166 



PERFECT SOCIETIES OF INSECTS. 



Many means have been had recourse to for the dispersion 

 of mobs and the allaying of popular tumults. In St. Peters- 

 burgh ( so travellers say) a fire-engine playing upon them 

 does not always cool their choler ; but were a few hives of bees 

 thus employed, their discomfiture would be certain. The ex- 

 periment 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 em- 

 ployed 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 escaped unstung. 1 



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 2 and their fate, it seems not 

 improbable that, when the workers become too old to be use- 

 ful 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 3 , 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 conqueror 

 is not always able to extricate this weapon, and then both 

 perish. The duration of the conflict is uncertain ; sometimes 

 it lasts an hour, and at others is very soon determined : and 

 occasionally it happens that both parties, fatigued and despair- 

 ing of victory, give up the contest and fly away. 



But the wars of bees are not confined to single combats ; 

 general actions now and then take place between two swarms. 

 This happens when one takes a fancy to a hive that another 

 has preoccupied. In fine warm weather, strangers that wish 

 to be received amongst them meet with but an indifferent 



1 Lesser, 1. ii. 171. 



2 See above, p. 108. 



3 Reaum. v. 360 — 365. 



