The Life of the Bee 
 
 BY 
 
 MAURICE MAETERLINCK 
 
 Translated by 
 ALFRED SUTRO 
 
 NEW YORK 
 DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 1908
 
 Copyright, 1901 
 BY DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 
 
 All righti reserved 
 
 Published May, 
 
 ,*-' V ' 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS JOHN WILSON 
 AND SON CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
 
 Contents 
 fjs 
 
 J? 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE HIVE 3 
 IL THE SWARM ...... . 37 
 
 III. THE FOUNDATION OF THE CITY . 131 
 
 IV. THE LIFE OF THE BEE . . . .159 
 V. THE YOUNG QUEENS .... 233 
 
 VI. THE NUPTIAL FLIGHT .... 295 
 
 VII. THE MASSACRE OF THE MALES . 347 
 
 VIII. THE PROGRESS OF THE RACE. . . 363 
 
 423
 
 ON THE THRESHOLD OF 
 THE HIVE
 
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 > 5 
 
 ON THE THRESHOLD OF 
 THE HIVE 
 
 IT is not my intention to write a trea- 
 tise on apiculture, or on practical 
 bee-keeping. Excellent works of the 
 kind abound in all civilised countries, 
 and it were useless to attempt another. 
 France has those of Dadant, Georges de 
 Layens and Bonnier, Bertrand, Hamet, 
 Weber, Clement, the Abbe Collin, etc. 
 English-speaking countries have Langs- 
 troth, Bevan, Cook, Cheshire, Cowan, 
 Root, etc. Germany has Dzierzon, Van 
 Berlespoch, Pollmann, Vogel, and many 
 others. 
 
 3
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 Nor is this book to be a scientific 
 monograph on Apis Mellifica, Ligustica, 
 Fasciata, Dorsata, etc., or a collection of 
 new observations and studies. I shall 
 say scarcely anvthina <ihat| those will not 
 know who are somewhat familiar with 
 bees. The notes and experiments I have 
 made during my* <Svety years of bee- 
 keeping I shall reserve for a more techni- 
 cal work; for their interest is necessarily 
 of a special and limited nature, and I 
 am anxious not to over-burden this 
 essay. I wish to speak of the bees very 
 simply, as one speaks of a subject one 
 knows and loves to those who know 
 it not. I do not intend to adorn the 
 truth, or merit the just reproach Reaumur 
 addressed to his predecessors in the study 
 of our honey-flies, whom he accused of 
 substituting for the marvellous reality 
 marvels that were imaginary and merely 
 plausible. The fact that the hive con- 
 4
 
 On the Threshold of the Hive 
 
 tains so much that is wonderful does 
 not warrant our seeking to add to its 
 wonders. Besides, I myself have now for 
 a long time ceased to look for anything 
 more beautiful in this world, or more 
 interesting, than the truth; or at least 
 than the effort one is able to make 
 towards the truth. I shall state nothing, 
 therefore, that I have not verified myself, 
 or that is not so fully accepted in the 
 text-books as to render further verifica- 
 tion superfluous. My facts shall be as 
 accurate as though they appeared in a 
 practical manual or scientific monograph, 
 but I shall relate them in a somewhat 
 livelier fashion than such works would 
 allow, shall group them more harmoni- 
 ously together, and blend them with 
 freer and more mature reflections. The 
 reader of this book will not learn there- 
 from how to manage a hive ; but he will 
 know more or less all that can with any 
 5
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 certainty be known of the curious, pro- 
 found, and intimate side of its inhabi- 
 tants. Nor will this be at the cost of 
 what still remains to be learned. I shall 
 pass over in silence the hoary traditions 
 that, in the country and many a book, 
 still constitute the legend of the hive. 
 Whenever there be doubt, disagreement, 
 hypothesis, when I arrive at the unknown, 
 I shall declare it loyally; you will find 
 that we often shall halt before the un- 
 known. Beyond the appreciable facts 
 of their life we know but little of the 
 bees. And the closer our acquaintance 
 becomes, the nearer is our ignorance 
 brought to us of the depths of their real 
 existence ; but such ignorance is better 
 than the other kind, which is uncon- 
 scious, and satisfied. 
 
 Does an analogous work on the bee 
 exist ? I believe I have read almost all 
 that has been written on bees; but of 
 6
 
 On the Threshold of the Hive 
 
 kindred matter I know only Michelet's 
 chapter at the end of his book " The 
 Insect," and Ludwig Biichner's essay in 
 his "Mind in Animals." Michelet merely 
 hovers on the fringe of his subject ; Biich- 
 ner's treatise is comprehensive enough, 
 but contains so many hazardous state- 
 ments, so much long-discarded gossip 
 and hearsay, that I suspect him of never 
 having left his library, never having set 
 forth himself to question his heroines, 
 or opened one of the many hundreds of 
 rustling, wing-lit hives which we must 
 profane before our instinct can be attuned 
 to their secret, before we can perceive the 
 spirit and atmosphere, perfume and mys- 
 tery, of these virgin daughters of toil. 
 The book smells not of the bee, or its 
 honey ; and has the defects of many a 
 learned work, whose conclusions often 
 are preconceived, and whose scientific at- 
 tainment is composed of a vast array of 
 7
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 doubtful anecdotes collected on every 
 side. But in this essay of mine we rarely 
 shall meet each other ; for our starting- 
 point, our aim, and our point of view 
 are all very different. 
 
 The bibliography of the bee (we will 
 begin with the books so as to get rid 
 of them as soon as we can and go to 
 the source of the books) is very exten- 
 sive. From the beginning this strange 
 little creature, that lived in a society 
 under complicated laws and executed 
 prodigious labours in the darkness, at- 
 tracted the notice of men. Aristotle, 
 Cato, Varro, Pliny, Columella, Palladius 
 all studied the bees ; to say nothing of 
 Aristomachus, who, according to Cicero, 
 watched them for fifty-eight years, and of 
 Phyliscus, whose writings are lost. But 
 these dealt rather with the legend of the 
 8
 
 On the Threshold of the Hive 
 
 bee ; and all that we can gather there- 
 from which indeed is exceedingly little 
 we may find condensed in the fourth 
 book of Virgil's Georgics. 
 
 The real history of the bee begins in 
 the seventeenth century, with the discov- 
 cries of the great Dutch savant Swammer- 
 dam. It is well, however, to add this 
 detail, but little known : before Swam- 
 merdam a Flemish naturalist named 
 Clutius had arrived at certain important 
 truths, such as the sole maternity of the 
 queen and her possession of the attributes 
 of both sexes, but he had left these un- 
 proved. Swammerdam founded the true 
 methods of scientific investigation ; he 
 invented the microscope, contrived injec- 
 tions to ward off decay, was the first to 
 dissect the bees, and by the discovery of 
 the ovaries and the oviduct definitely fixed 
 the sex of the queen, hitherto looked 
 upon as a king, and threw the whole 
 9
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 political scheme of the hive into most 
 unexpected light by basing it upon mater- 
 nity. Finally he produced woodcuts and 
 engravings so perfect that to this day they 
 serve to illustrate many books on apicul- 
 ture. He lived in the turbulent, restless 
 Amsterdam of those days, regretting 
 " Het Zoete Buiten Leve " The Sweet 
 Life of the Country and died, worn- 
 out with work, at the age of forty-three. 
 He wrote in a pious, formal style, with 
 beautiful, simple outbursts of a faith that, 
 fearful of falling away, ascribed all things 
 to the glory of the Creator ; and em- 
 bodied his observations and studies in his 
 great work "Bybel der Natuure," which 
 the doctor Boerhave, a century later, 
 caused to be translated from the Dutch 
 into Latin under the title of " Biblia 
 Naturae." (Leyden, 1737.) 
 
 Then came Reaumur, who, pursuing 
 similar methods, made a vast number of
 
 On the Threshold of the Hive 
 
 curious experiments and researches in his 
 gardens at Charenton, and devoted to the 
 bees an entire volume of his " Notes to 
 Serve for a History of Insects." One 
 may read it with profit to-day, and with- 
 out fatigue. It is clear, direct, and sin- 
 cere, and possessed of a certain hard, arid 
 charm of its own. He sought especially 
 the destruction of ancient errors ; he him- 
 self was responsible for several new ones ; 
 he partially understood the formation of 
 swarms and the political establishment 
 of queens ; in a word, he discovered 
 many difficult truths, and paved the way 
 for the discovery of more. He fully 
 appreciated the marvellous architecture 
 of the hive; and what he said on the 
 subject has never been better said. It is 
 to him, too, that we owe the idea of the 
 glass hives, which, having since been 
 perfected, enable us to follow the entire 
 private life of these fierce insects, whose
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 work, begun in the dazzling sunshine, 
 receives its crown in the darkness. To 
 be comprehensive, one should mention 
 also the somewhat subsequent works and 
 investigations of Charles Bonnet and 
 Schirach (who solved the enigma of the 
 royal egg) ; but I will keep to the broad 
 lines, and pass at once to Fra^ois Huber, 
 the master and classic of contemporary 
 apiarian science. 
 
 Huber was born in Geneva in 1750, 
 and fell blind in his earliest youth. The 
 experiments of Reaumur interested him ; 
 he sought to verify them, and soon be- 
 coming passionately absorbed in these 
 researches, eventually, with the assist- 
 ance of an intelligent and faithful servant, 
 Fran9ois Burnens, devoted his entire life 
 to the study of the bee. In the annals 
 of human suffering and human triumph 
 there is nothing more touching, no lesson 
 more admirable, than the story of this
 
 On the Threshold of the Hive 
 
 patient collaboration, wherein the one 
 who saw only with immaterial light 
 guided with his spirit the eyes and hands 
 of the other who had the real earthly 
 vision ; where he who, as we are assured, 
 had never with his own eyes beheld a 
 comb of honey, was yet able, notwith- 
 standing the veil on his dead eyes that 
 rendered double the veil in which nature 
 enwraps all things, to penetrate the pro- 
 found secrets of the genius that had made 
 this invisible comb ; as though to teach 
 us that no condition in life can warrant 
 our abandoning our desire and search for 
 the truth. I will not enumerate all that 
 apiarian science owes to Huber ; to state 
 what it -does not owe were the briefer 
 task. His " New Observations on Bees," 
 of which the first volume was written in 
 1789, in the form of letters to Charles 
 Bonnet, the second not appearing till 
 twenty years later, have remained the 
 . 13
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 unfailing, abundant treasure into which 
 every subsequent writer has dipped. And 
 though a few mistakes may be found 
 therein, a few incomplete truths; though 
 since his time considerable additions have 
 been made to the micrography and prac- 
 tical culture of bees, the handling of 
 queens, etc., there is not a single one of 
 his principal statements that has been 
 disproved, or discovered in error; and 
 in our actual experience they stand 
 untouched, and indeed at its very 
 foundation. 
 
 [3] 
 
 Some years of silence followed these 
 revelations ; but soon a German clergy- 
 man, Dzierzon, discovered parthenogene- 
 sis, /'. e. the virginal parturition of queens, 
 and contrived the first hive with movable 
 combs, thereby enabling the bee-keeper 
 henceforth to take his share of the harvest
 
 On the Threshold of the Hive 
 
 of honey, without being forced to destroy 
 his best colonies and in one instant 
 annihilate the work of an entire year. 
 This hive, still very imperfect, received 
 masterly improvement at the hands of 
 Langstroth, who invented the -movable 
 frame properly so called, which has been 
 adopted in America with extraordinary suc- 
 cess. Root, Quinby, Dadant, Cheshire, 
 De Layens, Cowan, Heddon, Howard, 
 etc., added still further and precious im- 
 provement. Then it occurred to Mehring 
 that if bees were supplied with combs 
 that had an artificial waxen foundation, 
 they would be spared the labour of 
 fashioning the wax and constructing the 
 cells, which costs them much honey and 
 the best part of their time ; he found that 
 the bees accepted these combs most 
 readily, and adapted them to their 
 requirements. 
 
 Major deHruschka invented the Honey-
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 Extractor, which enables the honey to be 
 withdrawn by centrifugal force without 
 breaking the combs, etc. And thus, in a 
 few years, the methods of apiculture 
 underwent a radical change. The capac- 
 ity and fruitfulness of the hives were 
 trebled. Great and productive apiaries 
 arose on every side. An end was put 
 to the useless destruction of the most 
 industrious cities, and to the odious selec- 
 tion of the least fit which was its result. 
 Man truly became the master of the 
 bees, although furtively, and without their 
 knowledge ; directing all things without 
 giving an order, receiving obedience but 
 not recognition. For the destiny once 
 imposed by the seasons he has substituted 
 his will. He repairs the injustice of the 
 year, unites hostile republics, and equal- 
 ises wealth. He restricts or augments 
 the births, regulates the fecundity of the 
 queen, dethrones her and instals another 
 16
 
 On the Threshold of the Hive 
 
 in her place, after dexterously obtaining 
 the reluctant consent of a people who 
 would be maddened at the mere suspicion 
 of an inconceivable intervention. When 
 he thinks fit, he will peacefully violate 
 the secret of the sacred chambers, and the 
 elaborate, tortuous policy of the palace. 
 He will five or six times in succession de- 
 prive the bees of the fruit of their labour, 
 without harming them, without their be- 
 coming discouraged or even impoverished. 
 He proportions the store-houses and 
 granaries of their dwellings to the harvest 
 of flowers that the spring is spreading 
 over the dip of the hills. He compels 
 them to reduce the extravagant number 
 of lovers who await the birth of the royal 
 princesses. In a word he does with them 
 what he will, he obtains what he will, pro- 
 vided always that what he seeks be in ac- 
 cordance with their laws and their virtues; 
 for beyond all the desires of this strange 
 2 17
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 god who has taken possession of them, 
 who is too vast to be seen and too alien 
 to be understood, their eyes see further 
 than the eyes of the god himself; and 
 their one thought is the accomplishment, 
 with untiring sacrifice, of the mysterious 
 duty of their race. 
 
 [4] 
 
 Let us now, having learned from books 
 all that they had to teach us of a very 
 ancient history, leave the science others 
 have acquired and look at the bees with 
 our own eyes. An hour spent in the 
 midst of the apiary will be less instruc- 
 tive, perhaps ; but the things we shall see 
 will be infinitely more stimulating and 
 more actual. 
 
 I have not yet forgotten the first apiary 
 
 I saw, where I learned to love the bees. 
 
 It was many years ago, in a large village 
 
 of Dutch Flanders, the sweet and pleasant 
 
 18
 
 On the Threshold of the Hive 
 
 country whose love for brilliant colour 
 rivals that of Zealand even, the concave 
 mirror of Holland; a country that gladly 
 spreads out before us, as so many pretty, 
 thoughtful toys, her illuminated gables, 
 and waggons, and towers ; her cupboards 
 and clocks that gleam at the end of the 
 passage; her little trees marshalled in line 
 along quays and canal-banks, waiting, one 
 almost might think, for some quiet, benef- 
 icent ceremony; her boats and her barges 
 with sculptured poops, her flower-like 
 doors and windows, immaculate dams, 
 and elaborate, many-coloured drawbridges; 
 and her little varnished houses, bright as 
 new pottery, from which bell-shaped 
 dames come forth, all a-glitter with silver 
 and gold, to milk the cows in the white- 
 hedged fields, or spread the linen on 
 flowery lawns, cut into patterns of oval 
 and lozenge, and most astoundingly 
 green. 
 
 19
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 To this spot, where life would seem 
 more restricted than elsewhere if it be 
 possible for life indeed to become re- 
 stricted a sort of aged philosopher had 
 retired; an old man somewhat akin to 
 Virgil's 
 
 " Man equal to kings, and approaching the gods ; " 
 
 whereto Lafontaine might have added, 
 "And, like the gods, content and at rest." 
 
 Here had he built his refuge, being a 
 little weary ; not disgusted, for the large 
 aversions are unknown to the sage ; but a 
 little weary of interrogating men, whose 
 answers to the only interesting questions 
 one can put concerning nature and her 
 veritable laws are far less simple than 
 those that are given by animals and 
 plants. His happiness, like the Scythian 
 philosopher's, lay all in the beauties of 
 his garden ; and best-loved and visited 
 most often, was the apiary, composed of
 
 On the Threshold of the Hive 
 
 twelve domes of straw, some of which he 
 had painted a bright pink, and some a 
 clear yellow, but most of all a tender 
 blue ; having noticed, long before Sir 
 John Lubbock's demonstrations, the bees' 
 fondness for this colour. 
 
 These hives stood against the wall of 
 the house, in the angle formed by one of 
 those pleasant and graceful Dutch kit- 
 chens whose earthenware dresser, all bright 
 with copper and tin, reflected itself through 
 the open door on to the peaceful canal. 
 And the water, burdened with these fami- 
 liar images beneath its curtain of poplars, 
 led one's eyes to a calm horizon of mills 
 and of meadows. 
 
 Here, as in all places, the hives lent a 
 new meaning to the flowers and the silence, 
 the balm of the air and the rays of the 
 sun. One seemed to have drawn very 
 near to the festival spirit of nature. One 
 was content to rest at this radiant cross- 
 
 21
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 road, where the aerial ways converge and 
 divide that the busy and tuneful bearers 
 of all country perfumes unceasingly travel 
 from dawn unto dusk. One heard the 
 musical voice of the garden, whose love- 
 liest hours revealed their rejoicing soul 
 and sang of their gladness. One came 
 hither, to the school of the bees, to be 
 taught the preoccupations of all-powerful 
 nature, the harmonious concord of the 
 three kingdoms, the indefatigable organi- 
 sation of life, and the lesson of ardent and 
 disinterested work ; and another lesson 
 too, with a moral as good, that the heroic 
 workers taught there, and emphasised, as 
 it were, with the fiery darts of their 
 myriad wings, was to appreciate the 
 somewhat vague savour of leisure, to 
 enjoy the almost unspeakable delights 
 of those immaculate days that revolved 
 on themselves in the fields of space, 
 forming merely a transparent globe, as
 
 On the Threshold of the Hive 
 
 void of memory as the happiness with- 
 out alloy. 
 
 [5] 
 
 In order to follow, as simply as possible, 
 the life of the bees through the year, we 
 will take a hive that awakes in the spring 
 and duly starts on its labours ; and then 
 we shall meet, in their natural order, all 
 the great episodes, viz. : the formation 
 and departure of the swarm, the founda- 
 tion of the new city, the birth, combat 
 and nuptial flight of the young queens, the 
 massacre of the males, and finally, the 
 return of the sleep of winter. With each 
 of these episodes there will go the neces- 
 sary explanations as to the laws, habits, 
 peculiarities and events that produce and 
 accompany it; so that, when arrived at 
 the end of the bee's short year, which 
 extends only from April to the last days 
 of September, we shall have gazed upon 
 23
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 all the mysteries of the palace of honey. 
 Before we open it, therefore, and throw a 
 general glance around, we only need say 
 that the hive is composed of a queen, the 
 mother of all her people ; of thousands 
 of workers or neuters who are incomplete 
 and sterile females ; and lastly of some 
 hundreds of males, from whom one shall 
 be chosen as the sole and unfortunate 
 consort of the queen that the workers 
 will elect in the future, after the more or 
 less voluntary departure of the reigning 
 mother. 
 
 [6] 
 
 The first time that we open a hive there 
 comes over us an emotion akin to that we 
 might feel at profaning some unknown 
 object, charged perhaps with dreadful 
 surprise, as a tomb. A legend of menace 
 and peril still clings to the bees. There 
 is the distressful recollection of her sting, 
 24
 
 On the Threshold of the Hive 
 
 which produces a pain so characteristic that 
 one knows not wherewith to compare it; 
 a kind of destroying dryness, a flame of 
 the desert rushing over the wounded limb, 
 as though these daughters of the sun had 
 distilled a dazzling poison from their 
 father's angry rays, in order more effec- 
 tively to defend the treasure they gather 
 from his beneficent hours. 
 
 It is true that were some one who neither 
 knows nor respects the customs and char- 
 acter of the bee suddenly to fling open 
 the hive, it would turn at once into a 
 burning bush of heroism and anger ; but 
 the slight amount of skill needed to 
 handle it with impunity can be most 
 readily acquired. Let but a little smoke 
 be deftly applied, much coolness and 
 gentleness be shown, and our well-armed 
 workers will suffer themselves to be 
 despoiled without dreaming of drawing 
 their sting. It is not the fact, as some 
 25
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 have maintained, that the bees recognise 
 their master ; nor have they any fear of 
 man ; but at the smell of the smoke, at 
 the large slow gestures that traverse their 
 dwellings without threatening them, they 
 imagine that this is not the attack of an 
 enemy against whom defence is pos- 
 sible, but that it is a force or a natural 
 catastrophe whereto they do well to 
 submit. 
 
 Instead of vainly struggling, therefore, 
 they do what they can to safeguard the 
 future ; and, obeying a foresight that for 
 once is in error, they fly to their reserves 
 of honey, into which they eagerly dip in 
 order to possess within themselves the 
 wherewithal to start a new city, immedi- 
 ately and no matter where, should the 
 ancient one be destroyed or they be 
 compelled to forsake it. 
 
 26
 
 On the Threshold of the Hive 
 
 [7] 
 
 The first impression of the novice 
 before whom an observation-hive 1 is 
 opened will be one of some disappoint- 
 ment. He had been told that this little 
 glass case contained an unparalleled activ- 
 ity, an infinite number of wise laws, 
 and a startling amalgam of mystery, ex- 
 perience, genius, calculation, science, of 
 various industries, of certitude and pre- 
 science, of intelligent habits and curious 
 feelings and virtues. All that he sees is 
 a confused mass of little reddish groups, 
 
 1 By observation-hive is meant a hive of glass, 
 furnished with black curtains or shutters. The best 
 kind have only one comb, thus permitting both faces 
 to be studied. These hives can be placed in a draw- 
 ing-room, library, etc., without inconvenience or dan- 
 ger. The bees that inhabit the one I have in my 
 study in Paris are able even in the stony desert of that 
 great city, to find the wherewithal to nourish them- 
 selves and to prosper. 
 
 27
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 somewhat resembling roasted coffee-ber- 
 ries, or bunches of raisins piled against 
 the glass. They look more dead than 
 alive ; their movements are slow, inco- 
 herent, and incomprehensible. Can these 
 be the wonderful drops of light he had 
 seen but a moment ago, unceasingly flash- 
 ing and sparkling, as they darted among 
 the pearls and the gold of a thousand 
 wide-open calyces ? 
 
 They appear to be shivering in the 
 darkness, to be numbed, suffocated, so 
 closely are they huddled together; one 
 might fancy they were ailing captives, or 
 queens dethroned, who have had their 
 one moment of glory in the midst of 
 their radiant garden, and are now com- 
 pelled to return to the shameful squalor 
 of their poor overcrowded home. 
 
 It is with them as with all that is 
 deeply real ; they must be studied, and 
 one must learn how to study them. The 
 28
 
 On the Threshold of the Hive 
 
 inhabitant of another planet who should 
 see men and women coming and going 
 almost imperceptibly through our streets, 
 crowding at certain times around certain 
 buildings, or waiting for one knows 
 not what, without apparent movement, 
 in the depths of their dwellings, might 
 conclude therefrom that they, too, were 
 miserable and inert. It takes time to 
 distinguish the manifold activity con- 
 tained in this inertia. 
 
 And indeed every one of the little 
 almost motionless groups in the hive is 
 incessantly working, each at a different 
 trade. Repose is unknown to any ; and 
 such, for instance, as seem the most tor- 
 pid, as they hang in dead clusters against 
 the glass, are intrusted with the most 
 mysterious and fatiguing task of all : it is 
 they who secrete and form the wax. But 
 the details of this universal activity will 
 be given in their place. For the mo- 
 29
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 ment we need only call attention to 
 the essential trait in the nature of the 
 bee which accounts for the extraordinary 
 agglomeration of the various workers. 
 The bee is above all, and even to a 
 greater extent than the ant, a creature 
 of the crowd. She can live only in the 
 midst of a multitude. When she leaves 
 the hive, which is so densely packed that 
 she has to force her way with blows of 
 her head through the living walls that 
 enclose her, she departs from her proper 
 element. She will dive for an instant 
 into flower-filled space, as the swimmer 
 will dive into the sea that is filled with 
 pearls, but under pain of death it 
 behoves her at regular intervals to re- 
 turn and breathe the crowd as the swim- 
 mer must return and breathe the air. 
 Isolate her, and however abundant the 
 food or favourable the temperature, she 
 will expire in a few days not of hunger 
 3
 
 On the Threshold of the Hive 
 
 or cold, but of loneliness. From the 
 crowd, from the city, she derives an 
 invisible aliment that is as necessary 
 to her as honey. This craving will 
 help to explain the spirit of the laws of 
 the hive. For in them the individual is 
 nothing, her existence conditional only, 
 and herself, for one indifferent moment, 
 a winged organ of the race. Her whole 
 life is an entire sacrifice to the manifold, 
 everlasting being whereof she forms part. 
 It is strange to note that it was not always 
 so. We find even to-day, among the 
 melliferous hymenoptera, all the stages 
 of progressive civilisation of our own do- 
 mestic bee. At the bottom of the scale 
 we find her working alone, in wretched- 
 ness, often not seeing her offspring (the 
 Prosopis, the Colletes, etc.) ; sometimes 
 living in the midst of the limited 
 family that she produces annually (as in 
 the case of the humble-bee). Then she 
 31
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 forms temporary associations (the Pan- 
 urgi, the Dasypodoe, the Hacliti, etc.) 
 and at last we arrive, through successive 
 stages, at the almost perfect but pitiless 
 society of our hives, where the individual 
 is entirely merged in the republic, and 
 the republic in its turn invariably sacri- 
 ficed to the abstract and immortal city of 
 the future. 
 
