For vividness of argument I wish in a brief section of this chapter to make a digression from our main inquiry to bring forward two examples--extreme cases of the imperious action of the sexual instincts--in which we see the sexes driven to the performance of their functions under peculiar conditions. Both occur among the invertebrates. I have left the consideration of them until now because of the instructive light they throw upon what we are trying to prove in this first attack on the validity of the common estimate of the true position of the sexes in Nature. Let us begin with the familiar case of the bees. As every one knows, these truly wonderful insects belong to a highly evolved and complex society, which may be said to represent a very perfected and extreme socialism. In this society the vast majority of the population--the workers--are sterile females, and of the drones, or males, only a very few at the most are ever functional. Reproduction is carried on by the queen-mother. The lesson to be drawn from the beehive is that such an organisation has evolved a quite extraordinary sacrifice of the individual members, notably in the submergence of the personal needs of sex-function, to its wider racial end. It is from this line of thought that I wish to consider it. We have (1) the drones, the fussing males, useless except for their one duty of fertilisation, and this function only a few actively perform; thus, if they become at all numerous they are killed off by the workers, so that the hives may be rid of them; (2) the queen, an imprisoned mother, specialised for maternity, her sole work the laying of the eggs, and incapable of any other function; her brain and mind of the humblest order, she being unable even to feed and care for her offspring; (3) the great body of unsexed workers, the busy sisters, whose duty is to rear the young and carry out all the social activities of the hive.