Happy omens are sometimes afforded by the swarming of bees, clustering, as they do, like a bunch of grapes, upon houses or temples; presages often of great events. Bees settled upon the lips of Plato when still an infant, announcing thereby the sweetness of that persuasive eloquence for which he was so noted. Bees settled in the camp of the chieftain Drusus when he gained the brilliant victory at Arbalo; a proof that the conjectures of soothsayers are not by any means infallible, for they consider this always of evil augury. When their leader is withheld from them, the swarm can always be detained; when lost, it will disperse and take its departure to find other kings. Without a king, they cannot exist.
If food fail the inhabitants of any particular hive, the swarm makes a concerted attack upon a neighboring one, with the view of plundering it. The swarm attacked at once ranges itself in battle array, and if the bee-keeper should happen to be present, that side which perceives itself favored by him will refrain from attacking him. They often fight, for other reasons, and the two generals are to be seen drawing up their ranks in battle array against their opponents. The battle is immediately ended by throwing dust among them, or raising a smoke; and if milk or honey mixed with water is placed before them, they speedily become reconciled.
Wasps build their nests of mud in lofty places, and make wax: hornets, on the other hand, build in holes or in the hollows of trees. With these two kinds the cells are also hexagonal, but, in other respects, though made of the bark of trees, they strongly resemble the substance of a spider’s web. Their young are found at irregular intervals, and are of unshapely appearance; while one is able to fly, another is still a mere pupa, and a third only in the maggot state. The wasp which is known as the ichneumon, a smaller kind than the others, kills one kind of spider in particular, known as the phalangium; after which it carries the body to its nest, covers it over with a sort of gluey substance, and then sits and hatches from it its young.[195] In addition to this, they are all of them carnivorous, while bees will touch no animal substance whatever. Wasps particularly pursue the larger flies, and after catching them cut off the head and carry away the remaining portion of the body.