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The most likely of all the scientific hypotheses will presently permit us to connect our domestic bee with the great tribe of the "Apiens," which embraces all wild bees, and where its ancestors are probably to be found. We shall then perceive physiological, social, economic, industrial, and architectural transformations more extraordinary than those of our human evolution.
The tribe in question is already known to us; it is that of the "Apiens," whose essential characteristics are so distinct and well-marked that one is inclined to credit all its members with one common ancestor.* *It is important that the terms we shall successively employ, adopting the classification of M. Emile Blanchard, "APIENS, APIDAE and APITAE, should not be confounded.
The tribe of the Apiens comprises all families of bees. And, finally, the Apitae include all the different varieties of our domestic bees. The disciples of Darwin, Hermann Muller among others, consider a little wild bee, the Prosopis, which is to be found all over the universe, as the actual representative of the primitive bee whence all have issued that are known to us to-day.
The evolution of the Apiens, or at least of the Apitae, being admitted, or regarded as more probable than that they should have remained stationary, let us now consider the general, constant direction that this evolution takes. It seems to follow the same roads as with ourselves.
It halts immediately; and hitherto has not succeeded, among the Xylocopae, in passing beyond this first obscure line of love. Among other Apiens, this groping idea assumes other forms. The Chalicodomae of the out-houses, which are building-bees, the Dasypodae and Halicti, which dig holes in the earth, unite in large colonies to construct their nests.
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