The brutal calculus of survival: The political economy of the expendable drone

“ I have told you that William had made the ideal of Germany that of the insect. Let me be sure that you get my meaning.
“Have you watched a hive of bees in bright summer weather? Well, you will find that the workers wear out their wings in two weeks and die. The hive has only two purposes—storage and race perpetuation.
These purposes are carried out with ruthless and perfect efficiency.
The drones are stung to death as soon as they are discovered. The worker will starve and die for the queen. The welfare of the hive is the main thing—that of the individual of no account whatever. ”

“ And yet her eyes and olfactory organs are like the eyes and organs of the infirm, compared with those of the male. Were the drones almost blind, had they only the most rudimentary sense of smell, they scarcely would suffer. They have nothing to do, no prey to hunt down; their food is brought to them ready prepared, and their existence is spent in the obscurity of the hive, lapping honey from the comb. But they are the agents of love; and the most enormous, most useless gifts are flung with both hands into the abyss of the future. ”

“ Fatal, I say, for it is a singular fact in the history of bees that the fecundation of the queen costs the male his life. Yet day after day the drones go forth, threading the mazes of the air in hopes of meeting her whom to meet is death. The queen only leaves the hive once, except when she leads away the swarm, and as she makes no appointment with the male, but wanders here and there, drones enough are provided to meet all the contingencies of the case.
One advantage, at least, results from this system of things: there is no incontinence among the males in this republic! ”

“ When an occurrence like the above happens, the drones next fall victims to the failure of honey. A brief existence only is theirs; such as are perfect, are destroyed without mercy; those in the chrysalis state are often dragged out, and sacrificed to the necessities of the family. Such as are allowed to hatch, instead of being fed and protected as they would be if honey was abundant, are allowed, while yet weak from the effects of hunger, to wander from the hive, and fall to the earth by hundreds. These effects attend only a scarcity in the early part of the season. ”

“ It is not by starvation that the drones die, however, for they are massacred by the bees. Some time about August, perhaps, when the bees find that the honey is not coming in as fast as it used to, the step will be taken, for they have now to think about the winter months which are close at hand. If there are any drone cells in the hive with eggs or grubs in them, the workers tear them open, the young drones are dragged out, and their bodies thrown out of the [92] door of the hive. ”

“ The drones are no more use, for the queen will not fly out again, and these idle bees will never do any work in the hive. So the worker-bees begin to kill them, falling upon them, and stinging them to death, and as the drones have no stings they cannot defend themselves, and in a few days there is not a drone, nor even a drone-egg, left in the hive. This massacre seems very sad to us, since the poor drones have never done any harm beyond being hopelessly idle. ”

“ The activity of the bees now takes another direction. In order to leave over as much honey as possible for the provisionless season that stands before them, a system of saving is now pursued. To compensate for the unavoidable loss of population from the journeys - 33 - abroad, a certain quantity of worker brood is still continually set on, but to a limited extent, while the breeding of drones is not only given up, but the already deposited drone brood is usually thrown out, and the drones themselves, as no longer of any use, are expelled from the hive. ”

“ During three hours, the bees furiously destroyed the males. They had massacred all their own on the preceding evening, but now attacked those which, driven from the neighbouring hives, had taken refuge amongst them. We saw them also tear some remaining nymphs from the combs; they greedily sucked all the fluid from the abdomen, and then carried them away. The following days no drones remained in the hives.
These two observations seem to me decisive. It is incontestible that nature has charged the workers with the destruction of the males at certain seasons of the year. ”

“ He will regard war as the means by which some day his nation shall impose its will upon another nation. He will be prepared to wait and wait, to make "every imaginable preparation," and finally to let loose war in its most absolute and ruthless character, war carried out with the utmost means, the utmost energy, and the utmost effort of a whole nation-in-arms, determined to achieve its political object and compel submission to its will by force. ”

“ We may take Hobbes as the philosopher of the extreme idea of the State and the consequent iniquity of rebellion. His is the ideal of the Hive, in which the virgin workers devote their whole lives without complaint to the service of the Queen and her State-supported grubs, while the drones are mercilessly slaughtered as soon as one of them has fulfilled his rapturous but suicidal functions for the future swarm. This ideal found its highest human example in the Spartan State, which trained its men to have no private existence at all, and even to visit their own wives by stealth. ”

