SEPTEMBER 233 



glands. If bees are the most intelligent of insects (Lord 

 Avebury gives the palm to the ants), so they have usually 

 been considered the most inveterate Tories, as shown by 

 enduring political constitution of the social species and 

 their immemorial styles of architecture. But here is 

 evidence of the progressive leaven in these ancient com- 

 munities. 



XXXV 



One is sometimes asked whether our bumble-bees are 

 solitary or social insects. Of course there are Bumbie- 

 many kinds of solitary bees, and these not the ''**^ 

 least intellectual of their kind; but the whole race o 

 Bonibus is social, forming communities of males, females 

 and sexless workers, acting under the direction of a queen. 

 Perhaps colony would be a better term than community, 

 seeing that there exist peculiar causes to prevent the 

 inhabitants of a bumble's nest ever approaching in number 

 to a hive of honey-bees. In the first place, the frosts of 

 autumn destroy the whole population, except a few 

 females. Each of these survivors sets about in spring 

 the foundation of the new colony over which she is to 

 reign. Hard work she has at first, building a nest of 

 moss in a hole in the ground or in some wall. Under 

 the moss she builds a cell of wax — not a very neat one, 

 indeed, but capacious enough to be lined with a paste 

 made of honey and pollen, and in this she lays several 

 eggs. If this cell is taken away, Hoffer found that the 

 queen died of a broken heart, or, as a bee has no heart, let 

 us say of the ruptured mesothoracic ganglion. After the 

 first cell is finished and sealed, her majesty takes a few 

 days' rest upon it ; then she begins a second cell, and, if 