 [8] 
 
 Let us not too hastily deduce from 
 these facts conclusions that apply to man. 
 He possesses the power of withstanding 
 certain of nature's laws ; and to know 
 whether such resistance be right or wrong 
 is the gravest and obscurest point in his 
 morality. But it is deeply interesting 
 to discover what the will of nature may 
 be in a different world ; and this will 
 is revealed with extraordinary clearness in 
 the evolution of the hymenoptera, which, 
 32
 
 On the Threshold of the Hive 
 
 of all the inhabitants of this globe, possess 
 the highest degree of intellect after that 
 of man. The aim of nature is manifestly 
 the improvement of the race ; but no 
 less manifest is her inability, or refusal, 
 to obtain such improvement except at 
 the cost of the liberty, the rights, and 
 the happiness of the individual. In 
 proportion as a society organises itself, 
 and rises in the scale, so does a shrinkage 
 enter the private life of each one of its 
 members. Where there is progress, it 
 is the result only of a more and more 
 complete sacrifice of the individual to 
 the general interest. Each one is com- 
 pelled, first of all, to renounce his vices, 
 which are acts of independence. For 
 instance, at the last stage but one of 
 apiarian civilisation, we find the humble- 
 bees, which are like our cannibals. The 
 adult workers are incessantly hovering 
 around the eggs, which they seek to 
 3 33
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 devour, and the mother has to display 
 the utmost stubbornness in their defence. 
 Then having freed himself from his most 
 dangerous vices, each individual has to 
 acquire a certain number of more and 
 more painful virtues. Among the humble- 
 bees, for instance, the workers do not 
 dream of renouncing love, whereas our 
 domestic bee lives in a state of perpetual 
 chastity. And indeed we soon shall show 
 how much more she has to abandon, in 
 exchange for the comfort and security of 
 the hive, for its architectural, economic, 
 and political perfection ; and we shall re- 
 turn to the evolution of the hymenoptera 
 in the chapter devoted to the progress of 
 the species. 
 
 34
 
 II 
 
 THE SWARM 
 
 35
 
 II 
 
 THE SWARM 
 
 [9] 
 
 WE will now, so as to draw more 
 closely to nature, consider the 
 different episodes of the swarm as they 
 come to pass in an ordinary hive, which 
 is ten or twenty times more populous 
 than an observation one, and leaves the 
 bees entirely free and untrammelled. 
 
 Here, then, they have shaken off the 
 torpor of winter. The queen started 
 laying again in the very first days of 
 February, and the workers have flocked 
 to the willows and nut-trees, gorse and 
 violets, anemones and lungworts. Then 
 spring invades the earth, and cellar and 
 stream with honey and pollen, while each 
 37
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 day beholds the birth of thousands of 
 bees. The overgrown males now all sally 
 forth from their cells, and disport them- 
 selves on the combs ; and so crowded 
 does the too prosperous city become that 
 hundreds of belated workers, coming back 
 from the flowers towards evening, will 
 vainly seek shelter within, and will be 
 forced to spend the night on the threshold, 
 where they will be decimated by the cold. 
 Restlessness seizes the people, and the 
 old queen begins to stir. She feels 
 that a new destiny is being prepared. 
 She has religiously fulfilled her duty as a 
 good creatress ; and from this duty done 
 there result only tribulation and sorrow. 
 An invincible power menaces her tran- 
 quillity ; she will soon be forced to quit 
 this city of hers, where she has reigned. 
 But this city is her work, it is she, her- 
 self. She is not its queen in the sense in 
 which men use the word. She issues no 
 38
 
 The Swarm 
 
 orders ; she obeys, as meekly as the 
 humblest of her subjects, the masked 
 power, sovereignly wise, that for the 
 present, and till we attempt to locate it, 
 we will term the "spirit of the hive." 
 But she is the unique organ of love ; she 
 is the mother of the city. She founded 
 it amid uncertainty and poverty. She 
 has peopled it with her own substance; 
 and all who move within its walls 
 workers, males, larvae, nymphs, and the 
 young princesses whose approaching birth 
 will hasten her own departure, one of 
 them being already designed as her suc- 
 cessor by the "spirit of the hive" 
 all these have issued from her flanks. 
 
 [10] 
 
 What is this "spirit of the hive" 
 
 where does it reside ? It is not like the 
 
 special instinct that teaches the bird to 
 
 construct its well planned nest, and then 
 
 39
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 seek other skies when the day for mi- 
 gration returns. Nor is it a kind of 
 mechanical habit of the race, or blind 
 craving for life, that will fling the bees 
 upon any wild hazard the moment an 
 unforeseen event shall derange the accus- 
 tomed order of phenomena. On the 
 contrary, be the event never so masterful, 
 the "spirit of the hive" still will follow 
 it, step by step, like an alert and quick- 
 witted slave, who is able to derive ad- 
 vantage even from his master's most 
 dangerous orders. 
 
 It disposes pitilessly of the wealth and 
 the happiness, the liberty and life, of all 
 this winged people ; and yet with discre- 
 tion, as though governed itself by some 
 great duty. It regulates day by day the 
 number of births, and contrives that these 
 shall strictly accord with the number of 
 flowers that brighten the country-side. 
 It decrees the queen's deposition or warns 
 40
 
 The Swarm 
 
 her that she must depart ; it compels her 
 to bring her own rivals into the world, 
 and rears them royally, protecting them 
 from their mother's political hatred. So, 
 too, in accordance with the generosity of 
 the flowers, the age of the spring, and 
 the probable dangers of the nuptial flight, 
 will it permit or forbid the first-born 
 of the virgin princesses to slay in their 
 cradles her younger sisters, who are sing- 
 ing the song of the queens. At other 
 times, when the season wanes, and flowery 
 hours grow shorter, it will command the 
 workers themselves to slaughter the whole 
 imperial brood, that the era of revolutions 
 may close, and work become the sole 
 object of all. The "spirit of the hive'" 
 is prudent and thrifty, but by no means 
 parsimonious. And thus, aware, it would 
 seem, that nature's laws are somewhat 
 wild and extravagant in all that pertains 
 to love, it tolerates, during summer days 
 41
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 of abundance, the embarrassing presence 
 in the hive of three or four hundred 
 males, irom whose ranks the queen about 
 to be born shall select her lover ; three 
 rr four hundred foolish, clumsy, useless, 
 noisy creatures, who are pretentious, glut- 
 tonous, dirty, coarse, totally and scan- 
 dalously idle, insatiable, and enormous. 
 
 But after the queen's impregnation, 
 when flowers begin to close sooner, and 
 open later, the spirit one morning will 
 coldly decree the simultaneous and gen- 
 eral massacre of every male. It regulates 
 the workers' labours, with due regard to 
 their age ; it allots their task to the nurses 
 who tend the nymphs and the larvas, the 
 ladies of honour who wait on the queen 
 and never allow her out of their sight ; 
 the house-bees who air, refresh, or heat 
 the hive by fanning their wings, and 
 hasten the evaporation of the honey that 
 may be too highly charged with water; 
 42
 
 The Swarm 
 
 the architects, masons, wax-workers, and 
 sculptors who form the chain and con- 
 struct the combs; the foragers who sally 
 forth to the flowers in search of the nectar 
 that turns into honey, of the pollen that 
 feeds the nymphs and the larvae, the pro- 
 polis that welds and strengthens the build- 
 ings of the city, or the water and salt 
 required by the youth of the nation. Its 
 orders have gone to the chemists who en- 
 sure the preservation of the honey by 
 letting a drop of formic acid fall in from 
 the end of their sting ; to the capsule- 
 makers who seal down the cells when the 
 treasure is ripe, to the sweepers who 
 maintain public places and streets most 
 irreproachably clean, to the bearers whose 
 duty it is to remove the corpses ; and 
 to the amazons of the guard who keep 
 watch on the threshold by night and by 
 day, question comers and goers, recognise 
 the novices who return from their very 
 43
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 first flight, scare away vagabonds, ma- 
 rauders and loiterers, expel all intruders, 
 attack redoubtable foes in a body, and, if 
 need be, barricade the entrance. 
 
 Finally, it is the spirit of the hive that 
 fixes the hour of the great annual sacrifice 
 to the genius of the race : the hour, that 
 is, of the swarm ; when we find a whole 
 people, who have attained the topmost pin- 
 nacle of prosperity and power, suddenly 
 abandoning to the generation to come 
 their wealth and their palaces, their homes 
 and the fruits of their labour ; themselves 
 content to encounter the hardships and 
 perils of a new and distant country. This 
 act, be it conscious or not, undoubtedly 
 passes the limits of human morality. 
 Its result will sometimes be ruin, but 
 poverty always ; and the thrice-happy 
 city is scattered abroad in obedience to 
 a law superior to its own happiness. 
 Where has this law been decreed, which, 
 44
 
 The Swarm 
 
 as we soon shall find, is by no means as 
 blind and inevitable as one might believe ? 
 Where, in what assembly, what council, 
 what intellectual and moral sphere, does 
 this spirit reside to whom all must submit, 
 itself being vassal to an heroic duty, to 
 an intelligence whose eyes are persistently 
 fixed on the future ? 
 
 It comes to pass with the bees as with 
 most of the things in this world; we 
 remark some few of their habits ; we 
 say they do this, they work in such and 
 such fashion, their queens are born thus, 
 their workers are virgin, they swarm at 
 a certain time. And then we imagine 
 we know them, and ask nothing more. 
 We watch them hasten from flower to 
 flower, we see the constant agitation within 
 the hive ; their life seems very simple to 
 us, and bounded, like every life, by the 
 instinctive cares of reproduction and nour- 
 ishment. But let the eye draw near, and 
 45
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 endeavour to see ; and at once the least 
 phenomenon of all becomes overpower- 
 ingly complex ; we are confronted by the 
 enigma of intellect, of destiny, will, aim, 
 means, causes ; the incomprehensible or- 
 ganisation of the most insignificant act 
 of life. 
 
 Our hive, then, is preparing to swarm ; 
 making ready for the great immolation to 
 the exacting gods of the race. In obe- 
 dience to the order of the spirit an order 
 that to us may well seem incomprehen- 
 sible, for it is entirely opposed to all our 
 own instincts and feelings 60,000 or 
 70,000 bees out of the 80,000 or 90,000 
 that form the whole population, will aban- 
 don the maternal city at the prescribed 
 hour. They will not leave at a moment 
 of despair ; or desert, with sudden and 
 wild resolve, a home laid waste by famine, 
 46
 
 The Swarm 
 
 disease, or war. No, the exile has long 
 been planned, and the favourable hour 
 patiently awaited. Were the hive poor, 
 had it suffered from pillage or storm, had 
 misfortune befallen the royal family, the 
 bees would not forsake it. They leave it 
 only when it has attained the apogee of 
 its prosperity ; at a time when, after the 
 arduous labours of the spring, the im- 
 mense palace of wax has its 120,000 well- 
 arranged cells overflowing with new honey, 
 and with the many-coloured flour, known 
 as " bees' bread," on which nymphs and 
 larvae are fed. 
 
 Never is the hive more beautiful than 
 on the eve of its heroic renouncement, in 
 its unrivalled hour of fullest abundance 
 and joy; serene for all its apparent excite- 
 ment and feverishness. 
 
 Let us endeavour to picture it to our- 
 selves, not as it appears to the bees, for 
 we cannot tell in what magical, formidable 
 47
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 fashion things may be reflected in the 
 6,000 or 7,000 facets of their lateral eyes 
 and the triple cyclopean eye on their brow, 
 but as it would seem to us, were we of 
 their stature. From the height of a dome 
 more colossal than that of St. Peter's at 
 Rome waxen walls descend to the ground, 
 balanced in the void and the darkness ; 
 gigantic and manifold, vertical and parallel 
 geometric constructions, to which, for rela- 
 tive precision, audacity, and vastness, no 
 human structure is comparable. Each of 
 these walls, whose substance still is immac- 
 ulate and fragrant, of virginal, silvery fresh- 
 ness, contains thousands of cells, that are 
 stored with provisions sufficient to feed the 
 whole people for several weeks. Here, 
 lodged in transparent cells, are the pollens, 
 love-ferment of every flower of spring, 
 making brilliant splashes of red and yellow, 
 of black and mauve. Close by, in twenty 
 thousand reservoirs, sealed with a seal 
 48
 
 The Swarm 
 
 that shall only be broken on days of su- 
 preme distress, the honey of April is 
 stored, most limpid and perfumed of all, 
 wrapped round with long and magnificent 
 embroidery of gold, whose borders hang 
 stiff and rigid. Still lower the honey of 
 May matures, in great open vats, by whose 
 side watchful cohorts maintain an incessant 
 current of air. In the centre, and far 
 from the light whose diamond rays steal 
 in through the only opening, in the 
 warmest part of the hive, there stands the 
 abode of the future ; here does it sleep, 
 and wake. For this is the royal domain 
 of the brood-cells, set apart for the queen 
 and her acolytes ; about 10,000 cells 
 wherein the eggs repose, 15,000 or 16,000 
 chambers tenanted by larvae, 40,000 dwel- 
 lings inhabited by white nymphs to whom 
 thousands of nurses minister. 1 And fin- 
 
 1 The figures given here are scrupulously exact. 
 They are those of a well-filled hive in full prosperity. 
 4 49
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 ally, in the holy of holies of these parts, 
 are the three, four, six, or twelve sealed 
 palaces, vast in size compared with the 
 others, where the adolescent princesses lie 
 who await their hour, wrapped in a kind 
 of shroud, all of them motionless and 
 pale, and fed in the darkness. 
 
 [12] 
 
 On the day, then, that the Spirit of the 
 Hive has ordained, a certain part of the 
 population will go forth, selected in ac- 
 cordance with sure and immovable laws, 
 and make way for hopes that as yet are 
 formless. In the sleeping city there 
 remain the males, from -whose ranks the 
 royal lover shall come, the very young 
 bees that tend the brood-cells, and some 
 thousands of workers who continue to 
 forage abroad, to guard the accurmi' 
 lated treasure, and preserve the moral 
 traditions of the hive. For each hive 
 50
 
 The Swarm 
 
 has its own code of morals. There are 
 some that are very virtuous and some 
 that are very perverse; and a careless 
 bee-keeper will often corrupt his people, 
 destroy their respect for the property 
 of others, incite them to pillage, and 
 induce in them habits of conquest and 
 idleness which will render them sources 
 of danger to all the little republics around. 
 These things result from the bee's dis- 
 covery that work among distant flowers, 
 whereof many hundreds must be visited to 
 form one drop of honey, is not the only 
 or promptest method of acquiring wealth, 
 but that it is easier to enter ill-guarded 
 cities by stratagem, or force her way 
 into others too weak for self-defence. 
 Nor is it easy to restore to the paths 
 of duty a hive that has beccme thus 
 depraved.
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 [13] 
 
 All things go to prove that it is not 
 the queen, but the spirit of the hive, 
 that decides on the swarm. With this 
 queen of ours it happens as with many 
 a chief among men, who though he ap- 
 pear to give orders, is himself obliged 
 to obey commands far more mysterious, 
 far more inexplicable, than those he 
 issues to his subordinates. The hour 
 once fixed, the spirit will probably let 
 it be known at break of dawn, or the 
 previous night, if indeed not two nights 
 before; for scarcely has the sun drunk 
 in the first drops of dew when a most 
 unaccustomed stir, whose meaning the 
 bee-keeper rarely will fail to grasp, is 
 to be noticed within and around the 
 buzzing city. At times one would al- 
 most appear to detect a sign of dispute, 
 hesitation, recoil. It will happen even
 
 The Swarm 
 
 that for day after day a strange emotion, 
 apparently without cause, will appear and 
 vanish in this transparent, golden throng. 
 Has a cloud that we cannot see crept 
 across the sky that the bees are watching ; 
 or is their intellect battling with a new 
 regret? Does a winged council debate 
 the necessity of the departure ? Of this 
 we know nothing ; as we know nothing 
 of the manner in which the spirit conveys 
 its resolution to the crowd. Certain as 
 it may seem that the bees communicate 
 with each other, we know not whether 
 this be done in human fashion. It is 
 possible even that their own refrain may 
 be inaudible to them : the murmur that 
 comes to us heavily laden with perfume 
 of honey, the ecstatic whisper of fairest 
 summer days that the bee-keeper loves so 
 well, the festival song of labour that rises 
 and falls around the hive in the crystal 
 of the hour, and might almost be the 
 53
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 chant of the eager flowers, hymn of their 
 gladness and echo of their soft fragrance, 
 the voice of the white carnations, the 
 marjoram, and the thyme. They have, 
 however, a whole gamut of sounds that 
 we can distinguish, ranging from pro- 
 found delight to menace, distress, and 
 anger ; they have the ode of the queen, 
 the song of abundance, the psalms of 
 grief, and, lastly, the long and mysterious 
 war-cries the adolescent princesses send 
 forth during the combats and massacres 
 that precede the nuptial flight. May this 
 be a fortuitous music that fails to attain 
 their inward silence ? In any event they 
 seem not the least disturbed at the noises 
 we make near the hive ; but they regard 
 these perhaps as not of their world, and 
 possessed of no interest for them. It is 
 possible that we on our side hear only 
 a fractional part of the sounds that the 
 bees produce, and that they have many 
 54
 
 The Swarm 
 
 harmonies to which our ears are not 
 attuned. We soon shall see with what 
 startling rapidity they are able to under- 
 stand each other, and adopt concerted 
 measures, when, for instance, the great 
 honey thief, the huge sphinx atropos, the 
 sinister butterfly that bears a death's head 
 on its back, penetrates into the hive, 
 humming its own strange note, which acts 
 as a kind of irresistible incantation; the 
 news spreads quickly from group to group, 
 and from the guards at the threshold to 
 the workers on the furthest combs, the 
 whole population quivers. 
 
 It was for a long time believed that 
 when these wise bees, generally so pru- 
 dent, so far-sighted and economical, aban- 
 doned the treasures of their kingdom and 
 flung themselves upon the uncertainties 
 of life, they were yielding to a kind of 
 55
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 irresistible folly, a mechanical impulse, a 
 law of the species, a decree of nature, or 
 to the force that for all creatures lies hid- 
 den in the revolution of time. It is our 
 habit, in the case of the bees no less than 
 our own, to regard as fatality all that we 
 do not as yet understand. But now that 
 the hive has surrendered two or three of 
 its material secrets, we have discovered 
 that this exodus is neither instinctive nor 
 inevitable. It is not a blind emigration, 
 but apparently the well-considered sacrifice 
 of the present generation in favour of the 
 generation to come. The bee-keeper has 
 only to destroy in their cells the young 
 queens that still are inert, and, at the same 
 time, if nymphs and larvae abound, to 
 enlarge the store-houses and dormitories 
 of the nation, for this unprofitable tumult 
 instantaneously to subside, for work to 
 be at once resumed, and the flowers re- 
 visited ; while the old queen, who now is 
 56
 
 The Swarm 
 
 essential again, with no successor to hope 
 for, or perhaps to fear, will renounce 
 for this year her desire for the light of 
 the sun. Reassured as to the future of 
 the activity that will soon spring into life, 
 she will tranquilly resume her maternal 
 labours, which consist in the laying of two 
 or three thousand eggs a day, as she passes, 
 in a methodical spiral, from cell to cell, 
 omitting none, and never pausing to 
 rest. 
 
 Where is the fatality here, save in the 
 love of the race of to-day for the race of 
 to-morrow? This fatality exists in the 
 human species also, but its extent and 
 power seem infinitely less. Among men 
 it never gives rise to sacrifices as great, as 
 unanimous, or as complete. What far- 
 seeing fatality, taking the place of this one, 
 do we ourselves obey ? We know not ; 
 as we know not the being who watches us 
 as we watch the bees. 
 57
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 [-5] 
 
 But the hive that we have selected is 
 disturbed in its history by no interference 
 of man ; and as the beautiful day advances 
 with radiant and tranquil steps beneath 
 the trees, its ardour, still bathed in dew, 
 makes the appointed hour seem laggard. 
 Over the whole surface of the golden cor- 
 ridors that divide the parallel walls the 
 workers are busily making preparation 
 for the journey. And each one will first 
 of all burden herself with provision of 
 honey sufficient for five or six days. From 
 this honey that they bear within them they 
 will distil, by a chemical process still unex- 
 plained, the wax required for the immediate 
 construction of buildings. They will pro- 
 vide themselves also with a certain amount 
 of propolis, a kind of resin with which they 
 will seal all the crevices in the new dwell- 
 ing, strengthen weak places, varnish the 
 58
 
 The Swarm 
 
 walls, and exclude the light ; for the bees 
 love to work in almost total obscurity, 
 guiding themselves with their many-faceted 
 eyes, or with their antennae perhaps, the 
 seat, it would seem, of an unknown sense 
 that fathoms and measures the darkness. 
 
 [16] 
 
 They are not without prescience, there- 
 fore, of what is to befall them on this the 
 most dangerous day of all their existence. 
 Absorbed by the cares, the prodigious 
 perils of this mighty adventure, they will 
 have no time now to visit the gardens and 
 meadows; and to-morrow, and after to- 
 morrow, it may happen that rain may fall, 
 or there may be wind; that their wings 
 may be frozen or the flowers refuse to 
 open. Famine and death would await 
 them were it not for this foresight of 
 theirs. None would come to their help, 
 nor would they seek help of any. For 
 59
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 one city knows not the other, and assist- 
 ance never is given. And even though 
 the bee-keeper deposit the hive, in which 
 he has gathered the old queen and her 
 attendant cluster of bees, by the side of 
 the abode they have but this moment 
 quitted, they would seem, be the disaster 
 never so great that shall now have befallen 
 them, to have wholly forgotten the peace 
 and the happy activity that once they had 
 known there, the abundant wealth and the 
 safety that had then been their portion ; 
 and all, one by one, and down to the last 
 of them, will perish of hunger and cold 
 around their unfortunate queen rather 
 than return to the home of their birth, 
 whose sweet odour of plenty, the fragrance, 
 indeed, of their own past assiduous labour, 
 reaches them even in their distress.
 
 The Swarm 
 
 [17] 
 
 That is a thing, some will say, that 
 men would not do, a proof that the 
 bee, notwithstanding the marvels of its 
 organisation, still is lacking in intellect and 
 veritable consciousness. Is this so certain ? 
 Other beings, surely, may possess an intel- 
 lect that differs from ours, and produces 
 different results, without therefore being 
 inferior. And besides, are we, even in 
 this little human parish of ours, such 
 infallible judges of matters that pertain to 
 the spirit ? Can we so readily divine 
 the thoughts that may govern the two 
 or three people we may chance to see 
 moving and talking behind a closed win- 
 dow, when their words do not reach us ? 
 Or let us suppose that an inhabitant of 
 Venus or Mars were to contemplate us 
 from the height of a mountain, and watch 
 the little black specks that we form in 
 61
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 space, as we come and go in the streets 
 and squares of our towns. Would the 
 mere sight of our movements, our build- 
 ings, machines, and canals, convey to him 
 any precise idea of our morality, intellect, 
 our manner of thinking, and loving, and 
 hoping, in a word, of our real and inti- 
 mate self? All he could do, like our- 
 selves when we gaze at the hive, would be 
 to take note of some facts that seem very 
 surprising; and from these facts to deduce 
 conclusions probably no less erroneous, 
 no less uncertain, than those that we choose 
 to form concerning the bee. 
 
