Against Celsus 4.82

And perhaps the so-called wars of the bees are set there as a lesson that wars among human beings, if ever they must happen, should be just and orderly. And bees do not have cities and suburbs; rather, the hives and the hexagonal cells and the works of the bees and the succession among them exist for the sake of human beings, who need honey for many purposes, for the treatment of bodies that are ailing and as pure food. Nor should what the bees do against the drones be compared with the punishments in cities against the idle and wicked and the penalties inflicted on them. But, as I said before, in these things nature is to be admired; while man, who is able to reason about all things and to set all things in order, is to be approved as a fellow worker with providence, accomplishing the works not of God's providence alone but also of his own.