332 
BRITISH BEES. 
absorbing love of tbe offspring. The latter is more emi¬ 
nently developed in the social bees than in any other 
group of the family of these insects. In the solitary 
bees it presents itself as a blind impulse, unconscious of 
its object; for did we admit the consciousness of the 
purpose of their labours, we should evidently endow 
them with reason. How could tliev know, without re- 
«/ * 
flection, that the food they store in the receptacle they 
form for the egg they will deposit, and which receptacle 
is exactly adapted to the size that the larva which will 
be hatched from it will take, is to nurture a creature 
thev will never see, and whose wonderful transformations 
they will not therefore witness ? In the hive bee the ma¬ 
ternal instinct exhibits itself as an energy diffused though 
a multitude of individuals, but these witness the results 
of their solicitude, and exclusively promote its successful 
issue; and in these also the instinct of self-preservation 
is a diffused impulse, which likewise includes the pre¬ 
servation of the society. 
As male and female conjunctively make up the species, 
thus do the queen-bee and the neuters collectively make 
up one sex,—the mother,—for the functions performed 
by the female alone in the case of the solitary kinds of 
bees are, in the genus Apis, separately executed. The 
cares and labours of maternity devolve upon these neuters, 
while the queen-bee’s maternal function is limited to 
merely laying the eggs with which she is replete, with 
the instinctive power of selecting for them their proper 
depository,—each of which is adapted in size to that of 
the sex which will be produced. Her maternal instinct 
stops abruptly here, without the development of an after¬ 
thought or care for their future thriving. The instinct 
of the neuters, like the anticipative promptings of the 
