What determines which queen shall leave the hive with the swarm?
What determines which five thousand out of fifteen thousand
worker bees, all apparently similarly stimulated and excited,
shall swarm out, and which ten thousand shall stay in? These
are questions too hard for us to answer. We may take refuge in
Maeterlinck’s poetical conception of the “spirit of the hive.”
Let us say that the “spirit of the hive” decides these things;
as well as what workers shall forage and what ones clean house;
what bees shall ventilate and what make wax and build comb.
Which is simply to say that we don’t know what decides all these
things. (Text.)--VERNON L. KELLOGG, “Insect Stories.”
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