410 



INSTINCT OF INSECTS. 



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 circum- 

 stanced, it would seem at the first view to be an impulse as 

 intimately connected with the organisation 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 fertilised 

 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 succession of males in 

 the spring doubtful. In such a hive the workers do not de- 

 stroy 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 reason, but endowed with a power 

 of looking before and after, and a command over the strongest 

 natural propensities, superior to what could be expected in a 

 similar case even from a society of men, and is obviously 

 unwarrantable. The only probable supposition is, clearly, 

 that a new instinct is developed suited to the extraordinary 

 situation in which the community stands, leading them now 

 to regard with kindness the drones, for whom otherwise they 

 would have felt the most violent aversion. 



In this instance, indeed, it would perhaps be more strictly 

 correct to say (which, however, is equally wonderful) that 

 the old instinct was extinguished ; but in the case of the loss 

 of a queen, to which I am next to advert, which is followed 

 by positive operations, the extraordinary development of a 

 new and peculiar instinct is indisputable. 



