Francis Huber relates that he saw bees propping up with pillars and flying buttresses of wax a piece of the honeycomb which had fallen down. At the same time, put on their guard by this sad accident, they set to work to fortify the principal framework of the other combs, and to fasten them more securely to the roof of the hive. This took place in the month of January, and therefore not during the working season, and when to provide against a distant eventuality was the only question. M. Waland has reported an analogous observation. Is there not here, in the first place, a true and excellent reasoning, then an act, an operation, a work, executed as the result of this reasoning? Now, an operation which is performed as the result of reasoning, is attributable to intelligence. Again, the bees give different sorts of food to the different sorts of larvæ. They know how to change this food when an accident has deprived the hive of its queen, and it is necessary to replace her; this is another proof of intelligence. But it is, above all, in the face of an enemy that the intellectual faculties of these insects show themselves. There are always at the entrance of every hive three or four bees, which have nothing else to do but to guard the door, to keep a watch over incomers and outgoers, and to prevent an enemy or an intruder from slipping into the community. When one of them perceives an enemy on the borders of the hive, it dashes forwards towards it, and by a menacing and significant buzzing warns it to retire. If it does not understand the warning, which is a rare occurrence--for men, horses, dogs, and animals of all kinds know perfectly well the danger to which they expose themselves by approaching too near a hive in full operation[94]--the bee gets a reinforcement, and very soon returns to the combat with a determined battalion. All this is, it seems to us, intelligence. [94] The bee's sting may lead to very serious consequences. It often happens that large animals, such as horses or oxen, tied up in the neighbourhood of a beehive, and which have disturbed the bees, die in consequence of stings received from them. [Illustration: Fig. 323.--Sentinel Bees guarding the entrance to the hive.]