 This much at least is certain ; our " little 
 black specks " would not reveal the vast 
 moral direction, the wonderful unity, that 
 are so apparent in the hive. " Whither 
 do they tend, and what is it they do ? " he 
 would ask, after years and centuries of 
 patient watching. "What is the aim of 
 their life, or its pivot ? Do they obey 
 62
 
 The Swarm 
 
 some God ? I can see nothing that 
 governs their actions. The little things 
 that one day they appear to collect and 
 build up, the next they destroy and scatter. 
 They come and they go, they meet and 
 disperse, but one knows not what it is they 
 seek. In numberless cases the spectacle 
 they present is altogether inexplicable. 
 There are some, for instance, who, as 
 it were, seem scarcely to stir from their 
 place. They are to be distinguished 
 by their glossier coat, and often too by 
 their more considerable bulk. They 
 occupy buildings ten or twenty times 
 larger than ordinary dwellings, and richer, 
 and more ingeniously fashioned. Every 
 day they spend many hours at their meals, 
 which sometimes indeed are prolonged far 
 into the night. They appear to be held 
 in extraordinary honour by those who 
 approach them ; men come from the 
 neighbouring houses, bringing provisions > 
 63
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 and even from the depths of the country, 
 laden with presents. One can only 
 assume that these persons must be indis- 
 pensable to the race, to which they render 
 essential service, although our means of 
 investigation have not yet enabled us to 
 discover what the precise nature of this 
 service may be. There are others, again, 
 who are incessantly engaged in the most 
 wearisome labour, whether it be in great 
 sheds full of wheels that forever turn round 
 and round, or close by the shipping, or in 
 obscure hovels, or on small plots of earth 
 that from sunrise to sunset they are con- 
 stantly delving and digging. We are led to 
 believe that this labour must be an offence, 
 and punishable. For the persons guilty 
 of it are housed in filthy, ruinous, squalid 
 cabins. They are clothed in some colour- 
 less hide. So great does their ardour 
 appear for this noxious, or at any rate 
 useless activity, that they scarcely allow 
 64
 
 The Swarm 
 
 themselves time to eat or to sleep. In 
 numbers they are to the others as a thou- 
 sand to one. It is remarkable that the 
 species should have been able to survive 
 to this day under conditions so unfavour- 
 able to its development. It should be 
 mentioned, however, that apart from this 
 characteristic devotion to their wearisome 
 toil, they appear inoffensive and docile; 
 and satisfied with the leavings of those 
 who evidently are the guardians, if not 
 the saviours, of the race." 
 
 [18] 
 
 Is it not strange that the hive, which 
 we vaguely survey from the height of 
 another world, should provide our first 
 questioning glance with so sure and pro- 
 found a reply ? Must we not admire the 
 manner in which the thought or the god 
 that the bees obey is at once revealed by 
 their edifices, wrought with such striking 
 5 65
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 conviction, by their customs and laws, 
 their political and economical organisation, 
 their virtues, and even their cruelties ? 
 Nor is this god, though it be perhaps the 
 only one to which man has as yet never 
 offered serious worship, by any means the 
 least reasonable or the least legitimate 
 that we can conceive. The god of the 
 bees is the future. When we, in our 
 study of human history, endeavour to 
 gauge the moral force or greatness of a 
 people or race, we have but one standard 
 of measurement the dignity and perma- 
 nence of their ideal, and the abnegation 
 wherewith they pursue it. Have we often 
 encountered an ideal more conformable to 
 the desires of the universe, more widely 
 manifest, more disinterested or sublime; 
 have we often discovered an abnegation 
 more complete and heroic? 
 
 66
 
 The Swarm 
 
 ['9] 
 
 Strange little republic, that, for all its 
 logic and gravity, its matured conviction 
 and prudence, still falls victim to so vast 
 and precarious a dream ! Who shall tell 
 us, O little people that are so profoundly 
 in earnest, that have fed on the warmth 
 and the light and on nature's purest, the 
 soul of the flowers, wherein matter fol 
 once seems to smile, and put forth its 
 most wistful effort towards beauty and hap 
 piness, who shall tell us what prob- 
 lems you have resolved, but we not yet, 
 what certitudes you have acquired that 
 we still have to conquer ? And if you 
 have truly resolved these problems, and 
 acquired these certitudes, by the aid of 
 some blind and primitive impulse and 
 not through the intellect, then to what 
 enigma, more insoluble still, are you not 
 urging us on ? Little city abounding 
 67
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 in faith and mystery and hope, why 
 do y6ur myriad virgins consent to a task 
 that no human slave has ever accepted ? 
 Another spring might be theirs, another 
 summer, were they only a little less waste- 
 ful of strength, a little less self-forgetful 
 in their ardour for toil ; but at the mag- 
 nificent moment when the flowers all cry 
 to them, they seem to be stricken with 
 the fatal ecstasy of work ; and in less 
 than five weeks they almost all perish, 
 their wings broken, their bodies shrivelled 
 and covered with wounds. 
 " Tantus amor florum, et generandi gloria mellis !" 
 
 cries Virgil in the fourth book of the 
 Georgics, wherein he devotes himself to 
 the bees, and hands down to us the 
 charming errors of the ancients, who 
 looked on nature with eyes still dazzled 
 by the presence of imaginary gods. 
 
 68
 
 The Swarm 
 
 [4*3 
 
 Why do they thus renounce sleep, the 
 delights of honey and love, and the ex- 
 quisite leisure enjoyed, for instance, by 
 their winged brother, the butterfly ? 
 Why will they not live as he lives ? 
 It is not hunger that urges them on. 
 Two or three flowers suffice for their 
 nourishment, and in one hour they will 
 visit two or three hundred, to collect a 
 treasure whose sweetness they never will 
 taste. Why all this toil and distress, and 
 whence comes this mighty assurance ? Is 
 it so certain, then, that the new generation 
 whereunto you offer your lives will merit 
 the sacrifice ; will be more beautiful, hap- 
 pier, will do something you have not 
 done ? Your aim is clear to us, clearer 
 far than our own ; you desire to live, 
 as long as the world itself, in those that 
 come after ; but what can the aim be 
 69
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 of this great aim ; what the mission of 
 this existence eternally renewed ? 
 
 And yet may it not be that these ques- 
 tions are idle, and we who are putting them 
 to you mere childish dreamers, hedged 
 round with error and doubt? And, in- 
 deed, had successive evolutions installed 
 you all-powerful and supremely happy ; 
 had you gained the last heights, whence 
 at length you ruled over nature's laws ; 
 nay, were you immortal goddesses, we 
 still should be asking you what your 
 desires might be, your ideas of prog- 
 ress; still wondering where you imag- 
 ined that at last you would rest and 
 declare your wishes fulfilled. We are 
 so made that nothing contents us ; that 
 we can regard no single thing as having 
 its aim self-contained, as simply existing, 
 with no thought beyond existence. Has 
 there been, to this day, one god out of all 
 the multitude man has conceived, from 
 70
 
 The Swarm 
 
 the vulgarest to the most thoughtful, of 
 whom it has not been required that he 
 shall be active and stirring, that he shall 
 create countless beings and things, and 
 have myriad aims outside himself? And 
 will the time ever come when we shall be 
 resigned for a few hours tranquilly to 
 represent in this world an interesting 
 form of material activity ; and then, our 
 few hours over, to assume, without sur- 
 prise and without regret, that other form 
 which is the unconscious, the unknown, 
 the slumbering, and the eternal? 
 
 [a,] 
 
 But we are forgetting the hive wherein 
 the swarming bees have begun to lose 
 patience, the hive whose black and vi- 
 brating waves are bubbling and overflow- 
 ing, like a brazen cup beneath an ardent 
 sun. It is noon ; and the heat so great 
 that the assembled trees would seem al-
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 most to hold back their leaves, as a man 
 holds his breath before something very 
 tender but very grave. The bees give 
 their honey and sweet-smelling wax to 
 the man who attends them ; but more 
 precious gift still is their summoning him 
 to the gladness of June, to the joy of the 
 beautiful months ; for events in which 
 bees take part happen only when skies 
 are pure, at the winsome hours of the 
 year when flowers keep holiday. They 
 are the soul of the summer, the clock 
 whose dial records the moments of 
 plenty ; they are the untiring wing on 
 which delicate perfumes float ; the guide 
 of the quivering light-ray, the song of the 
 slumberous, languid air ; and their flight 
 is the token, the sure and melodious note, 
 of all the myriad fragile joys that are born 
 in the heat and dwell in the sunshine. 
 They teach us to tune our ear to the 
 softest, most intimate whisper of these 
 72
 
 The Swarm 
 
 good, natural hours. To him who has 
 known them and loved them, a summer 
 where there are no bees becomes as sad 
 and as empty as one without flowers or 
 birds. 
 
 The man who never before has beheld 
 the swarm of a populous hive must re- 
 gard this riotous, bewildering spectacle 
 with some apprehension and diffidence. 
 He will be almost afraid to draw near; 
 he will wonder can these be the earnest, 
 the peace-loving, hard-working bees whose 
 movements he has hitherto followed ? 
 It was but a few moments before he had 
 seen them troop in from all parts of the 
 country, as pre-occupied, seemingly, as 
 little housewives might be, with no 
 thoughts beyond household cares. He 
 had watched them stream into the hive, 
 imperceptibly almost, out of breath, 
 73
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 eager, exhausted, full of discreet agita- 
 tion ; and had seen the young amazons 
 stationed at the gate salute them, as they 
 passed by, with the slightest wave of 
 antennae. And then, the inner court 
 reached, they had hurriedly given their 
 harvest of honey to the adolescent por- 
 tresses always stationed within, exchang- 
 ing with these at most the three or 
 four probably indispensable words ; or 
 perhaps they would hasten themselves 
 to the vast magazines that encircle the 
 brood-cells, and deposit the two heavy 
 baskets of pollen that depend from 
 their thighs, thereupon at once going 
 forth once more, without giving a thought 
 to what might be passing in the royal 
 palace, the work-rooms, or the dormitory 
 where the nymphs lie asleep ; without 
 for one instant joining in the babel of 
 the public place in front of the gate, 
 where it is the wont of the cleaners, at 
 74
 
 The Swarm 
 
 time of great heat, to congregate and to 
 gossip. 
 
 To-day this is all changed. A certain 
 number of workers, it is true, will peace- 
 fully go to the fields, as though nothing 
 were happening ; will come back, clean 
 the hive, attend to the brood-cells, and 
 hold altogether aloof from the general 
 ecstasy. These are the ones that will 
 not accompany the queen ; they will 
 remain to guard the old home, feed the 
 nine or ten thousand eggs, the eighteen 
 thousand larvae, the thirty-six thousand 
 nymphs and seven or eight royal prin- 
 cesses, that to-day shall all be abandoned. 
 Why they have been singled out for this 
 austere duty, by what law, or by whom, 
 it is not in our power to divine. To 
 this mission of theirs they remain in- 
 flexibly, tranquilly faithful ; and though 
 7S
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 I have many times tried the experiment 
 of sprinkling a colouring matter over one 
 of these resigned Cinderellas, that are 
 moreover easily to be distinguished in the 
 midst of the rejoicing crowds by their 
 serious and somewhat ponderous gait, 
 it is rarely indeed that I have found 
 one of them in the delirious throng 
 of the swarm. 
 
 And yet, the attraction must seem 
 irresistible. It is the ecstasy of the per- 
 haps unconscious sacrifice the god has 
 ordained ; it is the festival of honey, the 
 triumph of the race, the victory of the 
 future : the one day of joy, of forgetfulness 
 and folly ; the only Sunday known to 
 the bees. It would appear to be also the 
 solitary day upon which all eat their fill, 
 and revel, to heart's content, in the de- 
 lights of the treasure themselves have 
 76
 
 The Swarm 
 
 amassed. It is as though they were 
 prisoners to whom freedom at last had 
 been given, who had suddenly been led 
 to a land of refreshment and plenty. 
 They exult, they cannot contain the joy 
 that is in them. They come and go 
 aimlessly, they whose every movement 
 has always its precise and useful purpose 
 they depart and return, sally forth once 
 again to see if the queen be ready, to 
 excite their sisters, to beguile the tedium 
 of waiting. They fly much higher than 
 is their wont, and the leaves of the 
 mighty trees round about all quiver 
 responsive. They have left trouble 
 behind, and care. They no longer are 
 meddling and fierce, aggressive, suspicious, 
 untamable, angry. Man the unknown 
 master whose sway they never acknowl- 
 edge, who can subdue them only by con- 
 forming to their every law, to their habits 
 of labour, and following step by step the 
 77
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 path that is traced in their life by an 
 intellect nothing can thwart or turn from 
 its purpose, by a spirit whose aim is 
 always the good of the morrow on this 
 day man can approach them, can divide 
 the glittering curtain they form as they 
 fly round and round in songful circles; 
 he can take them up in his hand, and 
 gather them as he would a bunch of 
 grapes ; for to-day, in their gladness, 
 possessing nothing, but full of faith in 
 the future, they will submit to everything 
 and injure no one, provided only they be 
 not separated from the queen who bears 
 that future within her. 
 
 But the veritable signal has not yet 
 been given. In the hive there is in- 
 describable confusion ; and a disorder 
 whose meaning escapes us. At ordinary 
 times each bee, once returned to her 
 78
 
 The Swarm 
 
 home, would appear to forget her posses- 
 sion of wings ; and will pursue her active 
 labours, making scarcely a movement, on 
 that particular spot in the hive that her 
 special duties assign. But to-day they all 
 seem bewitched ; they fly in dense circles 
 round and round the polished wallsj 
 like a living jelly stirred by an invisible 
 hand. The temperature within rises 
 rapidly, to such a degree, at times, thai 
 the wax of the buildings will soften, and 
 twist out of shape. The queen, who 
 ordinarily never will stir from the centre 
 of the comb, now rushes wildly, in breath- 
 less excitement, over the surface of the 
 vehement crowd that turn and turn on 
 themselves. Is she hastening their de- 
 parture, or trying to delay it ? Does she 
 command, or haply implore ? Does this 
 prodigious emotion issue from her, or is 
 she its victim ? Such knowledge as we 
 possess of the general psychology of the 
 79
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 bee warrants the belief that the swarming 
 always takes place against the old sov- 
 ereign's will. For indeed the ascetic 
 workers, her daughters, regard the queen 
 above all as the organ of love, indispen- 
 sable, certainly, and sacred, but in herself 
 somewhat unconscious, and often of feeble 
 mind. They treat her like a mother in 
 her dotage. Their respect for her, their 
 tenderness, is heroic and boundless. 
 The purest honey, specially distilled and 
 almost entirely assimilable, is reserved 
 for her use alone. She has an escort that 
 watches over her by day and by night, 
 that facilitates her maternal duties and 
 gets ready the cells wherein the eggs 
 shall be laid ; she has loving attendants 
 who pet and caress her, feed her and clean 
 her, and even absorb her excrement. 
 Should the least accident befall her the 
 news will spread quickly from group to 
 group, and the whole population will rush 
 So
 
 The Swarm 
 
 to and fro in loud lamentation. Seize 
 her, imprison her, take her away from 
 the hive at a time when the bees shall 
 have no hope of filling her place, owing, 
 it may be, to her having left no pre- 
 destined descendants, or to there being 
 no larvae less than three days old (for a 
 special nourishment is capable of trans- 
 forming these into royal nymphs, such 
 being the grand democratic principle of 
 the hive, and a counterpoise to the preroga^ 
 tives of maternal predestination), and then, 
 her loss once known, after two or three 
 hours, perhaps, for the city is vast, work 
 will cease in almost every direction. Trie 
 young will no longer be cared for ; part 
 of the inhabitants will wander in every 
 direction, seeking their mother, in quest 
 of whom others will sally forth from the 
 hive ; the workers engaged in construct- 
 ing the comb will fall asunder and scatter, 
 the foragers no longer will visit the 
 6 81
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 flowers, the guard at the entrance will 
 abandon their post ; and foreign marau- 
 ders, all the parasites of honey, forever 
 on the watch for opportunities of plunder, 
 will freely enter and leave without any 
 one giving a thought to the defence of 
 the treasure that has been so laboriously 
 gathered. And poverty, little by little, 
 will steal into the city ; the population 
 will dwindle ; and the wretched inhabitants 
 soon will perish of distress and despair, 
 though every flower of summer burst 
 into bloom before them. 
 
 But let the queen be restored before 
 her loss has become an accomplished, 
 ^remediable fact, before the bees have 
 grown too profoundly demoralised, for 
 in this they resemble men : a prolonged 
 regret, or misfortune, will impair their 
 intellect and degrade their character, let 
 her be restored but a few hours later, and 
 they will receive her with extraordinary, 
 82
 
 The Swarm 
 
 pathetic welcome. They will flock eagerly 
 round her ; excited groups will climb over 
 each other in their anxiety to draw near ; 
 as she passes among them they will caress 
 her with the long antennae that contain so 
 many organs as yet unexplained ; they will 
 present her with honey, and escort her 
 tumultuously back to the royal chamber. 
 And order at once is restored, work re- 
 sumed, from the central comb of the 
 brood-cells to the furthest annex where 
 the surplus honey is stored ; the foragers 
 go forth, in long black files, to return, in 
 less than three minutes sometimes, laden 
 with nectar and pollen ; streets are swept, 
 parasites and marauders killed or expelled ; 
 and the hive soon resounds with the gentle, 
 monotonous cadence of the strange hymn 
 of rejoicing, which is, it would seem, the 
 hymn of the royal presence.
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 [26] 
 
 There are numberless instances of the 
 absolute attachment and devotion that 
 the workers display towards their queen. 
 Should disaster befall the little republic; 
 should the hive or the comb collapse, 
 should man prove ignorant, or brutal ; 
 should they suffer from famine, from cold 
 or disease, and perish by thousands, it 
 will still be almost invariably found that 
 the queen will be safe and alive, beneath 
 the corpses of her faithful daughters. For 
 they will protect her, help her to escape ; 
 their bodies will provide both rampart and 
 shelter ; for her will be the last drop of 
 honey, the wholesomest food. And be 
 the disaster never so great, the city of 
 virgins will not lose heart so long as the 
 queen be alive. Break their comb twenty 
 times in succession, take twenty times 
 from them their young and their food, 
 84
 
 The Swarm 
 
 you still shall never succeed in making 
 them doubt of the future; and though 
 they be starving, and their number so 
 small that it scarcely suffices to shield their 
 mother from the enemy's gaze, they will 
 set about to reorganize the laws of the 
 colony, and to provide for what is most 
 pressing ; they will distribute the work in 
 accordance with the new necessities of this 
 disastrous moment, and thereupon will 
 immediately re-assume their labours with 
 an ardour, a patience, a tenacity and intel- 
 ligence not often to be found existing to 
 such a degree in nature, true though it be 
 that most of its creatures display more 
 confidence and courage than man. 
 
 But the presence of the queen is not 
 even essential for their discouragement to 
 vanish and their love to endure. It is 
 enough that she should have left, at the 
 moment of her death or departure, the 
 very slenderest hope of descendants. " We 
 85
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 have seen a colony," says Langstroth, one 
 of the fathers of modern apiculture, "that 
 had not bees sufficient to cover a comb of 
 three inches square, and yet endeavoured 
 to rear a queen. For two whole weeks 
 did they cherish this hope ; finally, when 
 their number was reduced by one-half, their 
 queen was born, but her wings were imper- 
 fect, and she was unable to fly. Impotent 
 as she was, her bees did not treat her with 
 the less respect. A week more, and there 
 remained hardly a dozen bees ; yet a few 
 days, and the queen had vanished, leaving 
 a few wretched, inconsolable insects upon 
 the combs." 
 
 [47] 
 
 There is another instance, and one that 
 reveals most palpably the ultimate gesture 
 of filial love and devotion. It arises from 
 one of the extraordinary ordeals that our 
 recent and tyrannical intervention inflicts 
 86
 
 The Swarm 
 
 on these hapless, unflinching heroines. I, 
 in common with all amateur bee-keepers, 
 have more than once had impregnated 
 queens sent me from Italy ; for the 
 Italian species is more prolific, stronger, 
 more active, and gentler than our own. It 
 is the custom to forward them in small, 
 perforated boxes. In these some food is 
 placed, and the queen enclosed, together 
 with a certain number of workers, selected 
 as far as possible from among the oldest 
 bees in the hive. (The age of the bee can 
 be readily told by its body, which gradu- 
 ally becomes more polished, thinner, and 
 almost bald ; and more particularly by 
 the wings, which hard work uses and 
 tears.) It is their mission to feed the 
 queen during the journey, to tend her and 
 guard her. I would frequently find, when 
 the box arrived, that nearly every one of 
 the workers was dead. On one occasion, 
 indeed, they had all perished of hunger ; 
 87
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 but in this instance as in all others the 
 queen was alive, unharmed, and full of 
 vigour ; and the last of her companions 
 had probably passed away in the act of 
 presenting the last drop of honey she 
 held in her sac to the queen, who was 
 symbol of a life more precious, more vast, 
 than her own. 
 
 [a8] 
 
 This unwavering affection having come 
 under the notice of man, he was able to 
 turn to his own advantage the qualities to 
 which it gives rise, or that it perhaps con- 
 tains : the admirable political sense, the 
 passion for work, the perseverance, mag- 
 nanimity, and devotion to the future. 
 It has allowed him, in the course of 
 the last few years, to a certain extent 
 to domesticate these intractable insects, 
 though without their knowledge; for 
 they yield to no foreign strength, and 
 88
 
 The Swarm 
 
 in their unconscious servitude obey only 
 the laws of their own adoption. Man 
 may believe, if he choose, that, possessing 
 the queen, he holds in his hand the 
 destiny and soul of the hive. In accord- 
 ance with the manner in which he deals 
 with her as it were, plays with her 
 he can increase and hasten the swarm or 
 restrict and retard it ; he can unite or 
 divide colonies, and direct the emigration 
 of kingdoms. And yet it is none the less 
 true that the queen is essentially merely a 
 sort of living symbol, standing, as all 
 symbols must, for a vaster although less 
 perceptible principle; and this principle 
 the apiarist will do well to take into 
 account, if he would not expose himself to 
 more than one unexpected reverse. For 
 the bees are by no means deluded. The 
 presence of the queen does not blind them 
 to the existence of their veritable sovereign, 
 immaterial and everlasting, which is no 
 89
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 other than their fixed idea. Why inquire 
 as to whether this idea be conscious or 
 not ? Such speculation can have value 
 only if our anxiety be to determine whether 
 we should more rightly admire the bees 
 that have the idea, or nature that has 
 planted it in them. Wherever it lodge, 
 in the vast unknowable body or in the 
 tiny ones that we see, it merits our deepest 
 attention ; nor may it be out of place here 
 to observe that it is the habit we have of 
 subordinating our wonder to accidents of 
 origin or place, that so often causes us 
 to lose the chance of deep admiration ; 
 which of all things in the world is the 
 most helpful to us. 
 
 These conjectures may perhaps be re- 
 
 garded as exceedingly venturesome, and 
 
 possibly also as unduly human. It may 
 
 be urged that the bees, in all probability, 
 
 90
 
 The Swarm 
 
 have no idea of the kind ; that their care 
 for the future, love of the race, and many- 
 other feelings we choose to ascribe to 
 them, are truly no more than forms as- 
 sumed by the necessities of life, the fear 
 of suffering or death, and the attraction of 
 pleasure. Let it be so ; look on it all as 
 a figure of speech ; it is a matter to which 
 I attach no importance. The one thing 
 certain here, as it is the one thing certain 
 in all other cases, is that, under special 
 circumstances, the bees will treat their 
 queen in a special manner. The rest is 
 all mystery, around which we only can 
 weave more or less ingenious and pleasant 
 conjecture. And yet, were we speaking 
 of man in the manner wherein it were 
 wise perhaps to speak of the bee, is there 
 very much more we could say ? He too 
 yields only to necessity, the attraction of 
 pleasure, and the fear of suffering ; and 
 what we call our intellect has the same 
 9 1
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 origin and mission as what in animals we 
 choose to term instinct. We do certain 
 things, whose results we conceive to be 
 known to us ; other things happen, and 
 we flatter ourselves that we are better 
 equipped than animals can be to divine 
 their cause ; but, apart from the fact that 
 this supposition rests on no very solid 
 foundation, events of this nature are rare 
 and infinitesimal, compared with the vast 
 mass of others that elude comprehension ; 
 and all, the pettiest and the most sublime, 
 the best known and the most inexplicable, 
 the nearest and the most distant, come to 
 pass in a night so profound that our 
 blindness may well be almost as great as 
 that we suppose in the bee. 
 
