A Philosopher with Nature by Benjamin Kidd

Author:Benjamin Kidd [Kidd, Benjamin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General
ISBN: 9781317284710
Google: hZY0CwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-12-14T02:51:27+00:00

IX

THE HABITS AND INTELLIGENCE OF BEES

THE little busy bee has been a great favourite with the moralists and philosophers of this much-preached-at world. She and her works have been used to point so many morals to the intended disadvantage of the lord of creation, when his teachers take him to task in their sermons from the book of nature, that it is time some one undertook a serious examination of the claims of the little creature to be always posing as an example to the rest of the world. Not that it is to be expected that she would become less a subject of wonder and admiration, but rather because it would be interesting to be able to judge the exact amount of credit and respect to which she is entitled as an intelligent author of her own exemplary conduct.

There is no doubt at all events about the place of the bee in the insect tribe. In common with her cousins the ants, wasps, etc., she belongs to the order of Hymenoptera, ranking first in the insect series not only in the higher development of the cerebral ganglia, and general intelligence in habits and mode of living which this implies, but also in general completeness of form and structure. When bees are spoken of, the representative of the family most familiarly associated with the name is the ordinary honey-bee which has for countless generations lived, laboured, and died an ignominious death in the straw skeps of our rustic gardens. The common variety is often known as the German bee, its original home having been the woods and mountains of Central Europe. A successful rival of late for the notice of the intelligent apiarist is the Ligurian bee introduced from Italy, where in course of time, thanks to enforced separation from its relations north of the high ranges of mountains which hem in its native land, it developed those slight differences in structure and colour which now mark it as a separate variety. Both varieties were unknown in North America, until they were introduced from Europe; but they have thriven and multiplied enormously in their new home, especially in the Western States, where they are still known amongst the Indians as the white man’s fly. The other bees known in this country are the humble-bees, of which there are several varieties; but, although very interesting in their behaviour and habits, as will be seen further on, these are but the bumpkins of the bee family, who are content to spend their rude lives in arcadian dulness, living from hand to mouth, with no capacity for the aspiring life and higher civilization of their more gifted relations.

I am not a bee-keeper in the proper sense of the word. In my opinion, that occupation, on a large scale at all events, should in this country be left entirely to those possessed of an unwavering faith in our variable climate. My bees are not required, as the British workman sometimes holds himself to be,

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