

HYMENOPTERA. 
pillars and flying buttresses of wax a piece of the honeyco, 
which had fallen down. At the same time, put on their guard ‘a, 
this sad accident, they set to work to fortify the principal frame- 
work of the other combs, and to fasten them more securely to the 
roof of the hive. This took place in the month of January, and 
therefore not during the working season, and when, to provide 
against a distant eventuality was the only question. M. Walond 
has reported an analogous observation. Is there not here, in the 
first place, a true and excellent reasoning, then an act, an opera- 
tion, a work, executed as the result of this reasoning? Now, an 
operation which is performed as the result of reasoning, is attribut- 
able to intelligence. Again, the bees give different sorts of food 
to the different sorts of larve. They know how to change this 
food when an accident has deprived the hive of its queen, and it 
is necessary to replace her; this is another proof of intelligence. 
But it is, above all, in the face of an enemy that the intellectual 
faculties of these insects show themselves. There are always at 
the entrance of every hive three or four bees, which have nothing 
else to do but to guard the door, to keep a watch over incomers 
and outgoers, and to prevent an enemy or an intruder from 
slipping into the community. When one of them perceives an 
enemy on the borders of the hive, it dashes forwards towards it, 
and by a menacing and significant buzzing warns it to retire. 
If it does not understand the warning, which is a rare occurrence, 
—for men, horses, dogs, and animals of all kinds know perfectly 
well the danger to which they expose themselves by approaching 
too near to a hive in full operation,*—the bee gets a reinforcement 
and very soon returns to the combat with a determined battalion. 
All this is, it seems to us, intelligence. 
M. de Frariére, in his work on bees and bee-keeping, tells the 
following anecdote :—A bee-keeper had an apiary in his garden. 
But he very soon found out that certain birds, called bee-eaters 
or wasp-eaters, had made their home near it. Perched on the 
trees, they eat all the bees they could seize on in their pro- 
* The bee’s sting may lead to very serious consequences. It often happens 
that large animals, such as horses or oxen, tied up in the neighbourhood of a bee- 
hive, and which have disturbed the bees, die in consequence of stings received from 
them. j 





























