130 
Beekeeping 
kept for several years in artificial nests and Lubbock 1 
reports keeping a queen ant of Formica fusca for nearly 
fifteen years, “by far the oldest insect on record.” Queen 
bees live several years and it may be that if worker bees 
were equally well cared for and fed they might live as long 
as the queen. We get no light on the potential length of life 
of bumblebees and wasps because the colony is not main¬ 
tained over winter; possibly if they were protected as bees 
are or could hibernate like ants they might live for several 
years. It is perhaps not legitimate to compare the larval 
or pupal stages of insects which require several years for 
their development ( e.g. Cicada, Lachnosterna). Among 
insects ants are perhaps the patriarchs, while most insects 
live but a few days, weeks or months. Many insects take 
little or no food as adults (e.g. females of Psychidae, Phry- 
ganids, males of Phylloxera) and it is therefore not surprising 
that they do not live long. If, now, we compare ants and 
bees, we find them similarly constructed, similarly they live 
in colonies and their activities are in many ways almost iden¬ 
tical. The marked differences are in the facts (1) that 
bees fly while ants do not and (2) that ants live on a mixed 
diet while bees in the adult stage live chiefly on sugars. 
ferred to Weismann’s essay “The Duration of Life” (Daucr des Lebens) 
in his Essays on Heredity (English translation, 1891, Oxford). Prof. 
Weismann considers death an adaptation, as secondarily acquired, produced 
by natural selection, not a primary necessity of living matter and that 
"unlimited existence of individuals would be a luxury without any corre¬ 
sponding advantage” to the species. Death is a “beneficial occurrence,” 
whereby worn-out individuals which are harmful to the species are re¬ 
moved, leaving room for those which are sound. According to this view, 
duration of life is hereditary (for which there is much evidence) and there¬ 
fore we should expect workers and queens to be potentially equal in dura¬ 
tion of life (i. c., p. 60), if the workers were as well protected as the queens. 
This is seemingly true for ants. However, it is difficult to comprehend 
the cause of an adaptation which leads to the use of food which fails to 
nourish the body and thereby shortens the term of life, since it is not evident 
in what way a shorter span of life for the workers is of benefit to the species. 
Beekeepers would probably be inclined to believe th'at if they could get 
worker bees which would live as long as do worker ants that it would be 
advantageous to the honey-producer, if not to the bees themselves. 
1 Lubbock, Sir John, Jr. Linn. Soe. (Zool.) XX, p. 133. 
