USEFUL INSECTS
Relations of Man to Insect World.—But Few Species Useful to Man.—Little Trace of Domestication.—Honey-bees: their Origin; Reasons for no Selective Work; Habits of the Species.—Silkworms: Singular Importance to Man; Intelligence of Species.—Cochineal Insect.—Spanish Flies.—Future of Man relative to Useful Insects.
Although the relations of man to the insect world are prevailingly those of hostility, there are a few of these multitudinous creatures which have been more or less completely adopted into his great society. Although not more than half a dozen out of the million or more species in this subkingdom have thus been brought to the uses of civilization, the forms are interesting not only for what they give, but for the promise of further contributions when this great problem of winning help from the insect world receives adequate consideration.
As a whole, the insects are not well fitted to serve the needs of man. Owing to certain peculiarities in their organic laws they, fortunately for ourselves, are very limited in size. Although some of them afford savory food and are occasionally eaten by savages, and even by civilized folk when pressed by hunger owing to the famines which the invasions of these animals occasionally produce, they can never be of any value as sources of provisions, except through the stores which they accumulate in the manner of the bees. All that we have won, or are likely to win, from this realm is from the filaments which the creatures spin, the wax or honey which they accumulate, the coloring or other matters which their bodies afford, or the help which they may give us in our struggle with invading species of their class.
Probably the first insect to be brought into friendly relations with man was the honey-bee. This creature, like the most of our domesticated animals, is a native of the great continent of the Old World, though it has now been conveyed to all the flowery lands of the world where the season is long enough for it to win its harvest. In its wild as well as in its tame state the honey-bee dwells in one of the most perfect and highly elaborated of insect societies. It is a member of the group of membranous-winged insects known to naturalists as Hymenoptera, an order which includes all the elaborate societies of the class except the colonies of white ants. It is characteristic of all these colonial insects that, from the experience of ages, they have learned the great principles of the division of labor and of profit sharing towards which mankind are now clumsily stumbling; the great work which their societies are able to do is accomplished by a complete specialization of function and a perfect share in the commonwealth. So far has this elaboration gone, that in the bees the work of reproducing the kind is allotted to forms which do no labor; all the work of the hive being effected by individuals which are sterile, and whose sole function it is to toil unendingly for the profit of the great household.
While the greater part of the kindred of the bees either construct the nests for their young in the manner of our wasps or hornets, building them entirely in the open air, or excavate underground chambers in the fashion of our bumble-bees, our domesticated form at some time in the remote past adopted the plan of choosing for its dwelling-place some chamber in the rocks, or cavity in a hollow tree which could be shaped to the needs of a habitation. Owing to the size of these cavities, they were enabled to form societies composed of many thousands of individuals; while the species which adopted nests, in other conditions, were much more limited as regards their numbers. Thus the bumble-bee, which abides underground, dwells in very small communities, probably for the reason that the conditions of the soil it inhabits make it difficult to excavate and maintain large rooms. It is this habit of resorting to hollow spaces, as well as the instinct to store up honey in wax cases, which has made the common bee valuable to man.
