cellmaking

Updated: May 5, 2025

Darwin, like every really truth-loving controversialist, far from desiring to shroud, invites special attention to any seeming weaknesses in his position; and, therefore, when contending that all the faculties commonly classed as instincts, are exclusively due to natural selection, of course takes care to particularise the cellmaking faculty of the hive bee.

William Thomas Thornton - Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics: With Some of Their Applications

For, whatever be among meliponæ the distribution of the generative capacities, among hive bees, at any rate, all workers are sterile neuters, which never have any offspring to whom to bequeath their cellmaking skill, while the queen bee and drones, which alone can become parents, have no such skill to bequeath.

William Thomas Thornton - Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics: With Some of Their Applications