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Updated: May 11, 2025
It can be clearly shown that the most wonderful instincts with which we are acquainted, namely, those of the hive-bee and of many ants, could not possibly have been thus acquired. It will be universally admitted that instincts are as important as corporeal structure for the welfare of each species, under its present conditions of life.
Again, from the same cause, it would be advantageous to the Melipona, if she were to make her cells closer together, and more regular in every way than at present; for then, as we have seen, the spherical surfaces would wholly disappear, and would all be replaced by plane surfaces; and the Melipona would make a comb as perfect as that of the hive-bee.
When one cell comes into contact with three other cells, which, from the spheres being nearly of the same size, is very frequently and necessarily the case, the three flat surfaces are united into a pyramid; and this pyramid, as Huber has remarked, is manifestly a gross imitation of the three-sided pyramidal basis of the cell of the hive-bee.
If I should ever learn anything about this delicate point, I shall owe it to some happy chance for which I must wait, or rather watch, patiently. Towards the end of my investigations, I heard of a German theory which relates to the Hive-bee and comes from Dzierzon, the apiarist. The males are supposed to proceed from non-fertilized eggs, the females from fertilized eggs.
Beyond this stage of perfection in architecture, natural selection could not lead; for the comb of the hive-bee, as far as we can see, is absolutely perfect in economising labour and wax.
Hence, again, if humble-bees were to become rare in any country, it might be a great advantage to the red clover to have a shorter or more deeply divided tube to its corolla, so that the hive-bee could visit its flowers.
Beyond this stage of perfection in architecture, natural selection could not lead; for the comb of the hive-bee, as far as we can see, is absolutely perfect in economising wax.
Reflecting on this case, it occurred to me that if the Melipona had made its spheres at some given distance from each other, and had made them of equal sizes and had arranged them symmetrically in a double layer, the resulting structure would have been as perfect as the comb of the hive-bee.
Its descendants would probably inherit a tendency to a similar slight deviation of structure. Thus it might be a great advantage to the hive-bee to have a slightly longer or differently constructed proboscis. On the other hand, I have found by experiment that the fertility of clover depends on bees visiting and moving parts of the corolla, so as to push the pollen on to the stigmatic surface.
One bee, the Trypoxylon aurifrons, builds a nest of clay like a squat round bottle or carafe; generally in rows, one beside the other, on a branch, or in the corners of a building. The melipona bees are the most numerous of the honey-producing insects, their colonies being composed of vast numbers of individuals. They are smaller than the English hive-bee, and have no sting.
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