 [30] 
 
 "All must agree," remarks Buffon, 
 who has a somewhat amusing prejudice 
 against the bee, " all must agree that 
 92
 
 The Swarm 
 
 these flies, individually considered, pos- 
 sess far less genius than the dog, the 
 monkey, or the majority of animals ; that 
 they display far less docility, attachment, 
 or sentiment ; that they have, in a word, 
 less qualities that relate to our own ; and 
 from that we may conclude that their ap- 
 parent intelligence derives only from their 
 assembled multitude ; nor does this union 
 even argue intelligence, for it is governed 
 by no moral considerations, it being with- 
 out their consent that they find themselves 
 gathered together. This society, there- 
 fore, is no more than a physical assem- 
 blage ordained by nature, and independent 
 either of knowledge, or reason, or aim. 
 The mother-bee produces ten thousand 
 individuals at a time, and in the same 
 place; these ten thousand individuals, 
 were they a thousand times stupider than 
 I suppose them to be, would be com- 
 pelled, for the mere purpose of existence, 
 93
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 to contrive some form of arrangement; 
 and, assuming that they had begun by in- 
 juring each other, they would, as each 
 one possesses the same strength as its 
 fellow, soon have ended by doing each 
 other the least possible harm, or, in other 
 words, by rendering assistance. They 
 have the appearance of understanding 
 each other, and of working for a common 
 aim ; and the observer, therefore, is apt to 
 endow them with reasons and intellect 
 that they truly are far from possessing. 
 He will pretend to account for each 
 action, show a reason behind every move- 
 ment ; and from thence the gradation is 
 easy to proclaiming them marvels, or 
 monsters, of innumerable ideas. Where- 
 as the truth is that these ten thousand 
 individuals, that have been produced sim- 
 ultaneously, that have lived together, and 
 undergone metamorphosis at more or less 
 the same time, cannot fail all to do the 
 94
 
 The Swarm 
 
 same thing, and are compelled, however 
 slight the sentiment within them, to adopt 
 common habits, to live in accord and 
 union, to busy themselves with their dwel- 
 ling, to return to it after their journeys, 
 etc., etc. And on this foundation arise 
 the architecture, the geometry, the order, 
 the foresight, love of country, in a word, 
 the republic; all springing, as we have 
 seen, from the admiration of the observer." 
 There we have our bees explained in a 
 very different fashion. And if it seem 
 more natural at first, is it not for the very 
 simple reason that it really explains al- 
 most nothing? I will not allude to the 
 material errors this chapter contains ; I 
 will only ask whether the mere fact of the 
 bees accepting a common existence, while 
 doing each other the least possible harm, 
 does not in itself argue a certain intelli- 
 gence. And does not this intelligence 
 appear the more remarkable to us as we 
 95
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 more closely examine the fashion in which 
 these "ten thousand individuals" avoid 
 hurting each other, and end by giving as- 
 sistance? And further, is this not the 
 history of ourselves ; and does not all 
 that the angry old naturalist says apply 
 equally to every one of our human socie- 
 ties ? And yet once again: if the bee is 
 indeed to be credited with none of the 
 feelings or ideas that we have ascribed to 
 it, shall we not very willingly shift the 
 ground of our wonder ? If we must not 
 admire the bee, we will then admire 
 nature; the moment must always come 
 when admiration can be no longer denied 
 us, nor shall there be loss to us through 
 our having retreated, or waited. 
 
 However these things may be, and with- 
 out abandoning this conjecture of ours, that 
 at least has the advantage of connecting 
 96
 
 The Swarm 
 
 in our mind certain actions that have evi- 
 dent connection in fact, it is certain that 
 the bees have far less adoration for the 
 queen herself than for the infinite future 
 of the race that she represents. They are 
 not sentimental ; and should one of their 
 number return from work so severely 
 wounded as to be held incapable of 
 further service, they will ruthlessly expel 
 her from the hive. And yet it cannot 
 be said that they are altogether incapable 
 of a kind of personal attachment towards 
 their mother. They will recognise her 
 from among all. Even when she is old, 
 crippled, and wretched, the sentinels at 
 the door will never allow another queen 
 to enter the hive, though she be young 
 and fruitful. It is true that this is one of 
 the fundamental principles of their polity, 
 and never relaxed except at times of 
 abundant honey, in favour of some foreign 
 worker who shall be well laden with food. 
 7 97
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 When the queen has become com- 
 pletely sterile, the bees will rear a certain 
 number of royal princesses to fill her place. 
 But what becomes of the old sovereign ? 
 As to this we have no precise knowledge ; 
 but it has happened, at times, that apia- 
 rists have found a magnificent queen, in 
 the flower of her age, on the central comb 
 of the hive ; and in some obscure corner, 
 right at the back, the gaunt, decrepit " old 
 mistress," as they call her in Normandy. 
 In such cases it would seem that the bees 
 have to exercise the greatest care to pro- 
 tect her from the hatred of the vigorous 
 rival who longs for her death; for queen 
 hates queen so fiercely that two who might 
 happen to be under the same roof would 
 immediately fly at each other. It would be 
 pleasant to believe that the bees are thus 
 providing their ancient sovereign with a 
 humble shelter in a remote corner of the 
 city, where she may end her days in peace. 
 98
 
 The Swarm 
 
 Here again we touch one of the thousand 
 enigmas of the waxen city ; and it is once 
 more proved to us that the habits and 
 the policy of the bees are by no means 
 narrow, or rigidly predetermined ; and 
 that their actions have motives far more 
 complex than we are inclined to suppose. 
 
 But we are constantly tampering with 
 what they must regard as immovable 
 laws of nature ; constantly placing the 
 bees in a position that may be compared 
 to that in which we should ourselves be 
 placed were the laws of space and gravity, 
 of light and heat, to be suddenly sup- 
 pressed around us. What are the bees to 
 do when we, by force or by fraud, intro- 
 duce a second queen into the city ? It is 
 probable that, in a state of nature, thanks 
 to the sentinels at the gate, such an event 
 has never occurred since they first came 
 99
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 into the world. But this prodigious con- 
 juncture does not scatter their wits ; they 
 still contrive to reconcile the two princi- 
 ples that they appear to regard in the light 
 of divine commands. The first is that of 
 unique maternity, never infringed except 
 in the case of sterility in the reigning 
 queen, and even then only very excep- 
 tionally ,- the second is more curious still, 
 and, although never transgressed, suscepti- 
 ble of what may almost be termed a Judaic 
 evasion. It is the law that invests the 
 person of a queen, whoever she be, with a 
 sort of inviolability. It would be a simple 
 matter for the bees to pierce the intruder 
 with their myriad envenomed stings ; she 
 would die on the spot, and they would 
 merely have to remove the corpse from 
 the hive. But though this sting is always 
 held ready to strike, though they make 
 constant use of it in their fights among 
 themselves, they will never draw it against
 
 The Swarm 
 
 a queen; nor will a queen ever draw hers 
 on a man, an animal, or an ordinary bee. 
 She will never unsheath her royal weapon 
 curved, in scimeter fashion, instead of 
 being straight, like that of the ordinary 
 bee save only in the case of her doing 
 battle with an equal : in other words, 
 with a sister queen. 
 
 No bee, it would seem, dare take on 
 herself the horror of direct and bloody 
 regicide. Whenever, therefore, the good 
 order and prosperity of the republic 
 appear to demand that a queen shall die, 
 they endeavour to give to her death some 
 semblance of natural decease, and by infi- 
 nite subdivision of the crime, to render it 
 almost anonymous. 
 
 They will, therefore, to use the pictur- 
 esque expression of the apiarist, " ball " 
 the queenly intruder ; in other words, they 
 will entirely surround her with their innu- 
 merable interlaced bodies. They will
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 thus form a sort of living prison wherein 
 the captive is unable to move; and in 
 this prison they will keep her for twenty- 
 four hours, if need be, till the victim die 
 of suffocation or hunger. 
 
 But if, at this moment, the legitimate 
 queen draw near, and, scenting a rival, 
 appear disposed to attack her, the living 
 walls of the prison will at once fly open ; 
 and the bees, forming a circle around the 
 two enemies, will eagerly watch the strange 
 duel that will ensue, though remaining 
 strictly impartial, and taking no share in 
 it. For it is written that against a mother 
 the sting may be drawn by a mother 
 alone ; only she who bears in her flanks 
 close on two million lives appears to 
 possess the right with one blow to inflict 
 close on two million deaths. 
 
 But if the combat last too long, without 
 any result, if the circular weapons glide 
 harmlessly over the heavy cuirasses, if one
 
 The Swarm 
 
 of the queens appear anxious to make her 
 escape, then, be she the legitimate sover- 
 eign or be she the stranger, she will at 
 once be seized and lodged in the living 
 prison until such time as she manifest 
 once more the desire to attack her foe. It 
 is right to add, however, that the numer- 
 ous experiments that have been made on 
 this subject have almost invariably resulted 
 in the victory of the reigning queen, owing 
 perhaps to the extra courage and ardour 
 she derives from the knowledge that she 
 is at home, with her subjects around her, 
 or to the fact that the bees, however im- 
 partial while the fight is in progress, may 
 possibly display some favouritism in their 
 manner of imprisoning the rivals ; for 
 their mother would seem scarcely to suffer 
 from the confinement, whereas the stranger 
 almost always emerges in an appreciably 
 bruised and enfeebled condition. 
 
 103
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 [33] 
 
 There is one simple experiment which 
 proves the readiness with which the bees 
 will recognise their queen, and the depth 
 of the attachment they bear her. Re- 
 move her from the hive, and there will 
 soon be manifest all the phenomena of 
 anguish and distress that I have described 
 in a preceding chapter. Replace her, a 
 few hours later, and all her daughters will 
 hasten towards her, offering honey. One 
 section will form a lane, for her to pass 
 through ; others, with head bent low and 
 abdomen high in the air, will describe 
 before her great semicircles throbbing with 
 sound ; hymning, doubtless, the chant of 
 welcome their rites dictate for moments 
 of supreme happiness or solemn respect. 
 
 But let it not be imagined that a foreign 
 queen may with impunity be substituted 
 for the legitimate mother. The bees will 
 104
 
 The Swarm 
 
 at once detect the imposture ; the intru- 
 der will be seized, and immediately en- 
 closed in the terrible, tumultuous prison, 
 whose obstinate walls will be relieved, as 
 it were, till she dies ; for in this particular 
 instance it hardly ever occurs that th<- 
 stranger emerges alive. 
 
 And here it is curious to note to 
 what diplomacy and elaborate stratagem 
 man is compelled to resort in order to 
 delude these little sagacious insects, and 
 bend them to his will. In their un- 
 swerving loyalty, they will accept the 
 most unexpected events with touching 
 courage, regarding them probably as some 
 new and inevitable fatal caprice of nature. 
 And, indeed, all this diplomacy notwith- 
 standing, in the desperate confusion that 
 may follow one of these hazardous ex- 
 pedients, it is on the admirable good 
 sense of the bee that man always, and 
 almost empirically, relies ; on the inex-
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 haustible treasure of their marvellous laws 
 and customs, on their love of peace and 
 order, their devotion to the public weal, 
 and fidelity to the future ; on the adroit 
 strength, the earnest disinterestedness, of 
 their character, and, above all, on the un- 
 tiring devotion with which they fulfil 
 their duty. But the enumeration of such 
 procedures belongs rather to technical 
 treatises on apiculture, and would take us 
 too far. 1 
 
 1 The stranger queen is usually brought into the 
 hive enclosed in a little cage, with iron wires, which 
 is hung between two combs. The cage has a door 
 made of wax and honey, which the workers, their 
 anger over, proceed to gnaw, thus freeing the prisoner, 
 whom they will often receive without any ill-will. 
 Mr. Simmins, manager of the great apiary at Rotting- 
 dean, has recently discovered another method of intro- 
 ducing a queen, which, being extremely simple and 
 almost invariably successful, bids fair to be generally 
 adopted by apiarists who value their art. It is the 
 behaviour of the queen that usually makes her intro- 
 duction a matter of so great difficulty. She is almost 
 1 06
 
 The Swarm 
 
 [34] 
 
 As regards this personal affection of 
 which we have spoken, there is one word 
 more to be said. That such affection 
 
 'distracted, flies to and fro, hides, and generally com- 
 ports herself as an intruder, thus arousing the suspicions 
 of the bees, which are soon confirmed by the workers' 
 examination. Mr. Simmins at first completely isolates 
 the queen he intends to introduce, and lets her fast for 
 half an hour. He then lifts a corner of the inner 
 cover of the orphaned hive, and places the strange queen 
 on the top of one of the combs. Her former isolation 
 having terrified her, she is delighted to find herself in 
 the midst of the bees ; and being famished she eagerly 
 accepts the food they offer her. The workers, de- 
 ceived by her assurance, do not examine her, but prob- 
 ably imagine that their old queen has returned, and 
 welcome her joyfully. It would seem, therefore, that, 
 contrary to the opinion of Huber and all other inves- 
 tigators, the bees are not capable of recognising their 
 queen. In any event, the two explanations, which are 
 both equally plausible though the truth may lurk, 
 perhaps, in a third, that is not yet known to us 
 only prove once again how complex and obscure is 
 the psychology of the bee. And from this, as from all 
 107
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 exists is certain, but it is certain also that 
 its memory is exceedingly short-lived. 
 Dare to replace in her kingdom a mother 
 whose exile has lasted some days, and her 
 indignant daughters will receive her in 
 such a fashion as to compel you hastily to 
 snatch her from the deadly imprisonment 
 reserved for unknown queens. For the 
 bees have had time to transform a dozen 
 workers' habitations into royal cells, and 
 the future of the race is no longer in 
 danger. Their affection will increase, or 
 dwindle, in the degree that the queen rep- 
 resents the future. Thus we often find, 
 when a virgin queen is performing the 
 perilous ceremony known as the " nuptial 
 flight," of which I will speak later, that 
 her subjects are so fearful of losing her 
 that they will all accompany her on this 
 
 questions that deal with life, we can draw one conclu- 
 sion only: that, till better obtain, curiosity still must 
 rule in our heart. 
 
 108
 
 The Swarm 
 
 tragic and distant quest of love. This 
 they will never do, however, if they be 
 provided with a fragment of comb con- 
 taining brood-cells, whence they shall be 
 able to rear other queens. Indeed, their 
 affection even may turn into fury and 
 hatred should their sovereign fail in her 
 duty to that sort of abstract divinity that 
 we should call future society, which the 
 bees would appear to regard far more 
 seriously than we. It happens, for in- 
 stance, at times, that apiarists for various 
 reasons will prevent the queen from join- 
 ing a swarm by inserting a trellis into the 
 hive ; the nimble and slender workers will 
 flit through it, unperceiving, but to the 
 poor slave of love, heavier and more cor- 
 pulent than her daughters, it offers an im- 
 passable barrier. The bees, when they 
 find that the queen has not followed, will 
 return to the hive, and scold the unfortu- 
 nate prisoner, hustle and ill-treat her, 
 109
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 accusing her of laziness, probably, or sus- 
 pecting her of feeble mind. On their 
 second departure, when they find that she 
 still has not followed, her ill-faith becomes 
 evident to them, and their attacks grow 
 more serious. And finally, when they 
 shall have gone forth once more, and still 
 with the same result, they will almost 
 always condemn her, as being irremediably 
 faithless to her destiny and to the future 
 of the race, and put her to death in the 
 royal prison. 
 
 [35] 
 
 It is to the future, therefore, that the 
 bees subordinate all things ; and with 
 a foresight, a harmonious co-operation, a 
 skill in interpreting events and turning 
 them to the best advantage, that must 
 compel our heartiest admiration, particu- 
 larly when we remember in how startling 
 and supernatural a light our recent inter-
 
 The Swarm 
 
 vention must present itself to them. It 
 may be said, perhaps, that in the last 
 instance we have given, they place a very 
 false construction upon the queen's ina- 
 bility to follow them. But would our 
 powers of discernment be so very much 
 subtler, if an intelligence of an order 
 entirely different from our own, and 
 served by a body so colossal that its 
 movements were almost as imperceptible 
 as those of a natural phenomenon, were 
 to divert itself by laying traps of this 
 kind for us? Has it not taken us thou- 
 sands of years to invent a sufficiently 
 plausible explanation for the thunderbolt ? 
 There is a certain feebleness that over- 
 whelms every intellect the moment it 
 emerges from its own sphere, and is 
 brought face to face with events not of 
 its own initiation. And, besides, it is 
 quite possible that if this ordeal of the 
 trellis were to obtain more regularly and
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 generally among the bees, they would end 
 by detecting the pitfall, and by taking 
 steps to elude it. They have mastered 
 the intricacies of the movable comb, of 
 the sections that compel them to store 
 their surplus honey in little boxes sym- 
 metrically piled ; and in the case of the 
 still more extraordinary innovation of 
 foundation wax, where the cells are indi- 
 cated only by a slender circumference 
 of wax, they are able at once to grasp 
 the advantages this new system presents ; 
 they most carefully extend the wax, and 
 thus, without loss of time or labour, 
 construct perfect cells. So long as the 
 event that confronts them appear not 
 a snare devised by some cunning and 
 malicious god, the bees may be trusted 
 always to discover the best, nay, the only 
 human, solution. Let me cite an in- 
 stance ; an event, that, though occurring 
 in nature, is still in itself wholly abnor-
 
 The Swarm 
 
 mal. 1 refer to the manner in which 
 the bees will dispose of a mouse or a 
 slug that may happen to have found its 
 way into the hive. The intruder killed, 
 they have to deal with the body, which 
 will very soon poison their dwelling. 
 If it be impossible for them to expel or 
 dismember it, they will proceed methodi- 
 cally and hermetically to enclose it in a 
 veritable sepulchre of propolis and wax, 
 which will tower fantastically above the 
 ordinary monuments of the city. In one 
 of my hives last year I discovered three 
 such tombs side by side, erected with 
 party-walls, like the cells of the comb, 
 so that no wax should be wasted. These 
 tombs the prudent grave-diggers had 
 raised over the remains of three snails 
 that a child had introduced into the hive. 
 As a rule, when dealing with snails, they 
 will be content to seal up with wax the 
 orifice of the shell. But in this case 
 .8 113
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 the shells were more or less cracked 
 and broken ; and they had considered it 
 simpler, therefore, to bury the entire snail; 
 and had further contrived, in order that 
 circulation in the entrance-hall might not 
 be impeded, a number of galleries exactly 
 proportionate, not to their own girth, 
 but to that of the males, which are 
 almost twice as large as themselves. 
 Does not this instance, and the one that 
 follows, warrant our believing that they 
 would in time discover the cause of the 
 queen's inability to follow them through 
 the trellis ? They have a very nice sense 
 of proportion, and of the space required 
 for the movement of bodies. In the 
 regions where the hideous death's-head 
 sphinx, the acherontia atropos, abounds, 
 they construct little pillars of wax at the 
 entrance of the hive, so restricting the di- 
 mension as to prevent the passage of the 
 nocturnal marauder's enormous abdomen. 
 114
 
 The Swarm 
 
 [36] 
 
 But enough on this point; were I to 
 cite every instance I should never have 
 done. To return to the queen, whose 
 position in the hive, and the part that 
 she plays therein, we shall most fitly 
 describe by declaring her to be the cap- 
 tive heart of the city, and the centre 
 around which its intelligence revolves. 
 Unique sovereign though she be, she 
 is also the royal servant, the responsible 
 delegate of love, and its captive custo- 
 dian. Her people serve her and vener- 
 ate her; but they never forget that it 
 is not to her person that their homage 
 is given, but to the mission that she ful- 
 fils, and the destiny she represents. It 
 would not be easy for us to find a human 
 republic whose scheme comprised more 
 of the desires of our planet ; or a democ- 
 racy that offered an independence more 
 "5
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 perfect and rational, combined with a sub- 
 mission more logical and more complete. 
 And nowhere, surely, should we discover 
 more painful and absolute sacrifice. Let 
 it not be imagined that I admire this 
 sacrifice to the extent that I admire its 
 results. It were evidently to be desired 
 that these results might be obtained at 
 the cost of less renouncement and suf- 
 fering. But, the principle once accepted, 
 and this is needful, perhaps, in the 
 scheme of our globe, its organisation 
 compels our wonder. Whatever the 
 human truth on this point may be, life, 
 in the hive, is not looked on as a 
 series of more or less pleasant hours, 
 whereof it is wise that those moments 
 only should be soured and embittered 
 that are essential for maintaining exist- 
 ence. The bees regard it as a great 
 common duty, impartially distributed 
 amongst them all, and tending towards 
 116
 
 The Swarm 
 
 a future that goes further and further 
 back ever since the world began. And, 
 for the sake of this future, each one 
 renounces more than half of her rights 
 and her joys. The queen bids farewell 
 to freedom, the light of day, and the 
 calyx of flowers ; the workers give five 
 or six years of their life, and shall never 
 know love, or the joys of maternity. 
 The queen's brain turns to pulp, that the 
 reproductive organs may profit ; in the 
 workers these organs atrophy, to the bene- 
 fit of their intelligence. Nor would it 
 be fair to allege that the will plays no 
 part in all these renouncements. We 
 have seen that each worker's larva can 
 be transformed into a queen if lodged 
 and fed on the royal plan; and similarly 
 could each royal larva be turned into 
 worker if her food were changed and 
 her cell reduced. These mysterious elec- 
 tions take place every day in the golden 
 117
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 shade of the hive. It is not chance that 
 controls them, but a wisdom whose deep 
 loyalty, gravity, and unsleeping watch- 
 fulness man alone can betray : a wisdom 
 that makes and unmakes, and keeps careful 
 watch over all that happens within and 
 without the city. If sudden flowers 
 abound, or the queen grow old, or less 
 fruitful ; if population increase, and be 
 pressed for room, you then shall find 
 that the bees will proceed to rear royal 
 cells. But these cells may be destroyed 
 if the harvest fail, or the hive be en- 
 larged. Often they will be retained so 
 long as the young queen have not ac- 
 complished, or succeeded in, her marriage 
 flight, to be at once annihilated when 
 she returns, trailing behind her, trophy- 
 wise, the infallible sign of her impregna- 
 tion. Who shall say where the wisdom 
 resides that can thus balance present and 
 future, and prefer what is not yet visible 
 118
 
 The Swarm 
 
 to that which already is seen ? Where 
 the anonymous prudence that selects and 
 abandons, raises and lowers ; that of so 
 many workers makes so many queens, 
 and of so many mothers can make a 
 people of virgins ? We have said else- 
 where that it lodged in the " Spirit of 
 the Hive," but where shall this spirit 
 of the hive be looked for if not in the 
 assembly of workers ? To be convinced 
 of its residence there, we need not per- 
 haps have studied so closely the habits 
 of this royal republic. It was enough 
 to place under the microscope, as Dujar- 
 din, Brandt, Girard, Vogel, and other 
 entomologists have done, the little un- 
 couth and careworn head of the virgin 
 worker side by side with the somewhat 
 empty skull of the queen and the male's 
 magnificent cranium, glistening with its 
 twenty-six thousand eyes. Within this 
 tiny head we should find the workings 
 119
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 of the vastest and most magnificent brain 
 of the hive : the most beautiful and com- 
 plex, the most perfect, that, in another 
 order and with a different organisation, is 
 to be found in nature after that of man. 
 Here again, as in every quarter where 
 the scheme of the world is known to us, 
 there where the brain is, are authority 
 and victory, veritable strength and wis- 
 dom. And here again it is an almost 
 invisible atom of this mysterious sub- 
 stance that organises and subjugates 
 matter, and is able to create its own 
 little triumphant and permanent place in 
 the midst of the stupendous, inert forces 
 of nothingness and death. 1 
 
 1 The brain of the bee, according to the calcula- 
 tion of Dujardin, constitutes the I i/4th part of the 
 insect's weight, and that of the ant the 1-29 6th. 
 On the other hand the peduncular parts, whose de- 
 velopment usually keeps pace with the triumphs the 
 intellect achieves over instinct, are somewhat less 
 important in the bee than in the ant. It would seem 
 
 120
 
 The Swarm 
 
 [37] 
 
 And now to return to our swarming 
 hive, where the bees have already given 
 the signal for departure, without waiting 
 for these reflections of ours to come to an 
 end. At the moment this signal is given, 
 it is as though one sudden mad impulse 
 had simultaneously flung open wide every 
 single gate in the city; and the black 
 throng issues, or rather pours forth in 
 a double, or treble, or quadruple jet, as 
 the number of exits may be ; in a tense, 
 direct, vibrating, uninterrupted stream 
 that at once dissolves and melts into 
 space, where the myriad transparent, furi- 
 ous wings weave a tissue throbbing with 
 sound. And this for some moments will 
 
 to result from these estimates which are of course 
 hypothetical, and deal with a matter that is exceed- 
 ingly obscure that the intellectual value of the bee 
 and the ant must be more or less equal. 
 
 121
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 quiver right over the hive, with prodigious 
 rustle of gossamer silks that countless 
 electrified hands might be ceaselessly rend- 
 ing and stitching ; it floats undulating, it 
 trembles and flutters like a veil of glad- 
 ness invisible fingers support in the sky, 
 and wave to and fro, from the flowers to 
 the blue, expecting sublime advent or de- 
 parture. And at last one angle declines 
 another is lifted ; the radiant mantle 
 unites its four sunlit corners ; and like 
 the wonderful carpet the fairy-tale speaks 
 of, that flits across space to obey its mas- 
 ter's command, it steers its straight course, 
 bending forward a little as though to hide 
 in its folds the sacred presence of the 
 future, towards the willow, the pear-tree, 
 or lime whereon the queen has alighted ; 
 and round her each rhythmical wave 
 comes to rest, as though on a nail of gold, 
 and suspends its fabric of pearls and of 
 luminous wings.
 