“ You see those other soldiers opposite; they cut but a poor figure by the side of the Circassians. They are some of the infantry of the line; their downcast, inanimate look, their thin and miserable forms, tell of the many kicks and blows, the scanty rations of black bread and salt, the life of drudgery and the shameful ill-treatment to which, poor wretches! they are too much accustomed. “It is no wonder our soldiers are brave,” said a Russian official to me ”

“ They are the drones of the hive; only whereas the actual drone is unprovided by nature with a sting, the two-legged things whom we call drones are some of them without stings and some of them have dreadful stings; in other words, there are paupers and there are rogues. These are never far apart; and in oligarchical cities, where nearly everybody is a pauper who is not a ruler, you will find abundance of both. And this evil state of society originates in bad education and bad government. ”

“ The war is a colossal misallocation of scarce economic resources and an opportunity squandered. Russia should have used the windfall to reinvent itself - revamp its dilapidated infrastructure and modernize its institutions. Oil prices are bound to come down one day and when they do Russia will discover the true and most malign cost of war - the opportunity cost. ”

“ Far more important even than legal right to work is the Russian workers' recognized right to the full product of their labor. In other countries the cream of industry's products flow into the maw of the exploiters; the benefits of invention and intensified production are absorbed by social parasites; the drones idle in luxury; while the workers drudge in poverty and deprivation. But how different in Russia: there there are no exploiters. The workers have to pay no tribute to a ruling class. ”

“ It is becoming but too common to depress mechanics and agriculturists, the very sinews and life-blood of the land, and to elevate a sort of speculating indolence which in the end, may [150] make the drones disproportionate to the honey in our national hive. ”

“ Perfect economy it is, from the standpoint of the hive. The work of providing for the future is accomplished—no mistake in the plan. The workers gather from all sides. One by one the big clumsy drones are put to death—wrestling, tugging, stinging, many workers giving themselves to death to carry out the spirit of the hive.... The officers ahead who ordered our brother Russians upon us, thought they were right—those great grey lines ahead, honeycombed with our own precious comrades, all of whom were not yet [308] martyred, as was proved. ”

“ You knew perhaps that it fertilized the flowers, but you also knew that the bee didn’t know; you were aware that, it any bee deliberately went about trying to improve your delphiniums instead of gathering honey for the State, it would be turned down promptly by the other workers. For nothing is done in the hive without this one utilitarian purpose. Even the drones take their place in the scheme of things; a minor place in the stud; and when the next generation is assured, and the drones cease to be useful and can now only revert to the ornamental, they are ruthlessly cast out. ”

“ The drones seldom leave the hive, and never assist to procure honey. When the time comes for making up their winter stores, they are, therefore, all killed by the working bees as useless members of society. As they are without stings, they are unable to defend themselves. The working bees compose the most numerous body of the state. They have the care of the hive, collect wax and honey from the [148] flowers, make the wax into combs, feed the young, keep the hive clean, turn out all strangers, and employ themselves in promoting the general good. ”

“ Unlike the queen or the worker bees, the drone has no sting, and so you may let him crawl over your hand without fear of being hurt, even though he should become angry.
The life of the drone is a life of luxury and ease, for he does not work in the hive, neither does he gather any nectar or pollen. He is fed by the workers, and he also takes good care to help himself from the storehouses, whenever he thinks he would like a little more food. ”

“ It is admitted by those best able to judge that the proportion of about a hundred drones in each The drone. hive is conducive to the prosperity of the colony, but beyond that number they are worse than useless, being non-producers and heavy consumers. Thus in times of scarcity, which are not infrequent during the early part of the season, they become a heavy tax upon the food-supply of the colony at the critical period when brood-rearing is accelerated by an abundance of stores, while shortness of food means a falling-off in egg-production. ”

“ Neither should we overlook the singular services of the short-lived drones in other circumstances of the colony; for most essential is their presence in the hive during the months of May, June, and July. Do we not in those months behold the extraordinary rapidity with which the working Bees leave their hive in search of materials for their various works? So indefatigable are these admired insects, after enriching their commonwealth, that in the time of honey-dews, scarcely a mechanical labourer is left in the hive. ”

