Page - 1223 - in The Complete Aristotle

fine they go fluttering about within a restricted space, and the bee-keeper knows from this that they are expecting bad weather. When the bees inside the hive hang clustering to one another, it is a sign that the swarm is intending to quit; consequently, occasion, when a bee-keepers, on seeing this, besprinkle the hive with sweet wine. It is advisable to plant about the hives pear-trees, beans, Median-grass, Syrian-grass, yellow pulse, myrtle, poppies, creeping-thyme, and almond-trees. Some bee-keepers sprinkle their bees with flour, and can distinguish them from others when they are at work out of doors. If the spring be late, or if there be drought or blight, then grubs are all the fewer in the hives. So much for the habits of bees. < div id=“section221” class=“section” title=“41”> 41 Of wasps, there are two kinds. Of these kinds one is wild and scarce, lives on the mountains, engenders grubs not underground but on oak-trees, is larger, longer, and blacker than the other kind, is invariably speckled and furnished with a sting, and is remarkably courageous. The pain from its sting is more severe than that caused by the others, for the instrument that causes the pain is larger, in proportion to its own larger size. These wild live over into a second year, and in winter time, when oaks have been in course of felling, they may be seen coming out and flying away. They lie concealed during the winter, and live in the interior of logs of wood. Some of them are mother-wasps and some are workers, as with the tamer kind; but it is by observation of the tame wasps that one may learn the varied characteristics of the mothers and the workers. For in the case of the tame wasps also there are two kinds; one consists of leaders, who are called mothers, and the other of workers. The leaders are far larger and milder-tempered than the others. The workers do not live over into a second year, but all die when winter comes on; and this can be proved, for at the commencement of winter the workers become drowsy, and about the time of the winter solstice they are never seen at all. The leaders, the so-called mothers, are seen all through the winter, and live in holes underground; for men when ploughing or digging in winter have often come upon mother-wasps, but never upon workers. The mode of reproduction of wasps is as follows. At the approach of summer, when the leaders have found a sheltered spot, they take to moulding their combs, and construct the so-called sphecons,-little nests containing four cells or thereabouts, and in these are produced working-wasps but not mothers. When these are grown up, then they construct other larger combs upon the first, and then again in like manner others; so that by the close of autumn there are 1223