 The Swarm 
 
 And then there is silence once more ; 
 and, in an instant, this mighty tumult, 
 this awful curtain apparently laden with 
 unspeakable menace and anger, this be- 
 wildering golden hail that streamed upon 
 every object near all these become merely 
 a great, inoffensive, peaceful cluster of bees, 
 composed of thousands of little motionless 
 groups, that patiently wait, as they hang 
 from the branch of a tree, for the scouts 
 to return who have gone in search of a 
 place of shelter. 
 
 [38] 
 
 This is the first stage of what is known 
 as the "primary swarm" at whose head 
 the old queen is always to be found. 
 They will settle as a rule on the shrub 
 or the tree that <s nearest the hive ; for 
 the queen, besides being weighed down 
 by her eggs, has dwelt in constant dark- 
 ness ever since her marriage-flight, or the 
 123
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 swarm of the previous year ; and is natu- 
 rally reluctant to venture far into space, 
 having indeed almost forgotten the use 
 of her wings. 
 
 The bee-keeper waits till the mass be 
 completely gathered together ; then, hav- 
 ing covered his head with a large straw 
 hat (for the most inoffensive bee will con- 
 ceive itself caught in a trap if entangled 
 in hair, and will infallibly use its sting), 
 but, if he be experienced, wearing neither 
 mask nor veil ; having taken the precau- 
 tion only of plunging his arms in cold 
 water up to the elbow, he proceeds to 
 gather the swarm by vigorously shaking 
 the bough from which the bees depend 
 over an inverted hive. Into this hive the 
 cluster will fall as heavily as an over-ripe 
 fruit. Or, if the branch be too stout, he 
 can plunge a spoon into the mass ; and 
 deposit where he will the living spoonfuls, 
 as though he were ladling out corn. He 
 124
 
 The Swarm 
 
 need have no fear of the bees that are 
 buzzing around him, settling on his face 
 and hands. The air resounds with their 
 song of ecstasy, which is different far from 
 their chant of anger. He need have no 
 fear that the swarm will divide, or grow 
 fierce, will scatter, or try to escape. This 
 is a day, I repeat, when a spirit of holi- 
 day would seem to animate these mys- 
 terious workers, a spirit of confidence, 
 that apparently nothing can trouble. 
 They have detached themselves from 
 the wealth they had to defend, and they 
 no longer recognise their enemies. They 
 become inoffensive because of their hap- 
 piness, though why they are happy we 
 know not, except it be because they are 
 obeying their law. A moment of such 
 blind happiness is accorded by nature at 
 times to every living thing, when she 
 seeks to accomplish her end. Nor need 
 we feel any surprise that here the bees are 
 "5
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 her dupes ; we ourselves, who have studied 
 her movements these centuries past, and 
 with a brain more perfect than that of the 
 bee, we too are her dupes, and know not 
 even yet whether she be benevolent or 
 indifferent, or only basely cruel. 
 
 There where the queen has alighted the 
 swarm will remain-; and had she descended 
 alone into the hive, the bees would have 
 followed, in long black files, as soon as 
 intelligence had reached them of the ma- 
 ternal retreat. The majority will hasten 
 to her, with utmost eagerness ; but large 
 numbers will pause for an instant on the 
 threshold of the unknown abode, and 
 there will describe the circles of solemn 
 rejoicing with which it is their habit to 
 celebrate happy events. " They are beat- 
 ing to arms," say the French peasants. 
 And then the strange home will at once 
 be accepted, and its remotest corners 
 explored ; its position in the apiary, its 
 126
 
 The Swarm 
 
 form, its colour, are grasped and retained 
 in these thousands of prudent and faithful 
 little memories. Careful note is taken of 
 the neighbouring landmarks, the new city 
 is founded, and its place established in the 
 mind and the heart of all its inhabitants ; 
 the walls resound with the love-hymn of 
 the royal presence, and work begins. 
 
 [39] 
 
 But if the swarm be not gathered by 
 man, its history will not end here. It 
 will remain suspended on the branch un- 
 til the return of the workers, who, acting 
 as scouts, winged quartermasters, as it 
 were, have at the very first moment of 
 swarming sallied forth in all directions in 
 search of a lodging. They return one by 
 one, and render account of their mission ; 
 and as it is manifestly impossible for us to 
 fathom the thought of the bees, we can 
 only interpret in human fashion the spec- 
 127
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 tacle that they present. We may regard 
 it as probable, therefore, that most careful 
 attention is given to the reports of the 
 various scouts. One of them it may be, 
 dwells on the advantage of some hollow 
 tree it has seen ; another is in favour of a 
 crevice in a ruinous wall, of a cavity in a 
 grotto, or an abandoned burrow. The 
 assembly often will pause and deliberate 
 until the following morning. Then at 
 last the choice is made, and approved by 
 all. At a given moment the entire mass 
 stirs, disunites, sets in motion, and then, 
 in one sustained and impetuous flight, 
 that this time knows no obstacle, it will 
 steer its straight course, over hedges and 
 cornfields, over haystack and lake, over 
 river and village, to its determined and 
 always distant goal. It is rarely indeed 
 that this second stage can be followed by 
 man. The swarm returns to nature ; and 
 we lose the track of its destiny. 
 128
 
 Ill 
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF THE 
 CITY 
 
 129
 
 Ill 
 
 THE FOUNDATION OF THE 
 CITY 
 
 [40] 
 
 LET us rather consider the proceedings 
 of the swarm the apiarist shall have 
 gathered into his hive. And first of all 
 let us not be forgetful of the sacrifice these 
 fifty thousand virgins have made, who, as 
 Ronsard sings, 
 
 " In a little body bear so true a heart, " 
 
 and let us, yet once again, admire the 
 courage with which they begin life anew 
 in the desert whereon they have fallen. 
 They have forgotten the splendour and 
 wealth of their native city, where existence 
 had been so admirably organised and
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 certain, where the essence of every flower 
 reminiscent of sunshine had enabled them 
 to smile at the menace of winter. There, 
 asleep in the depths of their cradles, they 
 have left thousands and thousands of 
 daughters, whom they never again will 
 see. They have abandoned, not only the 
 enormous treasure of pollen and propolis 
 they had gathered together, but also more 
 than 1 20 pounds of honey; a quantity 
 representing more than twelve times the 
 entire weight of the population, and close 
 on 600,000 times that of the individual 
 bee. To man this would mean 42,000 
 tons of provisions, a vast fleet of mighty 
 ships laden with nourishment more pre- 
 cious than any known to us ; for to the 
 bee honey is a kind of liquid life, a species 
 of chyle that is at once assimilated, with 
 almost no waste whatever. 
 
 Here, in the new abode, there is noth- 
 ing ; not a drop of honey, not a morsel of 
 132
 
 The Foundation of the City 
 
 wax; neither guiding-mark nor point of 
 support. There is only the dreary emp- 
 tiness of an enormous monument that has 
 nothing but sides and roof. Within the 
 smooth and rounded walls there only is 
 darkness ; and the enormous arch above 
 rears itself over nothingness. But useless 
 regrets are unknown to the bee; or in any 
 event it does not allow them to hinder its 
 action. Far from being cast down by an 
 ordeal before which every other courage 
 would succumb, it displays greater ardour 
 than ever. Scarcely has the hive been 
 set in its place, or the disorder allayed that 
 ensued on the bees' tumultuous fall, when 
 we behold the clearest, most unexpected 
 division in that entangled mass. The 
 greater portion, forming in solid columns, 
 like an army obeying a definite order, will 
 proceed to climb the vertical walls of the 
 hive. The cupola reached, the first to 
 arrive will cling with the claws of their 
 '33
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 anterior legs, those that follow hang on to 
 the first, and so in succession, until long 
 chains have been formed that serve as a 
 bridge to the crowd that rises and rises. 
 And, by slow degrees, these chains, as 
 their number increases, supporting each 
 other and incessantly interweaving, be- 
 come garlands which, in their turn, the 
 uninterrupted and constant ascension 
 transforms into a thick, triangular curtain, 
 or rather a kind of compact and inverted 
 cone, whose apex attains the summit of 
 the cupola, while its widening base de- 
 scends to a half, or two-thirds, of the 
 entire height of the hive. And then, the 
 last bee that an inward voice has impelled 
 to form part of this group having added 
 itself to the curtain suspended in darkness, 
 the ascension ceases ; all movement slowly 
 dies away in the dome ; and, for long 
 hours, this strange inverted cone will wait, 
 in a silence that almost seems awful, in a 
 '34
 
 The Foundation of the City 
 
 stillness one might regard as religious, for 
 the mystery of wax to appear. 
 
 In the meantime the rest of the bees 
 those, that is, that remained down below 
 in the hive have shown not the slightest 
 desire to join the others aloft, and pay no 
 heed to the formation of the marvellous 
 curtain on whose folds a magical gift is 
 soon to descend. They are satisfied to 
 examine the edifice and undertake the 
 necessary labours. They carefully sweep 
 the floor, and remove, one by one, twigs, 
 grains of sand, and dead leaves; for the 
 bees are almost fanatically cleanly, and 
 when, in the depths of winter, severe 
 frosts retard too long what apiarists term 
 their "flight of cleanliness," rather than 
 sully the hive they will perish by thou- 
 sands of a terrible bowel-disease. The 
 males alone are incurably careless, and will 
 impudently bestrew the surface of the comb 
 with their droppings, which the workers
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 are obliged to sweep as they hasten behind 
 them. 
 
 The cleaning over, the bees of the pro- 
 fane group that form no part of the cone 
 suspended in a sort of ecstasy, set to work 
 minutely to survey the lower circumference 
 of the common dwelling. Every crevice 
 is passed in review, and filled, covered 
 over with propolis ; and the varnishing of 
 the walls is begun, from top to bottom. 
 Guards are appointed to take their stand 
 at the gate; and very soon a certain 
 number of workers will go to the fields 
 and return with their burden of pollen. 
 
 [41] 
 
 Before raising the folds of the mysteri- 
 ous curtain beneath whose shelter are laid 
 the veritable foundations of the home, let 
 us endeavour to form some conception of 
 the sureness of vision, the accurate cal- 
 culation and industry our little people 
 136
 
 The Foundation of the City 
 
 of emigrants will be called to display 
 in order to adapt this new dwelling to 
 their requirements. In the void round 
 about them they must lay the plans for 
 their city, and logically mark out the site 
 of the edifices that must be erected as 
 economically and quickly as possible, for 
 the queen, eager to lay, already is scat- 
 tering her eggs on the ground. And in 
 this labyrinth of complicated buildings, 
 so far existing only in imagination, laws 
 of ventilation must be considered, of 
 stability, solidity ; resistance of the wax 
 must not be lost sight of, or the nature 
 of the food to be stored, or the habits 
 of the queen ; ready access must be con- 
 trived to all parts, and careful attention 
 be given to the distribution of stores and 
 houses, passages and streets, this how- 
 ever is in some measure pre-established, 
 the plan already arrived at being organi- 
 cally the best, and there are countless 
 '37
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 problems besides, whose enumeration 
 would take too long. 
 
 Now, the form of the hive that man 
 offers to the bee knows infinite variety, 
 from the hollow tree or earthenware vessel 
 still obtaining in Asia and Africa, and the 
 familiar bell-shaped constructions of straw 
 which we find in our farmers' kitchen- 
 gardens or beneath their windows, lost 
 beneath masses of sunflowers, phlox, and 
 hollyhock, to what may really be termed 
 the factory of the model apiarist of to- 
 day. An edifice, this, that can contain 
 more than three hundred pounds of 
 honey, in three or four stories of super- 
 posed combs enclosed in a frame which 
 permits of their being removed and 
 handled, of the harvest being extracted 
 Hirough centrifugal force by means of 
 a turbine, and of their being then re- 
 stored to their place like a book in a 
 well-ordered library. 
 138
 
 The Foundation of the City 
 
 And one fine day the industry or 
 caprice of man will install a docile swarm 
 in one of these disconcerting abodes. And 
 there the little insect is expected to learn 
 its bearings, to find its way, to establish 
 its home ; to modify the seemingly un- 
 changeable plans dictated by the nature 
 of things. In this unfamiliar place it 
 is required to determine the site of the 
 winter storehouses, that must not extend 
 beyond the zone of heat that issues from 
 the half-numbed inhabitants ; it must 
 divine the exact point where the brood- 
 cells shall concentrate, under penalty of 
 disaster should these be too high or too 
 low, too near to or far from the door. 
 The swarm, it may be, has just left 
 the trunk of a fallen tree, containing 
 one long, narrow, depressed, horizon- 
 tal gallery ; and it finds itself now 
 in a tower-shaped edifice, whose roof is 
 lost in gloom. Or, to take a case that
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 is more usual, perhaps, and one that 
 will give some idea of the surprise habit- 
 ually in store for the bees : after having 
 lived for centuries past beneath the 
 straw dome of our village hives, they 
 are suddenly transplanted to a species 
 of mighty cupboard, or chest, three or 
 four times as large as- the place of their 
 birth ; and installed in the midst of a con- 
 fused scaffolding of superposed frames, 
 some running parallel to the entrance and 
 some perpendicular; the whole forming 
 a bewildering network that obscures the 
 surfaces of their dwelling. 
 
 And yet, for all this, there exists not 
 a single instance of a swarm refusing its 
 duty, or allowing itself to be baffled or 
 discouraged by the strangeness of its sur- 
 roundings, except only in the case of the 
 new dwelling being absolutely uninhabi- 
 140
 
 The Foundation of the City 
 
 table, or impregnated with evil odours. 
 And even then the bees will not be dis- 
 heartened or bewildered; even then they 
 will not abandon their mission. The 
 swarm will simply forsake the inhospi- 
 table abode, to seek better fortune some 
 little distance away. And similarly it can 
 never be said of them that they can be 
 induced to undertake any illogical or 
 foolish task. Their common-sense has 
 never been known to fail them ; they 
 have never, at a loss for definite decision, 
 erected at haphazard structures of a wild or 
 heterogeneous nature. Though you place 
 the swarm in a sphere, a cube, or a pyra- 
 mid, in an oval or polygonal basket, you 
 will find, on visiting the bees a few days 
 later, that if this strange assembly of little 
 independent intellects has accepted the new 
 abode, they will at once, and unhesitatingly 
 and unanimously have known how to select 
 the most favourable, often humanly speak- 
 141
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 ing the only possible spot in this absurd 
 habitation, in pursuance of a method 
 whose principles may appear inflexible, 
 but whose results are strikingly vivid. 
 
 When installed in one of the huge fac- 
 tories, bristling with frames, that we men- 
 tioned just now, these frames will interest 
 them only to the extent in which they 
 provide them with a basis or point of 
 departure for their combs ; and they 
 very naturally pay not the slightest heed 
 to the desires or intentions of man. But 
 if the apiarist have taken the precaution 
 of surrounding the upper lath of some of 
 these frames with a narrow fillet of wax, 
 they will be quick to perceive the advan- 
 tage this tempting offer presents, and will 
 carefully extract the fillet, using their own 
 wax as solder, and will prolong the comb 
 in accordance with the indicated plan. 
 Similarly and the case is frequent in 
 modern apiculture if all the frames of 
 142
 
 The Foundation of the City 
 
 the hive into which the bees have been 
 gathered be covered from top to bottom 
 with leaves of foundation-wax, they will 
 not waste time in erecting buildings across 
 or beside these, or in producing useless 
 wax, but, finding that the work is already 
 half finished, they will be satisfied to 
 deepen and lengthen each of the cells 
 designed in the leaf, carefully rectifying 
 these where there is the slightest devia- 
 tion from the strictest vertical. Proceed- 
 ing in this fashion, therefore, they will 
 possess in a week a city as luxurious and 
 well-constructed as the one they have 
 quitted; whereas, had they been thrown 
 on their own resources, it would have 
 taken them two or three months to con- 
 struct so great a profusion of dwellings 
 and storehouses of shining wax.
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 [43] 
 
 This power of appropriation may well 
 be considered to overstep the limit of 
 instinct ; and indeed there can be nothing 
 more arbitrary than the distinction we 
 draw between instinct and intelligence 
 properly so-called. Sir John Lubbock, 
 whose observations on ants, bees, and 
 wasps are so interesting and so personal, 
 is reluctant to credit the bee, from the 
 moment it forsakes the routine of its 
 habitual labour, with any power of discern- 
 ment or reasoning. This attitude of his 
 may be due in some measure to an uncon- 
 scious bias in favour of the ants, whose 
 ways he has more specially noted ; for the 
 entomologist is always inclined to regard 
 that insect as the more intelligent to which 
 he has more particularly devoted himself, 
 and we have to be on our guard against 
 this little personal predilection. As a 
 
 144
 
 The Foundation of the City 
 
 proof of his theory, Sir John cites as an 
 instance an experiment within the reach of 
 all. If you place in a bottle half a dozen 
 bees and the same number of flies, and 
 lay the bottle down horizontally, with its 
 base to the window, you will find that the 
 bees will persist, till they die of exhaustion 
 or hunger, in their endeavour to discover 
 an issue through the glass ; while the 
 flies, in less than two minutes, will all 
 have sallied forth through the neck on 
 the opposite side. From this Sir John 
 Lubbock concludes that the intelligence 
 of the bee is exceedingly limited, and that 
 the fly shows far greater skill in extricat- 
 ing itself from a difficulty, and finding its 
 way. This conclusion, however, would 
 not seem altogether flawless. Turn the 
 transparent sphere twenty times, if you 
 will, holdin'g now the base, now the neck, 
 to the window, and you will find that the 
 bees will turn twenty times with it, so as 
 10 MS
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 always to face the light. It is their love of 
 the light, it is their very intelligence, that 
 is their undoing in this experiment of the 
 English savant. They evidently imagine 
 that the issue from every prison must be 
 there where the light shines clearest ; and 
 they act in accordance, and persist in too 
 logical action. To them glass is a super- 
 natural mystery they never have met 
 with in nature ; they have had no ex- 
 perience of this suddenly impenetrable 
 atmosphere ; and, the greater their in- 
 telligence, the more inadmissible, more 
 incomprehensible, will the strange ob- 
 stacle appear. Whereas the feather- 
 brained flies, careless of logic as of the 
 enigma of crystal, disregarding the call of 
 the light, flutter wildly hither and thither, 
 and, meeting here the good fortune that 
 often waits on the simple, who find 
 salvation there where the wiser will 
 perish, necessarily end by discovering 
 146
 
 The Foundation of the City 
 
 the friendly opening that restores their 
 liberty to them. 
 
 The same naturalist cites yet another 
 proof of the bees' lack of intelligence, and 
 discovers it in the following quotation 
 from the great American apiarist, the 
 venerable and paternal Langstroth : 
 
 " As the fly was not intended to ban- 
 quet on blossoms, but on substances in 
 which it might easily be drowned, it 
 cautiously alights on the edge of any 
 vessel containing liquid food, and warily 
 helps itself; while the poor bee, plunging 
 in headlong, speedily perishes. The sad 
 fate of their unfortunate companions does 
 not in the least deter others who approach 
 the tempting lure from madly alighting 
 on the bodies of the dying and the dead, 
 to share the same miserable end. No one 
 can understand the extent of their infatua- 
 tion until he has seen a confectioner's 
 shop assailed by myriads of hungry bees. 
 M7
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 I have seen thousands strained out from 
 the syrups in which they had perished ; 
 thousands more alighting even on the 
 boiling sweets; the floors covered and win- 
 dows darkened with bees, some crawling, 
 others flying, and others still so completely 
 besmeared as to be able neither to crawl 
 nor to fly not one in ten able to carry 
 home its ill-gotten spoils, and yet the 
 air filled with new hosts of thoughtless 
 comers." 
 
 This, however, seems to me no more 
 conclusive than might be the spectacle of 
 a battlefield, or of the ravages of alcohol- 
 ism, to a superhuman observer bent on 
 establishing the limits of human under- 
 standing. Indeed, less so, perhaps ; for 
 the situation of the bee, when compared 
 with our own, is strange in this world. 
 It was intended to live in the midst of an 
 indifferent and unconscious nature, and 
 not by the side of an extraordinary being 
 148
 
 The Foundation of the City 
 
 who is forever disturbing the most con- 
 stant laws, and producing grandiose, inex- 
 plicable phenomena. In the natural order 
 of things, in the monotonous life of the 
 forest, the madness Langstroth describes 
 would be possible only were some accident 
 suddenly to destroy a hive full of honey. 
 But in this case, even, there would be no 
 fatal glass, no boiling sugar or cloying 
 syrup ; no death or danger, therefore, 
 other than that to which every animal is 
 exposed while seeking its prey. 
 
 Should we be more successful than 
 they in preserving our presence of mind 
 if some strange power were at every step 
 to ensnare our reason? Let us not be 
 too hasty in condemning the bees for the 
 folly whereof we are the authors, or in de- 
 riding their intellect, which is as poorly 
 equipped to foil our artifices as our own 
 would be to foil those of some superior 
 creature unknown to us to-day, but on 
 149
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 that account not impossible. None such 
 being known at present, we conclude that 
 we stand on the topmost pinnacle of life 
 on this earth ; but this belief, after all, 
 is by no means infallible. I am not 
 assuming that when our actions are un- 
 reasonable, or contemptible, we merely 
 fall into the snares that such a creature 
 has laid ; though it is not inconceivable 
 that this should one day be proved true. 
 On the other hand, it cannot be wise to 
 deny intelligence to the bee because it has 
 not yet succeeded in distinguishing us 
 from the great ape or the bear. It is 
 certain that there are, in us and about 
 us, influences and powers no less dis- 
 similar whose distinction escapes us as 
 readily. 
 
 And finally, to end this apology, where- 
 in I seem somewhat to have fallen into 
 the error I laid to Sir John Lubbock's 
 charge, does not the capacity for folly so 
 150
 
 The Foundation of the City 
 
 great in itself argue intelligence? For 
 thus it is ever in the uncertain domain of 
 the intellect, apparently the most vacillat- 
 ing and precarious condition of matter. 
 The same light that falls on the intellect 
 falls also on passion, whereof none can 
 tell whether it be the smoke of the flame 
 or the wick. In the case above it has not 
 been mere animal desire to gorge them- 
 selves with honey that has urged on the 
 bees. They could do this at their leisure 
 in the store-rooms at home. Watch them 
 in an analogous circumstance; follow them ; 
 you will see that, as soon as their sac is 
 filled, they will return to the hive and 
 add their spoil to the general store ; and 
 visit the marvellous vintage, and leave it, 
 perhaps thirty times in an hour. Their 
 admirable labours, therefore, are inspired 
 by a single desire : zeal to bring as much 
 wealth as they can to the home of their 
 sisters, which is also the home of the
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 future. When we discover a cause as 
 disinterested for the follies of men, we are 
 apt to call them by another name. 
 
 [44] 
 
 However, the whole truth must be told. 
 In the midst of the marvels of their indus- 
 try, their policy, their sacrifice, one thing 
 exists that must always check and weaken 
 our admiration ; and this is the indifference 
 with which they regard the misfortunes or 
 death of their comrades. There is a 
 strange duality in the character of the 
 bee. In the heart of the hive all help 
 and love each other. They are as united 
 as the good thoughts that dwell in the 
 same soul. Wound one of them, and 
 a thousand will sacrifice themselves to 
 avenge its injury. But outside the hive 
 they no longer recognise each other. 
 Mutilate them, crush them, or rather, 
 do nothing of the kind ; it would be a 
 152
 
 The Foundation of the City 
 
 useless cruelty, for the fact is established 
 beyond any doubt, but were you to 
 mutilate, or crush, on a piece of comb 
 placed a few steps from their dwelling, 
 twenty or thirty bees that have all issued 
 from the same hive, those you have left 
 untouched will not even turn their heads. 
 With their tongue, fantastic as a Chinese 
 weapon, they will tranquilly continue to 
 absorb the liquid they hold more precious 
 than life, heedless of the agony whose 
 last gestures almost are touching them, 
 of the cries of distress that arise all 
 around. And when the comb is empty, 
 so great is their anxiety that nothing shall 
 be lost, that their eagerness to gather the 
 honey which clings to the victims will in- 
 duce them tranquilly to climb over dead 
 and dying, unmoved by the presence of 
 the first and never dreaming of helping 
 the others. In this case, therefore, they 
 have no notion of the danger they run, 
 '53
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 seeing that they are wholly untroubled by 
 the death that is scattered about them, and 
 they have not the slightest sense of soli- 
 darity or pity. As regards the danger, 
 the explanation lies ready to hand; the 
 bees know not the meaning of fear, and, 
 with the exception only of smoke, are 
 afraid of nothing in the world. Outside 
 the hive, they display extreme condescen- 
 sion and forbearance. They will avoid 
 whatever disturbs them, and affect to ig- 
 nore its existence, so long as it come not 
 too close ; as though aware that this uni- 
 verse belongs to all, that each one has his 
 place there, and must needs be discreet and 
 peaceful. But beneath this indulgence is 
 quietly hidden a heart so sure of itself that 
 it never dreams of protesting. If they are 
 threatened, they will alter their course, but 
 never attempt to escape. In the hive, 
 however, they will not confine themselves 
 to this passive ignoring of peril. They
 
 The Foundation of the City 
 
 will spring with incredible fury on any 
 living thing, ant or lion or man, that 
 dares to profane the sacred ark. This 
 we may term anger, ridiculous obsti- 
 nacy, or heroism, according as our mind 
 be disposed. 
 