“ They range the fields for honey and pollen, secrete wax, construct combs, prepare food, nurse the young, bring water for the use of the community, obtain propolis to seal up all crevices about the hive, stand guard, and keep out intruders, robbers, &c., &c.
DESCRIPTION OF DRONES.
When the family is large and honey abundant, a brood of drones is reared; the number, probably, depends on the yield of honey, and size of the swarm, more than anything else. As honey becomes scarce, they are destroyed. Their bodies are large and rather clumsy, covered with short hairs or bristles. ”

“ The story of how honey is made, and why it is made at all, forms one of the most interesting items in the history of the hive-bee. In a land where nectar-yielding plants flourish all the year through, if such a spot exist at all, there would be no honey, because the necessity for it would not occur. Hive-bees in such a land would go all their lives, and assuredly never dream of honey-making. But wherever there is winter, or a season when the supply of nectar and pollen temporarily fails, the p. ”

“ There is only one queen allowed in each colony, and she lays all the eggs, the workers being imperfectly-developed 184 females. Drones are the masculine members of the population, lazy fellows, whom the workers have to feed, hence the reason for their being expelled from the hive whenever food is scarce. ”

“ No foreign spys can come prowlin’ ’round her premises—speculators on other folks’es honey haint encouraged,—tobacco is obnoxious to ’em. Only one thing I don’t approve of, if food is skurce, if the females don’t get honey enough to last the whole hive, all winter, they slaughter the male bees in the fall to save honey. I don’t approve of it; but where will you find a great nater that haint got its peculiar excentricities? This is hern. She wants to dispose of the drones as they call [385] the lazy husbands of the workin’ wimmen, and she thinks killin’ is the easiest way to dispose of ’em. ”

“ When the mother of the hive ceases to maintain the standard of fertility set by her exacting daughters, she is put to death stealthily, as if in an excess of devotion: she is smothered under their embraces. Towards the drones now under sentence no such consideration is to be shown. When the word goes forth, the slaughter begins, and it gathers in ferocity. It begins in a massacre of the innocents—every helpless larval drone is ruthlessly dragged from its cot and thrown out of the hive to die: there is now no crime in infanticide, nor in the most gruesome massacre that is presently to follow. ”

“ There’s too much of it to tell right hot off the bat. But you can watch ’em in the observation hive and pretty quick you can see which cells have got the big, soft, white nymphs in them, and which ones have got the big fat drones, and which ones have the little workers, and the nurses, and the scouts, maybe. After what I’ve told you, you can see the old drones crawling around over the cells eating honey where they please, and being as dirty and mussy as ever they want to. Then you can see the workers go and clean up after them. You can see the cells where the eggs are being taken care of. ”

“ For their pleasant slumbers they select the snuggest corners of the hive; then, rising carelessly, they flock to the open cells where the honey smells sweetest, and soil with their excrements the combs they frequent. The patient workers, their eyes steadily fixed on the future, will silently set things right. From noon till three, when the purple country trembles in blissful lassitude beneath the invincible gaze of a July or August sun, the drones will appear on the threshold. ”

“ After the swarming season is over, a general massacre of the drones in the hive takes place. This usually occurs toward the latter part of July. The unfortunate victims evidently perceive their danger; for they are now seen darting in and out of the hive, and passing from one place to another, as if afraid of being seized. Like some poor man, who owes a debt he cannot pay, and is afraid of being caught by the sheriff, they wander from place to place, as if in a constant state of alarm.
When the working bees meet these drones, they fall upon them and plunge their stings into their bodies. ”

“ Throughout the hive may be seen the workers chasing the drones over the combs which, but a few days before, supplied them with honey. The drones have no sting, nor any means of defence, so that they are absolutely at the mercy of their pursuers. The bee-city is alive with the terrible cries of the victims, and as the workers catch the drones they commence to bite off their wings. Sometimes, too, they will even gnaw off the legs or the antennæ or cut through the drone’s slender waist, their one idea being to disable him. ”

