THE HONEY-BEE AND OTHER SOCIAL ANIMALS 3°9 



lowers fly away together, finally alighting on some tree 

 branch and hanging there in a dense mass. This is the 

 familiar act of ' ' swarming. ' ' Scouts leave the swarm to 

 find a new home, to which thej^ finally conduct the others. 

 Thus is founded a new colony. 



There are many more interesting things to be learned 

 of the life in a honey-bee community; how it protects 

 itself from the dangers of starvation, when food is scarce 

 or winter comes on, by killing the useless drones and the 

 immature bees in egg and larval stages ; how the instinct 

 of home-finding has been so highly developed that the 

 worker may go miles away for honey and nectar, flying 

 with unerring accuracy back to the hive ; of the extraor- 

 dinarily nice structural modifications which adapt the 

 bee so perfectly for its complex and varied affairs ; and of 

 the tireless persistence of the workers until they fall ex- 

 hausted and dying in the performance of their duties. 

 The community, it is important to note, is a persistent or 

 continuous one. The workers do not live long, the spring 

 broods usually not over two or three months, and the fall 

 broods not more than six or eight months; but new bees 

 are hatching while the old ones are dying, and the com- 

 munity as a whole always persists. The queen may live 

 several years, perhaps as many as five. She lays about 

 one million eggs a year. 



The honey-bees offer a splendid example of mutual aid 

 instead of bitter war among individuals of a species. To 

 be sure there is competition among different honey-bee 

 communities for food, but among the thousands of indi- 

 viduals composing a single colony every one works for 

 the benefit of the whole great family; the workers devote 

 their whole life unceasingly for others. 



Ants. — More than two thousand different kinds or spe- 

 cies of ants are known, and all of them live in large 

 communities or households and show a truly communal 