 But of their want of solidarity outside 
 the hive, and even of sympathy within it, 
 I can find nothing to say. Are we to 
 believe that each form of intellect possesses 
 its own strange limitation, and that the 
 tiny flame which with so much difficulty 
 at last burns its way through inert matter 
 and issues forth from the brain, is still so 
 uncertain that if it illumine one point more 
 strongly the others are forced into blacker 
 darkness ? Here we find that the bees (or 
 nature acting within them) have organised 
 work in common, the love and cult of the 
 future, in a manner more perfect than can 
 elsewhere be discovered. Is it for this 
 reason that they have lost sight of all the
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 rest? They give their love to what lies 
 ahead of them ; we bestow ours on what is 
 around. And we who love here, perhaps, 
 have no love left for what is beyond. 
 Nothing varies so much as the direction 
 of pity or charity. We ourselves should 
 formerly have been far less shocked than 
 we are to-day at the insensibility of the 
 bees ; and to many an ancient people such 
 conduct would not have seemed blame- 
 worthy. And further, can we tell how 
 many of the things that we do would 
 shock a being who might be watching 
 us as we watch the bees ? 
 
 156
 
 IV 
 
 THE LIFE OF THE BEE
 
 IV t 
 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 
 
 [45] 
 
 LET us now, in order to form a 
 clearer conception of the bees' in- 
 tellectual power, proceed to consider their 
 methods of inter-communication. There 
 can be no doubting that they understand 
 each other; and indeed it were surely 
 impossible for a republic so considerable, 
 wherein the labours are so varied and so 
 marvellously combined, to subsist amid 
 the silence and spiritual isolation of so 
 many thousand creatures. They must be 
 able, therefore, to give expression to 
 thoughts and feelings, by means either 
 of a phonetic vocabulary or more prob- 
 '59
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 ably of some kind of tactile language or 
 magnetic intuition, corresponding per- 
 haps to senses and properties of matter 
 wholly unknown to ourselves. And such 
 intuition well might lodge in the myste- 
 rious antennae containing, in the case 
 of the workers, according to Cheshire's 
 calculation, twelve thousand tactile hairs 
 and five thousand " smell-hollows," where- 
 with they probe and fathom the darkness. 
 For the mutual understanding of the bees 
 is not confined to their habitual labours ; 
 the extraordinary also has a name and 
 place in their language ; as is proved by 
 the manner in which news, good or bad, 
 normal or supernatural, will at once spread 
 in the hive; the loss or return of the 
 mother, for instance, the entrance of an 
 enemy, the intrusion of a strange queen, 
 the approach of a band of marauders, the 
 discovery of treasure, etc. And so char- 
 acteristic is their attitude, so essentially 
 1 60
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 different their murmur at each of these 
 special events, that the experienced apia- 
 rist can without difficulty tell what is 
 troubling the crowd that moves dis- 
 tractedly to and fro in the shadow. 
 
 If you desire a more definite proof, you 
 have but to watch a bee that shall just 
 have discovered a few drops of honey on 
 your window-sill or the corner of your 
 table. She will immediately gorge herself 
 with it ; and so eagerly, that you will 
 have time, without fear of disturbing her, 
 to mark her tiny belt with a touch of paint. 
 But this gluttony of hers is all on the 
 surface ; the honey will not pass into the 
 stomach proper, into what we might call 
 her personal stomach, but remains in the 
 sac, the first stomach, that of the com- 
 munity, if one may so express it. This 
 reservoir full, the bee will depart, but not 
 with the free and thoughtless motion of the 
 fly or butterfly; she, on the contrary, will 
 " 161
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 for some moments fly backwards, hovering 
 eagerly about the table or window, with 
 her head turned toward the room. 
 
 She is reconnoitring, fixing in her 
 memory the exact position of the treasure. 
 Thereupon she will go to the hive, dis- 
 gorge her plunder into one of the provi- 
 sion-cells, and in three or four minutes 
 return, and resume operations at the 
 providential window. And thus, while 
 the honey lasts, will she come and go, 
 at intervals of every five minutes, till 
 evening, if need be ; without interruption 
 or rest ; pursuing her regular journeys 
 from the hive to the window, from the 
 window back to the hive. 
 
 [46] 
 
 Many of those who have written on 
 
 bees have thought fit to adorn the truth; 
 
 I myself have no such desire. For 
 
 studies of this description to possess 
 
 162
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 any interest, it is essential that they 
 should remain absolutely sincere. Had 
 the conclusion been forced upon me that 
 bees are incapable of communicating to 
 each other news of an event occurring 
 outside the hive, I should, I imagine, as 
 a set-off against the slight disappoint- 
 ment this discovery would have entailed, 
 have derived some degree of satisfaction 
 in recognising once more that man, after 
 all, is the only truly intelligent being who 
 inhabits our globe. And there comes 
 too a period of life when we have more 
 joy in saying the thing that is true than 
 in saying the thing that merely is wonder- 
 ful. Here as in every case the principle 
 holds that, should the naked truth appear 
 at the moment less interesting, less great 
 and noble than the imaginary embellish- 
 ment it lies in our power to bestow, the 
 fault must rest with ourselves who still 
 are unable to perceive the astonishing 
 163
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 relation in which this truth always must 
 stand to our being, and to universal law; 
 and in that case it is not the truth, but 
 our intellect, that needs embellishment 
 and ennoblement. 
 
 I will frankly confess, therefore, that 
 the marked bee often returns alone. 
 Shall we believe that in bees there exists 
 the same difference of character as in 
 men; that of them too some are gossips, 
 and others prone to silence ? A friend 
 who stood by and watched my experi- 
 ment, declared that it was evidently mere 
 selfishness or vanity that caused so many 
 of the bees to refrain from revealing the 
 source of their wealth, and from sharing 
 with others the glory of an achievement 
 that must seem miraculous to the hive. 
 These were sad vices indeed, which give 
 not forth the sweet odour, so fragrant 
 and loyal, that springs from the home of 
 the many thousand sisters. But, what- 
 164
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 ever the cause, it often will also happen 
 that the bee whom fortune has favoured 
 will return to the honey accompanied by 
 two or three friends. I am aware that 
 Sir John Lubbock, in the appendix to 
 his book on " Ants, Bees, and Wasps," 
 records the results of his investigations 
 in long and minute tables ; and from 
 these we are led to infer that it is a matter 
 of rarest occurrence for a single bee to 
 follow the one who has made the dis- 
 covery. The learned naturalist does not 
 name the race of bees which he selected 
 for his experiments, or tell us whether 
 the conditions were especially unfavour- 
 able. As for myself I only can say that 
 my own tables, compiled with great care, 
 and every possible precaution having 
 been taken that the bees should not be 
 directly attracted by the odour of the 
 honey, establish that on an average one 
 bee will bring others four times out of ten. 
 165
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 I even one day came across an extraor- 
 dinary little Italian bee, whose belt I had 
 marked with a touch of blue paint. In 
 her second trip she brought two of her 
 sisters, whom I imprisoned, without in- 
 terfering with her. She departed once 
 more, and this time returned with three 
 friends, whom I again confined, and so 
 till the end of the afternoon, when, count- 
 ing my prisoners, I found that she had 
 told the news to no less than eighteen 
 bees. 
 
 In fact you will find, if you make this 
 experiment yourself, that communication, 
 if not general, at least is frequent. The 
 possession of this faculty is so well 
 known to American bee-hunters that they 
 trade upon it when engaged in searching 
 for nests. Mr. Josiah Emery remarks 
 on this head (quoted by Romanes in 
 his " Intellect of Animals ") : " Going 
 to a field or wood at a distance from 
 166
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 tame bees with their box of honey, they 
 gather up from the flowers and imprison 
 one or more bees, and after they have 
 become sufficiently gorged, let them out 
 to return to their home with their easily 
 gotten load. Waiting patiently a longer 
 or shorter time, according to the distance 
 of the bee-tree, the hunter scarcely ever 
 fails to see the bee or bees return accom- 
 panied by other bees, which are in like 
 manner imprisoned till they in turn are 
 filled ; then one or more are let out at 
 places distant from each other, and the 
 direction in which the bee flies noted; 
 and thus, by a kind of triangulation, the 
 position of the bee-tree proximately 
 ascertained." 
 
 [47] 
 
 You will notice too in your experi- 
 ments that the friends who appear to 
 obey the behests of good fortune do not 
 167
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 always fly together, and that there will 
 often be an interval of several seconds be- 
 tween the different arrivals. As regards 
 these communications, therefore, *we must 
 ask ourselves the question that Sir John 
 Lubbock has solved as far as the ants are 
 concerned. 
 
 Do the comrades who flock to the treas- 
 ure only follow the bee that first made the 
 discovery, or have they been sent on by 
 her, and do they find it through following 
 her indications, her description of the 
 place where it lies ? Between these two 
 hypotheses, that refer directly to the extent 
 and working of the bee's intellect, there is 
 obviously an enormous difference. The 
 English savant has succeeded, by means 
 of an elaborate and ingenious arrangement 
 of gangways, corridors, moats full of 
 water, and flying bridges, in establishing 
 that the ants in such cases do no more 
 than follow in the track of the pioneering 
 168
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 insect. With ants, that can be made to 
 pass where one will, such experiments are 
 possible; but for the bee, whose wings 
 throw every avenue open, some other ex- 
 pedient must of necessity be contrived. 
 I imagined the following, which, though 
 it gave no definite result, might yet, 
 under more favourable conditions, and if 
 organised more carefully, give rise to defi- 
 nite and satisfactory conclusions. 
 
 My study in the country is on the first 
 floor, above a somewhat lofty room ; suf- 
 ficiently high, therefore, to be out of the 
 ordinary range of the bees' flight, except 
 at times when the chestnuts and lime 
 trees are in bloom. And for more than 
 a week before I started this experiment 
 I had kept on my table an open comb of 
 honey, without the perfume having at- 
 tracted, or induced the visit of, a single 
 bee. Then I went to a glass hive that 
 was close to the house, took an Italian 
 169
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 bee, brought her to my study, set her on 
 the comb, and marked her while she was 
 feeding. 
 
 When satisfied, she flew away and re- 
 turned to the hive. I followed, saw her 
 pass over the surface of the crowd, plunge 
 her head into an empty cell, disgorge her 
 honey, and prepare to set forth again. At 
 the door of the hive I had placed a glass 
 box, divided by a trap into two compart- 
 ments. The bee flew into this box; and 
 as she was alone, and no other bee seemed 
 to accompany or follow her, I imprisoned 
 her and left her there. I then repeated 
 the experiment on twenty different bees 
 in succession. When the marked bee 
 reappeared alone, I imprisoned her as I 
 had imprisoned the first. But eight of 
 them came to the threshold of the hive 
 and entered the box accompanied by two 
 or three friends. By means of the trap 
 I was able to separate the marked bee 
 170
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 from her companions, and to keep her 
 a prisoner in the first compartment. Then, 
 having marked her companions with a 
 different colour, I threw open the second 
 compartment and set them at liberty, 
 myself returning quickly to my study 
 to await their arrival. Now it is evi- 
 dent that if a verbal or magnetic commu- 
 nication had passed, indicating the place, 
 describing the way, etc., a certain num- 
 ber of the bees, having been furnished 
 with this information, should have found 
 their way to my room. I am compelled 
 to admit that there came but a single one. 
 Was this mere chance, or had she followed 
 instructions received ? The experiment 
 was insufficient, but circumstances pre- 
 vented me from carrying it further. I 
 released the " baited " bees, and my study 
 soon was besieged by the buzzing crowd 
 to whom they had taught the way to the 
 treasure. 
 
 171
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 We need not concern ourselves with 
 this incomplete attempt of mine, for many 
 other curious traits compel us to recognise 
 the existence among the bees of spiritual 
 communications that go beyond a mere 
 " yes " or " no," and that are manifest in 
 cases where mere example or gesture 
 would not be sufficient. Of such, for 
 instance, are the remarkable harmony of 
 their work in the hive, the extraordinary 
 division of labour, the regularity with 
 which one worker will take the place of 
 another, etc. I have often marked bees 
 that went foraging in the morning, and 
 found that, in the afternoon, unless flowers 
 were specially abundant, they would be 
 engaged in heating and fanning the brood- 
 cells, or perhaps would form part of the 
 mysterious, motionless curtain in whose 
 midst the wax-makers and sculptors would 
 be at work. Similarly I have noticed 
 that workers whom I have seen gather- 
 172
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 ing pollen for the whole of one day, will 
 bring no pollen back on the morrow, 
 but will concern themselves exclusively 
 with the search for nectar, and vice- 
 versa. 
 
 [48] 
 
 And further, we might mention what 
 M. Georges de Layens, the celebrated 
 French apiarist, terms the " Distribution 
 of Bees over Melliferous Plants." Day 
 after day, at the first hour of sunrise, the 
 explorers of the dawn return, and the hive 
 awakes to receive the good news of the 
 earth. " The lime trees are blossoming 
 to-day on the* banks of the canal." " The 
 grass by the roadside is gay with white 
 clover." " The sage and the lotus are 
 about to open." " The mignonette, the 
 lilies are overflowing with pollen." Where- 
 upon the bees must organise quickly, and 
 arrange to divide the work. Five thou-
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 sand of the sturdiest will sally forth to the 
 lime trees, while three thousand juniors go 
 and refresh the white clover. Those who 
 yesterday were absorbing nectar from the 
 corollas will to-day repose their tongue 
 and the glands of their sac, and gather red 
 pollen from the mignonette, or yellow 
 pollen from the tall lilies ; for never shall 
 you see a bee collecting or mixing pollen 
 of a different colour or species ; and indeed 
 one of the chief pre-occupations of the 
 hive is the methodical bestowal of these 
 pollens in the store-rooms, in strict accord- 
 ance with their origin and colour. Thus 
 does the hidden genius issue its commands. 
 The workers immediately sally forth, in 
 long black files, whereof each one will 
 fly straight to its allotted task. "The 
 bees," says De Layens, "would seem 
 to be perfectly informed as to the lo- 
 cality, the relative melliferous value, 
 and the distance of every melliferous
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 plant within a certain radius from the 
 hive. 
 
 " If we carefully note the different direc- 
 tions in which these foragers fly, and 
 observe in detail the harvest they gather 
 from the various plants around, we shall 
 find that the workers distribute themselves 
 over the flowers in proportion not only to 
 the numbers of flowers of one species, but 
 also to their melliferous value. Nay, 
 more they make daily calculations as to 
 the means of obtaining the greatest possi- 
 ble wealth of saccharine liquid. In the 
 spring, for instance, after the willows have 
 bloomed, when the fields still are bare, 
 and the first flowers of the woods are the 
 one resource of the bees, we shall see 
 them eagerly visiting gorse and violets, 
 lungworts and anemones. But, a few days 
 later, when fields of cabbage and colza 
 begin to flower in sufficient abundance, we 
 shall find that the bees will almost entirely 
 *75
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 forsake the plants in the woods, though 
 these be still in full blossom, and will con- 
 fine their visits to the flowers qf cabbage 
 and colza alone. In this fashion they 
 regulate, day by day, their distribution 
 over the plants, so as to collect the great- 
 est value of saccharine liquid in the least 
 possible time. 
 
 " It may fairly be claimed, therefore, for 
 the colony of bees that, in its harvesting 
 labours no less than in its internal economy, 
 it is able to establish a rational distribution 
 of the number of workers without ever 
 disturbing the principle of the division of 
 labour." 
 
 [49] 
 
 But what have we to do, some will ask, 
 with the intelligence of the bees ? What 
 concern is it of ours whether this be a little 
 less or a little more? Why weigh, with 
 such infinite care, a minute fragment of 
 176
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 almost invisible matter, as though it were 
 a fluid whereon depended the destiny of 
 man ? I hold, and exaggerate nothing, 
 that our interest herein is of the most con- 
 siderable,, The discovery of a sign of 
 true intellect outside ourselves procures 
 us something of the emotion Robinson 
 Crusoe felt when he saw the imprint of 
 a human foot on the sandy beach of his 
 island. We seem less solitary than we 
 had believed. And indeed, in our en- 
 deavour to understand the intellect of 
 the bees, we are studying in them that 
 which is most precious in our own sub- 
 stance : an atom of the extraordinary 
 matter which possesses, wherever it at- 
 tach itself, the magnificent power of 
 transfiguring blind necessity, of organ- 
 ising, embellishing, and multiplying life; 
 and, most striking of all, of holding in 
 suspense the obstinate force of death, 
 and the mighty, irresponsible wave that 
 
 12 177
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 wraps almost all that exists in an eternal 
 unconsciousness. 
 
 Were we sole possessors of the particle 
 of matter that, when maintained in a 
 special condition of flower or incandes- 
 cence, we term the intellect, we should to 
 some extent be entitled to look on our- 
 selves as privileged beings, and to imagine 
 that in us nature achieved some kind of 
 aim ; but here we discover, in the hymen- 
 optera, an entire category of beings in 
 whom a more or less identical aim is 
 achieved. And this fact, though it decide 
 nothing perhaps, still holds an honour- 
 able place in the mass of tiny facts that 
 help to throw light on our position in 
 this world. It affords even, if considered 
 from a certain point of view, a fresh proof 
 of the most enigmatic part of our being ; 
 for the superpositions of destinies that we 
 find in the hive are surveyed by us from 
 an eminence loftier than any we can attain 
 178
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 for the contemplation of the des'J.nles 
 of man. There we see before us, in 
 miniature, the large and simple lines that 
 in our own disproportionate sphere we 
 never have the occasion to disentangle 
 and follow to the end. Spirit and matter 
 are there, the race and the individual, evo- 
 lution and permanence, life and death, the 
 past and the future; all gathered together 
 in a retreat that our hand can lift and one 
 look of our eye embrace. And may we 
 not reasonably ask ourselves whether the 
 mere size of a body, and the room that it 
 fills in time and space, can modify to the 
 extent we imagine the secret idea of na- 
 ture ; the idea that we try to discover in 
 the little history of the hive, which in a 
 few days already is ancient, no less than 
 in the great history of man, of whom three 
 generations overlap a long century ? 
 
 179
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 Let us go on, then, with the story of 
 our hive ; let us take it up where we left 
 it; and raise, as high as we may, a fold of 
 the festooned curtain in whose midst a 
 strange sweat, white as snow and airier 
 than the down of a wing, is beginning to 
 break over the swarm. For the wax that 
 is now being born is not like the wax that 
 we know ; it is immaculate, it has no 
 weight; seeming truly to be the soul of 
 the honey, that itself is the spirit of flowers. 
 And this motionless incantation has called 
 it forth that it may serve us, later in 
 memory of its origin, doubtless, wherein 
 it is one with the azure sky, and heavy 
 with perfumes of magnificence and purity 
 as the fragrant light of the last of 
 our altars. 
 
 180
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 To follow the various phases of the 
 secretion and employment of wax by a 
 swarm that is beginning to build, is a 
 matter of very great difficulty. All comes 
 to pass in the blackest depths of the 
 crowd, whose agglomeration, growing 
 denser and denser, produces the tem- 
 perature needful for this exudation, which 
 is the privilege of the youngest bees. 
 Huber, who was the first to study these 
 phenomena, bringing incredible patience 
 to bear and exposing himself at times to 
 very serious danger, devotes to them 
 more, than two hundred and fifty pages ; 
 which, though of considerable interest, 
 are necessarily somewhat confused. But 
 I am not treating this subject technically ; 
 and while referring when necessary to 
 Huber's admirable studies, I shall con- 
 fine myself generally to relating what is 
 181
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 patent to any one who may gather a 
 swarm into a glass hive. 
 
 We have to admit, first of all, that we 
 know not yet by what process of alchemy 
 the honey transforms itself into wax in 
 the enigmatic bodies of our suspended 
 bees. We can only say that they will 
 remain thus suspended for a period ex- 
 tending from eighteen to twenty-four 
 hours, in a temperature so high that one 
 might almost believe that a fire was burn- 
 ing in the hollow of the hive ; and then 
 white and transparent scales will appear 
 at the opening of four little pockets that 
 every bee has underneath its abdomen. 
 
 When the bodies of most of those 
 who form the inverted cone have thus 
 been adorned with ivory tablets, we shall 
 see one of the bees, as though suddenly 
 inspired, abruptly detach herself from the 
 mass, and climb over the backs of the 
 passive crowd till she reach the inner 
 182
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 pinnacle of the cupola. To this she will 
 fix herself solidly, dislodging, with re- 
 peated blows of her head, such of her 
 neighbours as may seem to hamper her 
 movements. Then, with her mouth and 
 claws, she will seize one of the eight 
 scales that hang from her abdomen, and 
 at once proceed to clip it and plane it, 
 extend it, knead it with her saliva, 
 bend it and flatten it, roll it and straighten 
 it, with the skill of a carpenter handling 
 a pliable panel. When at last the sub- 
 stance, thus treated, appears to her to 
 possess the required dimensions and con- 
 sistency, she will attach it to the highest 
 point of the dome, thus laying the first, 
 or rather the keystone of the new town ; 
 for we have here an inverted city, hang- 
 ing down from the sky, and not rising 
 from the bosom of earth like a city of 
 men. 
 
 To this keystone, depending in the 
 183
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 void, she will add other fragments of wax 
 that she takes in succession from beneath 
 her rings of horn ; and finally, with one 
 last lick of the tongue, one last wave of 
 antennae, she will go as suddenly as she 
 came, and disappear in the crowd. An- 
 other will at once take her place, continue 
 the work at the point where the first one 
 has left it, add on her own, change and 
 adjust whatever may seem to offend the 
 ideal plan of the tribe, then vanish in her 
 turn, to be succeeded by a third, a fourth, 
 and a fifth, all appearing unexpectedly, 
 suddenly, one after the other, none com- 
 pleting the work, but each bringing her 
 share to the task in which all combine. 
 
 A small block of wax, formless as yet, 
 
 hangs down from the top of the vault. 
 
 So soon as its thickness may be deemed 
 
 sufficient, we shall see another bee emerge 
 
 184
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 from the mass, her physical appearance 
 differing appreciably from that of the 
 foundresses who preceded her. And her 
 manner displays such settled conviction, 
 her movements are followed so eagerly by 
 all the crowd, that we almost might fancy 
 that some illustrious engineer had been 
 summoned to trace in the void the site of 
 the first cell of all, from which every other 
 must mathematically depend. This bee 
 belongs to the sculptor or carver class 
 of workers ; she produces no wax her- 
 self and is content to deal with the 
 materials others provide. She locates the 
 first cell, scoops into the -block for an in- 
 stant, lays the wax she has removed from 
 the cavity on the borders around it ; and 
 then, like the foundresses, abruptly de- 
 parts and abandons her model. Her 
 place is taken at once by an impatient 
 worker, who continues the task that a 
 third will finish, while others close by are 
 185
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 attacking the rest of the surface and the 
 opposite side of the wall ; each one obey- 
 ing the general law of interrupted and 
 successive labour, as though it were an 
 inherent principle of the hive that the 
 pride of toil should be distributed, and 
 every achievement be anonymous and 
 common to all, that it might thereby 
 become more fraternal. 
 
 [53] 
 
 The outline of the nascent comb may 
 soon be divined. In form it will still be 
 lenticular, for the little prismatic tubes 
 that compose it are unequal in length, and 
 diminish in proportion as they recede from 
 the centre to the extremities. In thick- 
 ness and appearance at present it more or 
 less resembles a human tongue whose 
 sides might be formed of hexagonal cells, 
 contiguous, and placed back to back. 
 
 The first cells having been built, the 
 186
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 foundresses proceed to add a second block 
 of wax to the roof; and so in gradation a 
 third and a fourth. These blocks follow 
 each other at regular intervals so nicely 
 calculated that when, at a much later 
 period, the comb shall be fully developed, 
 there will be ample space for the bees to 
 move between its parallel walls. 
 
 Their plan must therefore embrace the 
 final thickness of every comb, which will 
 be from eighty-eight to ninety-two hun- 
 dredths of an inch, and at the same time 
 the width of the avenues between, which 
 must be about half an inch, or in other 
 words twice the height of a bee, since 
 there must be room to pass back to back 
 between the combs. 
 
 The bees, however, are not infallible, 
 nor does their certainty appear mechanical. 
 They will commit grave errors at times, 
 when circumstances present unusual diffi- 
 culty. They will often leave too much 
 187
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 space, or too little, between the combs. 
 This they will remedy as best they can, 
 either by giving an oblique twist to the 
 comb that too nearly approaches the other, 
 or by introducing an irregular comb into 
 the gap. " The bees sometimes make 
 mistakes," Reaumur remarks on this sub- 
 ject, " and herein we may find yet another 
 fact which appears to prove that they 
 reason." 
 
