From Capital:

A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality.

Let's not waste anymore time; let's begin with this insect, the honey bee:
What catches our attention (the attention of a Marxist) is not this insect's happy dancing business, nor the way it builds its complicated hive, but this dark and deadly practice:

The queen is normally the only egg producer in the colony and this condition is maintained by a pheromonal 'feed back' system, whereby worker ovary development is inhibited. The queen and the brood both produce pheromones that inhibit worker ovary development, which prevents individual workers from exploiting the system.

...When populations are large and the nest is physically widespread, the distribution of pheromones reduces at the outer edges, simply because of distance from the queen and brood as well as the larger area of the outer periphery of the nest. this gives rise to a condition of reduced suppression of ovary production... [And this gives] rise to an increase in worker laid eggs, but the numbers of drones arising from them is a very small fraction of those that are laid. 'Worker policing' is the mechanism that causes adult workers to eat 'worker laid' eggs, which are identified by other workers. It is speculated that normal queen laid eggs are marked with a pheromone that is produced by the queen, which is coated on the eggs as they pass over the sting sheath. Worker laid eggs are thought to lack this pheromone and are thus identified as such and eaten by the workers.

It has been suggested that aggression towards workers with activated ovaries is another potential mechanism of worker policing, but I am unsure whether this applies to workers being hoisted out of cells as they attempt to lay an egg or whether the aggression goes further and results it the fertile worker being damaged or stung.

But it is ridiculous for us to think about human policing without considering worker bee policing. To see some of the reasons for one form of policing, will help us see some of the reasons for the other. Also, we have to read the queen's "pheromonal 'feed back' system" in the way Althusser read the ISA, the Ideological State Apparatus. When this mechanism of oppression and control (the Church, the media, the education system) fails to produce the desired behavior (or subjects), then it is replaced by direct police action: "Hey you!"

The next post will look at paper wasps.