IX 



THE HABITS AND INTELLIGENCE OF 

 BEES 



THE little busy bee has been a great favourite 

 with the moralists and philosophers of this 

 much-preached-at world. She and her 

 works have been used to point so many morals to 

 the intended disadvantage of the lord of creation, 

 when his teachers take him to task in their sermons 

 from the book of nature, that it is time some one 

 undertook a serious examination of the claims of 

 the httle creature to be always posing as an example 

 to the rest of the world. Not that it is to be expected 

 that she would become less a subject of wonder and 

 admiration, but rather because it would be inter- 

 esting to be able to judge the exact amount of credit 

 and respect to which she is entitled as an intelligent 

 author of her own exemplary conduct. 



There is no doubt at all events about the place 

 of the bee in the insect tribe. In common with her 

 cousins the ants, wasps, etc., she belongs to the 

 order of Hymenoptera, ranking first in the insect 

 series not only in the higher development of the 

 cerebral gangUa, and general intelligence in habits 

 and mode of living which this implies, but also in 



123 