 [54] 
 
 We know that the bees construct four 
 kinds of cells. First of all, the royal 
 cells, which are exceptional, and contrived 
 somewhat in the shape of an acorn ; then 
 the large cells destined for the rearing 
 of males and storing of provisions when 
 flowers super-abound ; and the small cells, 
 serving as workers' cradles and ordinary 
 store-rooms, which occupy normally about 
 four-fifths of the built-over surface of the 
 188
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 hive. And lastly, so as to connect in 
 orderly fashion the larger cells with the 
 small, the bees will erect a certain number 
 of what are known as transition cells. 
 These must of necessity be irregular in 
 form ; but so unerringly accurate are the 
 dimensions of the second and third types 
 that, at the time when the decimal system 
 was established, and a fixed measure sought 
 in nature to serve as a starting-point and 
 an incontestable standard, it was proposed 
 by Reaumur to select for this purpose the 
 cell of the bee. 1 
 
 Each of the cells is an hexagonal tube 
 
 1 It was as well, perhaps, that this standard was not 
 adopted. For although the diameter of the cells is 
 admirably regular, it is, like all things produced by a 
 living organism, not mathematically invariable in the 
 same hive. Further, as M. Maurice Girard has 
 pointed out, the apothem of the cell varies among 
 different races of bees, so that the standard would alter 
 from hive to hive, according to the species of bee that 
 inhabited it. 
 
 189
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 placed on a pyramidal base; and two 
 layers of these tubes form the comb, their 
 bases being opposed to each other in such 
 fashion that each of the three rhombs or 
 lozenges which on one side constitute the 
 pyramidal base of one cell, composes at 
 the same time the pyramidal base of three 
 cells on the other. It is in these pris- 
 matic tubes that the honey is stored ; and 
 to prevent its escaping during the period 
 of maturation, which would infallibly 
 happen if the tubes were as strictly hori- 
 zontal as they appear to be, the bees 
 incline them slightly, to an angle of 
 4 or 5. 
 
 " Besides the economy of wax," says 
 Reaumur, when considering this marvellous 
 construction in its entirety, " besides the 
 economy of wax that results from the dis- 
 position of the cells, and the fact that this 
 arrangement allows the bees to fill the 
 comb without leaving a single spot vacant, 
 190
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 there are other advantages also with respect 
 to the solidity of the work. The angls 
 at the base of each cell, the apex of 
 the pyramidal cavity, is buttressed by 
 the ridge formed by two faces of the 
 hexagon of another cell. The two tri- 
 angles, or extensions of the hexagon faces 
 which fill one of the convergent angles of 
 the cavity enclosed by the three rhombs, 
 form by their junction a plane angle on 
 the side they touch ; each of these angles, 
 concave within the cell, supports, on its 
 convex side, one of the sheets employed 
 to form the hexagon of another cell ; the 
 sheet, pressing on this angle, resists the 
 force which is tending to push it out- 
 wards ; and in this fashion the angles are 
 strengthened. Every advantage that could 
 be desired with regard to the solidity of 
 each cell is procured by its own formation 
 and its position with reference to the 
 others." 
 
 191
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 [55] 
 
 " There are only," says Dr. Reid, " three 
 possible figures of the cells which can 
 make them all equal and similar, without 
 any useless interstices. These are the 
 equilateral triangle, the square, and the 
 regular hexagon. Mathematicians know 
 that there is not a fourth way possible in 
 which a plane shall be cut into little spaces 
 that shall be equal, similar, and regular, 
 without useless spaces. Of the three 
 figures, the hexagon is the most proper 
 for convenience and strength. Bees, as 
 if they knew this, make their cells regular 
 hexagons. 
 
 " Again, it has been demonstrated that, 
 by making the bottoms of the cells to 
 consist of three planes meeting in a point, 
 there is a saving of material and labour in 
 no way inconsiderable. The bees, as if 
 acquainted with these principles of solid 
 192
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 geometry, follow them most accurately. 
 It is a curious mathematical problem at 
 what precise angle the three planes which 
 compose the bottom of a cell ought to 
 meet, in order to make the greatest pos- 
 sible saving, or the least expense of mate- 
 rial and labour. 1 This is one of the 
 
 1 Reaumur suggested the following problem to the 
 celebrated mathematician Koenig : "Of all possible 
 hexagonal cells with pyramidal base composed of three 
 equal and similar rhombs, to find the one whose con- 
 struction would need the least material." Koenig' s 
 answer was, the cell that had for its base three rhombs 
 whose large angle was 109 26", and the small 70* 
 34". Another savant, Maraldi, had measured as 
 exactly as possible the angles of the rhombs constructed 
 by the bees, and discovered the larger to be 109 28", 
 and the other 70 32". Between the two solutions 
 there was a difference, therefore, of only 2". It is 
 probable that the error, if error there be, should be 
 attributed to Maraldi rather than to the bees ; for it is 
 impossible for any instrument to measure the angles of 
 the cells, which are not very clearly defined, with 
 infallible precision. 
 
 The problem suggested to Koenig was put to 
 '3 193
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 problems which belong to the higher parts 
 of mathematics. It has accordingly been 
 resolved by some mathematicians, par- 
 ticularly by the ingenious Maclaurin, by 
 a fluctionary calculation which is to be 
 found in the Transactions of the Royal 
 Society of London. He has determined 
 precisely the angle required, and he found, 
 by the most exact mensuration the subject 
 would admit, that it is the very angle in 
 which the three planes at the bottom of 
 the cell of a honey comb do actually 
 meet." 
 
 [56] 
 
 I myself do not believe that the bees 
 indulge in these abstruse calculations ; 
 but, on the other hand, it seems equally 
 impossible to me that such astounding re- 
 
 tnother mathematician, Cramer, whose solution came 
 even closer to that of the bees, viz., 109 28^" for 
 the large angle, and 70 31/4" for the small. 
 
 194
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 suits can be due to chance alone, or to the 
 mere force of circumstance. The wasps, 
 for instance, also build combs with hex- 
 agonal cells, so that for them the problem 
 was identical, and they have solved it in a 
 far less ingenious fashion. Their combs 
 have only one layer of celts, thus lacking 
 the common base that serves the bees for 
 their two opposite layers. The wasps' 
 comb, therefore, is not only less regular, 
 but also less substantial ; and so waste- 
 fully constructed that, besides loss of ma- 
 terial, they must sacrifice about a third of 
 the available space and a quarter of the 
 energy they put forth. Again, we find that 
 the trigonse and meliponse, which are veri- 
 table and domesticated bees, though of less 
 advanced civilisation, erect only one row 
 of rearing-cells, and support their horizon- 
 tal, superposed combs on shapeless and 
 costly columns of wax. Their provision- 
 cells are merely great pots, gathered to- 
 '95
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 gether without any order ; and, at the 
 point between the spheres where these 
 might have intersected and induced a 
 profitable economy of space and material, 
 the meliponae clumsily insert a section of 
 cells with flat walls. Indeed, to compare 
 one of their nests with the mathematical 
 cities of our own honey-flies, is like 
 imagining a hamlet composed of primitive 
 huts side by side with a modern town ; 
 whose ruthless regularity is the logical, 
 though perhaps somewhat charmless, re- 
 sult of the genius of man, that to-day, 
 more fiercely than ever before, seeks to 
 conquer space, matter, and time. 
 
 [57] 
 
 There is a theory, originally pro- 
 pounded by Buffon and now revived, 
 which assumes that the bees have not the 
 least intention of constructing hexagons 
 with a pyramidal base, but that their 
 196
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 desire is merely to contrive round cells 
 in the wax; only, that as their neighbours, 
 and those at work on the opposite side of 
 the comb, are digging at the same mo- 
 ment and with the same intentions, the 
 points where the cells meet must of neces- 
 sity become hexagonal. Besides, it is 
 said, this is precisely what happens to 
 crystals, the scales of certain kinds of fish, 
 soap-bubbles, etc., as it happens in the 
 following experiment that Buffon sug- 
 gested. " If," he said, " you fill a dish 
 with peas or any other cylindrical bean, 
 pour as much water into it as the space 
 between the beans will allow, close it care- 
 fully and then boil the water, you will 
 find that all these cylinders have become 
 six-sided columns. And the reason is 
 evident, being indeed purely mechanical ; 
 each of the cylindrical beans tends, as it 
 swells, to occupy the utmost possible 
 space within a given space ; wherefore it 
 197
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 follows that the reciprocal compression 
 compels them all to become hexagonal. 
 Similarly each bee seeks to occupy the 
 utmost possible space within a given 
 space, with the necessary result that, its 
 body being cylindrical, the cells become 
 hexagonal for the same reason as before, 
 viz., the working of reciprocal obstacles." 
 
 [58] 
 
 These reciprocal obstacles, it would 
 seem, are capable of marvellous achieve- 
 ment ; on the same principle, doubtless, 
 that the vices of man produce a general 
 virtue, whereby the human race, hateful 
 often in its individuals, ceases to be so in 
 the mass. We might reply, first of all, 
 with Brougham, Kirby and Spence, and 
 others, that experiments with peas and 
 soap-bubbles prove nothing ; for the rea- 
 son that in both cases the pressure pro- 
 duces only irregular forms, and in no 
 198
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 wise explains the existence of the pris* 
 matic base of the cells. But above all 
 we might answer that there are more 
 ways than one of dealing with rigid neces- 
 sity ; that the wasp, the humble-bee, the 
 trigonae and meliponae of Mexico and 
 Brazil achieve very different and mani- 
 festly inferior results, although the cir- 
 cumstances, and their own intentions, are 
 absolutely identical with those of the 
 bees. It might further be urged that if 
 the bee's cell does indeed follow the law 
 that governs crystals, snow, soap-bubbles, 
 as well as Buffon's boiled peas, it also, 
 through its general symmetry, disposition 
 in opposite layers, and angle of inclina- 
 tion, obeys many other laws that are not 
 to be found in matter. May we not say, 
 too, of man that all his genius is com- 
 prised in his fashion of handling kindred 
 necessities ? And if it appear to us that 
 his manner of treating these is the best 
 199
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 there can possibly be, the reason only 
 can lie in the absence of a judge superior 
 to ourselves. But it is well that argu- 
 ment should make way for fact ; and 
 indeed, to the objection based on an 
 experiment, the best reply of all must 
 be a counter-experiment. 
 
 In order to satisfy myself that hexag- 
 onal architecture truly was written in the 
 spirit of the bee, I cut off and removed 
 one day a disc of the size of a five- 
 franc piece from the centre of a comb, 
 at a spot where there were both brood- 
 cells and cells full of honey. I cut into 
 the circumference of this disc, at the 
 intersecting point of the pyramidal cells ; 
 inserted a piece of tin on the base of one 
 of these sections, shaped exactly to its 
 dimensions, and possessed of resistance 
 sufficient to prevent the bees from bend- 
 ing or twisting it. Then I replaced the 
 slice of comb, duly furnished with its
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 slab of tin, on the spot whence I had 
 removed it; so that, while one side of 
 the comb presented no abnormal feature, 
 the damage having been repaired, the 
 other displayed a sort of deep cavity, 
 covering the space of about thirty cells, 
 with the piece of tin as its base. The 
 bees were disconcerted at first; they 
 flocked in numbers to inspect and ex- 
 amine this curious chasm ; day after day 
 they wandered agitatedly to and fro, ap- 
 parently unable to form a decision. But, 
 as I fed them copiously every evening, 
 there came a moment when they had no 
 more cells available for the storage of 
 provisions. Thereupon they probably 
 summoned their great engineers, distin- 
 guished sculptors, and wax-workers, and 
 invited them to turn this useless cavity 
 to profitable account. 
 
 The wax-makers having gathered around 
 and formed themselves into a dense fes- 
 
 201
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 toon, so that the necessary heat might be 
 maintained, other bees descended into the 
 hole and proceeded solidly to attach the 
 metal, and connect it with the walls of ad- 
 jacent cells, by means of little waxen hooks 
 which they distributed regularly over its 
 surface. In the upper semicircle of the 
 disc they then began to construct three 
 or four cells, uniting these to the hooks. 
 Each of these transition, or accommo- 
 dation, cells was more or less deformed 
 at the top, to allow of its being soldered 
 to the adjoining cell on the comb ; but 
 its lower portion already designed on the 
 tin three very clear angles, whence there 
 ran three little straight lines that correctly 
 indicated the first half of the following 
 cell. 
 
 After forty-eight hours, and notwith- 
 standing the fact that only three bees at 
 a time were able to work in the cavity, 
 the entire surface of the tin was covered
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 with outlined cells. These were less reg- 
 ular, certainly, than those of an ordinary 
 comb ; wherefore the queen, having in- 
 spected them, wisely declined to lay any 
 eggs there, for the generation that would 
 have arisen therefrom would necessarily 
 have been deformed. Each cell, how- 
 ever, was a perfect hexagon ; nor did it 
 contain a single crooked line, a single 
 curved figure or angle. And yet the 
 ordinary conditions had all been changed ; 
 the cells had neither been scooped out of 
 a block, according to Huber's descrip- 
 tion, nor had they been designed within a 
 waxen hood, and, from being circular at 
 first, been subsequently converted into 
 hexagons by the pressure of adjoining 
 cells, as explained by Darwin. Neither 
 could there be question here of reciprocal 
 obstacles, the cells having been formed 
 one by one, and their first lines traced on 
 what practically was a bare table. It would 
 203
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 seem incontestable, therefore, that the hex- 
 agon is not merely the result of mechani- 
 cal necessities, but that it has its true 
 place in the plans, the experience, the 
 intellect and will of the bee. I may 
 relate here another curious instance of 
 the workers' sagacity : the cells they built 
 on the tin had no other base than the 
 metal itself. The engineers of the corps 
 had evidently decided that the tin could 
 adequately retain the honey; and had 
 considered that, the substance being im- 
 permeable, they need not waste the mate- 
 rial they value so highly by covering the 
 metal with a layer of wax. But, a short 
 time after, some drops of honey having 
 been placed in two of these cells, the bees 
 discovered, in tasting it, that the contact 
 of the metal had a deteriorating effect. 
 Thereupon they reconsidered the matter, 
 and covered over with wax the en^re sur- 
 face of the tin. 
 
 204
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 [59] 
 
 Were it our desire to throw light upon 
 all the secrets of this geometric architect- 
 ure, we should have more than one curi- 
 ous question still to consider; as for 
 instance the shape of the first cells, 
 which, being attached to the roof, are 
 modified in such a manner as to touch 
 the roof at the greatest possible number 
 of points. 
 
 The design of the principal thorough- 
 fares is determined by the parallelism of 
 the combs ; but we must admire the in- 
 genious construction of alleys and gang- 
 ways through and around the comb, so 
 skilfully contrived as to provide short cuts 
 in every direction and prevent conges- 
 tion of traffic, while ensuring free circula- 
 tion of air. And finally we should have 
 to study the construction of transition 
 cells, wherein we see a unanimous instinct 
 205
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 at work that impels the bees at a given 
 moment to increase the size of their 
 dwellings. Three reasons may dictate 
 this step : an extraordinary harvest may 
 call for larger receptacles, the workers 
 may consider the population to be suffi- 
 ciently numerous, or it may have become 
 necessary that males should be born. Nor 
 can we in such cases refrain from wonder- 
 ing at the ingenious economy, the unerr- 
 ing, harmonious conviction, with which the 
 bees will pass from the small to the large, 
 from the large to the small ; from perfect 
 symmetry to, where unavoidable, its very 
 reverse, returning to ideal regularity so 
 soon as the laws of a live geometry will 
 allow; and all the time not losing a cell, 
 not suffering a single one of their numer- 
 ous structures to be sacrificed, to be ridic- 
 ulous, uncertain, or barbarous, or any 
 section thereof to become unfit for use. 
 But I fear that I have already wandered 
 206
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 into many details that will have but slen- 
 der interest for the reader, whose eyes 
 perhaps may never have followed a flight 
 of bees ; or who may have regarded them 
 only with the passing interest with which 
 we are all of us apt to regard the flower, 
 the bird or the precious stone, asking of 
 these no more than a slight superficial 
 assurance, and forgetting that the most 
 trivial secret of the non-human object we 
 behold in nature connects more closely 
 perhaps with the profound enigma of our 
 origin and our end, than the secret of 
 those of our passions that we study the 
 most eagerly and the most passionately. 
 
 [60] 
 
 And I will pass over too in my de- 
 sire that this essay shall not become too 
 didactic the remarkable instinct that in- 
 duces the bees at times to thin and demol- 
 ish the extremity of their combs, when 
 207
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 these are to be enlarged or lengthened ; 
 though it must be admitted that in this 
 case the " blind building instinct " fails 
 signally to account for their demolishing 
 in order that they may rebuild, or undoing 
 what has been done that it may be done 
 afresh, and with more regularity. I will 
 content myself also with a mere reference 
 to the remarkable experiment that enables 
 us, with the aid of a piece of glass, to 
 compel the bees to start their combs at a 
 right angle ; when they most ingeniously 
 contrive that the enlarged cells on the 
 convex side shall coincide with the reduced 
 cells on the concave side of the comb. 
 
 But before finally quitting this subject 
 let us pause, though it be but for an in- 
 stant, and consider the mysterious fashion 
 in which they manage to act in concert 
 and combine their labour, when simul- 
 taneously carving two opposite sides of a 
 comb, and unable therefore to see each 
 208
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 other. Take a finished comb to the light, 
 fix your eyes on the diaphanous wax ; you 
 will see, most clearly designed, an entire 
 network of sharply cut prisms, a whole 
 system of concordances so infallible that 
 one might almost believe them to be 
 stamped on steel. 
 
 I wonder whether those who never have 
 seen the interior of a hive can form an ade- 
 quate conception of the arrangement and 
 aspect of the combs. Let them imagine 
 we will take a peasant's hive, where the bee 
 is left entirely to its own resources let 
 them imagine a dome of straw or osier, 
 divided from top to bottom by five, six, 
 eight, sometimes ten, strips of wax, resemb- 
 ling somewhat great slices of bread, that run 
 in strictly parallel lines from the top of 
 the dome to the floor, espousing closely 
 the shape of the ovoid walls. Between 
 these strips is contrived a space of about 
 half an inch, to enable the bees to stand 
 14 209
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 and to pass each other. At the moment 
 when they begin to construct one of 
 these strips at the top of the hive, the 
 waxen wall (which is its rough model, and 
 will later be thinned and extended) is still 
 very thick, and completely excludes the 
 fifty or sixty bees at work on its inner 
 face from the fifty or sixty simultaneously 
 engaged in carving the outer, so that it is 
 wholly impossible for one group to see the 
 other, unless indeed their sight be able to 
 penetrate opaque matter. And yet there 
 is not a hole that is scooped on the inner 
 surface, not a fragment of wax that is 
 added, but corresponds with mathematical 
 precision to a protuberance or cavity on 
 the outer surface, and vice versa. How 
 does this happen? How is it that one 
 does not dig too deep, another not deep 
 enough ? Whence the invariable magical 
 coincidence between the angles of the 
 lozenges ? What is it tells the bees that
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 at this point they must begin, and at that 
 point stop? Once again we must con- 
 tent ourselves with the reply, that is no 
 reply : " It is a mystery of the hive." 
 Huber has sought to explain this mys- 
 tery by suggesting that the pressure of 
 the bees' hooks and teeth may possibly 
 produce slight projections, at regular in- 
 tervals, on the opposite side of the comb ; 
 or that they may be able to estimate the 
 thickness of the block by the flexibility, 
 elasticity, or some other physical quality of 
 the wax ; or again, that their antennae, 
 which seem so well adapted for the ques- 
 tioning of the finer, less evident side of 
 things, may serve as a compass in the in- 
 visible; or, lastly, that the position of 
 every cell may derive mathematically from 
 the arrangement and dimensions of the 
 cells on the first row, and thus dispense 
 with the need for further measurement. 
 But these explanations are evidently in-
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 sufficient; the first are mere hypotheses 
 that cannot be verified, the others do no 
 more than transplant the mystery. And 
 useful as it may be to transplant mystery 
 as often as we possibly can, it were not 
 wise to imagine that a mystery has 
 ceased to be because we have shifted its 
 home. 
 
 [61] 
 
 Now let us leave these dreary building 
 grounds, this geometrical desert of cells. 
 The combs have been started, and are 
 becoming habitable. Though it be here 
 the infinitely little that, without apparent 
 hope, adds itself to the infinitely little ; 
 though our eye with its limited vision 
 look and see nothing, the work of wax, 
 halting neither by day nor by night, will 
 advance with incredible quickness. The 
 impatient queen already has more than 
 once paced the stockades that gleam white
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 in the darkness ; and no sooner is the 
 first row of dwellings complete than she 
 takes possession with her escort of coun- 
 sellors, guardians, or servants for we 
 know not whether she lead or be led, be 
 venerated or supervised. When the spot 
 has been reached that she, or her urgent 
 advisers, may regard as favourable, she 
 arches her back, bends forward, and intro- 
 duces the extremity of her long spindle- 
 shaped abdomen into one of the cells ; the 
 little eager heads of her escort meanwhile 
 forming a passionate circle around her, 
 watching her with their enormous black 
 eyes, supporting her, caressing her wings, 
 and waving their feverish antennae as 
 though to encourage, incite, or congratulate. 
 You may easily discover the spot where 
 the queen shall be found by the sort of 
 starry cockade, or oval brooch perhaps 
 of the imposing kind our grandmothers 
 used to wear, of which she forms the 
 213
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 central stone. And one may mention 
 here the curious fact that the workers 
 always avoid turning their back on the 
 queen. No sooner has she approached 
 a group than they will invariably arrange 
 themselves so as to face her with eyes and 
 antennae, and to walk backwards before 
 her. It is a token of respect, or of 
 solicitude, that, unlikely as it may seem, 
 is nevertheless constant and general. But 
 to return to the queen. During the 
 slight spasm that visibly accompanies the 
 emission of an egg, one of her daughters 
 will often throw her arms round her and 
 appear to be whispering to her, brow 
 pressed to brow and mouth to mouth. 
 But the queen, in no wise disturbed by 
 this somewhat bold demonstration, takes 
 her time, tranquilly, calmly, wholly ab- 
 sorbed by the mission that would seem 
 amorous delight to her rather than labour. 
 And after some seconds she will rise, very 
 214
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 quietly, take a step back, execute a slight 
 turn on herself, and proceed to the next 
 cell, into which she will first, before intro- 
 ducing her abdomen, dip her head to make 
 sure that all is in order and that she is 
 not laying twice in the same cell ; and in 
 the meanwhile two or three of her escort 
 will have plunged into the cell she has 
 quitted to see whether the work be duly 
 accomplished, and to care for, and ten- 
 derly house, the little bluish egg she has 
 laid. 
 
 From this moment, up to the first frosts 
 of autumn, she does not cease laying ; 
 she lays while she is being fed, and even 
 in her sleep, if indeed she sleeps at all, 
 she still lays. She represents henceforth 
 the devouring force of the future, which 
 invades every corner of the kingdom. 
 Step by step she pursues the unfortunate 
 workers who are exhaustedly, feverishly 
 erecting the cradles her fecundity de- 
 2I 5
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 mands. We have here the union of 
 two mighty instincts ; and their workings 
 throw into light, though they leave unre- 
 solved, many an enigma of the hive. 
 
 It will happen, for instance, that the 
 workers will distance her, and acquire a 
 certain start ; whereupon, mindful of 
 their duties as careful housewives to pro- 
 vide for the bad days ahead, they hasten 
 to fill with honey the cells they have 
 wrested from the avidity of the species. 
 But the queen approaches ; material wealth 
 must give way to the scheme of nature ; 
 and the distracted workers are compelled 
 with all speed to remove the importunate 
 treasure. 
 
 But assume them to be a whole comb 
 ahead, and to have no longer before them 
 her who stands for the tyranny of days 
 they shall none of them see ; we find 
 then that they eagerly, hurriedly, build 
 a zone of large cells, cells for males ; 
 216
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 whose construction is very much easier, 
 and far more rapid. When the queen 
 in her turn attains this unthankful zone, 
 she will regretfully lay a few eggs there, 
 then cease, pass beyond, and clamour 
 for more workers' cells. Her daughters 
 obey ; little by little they reduce the 
 cells ; and then the pursuit starts afresh, 
 till at last the insatiable mother shall have 
 traversed the whole circumference of the 
 hive, and have returned to the first cells. 
 These, by this time, will be empty ; for 
 the first generation will have sprung into 
 life, soon to go forth, from their shadowy 
 corner of birth, disperse over the neigh- 
 bouring blossoms, people the rays of the 
 sun and quicken the smiling hours; and 
 then sacrifice themselves in their turn 
 to the new generations that are already 
 filling their place in the cradles. 
 
