SOCIAL INSECTS III 
is constantly being replenished during fine weather, to be drawn 
upon when it is wet. Old brood-cells may be enlarged for the 
same purpose, but are never put to their original use a second 
time. 
For one species of Humble-Bee (Boméus ruderatus) a remark- 
able arrangement has been described. It is said that in every 
nest one bee is told off as a “trumpeter”. This individual 
sounds veverllé at from 3 to 4 a.m., rousing her fellows to the 
labours of the day, and if removed is replaced by another. The 
habit of storing food, existing to some extent in Humble-Bees, 
is carried much further in the Honey-Bee (Afzs mellifica) and 
its numerous relatives, and has probably had much to do with the 
evolution of the complex social life which these exhibit. It 
enables a community to live on through the unfavourable season 
of the year, thus becoming permanent, and this continuity has 
rendered possible division of labour to a greater degree, being 
at the same time associated with well-marked differences between 
the castes, so far as queen and workers are concerned. The 
former is of comparatively large size, and her only duty is to 
produce eggs, while the varied labours of the hive fall to the 
lot of her smaller sisters. The community is only temporary 
as regards the drones, none of which survive the winter, but are 
replaced by a fresh set which hatch out the following year. A 
few further details regarding the Honey-Bee will be given in a 
later section. 
The Social Wasps (Vesféde) live in communities which, so 
far as at present known, exist for one season only, as in Humble- 
Bees, to which they present a further resemblance in the fact 
that the workers are not markedly unlike the queen, and are more 
or less capable of laying eggs. The building-material, however, 
is not wax but a sort of paper, made by chewing woody matter 
and mixing it with a fluid secreted by certain glands of the 
mouth-region. We may take to illustrate the annual cycle one 
of three British species (Vespa Germanica, fig. 1096) in which 
the nest is constructed underground. The foundress queen begins 
work in spring, making a small number of cells in the place which 
is to be the top of the nest, and depositing an egg in each. The 
cells are neither stored nor closed. Her next task consists in 
feeding the grubs as they hatch out, first with honey or fruit- 
juice, and later with the bodies of insects, especially flies. By 
