[Illustration: FIG. 24.--Wood ant. 1, Queen; 2, male; 3, worker (from Shipley).]
So much has been written--and well written--on the social life of insect communities, that it will here suffice to indicate some of the problems which arise when we endeavour to interpret the modes of behaviour which have been carefully observed. In the honey-bee we have the well-known differentiation of structure into drones or effective males, queens or egg-laying females, and workers or ineffective females, in which the development of the reproductive organs is arrested or modified. Distinct modes of behaviour are correlated with these structural differences. When a swarm of bees leaves a hive it generally consists of the old queen-mother and a certain number of the workers which are her offspring. When they have found new quarters, or have been safely housed under domestication, the workers busy themselves in making the cells in which the queen may lay her eggs, and in which food may be stored. In doing this the bees act in concert, and though the mathematical accuracy of the form and size of the cells has been much exaggerated, the comb which results is a very beautiful and well-adapted product of mutual co-operation in joint labour. And though intelligence may, under special circumstances, modify the method of procedure there can be little doubt that comb-building is primarily due to inherited instinct. The cells are not, however, all of the same size, those for the drones being somewhat larger than the cells in which the workers are reared, while much larger and differently shaped cells are prepared for the future queens. If instinctive therefore--as it seems to be in the main--the behaviour runs into different lines, the immediate causes of which, internal or external, we are not able accurately to assign.
The reproductive behaviour of egg-laying in the queen-mother is also instinctive. It is believed that the drones are developed from eggs from which the queen bee withholds the fertilizing fluid, which she retains for months or years after the nuptial flight, stored in a special receptacle. And the size and shape of the drone-cell may supply the stimulus through which her behaviour in this respect is determined. But she lays similarly fertilized eggs in both the worker-cells and the queen-cells; and in these two cases the stimulating conditions must be different.