142 A PHILOSOPHER WITH NATURE 



intelligence which enables her to lay at wiU a drone- 

 egg or a worker-egg, for in the hive she often passes 

 immediately from the worker to the drone cells or 

 vice versd, depositing an egg at the bottom of each 

 which always produces a bee of the sex intended. 

 This instinct is rendered more wonderful when it is 

 remembered that the number of drones produced 

 in a hive is always regulated by the wants of the 

 colony. The questions suggested by the manner 

 of the production of the worker-bee are also highly 

 interesting. It has been mentioned that the bees, 

 when they require a queen, wiU take a worker-egg 

 or grub and by especial feeding rear from it an 

 ordinary queen bee. It has generally been stated 

 that the young queen is in such cases fed with richer 

 food known as royal food, but it seems by no means 

 unlikely that we shall soon learn that this is slightly 

 incorrect, and that the queen grub is in such cases 

 simply fed with as much food as it requires. This 

 would mean that the queen state is that to which 

 aU the worker-grubs would develop in normal cir- 

 cumstances, and that the bees deliberately and for 

 social reasons prevent this natural development by 

 a regime of low diet. One who has made a special 

 study of bees gives it as the result of his observations 

 that the bees feed the worker-grubs sparingly, as if 

 fearing an excessive development — a truly wonder- 

 ful instinct which has enabled the bees to solve 

 one of the most difficult of social problems. In the 

 construction of the honeycomb the bees anticipated 

 the mathematicians : have they not here again 

 anticipated the philosophers ? 



