242 THE HONEY-BEE. 



are other manifestations of an internal guide towards 

 useful labour. 



Once more, the series of remarkable facts con- 

 nected with their respect and attention and service to 

 their sovereign ; their treatment of queens introduced 

 into hives possessing a queen, or without one ; the 

 permission, and even urging, of rival monarchs to 

 fight dt outrance ; the expedients adopted to repair, if 

 by any means it is possible, the loss of a queen — all 

 these facts point, still further, to a power, by whose 

 almost unerring operation extraordinary results are 

 secured for the well-being and the very continuance 

 of the race. 



Nor is it easy to see how, on the principles of 

 evolution alone, this faculty can have been acquired ; 

 for the remarkable point, and one apparently inex- 

 plicable on the development-theory, is this, that the 

 two portions of the community alone concerned in 

 the actual propagation of the race are absolutely 

 without the special endowment of which we have 

 been speaking, at least so far as the particular 

 directions of its manifestation just mentioned enable 

 us to conclude. The queen among bees, unlike her 

 representative among wasps, is quite unable to 

 perform any of the processes preliminary to egg- 

 laying. She cannot secrete wax or build comb. She 

 cannot fly abroad to collect honey. She has no 

 means of gathering pollen. She can neither procure 

 nor use propolis. So helpless, indeed, is she, that, 

 bereft of attendants, she is unable to feed herself 

 sufficiently to maintain life. The drones, if not so 

 absolutely helpless, are equally incapable of all 

 constructive work, of the power of collecting honey. 



