333 BRITISH BEES. 



absorbing love of the offspring. The latter is more emi- 

 nently developed in the social bees than in any other 

 group of the family of these insects. In the solitary 

 bees it presents itself as a blind impulse, unconscious of 

 its object ; for did we admit the consciousness of the 

 purpose of their labours, we should evidently endow 

 them with reason. How could they know, without re- 

 flection, that the food they store in the receptacle they 

 form for the egg they will deposit, and which receptacle 

 is exactly adapted to the size that the larva which will 

 be hatched from it will take, is to nurture a creature 

 they will never see, and whose wonderful transformations 

 they will not therefore witness ? In the hive bee the ma- 

 ternal instinct exhibits itself as an energy diffused though 

 a multitude of individuals, but these witness the results 

 of their solicitude, and exclusively promote its successful 

 issue ; and in these also the instinct of self-preservation 

 is a diffused impulse, which likewise includes the pre- 

 servation of the society. 



As male and female conjunctively make up the species, 

 thus do the queen-bee and the neuters collectively make 

 up one sex, — the mother, — for the functions performed 

 by the female alone in the case of the solitary kinds of 

 bees are, in the genus Apis, separately executed. The 

 cares and labours of maternity devolve upon these neuters, 

 while the queen-bee's maternal function is limited to 

 merely laying the eggs with which she is replete, with 

 the instinctive power of selecting for them their proper 

 depository, — each of which is adapted in size to that of 

 the sex which will be produced. Her maternal instinct 

 stops abruptly here, without the development of an after- 

 thought or care for their future thriving. The instinct 

 of the neuters, like the anticipative promptings of the 



