510 INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 
duly fertilized, and consequently sure the next season of 
2 succession of males, all the drones, as I have before 
stated, towards the approach of winter are massacred 
by the workers with the most unrelenting ferocity. To 
this seemingly cruel course they are doubtless impelled 
by an imperious instinct; and as it is regularly followed 
in every hive thus circumstanced, it would seem at the 
first view to be an impulse as intimately connected with 
the organization and very existence of the workers, and 
as incapable of change, as that which leads them to build 
cells or to store up honey. But this is far from being 
the case. However certain the doom of the drones this 
autumn, if the hive be furnished with a duly-fertilized 
queen, their undisturbed existence over the winter is 
equally sure if the hive have lost its sovereign, or her 
impregnation have been so retarded as to make a suc- 
cession of males in the spring doubtful. In such a hive 
the workers do not destroy a single drone, though the 
hottest persecution rages in all the hives around them. 
Now, how are we to explain this difference of conduct? 
Are we to suppose that the bees know and reason upon 
this alteration in the circumstances of their community— 
that they infer the possibility of their entire extinction if 
the whole male stock were destroyed when without a queen 
—and that thus influenced by a wise policy they restrain 
the fury they would otherwise have exercised? This 
would be at once to make them not only gifted with rea- 
son, but endowed with a power of looking before and 
after, and a command over the strongest natural propen- 
sities, superior to what could be expected in a similar 
* See above, p. 173—~ 
