For the rest, the present and the following storeys will all have the
same fate. Carefully watched by the insect as long as they are in
process of building, they are forgotten and allowed to go to ruin once
they are actually built. Here is a striking instance: in a cell which
has attained its full height, I make a window, almost as large as the
natural opening, and place it about half-way up, above the honey. The
Bee brings provisions for some time longer and then lays her egg.
Through my big window, I see the egg deposited on the victuals. The
insect next works at the cover, to which it gives the finishing
touches with a series of little taps, administered with infinite care,
while the breach remains yawning. On the lid, it scrupulously stops up
every pore that could admit so much as an atom; but it leaves the
great opening that places the house at the mercy of the first-comer.
It goes to that breach repeatedly, puts in its head, examines it,
explores it with its antennae, nibbles the edges of it. And that is
all. The mutilated cell shall stay as it is, with never a dab of
mortar. The threatened part dates too far back for the Bee to think of
troubling about it.

I have said enough, I think, to show the insect's mental incapacity in
the presence of the accidental. This incapacity is confirmed by
renewing the test, an essential condition of all good experiments;
therefore my notes are full of examples similar to the one which I
have just described. To relate them would be mere repetition; I pass
them over for the sake of brevity.

The renewal of a test is not sufficient: we must also vary our test.
Let us, then, examine the insect's intelligence from another point of
view, that of the introduction of foreign bodies into the cell. The