitional steps here in large numbers, as in the 

 cell-building, among the nearest relations of the bees. The 

 fertile females and males work among the solitary or 

 unsocial bees, as well as among humble bees and wasps; 

 indeed by far the greatest and most important share of the 

 work falls to the lot of the females. The female wasp her- 

 self builds her nest and her cells in the spring, lays her eggs 

 in them, and nurses and feeds her young until the later- 

 emerging workers can relieve her of her heavy work. But 

 even then the female is ceaselessly busy, while the males, 

 emerging at the end of August, clean the nest and carry out 

 excrements and dead bodies. The female humble bee is not 

 less industrious, but works in spring with such rapidity and 



* Further details on the gradual development of the cell-building 

 instinct of bees will be found in Graber (loc. cit. ii., p. 178, etc.). 