“ Although the drones are much larger and stronger than the workers, they have no stings wherewith to defend themselves, and are thrust out of the hive to perish when their office is accomplished. They mature - 5 - in about twenty-four days after the egg is laid and are bred in larger cells than the workers."
SITUATION OF THE APIARY.
Aspect.—I will commence by giving the aspect best suited for the Bees to be placed in. I have tried all aspects, and have no hesitation in saying that the south is the best. Bee-houses of all kinds I very much dislike; many hives are ruined by them ”

“ If much resistance is made, they will persevere in trying to keep them away; but, at last, when patience is exhausted, they will bite the wings underneath, and so render them almost powerless. Harassed in these ways, and prevented from taking food from the cells, the drones die of starvation in large numbers. A few may be stung to death. Many will creep to unfrequented parts of the comb, in hope of escaping notice; and if a side box, or unoccupied back of a wooden hive, be opened for them, they will congregate there. ”

“ No sooner, however, does it become clear that this chance is past, than the decree of death is made absolute, and the poor drones are suddenly and viciously attacked by half a dozen frenzied spinsters at once. Each tries to bite through the base of the victim’s wings, and succeeding in this, he is speedily pushed towards the door of the hive and out into the open, whence return is impossible, so that nothing is left but death by starvation. ”

“ Still, there is no doubt of the practical importance of having a good supply of males in the hives during the swarming time. When they are no longer of use, the workers expel them. By many it has been asserted that the drones are stung to death; but any one who - 33 - takes the trouble to watch what goes on in July and August, will see that, for the most part, the neuters seize their brethren by the wing, and drag them from the entrance of the home. ”

“ Any time during the summer when the bee-keeper finds the workers attacking the drones he may be very sure it means that the honey crop is exhausted.
Our pity is usually much more excited for the fate of the drone than for that of the busy worker, which dies from overwork at the end of a few weeks; and this is undoubtedly because the death of the worker seems voluntary, while the drones are manifestly murdered. Once we witnessed the slaughter of the drones in an observation hive, the entrance of which was too contracted to allow the bodies of the drones to pass. ”

“ As soon as their queen has been pleased, and the future of the hive is assured, the working-bees destroy the drones. If merciful economy be a human attribute, the bees are more human than men. Those who cannot work, and those for whom there is nothing to do, the natural and artificial drones among men, are interned in lunatic asylums, homes for incurables, prisons, poorhouses. ”

“ When stocks are liberally fed early in the season, drones will appear correspondingly early. And if from a stock well supplied with drones, you remove the queen, the workers will not destroy the drones in that hive until they have obtained another fertile laying queen. ”

“ The moment this formidable weapon has entered their bodies, they expand their wings and expire. This sacrifice is not the consequence of a blind indiscriminating instinct, for if a hive be deprived of its queen, no massacre takes place, though the hottest persecution rage in all the surrounding hives. This fact was observed by Bonner, who supposed the drones to be - 45 - preserved for the sake of the additional heat which they would generate in the hive during winter; but according to Huber’s theory, they are preserved for the purpose of impregnating a new queen. ”

“ The odious monarchy of the bee-hive must be done away; the queen of bees must doff her robes of royalty, and become a commoner; while the drones, the privileged order of this tribe of insects, will be compelled to assume habits of industry, and will no longer be tolerated in the enjoyment of idleness and luxury, at the expense of their industrious fellow-citizens. ”

“ For if they could grab all ther is, awm pratty sewer they wod.
Aw hate fowk sanctimonious, whose humility is pride,
Who, when they see a chap distressed, pass by on tother side!
Aw hate those drones 'at share earth's hive, but shirk ther share o' wark,
Yet curl ther nooas at some poor soul, who's toiled, yet missed his mark.
Give me that man whose heart can feel for others griefs an woes;—
Who loves his friends an nivver bears a grudge ageean his foes;
Tho' kindly words an cheerin smiles are all he can bestow,—
If he gives that wi' willin heart, he does some gooid below. ”

“ The seeds of war are chiefly sown by those very people whose wisdom and moderation, characteristic of their rank and station, ought to compose and assuage the impetuous passions of the people.
The people, the ignoble vulgar, despised as they are, are the very persons who originally raise great and fair cities to their proud eminence; who conduct the commercial business of them entirely; and, by their excellent management, fill them with opulence. Into these cities, after they are raised and enriched by plebeians, creep the satraps and grandees, like so many drones into a hive ”

