
SN eee eee eee 
HYMENOPTERA. 347 
which mv seize each other by the neck in the air. It happens 
also that’a.pe, in a state of fury, throws itself on another who is 
walking quietly and unsuspiciously along the edge of its hive. 
When two bees are struggling in this manner they descend to the 
ground, for in the air they would not be able to get purchase 
enough to be sure of striking each other. They then engage in a 
hand-to-hand fight, as the gladiators used formerly to do in the 
circus. They are continually making stabs with their stings, but 
almost always the point slips over the scales with which they are 
covered. ‘The combat is sometimes prolonged during an hour 
before one of them has found the weak point in the other’s natural 
cuirasse and has buried its terrible weapon in the flesh. The 
victor often leaves its sting in the wound which it has made, 
and then dies, in its moment of triumph, through the loss of this 
organ. Sometimes the two combatants, in spite of long and savage 
assaults, cannot succeed in injuring either’s solid armour. In such 
a case, they leave each other, tired of war, and fly away, despairin g 
of obtaining a victory. 
At the end of autumn, when the bees no longer find any flowers 
in the fields to plunder, they finish rearing the eggs on the pollen 
which they keep in store, and the queen ceases to lay. Numbed 
by the cold of the winter, the workers cease to go out. Crowded 
together, they mutually warm each other, and thus hold out, when 
the cold is not too intense, against the rigour of the frosts. 
Huddied up between the cakes of the honeycomb, they wait for the 
return of fine weather, to recommence their labours at home and 
abroad. After two or three years of this laborious existence the 
bee dies, but to live again in a numerous posterity, as Virgil 
says :— 
* At genus immortale manet, multosque per annos 
Stat fortuna domus, et avi numerantur avorum!”’ 
There has been a good deal of discussion on the question 
whether bees constitute monarchies or republics. According to 
our opinion theirs is a true republic. As all the population is the 
issue of a common mother, and as each bee of the female sex can 
become a queen—that is to say, a mother-bee, if it receives an 
appropriate nourishment—it is manifest that the title of queen has 
been wrongly given to the mother-bee. After all, she is nothing 




























