PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 205 
certain. The experiment has been tried. Lesser tells us, 
that in 1525, during the confusion occasioned by. a time 
of war, a mob of peasants assembling in Hohnstein (in 
Thuringia) attempted to pillage the house of the minister 
of Elende ; who having in vain employed all his eloquence 
to dissuade them from their design, ordered his domestics 
to fetch his bee-hives, and throw them in the middle of 
this furious mob. The effect was what might be expected ; 
they were immediately put to flight, and happy if they es- 
caped unstung?. 
The anger of bees is not confined to man; it is not 
seldom excited against their own species. From what I 
have said above respecting the black bees” and their fate, 
it seems not improbable that, when the workers become 
too old to be useful to the community, they are either 
killed, or expelled the society. _Reaumur, who observed 
that the inhabitants of the same hive had often mortal 
combats, was of opinion that this was their object in these 
battles*, which take place, he observes, in fine or warm 
weather. On these occasions the bees are sometimes so 
eager, that examining them with a lens does not part 
them :—their whole object is to pierce each other with 
their sting, the stroke of which, if once it penetrates to 
the muscles, is mortal. In these engagements the con- 
queror is not always able to extricate this weapon, and 
then both perish. The duration of the conflict is uncer- 
tain; sometimes it lasts an hour, and at others is very soon 
determined : and occasionally it happens that both parties, 
fatigued and despairing of victory, give up the contest 
and fly away. 
But the wars of bees are not confined to single combats ; 
a Lesser, L.ii,171, » See above, p. 128. ¢ Reaum. vy. 360-365. 
ifs 
