THE BEE NATION. 279 



skill that she makes a larval cell, fills it with honey or bee- 

 bread, and lays an egg therein in the course of half-an-hour. 

 The later - emerging fertile females and males help the 

 mother in building the cells and in tending the brood. The 

 other solitary species of bees act in a similar way. The 

 female of the mason bee (Megachile muraria) builds in the 

 spring her thimble-shaped larval cells, just as do swallows, 

 out of earth or sand kneaded with saliva, on the sunny sides 

 of garden and stable walls, and this all by herself, although 

 this kind of building requires much skill, industry, and 

 patience. She lays an egg in each cell, after she has put 

 therein a jelly of pollen and honey as food for the larva 

 after hatching. The cell is then closed, another built in 

 similar fashion, and so on. The partition- walls are also 

 cemented, so that the individual cells may have more 

 cohesion, and the whole is covered with a protecting roof of 

 rather rough mortar. We have seen among the ants that 

 although the queens do not work as a rule, they are yet 

 very well able to do so, and that there is indeed a single 

 t.pecies in which they regularly take part in the work. "We 

 have also seen them take a share of fighting, and that in very 

 powerful and effective fashion. It was also shown that 

 some fertile females after the wedding flight dug holes in 

 the ground, and just like wasps and humble bees founded 

 new States and colonies independently and without foreign 

 aid, whilst the founding of new colonies was generally done 

 by emigration from over-populated States. It seems as 

 though the apparent intellectual sloth or inferiority of the 

 fertile females of the bees and ants in comparison with their 

 working sisters is only apparent, and is grounded on the 

 difference of their work. At least the sensible conduct of 

 the queen-bees in occasional emergencies of life, as already 

 described, is in favor of such a conjecture, as is also the 

 founding of new colonies by individual female ants, or their 

 occasional participation in work or in battle. 



In view of such facts there is not the smallest reason to 

 prevent us from believing that the female bee originally 

 formed her own colony and was at once queen and worker 

 in her own person, just as are to-day her relations above- 

 mentioned. The now so idle drones may also in long past 

 times have rendered services which were later taken from 

 them by the industrious workers as the division of labor 



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