166 
ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE, 
a time before the social instincts became so complex or 
consolidated, and when, therefore, bees lived in lesser 
communities. Probably this is the explanation, although 
I think we might still have expected that before this 
period in their evolution had arrived bees might have de- 
veloped a compensating instinct, either not to allow the 
queen to lay so many drone eggs, or else to massacre the 
drones while still in the larval state. But here we must re- 
member that among the wasps the males do work (chiefly 
domestic work, for which they are fed by their foraging 
sisters) ; so it is possible that in the hive-bee the drones 
were originally useful members of the community, and 
that they have lost their primitively useful instincts. But 
whatever the explanation, it is very curious that here, 
among the animals which are justly regarded as exhibiting 
the highest perfection of instinct, we meet with perhaps 
the most flagrant instance in the animal kingdom of 
instinct unperfected. It is the more remarkable that 
the drone-killing instinct should not have been better de- 
veloped in the direction of killing the drones at the most 
profitable time — namely, in their larval or oval state — 
from the fact that in many respects it seems to have been 
advanced to a high degree of discriminative refinement. 
Thus, to quote Buchner, — 
That the massacre of the drones is not performed entirely 
from an instinctive impulse, but in full consciousness of the 
object to be gained, is proved by the circumstance that it is 
carried out the more completely and mercilessly the more fer- 
tile the queen shows herself to be. But in cases where this 
fertility is subject to serious doubt, or when the queen has been 
fertilised too late or not at all, and therefore only lays drones 7 
eggs, or when the queen is barren, and new queens, to be fer- 
tilised later, have to be brought up from working-bee larvae, 
then all or some of the drones are left alive, in the clear pre- 
vision that their services will be required later. . . . This wise 
calculation of consequences is further exemplified in that some- 
times the massacre of the drones takes place before the time for 
swarming, as, for instance, when long-continued unfavourable 
weather succeeds a favourable beginning of spring, and makes 
the bees anxious for their own welfare. If, however, the 
weather breaks, and work again becomes possible, .so that the 
