THE EVOLUTION OF THE BEE AND THE BEEHIVE
reach the stage of the comb of a honey-bee, and there is developed a community of insects that rivals in complexity and in division of labour anything that we meet with in human communities. A clearer example of evolution could hardly be imagined—the gradual development from a simple primitive state of life to one of the highest complexity.
REFERENCES
- Edwardes, Tickner. The Lore of the Honey-Bee. London, Methuen & Co.
- Maeterlinck, Maurice. Le Vie des Abeilles. Paris, Bibliothèque Charpentier.
- Maeterlinck, Maurice. The Life of the Bee (translated by Alfred Sutro) . London, George Allen & Sons.
- Shipley, A. E. Life. Cambridge University Press.
- Shipley, A. E. Studies in Insect Life. London, T. Fisher Unwin.
- Sladen, F. W. The Humble Bee. London, Macmillan & Co., Ltd.
- Stabler, Hans von. Die Biologie der Biene. Wurzburg, H. Sturtz.
“The bees have existed many thousands of years; we have watched them for ten or twelve lustres. And if it could even be proved that no change has occurred in the hive since we first opened it, should we have the right to conclude that nothing had changed before our first questioning glance? Do we not know that in the evolution of species a century is but as a drop of rain that is caught in the whirl of the river, and that millenaries glide as swiftly over the life of universal matter as single years over the history of a people?”— Maeterlinck’s The Life of the Bee.
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