“ When the people meet, they are omnipotent, but they cannot be brought together unless they are attracted by a little honey; and the rich are made to supply the honey, of which the demagogues keep the greater part themselves, giving a taste only to the mob. Their victims attempt to resist; they are driven mad by the stings of the drones, and so become downright oligarchs in self-defence. ”

“ I think the Department of Energy has announced a couple different programs that would affect conservation and affect efficiency. And in the report that you will see coming out soon, there will be passages in there dealing with efficiency. Efficiency is also a blessing. Efficiency has been a way the American people can enjoy their standard of living, their standard of life, while using less resources. ”

“ The Russian revolution is a standing marvel to the bourgeois world. In the first place, by all the rules of "legitimate" economics, it should not have occured at all; because, for a country to have such a proletarian revolution it would seem to be absolutely necessary that it possess a highly-developed industrial system and an educated working class; whereas Russia is 85 per cent agricultural and her workers are notoriously lacking in industrial training. But the revolution did occur, nevertheless. ”

“ Finland and the Ukraine are two Russian states which are trying to bring about this end, and they may succeed, but a dissected Russia would furnish such good material for future wars that the Allies can hardly afford to consent to it.
Civil war is a fine possibility in Russia just now, except that there seems to be no one at hand to organize the two forces. The strongest probability is [Pg 238] more guerilla warfare, more street fighting, more motor trucks loaded with machine guns rushing up and down Petrograd, more battle, murder and sudden death, and then the reaction. ”

“ You hear it on all sides in Russia. “It’s a free country,” says a man with a third-class ticket taking possession of a first-class compartment. “It’s a free country,” declares a soldier, tossing a handful of sunflower seed shells on a woman’s white shoes in a street car. “It’s a free country,” say a group of men, stripping off their clothes before a crowd of women and children and taking a bath in the Neva. This occurs frequently on the Admiralty quay, a great pleasure resort in Petrograd. ”

“ She asked me eagerly to tell her how things were going in Petrograd, and her face saddened when I told her of the riotous and bloody events I had witnessed during the days of the July [Pg 149] revolution, scarcely past. “Times are very bad with us just now,” she said, “but they will improve soon, I am sure. The Russian people are good and kind at heart, but they are mostly children—big, ignorant, impulsive children. If they can find good leaders, and if they will only realize that they must obey their leaders, they will emerge from this dreadful chaos and build up a strong, new Russia. ”

“ If fighting and dying were the price of Russia’s freedom, they wanted to fight and fight again. If they could rally unwilling men to fight, they wanted nothing in the world except more chances to do it. Wounds were nothing, death was nothing in the scale of Russia’s honor or dishonor. Then too, and this is a strange commentary on women’s “protected” position in life, the women soldiers said that fighting was not the most difficult or the most disagreeable work they had ever done. They said it was less arduous if a little more dangerous than working in a harvest field or a factory. ”

“ And so it has gone all through the revolutionary period: the Communists have sacrificed themselves without stint or limit. It is said that of the total number of Communists in Russia when the revolution began, not more than 20 per cent are now alive. The gaps in the revolutionary ranks have been filled from the growing generation of militants.
The Communists are not among "those pastors who point out to others the steep and thorny path to Heaven, while they themselves the primrose path of dalliance tread." They work harder and live simpler than anyone else in Russia. ”

“ Russia's is a primitive economy, based on commodities - especially energy products - and an over-developed weapons industry. Its fortunes fluctuate with the price of oil, of agricultural produce and with the need for arms, driven by regional conflicts.
Should the price of oil collapse, Russia may again be forced to resort to multilateral financing, a virtual monopoly of the long arms of US foreign policy, such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) . The USA also has a decisive voice in the World Trade Organization (WTO) , membership thereof being a Russian strategic goal. ”

“ So long as honey is being gathered in plenty drones are tolerated, but no sooner does the honey harvest show signs of being over than they are mercilessly killed and cast out of the hive by the workers, after a brief idle life of about four months’ duration. Thus the “lazy yawning drone,” as Shakespeare puts it, has a short shrift when his usefulness to the community is ended.
Finally we have the aptly named worker-bee, on whom devolves the entire labour of the colony. ”