 217
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 [62] 
 
 And whom does the queen-bee obey ? 
 She is ruled by nourishment given her ; 
 for she does not take her own food, but 
 is fed like a child by the very workers 
 whom her fecundity harasses. And the 
 food these workers deal out is nicely pro- 
 portioned to the abundance of flowers, to 
 the spoil brought back by those who 
 visit the calyces. Here, then, as every- 
 where else in the world, one part of the 
 circle is wrapped in darkness ; here, as 
 everywhere, it is from without, from an 
 unknown power, that the supreme order 
 issues ; and the bees, like ourselves, obey 
 the nameless lord of the wheel that inces- 
 santly turns on itself, and crushes the 
 wills that have set it in motion. 
 
 Some little time back, I conducted a 
 friend to one of my hives of glass, and 
 showed him the movements of this wheel, 
 218
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 which was as readily perceptible as the 
 great wheel of a clock ; showed him, in 
 all its bareness, the universal agitation 
 on every comb, the perpetual, frantic, 
 bewildered haste of the nurses around 
 the brood-cells ; the living gangways and 
 ladders formed by the makers of wax, the 
 abounding, unceasing activity of the entire 
 population, and their pitiless, useless ef- 
 fort ; the ardent, feverish coming and 
 going of all, the general absence of sleep 
 save in the cradles alone, around which 
 continuous labour kept watch ; the denial 
 of even the repose of death in a home 
 which permits no illness and accords no 
 grave; and my friend, his astonishment 
 over, soon turned his eyes away, and in 
 them I could read the signs of I know 
 not what saddened fear. 
 
 And truly, underlying the gladness that 
 we note first of all in the hive, underly- 
 ing the dazzling memories of beautiful 
 219
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 days that render it the storehouse of 
 summer's most precious jewels, underly- 
 ing the blissful journeys that knit it so 
 close to the flowers and to running water, 
 to the sky, to the peaceful abundance of 
 all that makes for beauty and happiness 
 underlying all these exterior joys, there 
 reposes a sadness as deep as the eye of 
 man can behold. And we, who dimly 
 gaze on these things with our own blind 
 eyes, we know full well that it is not they 
 alone that we are striving to see, not 
 they alone that we cannot understand, 
 but that before us there lies a pitiable 
 form of the great power that quickens 
 us also. 
 
 Sad let it be, as all things in nature are 
 sad, when our eyes rest too closely upon 
 them. And thus it ever shall be so long 
 as we know not her secret, know not even 
 whether secret truly there be. And should 
 we discover some dav that there is no secret,
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 or that the secret is monstrous, other duties 
 will then arise that, as yet, perhaps, have 
 no name. Let our heart, if it will, in the 
 meanwhile repeat, " It is sad ; " but let 
 our reason be content to add, " Thus it is." 
 At the present hour the duty before us is 
 to seek out that which perhaps may be hid- 
 ing behind these sorrows ; and, urged on 
 by this endeavour, we must not turn our 
 eyes away, but steadily, fixedly, watch these 
 sorrows and study them, with a courage and 
 interest as keen as though they were joys. 
 It is right that before we judge nature, 
 before we complain, we should at least 
 ask every question that we can possibly 
 ask. 
 
 [63] 
 
 We have seen that the workers> when 
 free for the moment from the threatening 
 fecundity of the queen, hasten to erect 
 cells for provisions, whose construction is
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 more economical and capacity greater. 
 We have seen, too, that the queen prefers 
 to lay in the smaller cells, for which she is 
 incessantly clamouring. When these are 
 wanting, however, or till they be provided, 
 she resigns herself to laying her eggs in 
 the large cells she finds on her road. 
 
 These eggs, though absolutely identical 
 with those from which workers are 
 hatched, will give birth to males, or 
 drones. Now, conversely to what takes 
 place when a worker is turned into queen, 
 it is here neither the form nor the capac- 
 ity of the cell that produces this change ; 
 for from an egg laid in a large cell and 
 afterwards transferred to that of a worker 
 (a most difficult operation, because of 
 the microscopic minuteness and extreme 
 fragility of the egg, but one that I have 
 four or five times successfully accom- 
 plished) there will issue an undeniable 
 male, though more or less atrophied. It
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 follows, therefore, that the queen must 
 possess the power, while laying, of know- 
 ing or determining the sex of the egg, 
 and of adapting it to the cell over which 
 she is bending. She will rarely make a 
 mistake. How does she contrive, from 
 among the -myriad eggs her ovaries con- 
 tain, to separate male from female, and 
 lower them, at will, into the unique 
 oviduct ? 
 
 Here, yet again, there confronts us an 
 enigma of the hive ; and in this case one 
 of the most unfathomable. We know 
 that the virgin queen is not sterile ; but 
 the eggs that she lays will produce only 
 males. It is not till after the impregnation 
 of the nuptial flight that she can produce 
 workers or drones at will. The nuptial 
 flight places her permanently in posses- 
 sion, till death, of the spermatozoa torn 
 from her unfortunate lover. These sper- 
 matozoa, whose number Dr. Leuckart 
 223
 
 The Lite of the Bee 
 
 estimates at twenty-five millions, are 
 preserved alive in a special gland known 
 as the spermatheca, that is situate under 
 the ovaries, at the entrance to the common 
 oviduct. It is imagined that the narrow 
 aperture of the smaller cells, and the 
 manner in which the form of this aperture 
 compels the queen to bend forward, ex- 
 ercise a certain pressure upon the sper- 
 matheca, in consequence of which the 
 spermatozoa spring forth and fecundate 
 the egg as it passes. In the large cells 
 this pressure would not take place, and 
 the spermatheca would therefore not open. 
 Others, again, believe that the queen has 
 perfect control over the muscles that open 
 and close the spermatheca on the vagina ; 
 and these muscles are certainly very 
 numerous, complex, and powerful. For 
 myself, I incline to the second of these 
 hypotheses, though I do not for a mo- 
 ment pretend to decide which is the more 
 224
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 correct; for indeed, the further we go 
 and the more closely we study, the more 
 plainly is it brought home to us that we 
 merely are waifs shipwrecked on the 
 ocean of nature ; and ever and anon, 
 from a sudden wave that shall be more 
 transparent than others, there leaps forth 
 a fact that in an instant confounds all we 
 imagined we knew. But the reason of 
 my preferring the second theory is that, 
 for one thing, the experiments of a Bor- 
 deaux bee-keeper, M. Drory, have shown 
 that in cases where all the large cells have 
 been removed from the hive, the mother 
 will not hesitate, when the moment for 
 laying male eggs has come, to deposit 
 these in workers* cells ; and that, in- 
 versely, she will lay workers' eggs in cells 
 provided for males, if she have no others 
 at her disposal. And, further, we learn 
 from the interesting observations of M. 
 Fabre on the Osmiae, which are wild and 
 *5 225
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 solitary bees of the Gastrilegidae family, 
 that not only does the Osmia know in 
 advance the sex of the egg she will lay, 
 but that this sex is " optional for the 
 mother, who decides it in accordance with 
 the space of which she disposes ; this space 
 being often governed by chance and not 
 to be modified ; and she will deposit a 
 male egg here and a female there." I 
 shall not enter into the details of the 
 great French entomologist's experiments, 
 for they are exceedingly minute, and 
 would take us too far. But whichever 
 be the hypothesis we prefer to accept, 
 either will serve to explain the queen's 
 inclination to lay her eggs in workers' 
 cells, without it being necessary to credit 
 her with the least concern for the future. 
 
 It is not impossible that this slave- 
 mother, whom we are inclined to pity, may 
 be indeed a great amorist, a great volup- 
 tuary, deriving a certain enjoyment, an 
 226
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 after-taste, as it were, of her one mar- 
 riage-flight, from the um'on of the male 
 and female principle that thus comes to 
 pass in her being. Here again nature, 
 never so ingenious, so cunningly pru- 
 dent and diverse, as when contriving her 
 snares of love, will not have failed to 
 provide a certain pleasure as a bait in 
 the interest of the species. And yet let 
 us pause for a moment, and not become 
 the dupes of our own explanation. For 
 indeed, to attribute an idea of this kind to 
 nature, and regard that as sufficient, is 
 like flinging a stone into an unfathomable 
 gulf we may find in the depths of a grotto, 
 and imagining that the sounds it creates 
 as it falls shall answer our every question, 
 or reveal to us aught beside the immensity 
 of the abyss. 
 
 When we say to ourselves, " This thing 
 is of nature's devising ; it is she has or- 
 dained this marvel ; those are her desires 
 227
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 that we see before us ! " the fact is merely 
 that our special attention has been drawn 
 to some tiny manifestation of life upon 
 the boundless surface of matter that we 
 deem inactive, and choose to describe, with 
 evident inaccuracy, as nothingness and 
 death. A purely fortuitous chain of 
 events has allowed this special manifesta- 
 tion to attract our attention ; but a thou- 
 sand others, no less interesting, perhaps, 
 and informed with no less intelligence, 
 have vanished, not meeting with a like 
 good-fortune, and have lost for ever the 
 chance of exciting our wonder. It were 
 rash to affirm aught beside ; and all that 
 remains, our reflections, our obstinate 
 search for the final cause, our admiration 
 and hopes all these in truth are no 
 more than our feeble cry as, in the depths 
 of the unknown, we clash against what is 
 more unknowable still ; and this feeble 
 cry declares the highest degree of indi- 
 228
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 vidual existence attainable for us on this 
 mute and impenetrable surface, even as 
 the flight of the condor, the song of the 
 nightingale, reveal to them the highest 
 degree of existence their species allows. 
 But the evocation of this feeble cry, when- 
 ever opportunity offers, is none the less 
 one of our most unmistakable duties ; nor 
 should we let ourselves be discouraged by 
 its apparent futility.
 
 V 
 
 THE YOUNG QUEENS
 
 V 
 THE YOUNG QUEENS 
 
 [6 4 ] 
 
 HERE let us close our hive, where we 
 find that life is reassuming its cir- 
 cular movement, is extending and multi- 
 plying, to be again divided as soon as it 
 shall attain the fulness of its happiness 
 and strength ; and let us for the last time 
 reopen the mother-city, and see what is 
 happening there after the departure of the 
 swarm. 
 
 The tumult having subsided, the hap- 
 less city, that two thirds of her children 
 have abandoned for ever, becomes feeble, 
 empty, moribund ; like a body from which 
 the blood has been drained. Some thou- 
 sands of bees have remained, however ; and 
 233
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 these, though a trifle languid perhaps, are 
 still immovably faithful to the duty a 
 precise destiny has laid upon them, still 
 conscious of the part that they have them- 
 selves to play ; they resume their labours, 
 therefore, fill as best they can the place 
 of those who have gone, remove all trace 
 of the orgy, carefully house the provisions 
 that have escaped pillage, sally forth to 
 the flowers again, and keep scrupulous 
 guard over the hostages of the future. 
 
 And for all that the moment may 
 appear gloomy, hope abounds wherever 
 the eye may turn. We might be in one 
 of the castles of German legend, whose 
 walls are composed of myriad phials con- 
 taining the souls of men about to be born. 
 For we are in the abode of life that goes 
 before life. On all sides, asleep in their 
 closely sealed cradles, in this infinite 
 superposition of marvellous six-sided cells, 
 lie thousands of nymphs, whiter than 
 234
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 milk, who with folded arms and head 
 bent forward await the hour of awakening. 
 In their uniform tombs, that, isolated, 
 become nearly transparent, they seem 
 almost like hoary gnomes, lost in deep 
 thought, or legions of virgins whom the 
 folds of the shroud have contorted, who 
 are buried in hexagonal prisms that some 
 inflexible geometrician has multiplied to 
 the verge of delirium. 
 
 Over the entire area that the vertical 
 walls enclose, and in the midst of this 
 growing world that so soon shall trans- 
 form itself, that shall four or five times in 
 succession assume fresh vestments, and 
 then spin its own winding-sheet in the 
 shadow, hundreds of workers are dancing 
 and flapping their wings. They appear 
 thus to generate the necessary heat, and 
 accomplish some other object besides that 
 is still more obscure ; for this dance of 
 theirs contains some extraordinary move- 
 235
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 ments, so methodically conceived that they 
 must infallibly answer some purpose which 
 no observer has as yet, I believe, been 
 able to divine. 
 
 A few days more, and the lids of these 
 myriad urns whereof a considerable hive 
 will contain from sixty to eighty thousand 
 will break, and two large and earnest 
 black eyes will appear, surmounted by 
 antennae that already are groping at life, 
 while active jaws are busily engaged in 
 enlarging the opening from within. The 
 nurses at once come running; they help 
 the young bee to emerge from her 
 prison, they clean her and brush her, and 
 at the tip of their tongue present the 
 first honey of the new life. But the bee, 
 that has come from another world, is be- 
 wildered still, trembling and pale ; she 
 wears the feeble look of a little old man 
 who might have escaped from his tomb, 
 or perhaps of a traveller strewn with the 
 236
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 powdery dust of the ways that lead unto 
 life. She is perfect, however, from head 
 to foot ; she knows at once all that has to 
 be known ; and, like the children of the 
 people, who learn, as it were, at their birth, 
 that for them there shall never be time 
 to play or to laugh, she instantly makes 
 her way to the cells that are closed, and 
 proceeds to beat her wings and to dance 
 in cadence, so that she in her turn may 
 quicken her buried sisters ; nor does she 
 for one instant pause to decipher the 
 astounding enigma of her destiny, or her 
 race. 
 
 [65] 
 
 The most arduous labours will, how- 
 ever, at first be spared her. A week 
 must elapse from the day of her birth 
 before she will quit the hive; she will 
 then perform her first " cleansing flight," 
 and absorb the air into her tracheae, which, 
 237
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 filling, expand her body, and proclaim her 
 the bride of space. Thereupon she re- 
 turns to the hive, and waits yet one week 
 more; and then, with her sisters born 
 the same day as herself, she will for the 
 first time set forth to visit the flowers. 
 A special emotion now will lay hold of 
 her; one that French apiarists term the 
 "soleil d'artifice," but which might more 
 rightly perhaps be called the " sun of dis- 
 quiet." For it is evident that the bees 
 are afraid, that these daughters of the 
 crowd, of secluded darkness, shrink from 
 the vault of blue, from the infinite loneli- 
 ness of the light; and their joy is halting, 
 and woven of terror. They cross the 
 threshold and pause ; they depart, they 
 return, twenty times. They hover aloft 
 in the air, their head persistently turned 
 to the home ; they describe great soaring 
 circles that suddenly sink beneath the 
 weight of regret ; and their thirteen thou- 
 238
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 sand eyes will question, reflect, and retain 
 the trees and the fountain, the gate and 
 the walls, the neighbouring windows and 
 houses, till at last the aerial course where- 
 on their return shall glide have become 
 as indelibly stamped in their memory as 
 though it were marked in space by two 
 lines of steel. 
 
 [66] 
 
 A new mystery confronts us here, which 
 we shall do well to challenge ; for though 
 it reply not, its silence still will extend the 
 field of our conscious ignorance, which 
 is the most fertile of all that our activity 
 knows. How do the bees contrive to 
 find their way back to the hive that they 
 cannot possibly see, that is hidden, per- 
 haps, by the trees, that in any event must 
 form an imperceptible point in space? 
 How is it that if taken in a box to a spot 
 two or three miles from their home, they 
 239
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 will almost invariably succeed in finding 
 their way back ? 
 
 Do obstacles offer no barrier to their 
 sight; do they guide themselves by cer- 
 tain indications and landmarks; or do they 
 possess that peculiar, imperfectly under- 
 stood sense that we ascribe to the swal- 
 lows and pigeons, for instance, and term 
 the " sense of direction " ? The experi- 
 ments of J. H. Fabre, of Lubbock, and, 
 above all, of Romanes (Nature, 29 Oct. 
 1886) seem to establish that it is not this 
 strange instinct that guides them. I have, 
 on the other hand, more than once no- 
 ticed that they appear to pay no attention 
 to the colour or form of the hive. They 
 are attracted rather by the ordinary ap- 
 pearance of the platform on which their 
 home reposes, by the position of the 
 entrance, and of the alighting-board. But 
 this even is merely subsidiary ; were the 
 front of the hive to be altered from top 
 240
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 to bottom, during the workers' absence, 
 they would still unhesitatingly direct their 
 course to it from out the far depths of the 
 horizon ; and only when confronted by 
 the unrecognisable threshold would they 
 seern for one instant to pause. Such ex- 
 periments as lie in our power point rather 
 to their guiding themselves by an extraor- 
 dinarily minute and precise appreciation 
 of landmarks. It is not the hive that 
 they seem to remember, but its position, 
 calculated to the minutest fraction, in its 
 relation to neighbouring objects. And so 
 marvellous is this appreciation, so mathe- 
 matically certain, so profoundly inscribed 
 in their memory, that if, after five months' 
 hibernation in some obscure cellar, the 
 hive, when replaced on the platform, 
 should be set a little to right or to left of 
 its former position, all the workers, on 
 their return from the earliest flowers, will 
 infallibly steer their direct and unwavering 
 16 241
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 course to the precise spot that it filled 
 the previous year; and only after some 
 hesitation and groping will they discover 
 the door which stands not now where it 
 once had stood. It is as though space 
 had preciously preserved, the whole 
 winter through, the indelible track of 
 their flight : as though the print of their 
 tiny, laborious footsteps, still lay graven 
 in the sky. 
 
 If the hive be displaced, therefore, 
 many bees will lose their way ; except 
 in the case of their having been carried 
 far from their former home, and finding 
 the country completely transformed that 
 they had grown to know perfectly within 
 a radius of two or three miles ; for 
 then, if care be taken to warn them, 
 by means of a little gangway connecting 
 with the alighting-board, at the entrance 
 to the hive, that some change has 
 occurred, they will at once proceed to 
 242
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 seek new bearings and create fresh land- 
 marks. 
 
 And now let us return to the city that 
 is being repeopled, where myriad cradles 
 are incessantly opening, and the solid walls 
 even appear to be moving. But this city 
 still lacks a queen. Seven or eight curi- 
 ous structures arise from the centre of one 
 of the combs, and remind us, scattered as 
 they are over the surface of the ordinary 
 cells, of the circles and protuberances that 
 appear so strange on the photographs of 
 the moon. They are a species of capsule, 
 contrived of wrinkled wax or of inclined 
 glands, hermetically sealed, which fills the 
 place of three or four workers' cells. As 
 a rule, they are grouped around the same 
 point ; and a numerous guard keep watch, 
 with singular vigilance and restlessness, 
 over this region that seems instinct with 
 243
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 an indescribable prestige. It is here that 
 the mothers are formed. In each one of 
 these capsules, before the swarm departs, 
 an egg will be placed by the mother, or 
 more probably though as to this we 
 have no certain knowledge by one of 
 the workers ; an egg that she will have 
 taken from some neighbouring cell, and 
 that is absolutely identical with those from 
 which workers are hatched. 
 
 From this egg, after three days, a small 
 larva will issue, and receive a special and 
 very abundant nourishment ; and hence- 
 forth we are able to follow, step by step, 
 the movements of one of those magnifi- 
 cently vulgar methods of nature on which, 
 were we dealing with men, we should 
 bestow the august name of fatality. The 
 little larva, thanks to this regimen, as- 
 sumes an exceptional development ; and 
 in its ideas, no less than in its body, there 
 ensues so considerable a change that the 
 244
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 bee to which it will give birth might 
 almost belong to an entirely different race 
 of insects. 
 
 Four or five years will be the period of 
 her life, instead of the six or seven weeks 
 of the ordinary worker. Her abdomen 
 will be twice as long, her colour more 
 golden, and clearer; her sting will be 
 curved, and her eyes have seven or eight 
 thousand facets instead of twelve or thir- 
 teen thousand. Her brain will be smaller, 
 but she will possess enormous ovaries, 
 and a special organ besides, the sperma- 
 theca, that will render her almost an 
 hermaphrodite. None of the instincts 
 will be hers that belong to a life of toil ; 
 she will have no brushes, no pockets 
 wherein to secrete the wax, no baskets to 
 gather the pollen. The habits, the pas- 
 sions, that we regard as inherent in the 
 bee, will all be lacking in her. She will 
 not crave for air, or the light of the sun ;
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 she will die without even once having 
 tasted a flower. Her existence will pass 
 in the shadow, in the midst of a restless 
 throng ; her sole occupation the indefat- 
 igable search for cradles that she must 
 fill. On the other hand she alone will 
 know the disquiet of love. Not even 
 twice, it may be, in her life shall she look 
 on the light for the departure of the 
 swarm is by no means inevitable ; on one 
 occasion only, perhaps, will she make use 
 of her wings, but then it will be to fly to 
 her lover. It is strange to see so many 
 things organs, ideas, desires, habits, an 
 entire destiny depending, not on a 
 germ, which were the ordinary miracle of 
 the plant, the animal, and man, but on 
 a curious inert substance : a drop of 
 honey. 1 
 
 1 It is generally admitted to-day that workers and 
 queens, after the hatching of the egg, receive the same 
 nourishment, a kind of milk, very rich in nitrogen, 
 246
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 [68] 
 
 About a week has passed since the 
 departure of the old queen. The royal 
 nymphs asleep in the capsules are not all 
 of the same age, for it is to the interest 
 of the bees that the births should be 
 nicely gradationed, and take place at 
 regular intervals, in accordance with their 
 possible desire for a second swarm, a 
 third, or even a fourth. The workers 
 have for some hours now been actively 
 thinning the walls of the ripest cell, while 
 the young queen, from within, has been 
 simultaneously gnawing the rounded lid 
 of her prison. And at last her head 
 appears ; she thrusts herself forward ; 
 
 that a special gland in the nurses' head secretes. But 
 after a few days the worker larvae are weaned, and put 
 on a coarser diet of honey and pollen ; whereas the 
 future queen, until she be fully developed, is copiously 
 fed on the precious milk known as " royal jelly." 
 247
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 and, with the help of the guardians who 
 hasten eagerly to her, who brush her, 
 caress her, and clean her, she extricates 
 herself altogether and takes her first steps 
 on the comb. At the moment of birth 
 she too, like the workers, is trembling 
 and pale, but after ten minutes or so her 
 legs become stronger, and a strange rest- 
 lessness seizes her; she feels that she is 
 not alone, that her kingdom has yet to 
 be conquered, that close by pretenders 
 are hiding ; and she eagerly paces the 
 waxen walls in search of her rivals. But 
 there intervene here the mysterious deci' 
 sions and wisdom of instinct, of the spirit 
 of the hive, or of the assembly of work- 
 ers. The most surprising feature of all, 
 as we watch these things happening be- 
 fore us in a hive of glass, is the entire 
 absence of hesitation, of the slightest 
 division of opinion. There is not a trace 
 of discussion or discord. The atmosphere 
 248
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 of the city is one of absolute unanimity k 
 preordained, which reigns over all ; and 
 every one of the bees would appear to ' 
 know in advance the thought of her 
 sisters. And yet this moment is the 
 gravest, the most vital, in their entire 
 history. They have to choose between 
 three or four courses whose results, in the 
 distant future, will be totally different; 
 which, too, the slightest accident may 
 render disastrous. They have to rec- 
 oncile the multiplication of species 
 which is their passion, or innate duty 
 with the preservation of the hive and 
 its people. They will err at times; 
 they will successively send forth three or 
 four swarms, thereby completely denuding 
 the mother-city ; and these swarms, too 
 feeble to organise, will succumb, it may 
 be, at the approach of winter, caught un- 
 awares by this climate of ours, which is 
 different far from their original climate, that 
 249
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 the bees, notwithstanding all, have never 
 forgotten. In such cases they suffer from 
 what is known as " swarming fever ; " 
 a condition wherein life, as in ordinary 
 fever, reacting too ardently on itself, 
 passes its aim, completes the circle, and 
 discovers only death. 
 
 Of all the decisions before them there 
 is none that would seem imperative ; nor 
 can man, if content to play the part of 
 spectator only, foretell in the slightest 
 degree which one the bees will adopt. 
 But that the most careful deliberation 
 governs their choice is proved by the 
 fact that we are able to influence, or even 
 determine it, by for instance reducing or 
 enlarging the space we accord them ; or 
 by removing combs full of honey, and 
 setting up, in their stead, empty combs 
 which are well supplied with workers' cells. 
 250
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 The question they have to consider is 
 not whether a second or third swarm 
 shall be immediately launched, for in 
 arriving at such a decision they would 
 merely be blindly and thoughtlessly 
 yielding to the caprice or temptation of a 
 favourable moment, but the instanta- 
 neous, unanimous adoption of measures 
 that shall enable them to issue a second 
 swarm or "cast" three or four days after 
 the birth of the first queen, and a third 
 swarm three days after the departure of 
 the second, with this first queen at their 
 head. It must be admitted, therefore, 
 that we discover here a perfectly reasoned 
 system, and a mature combination of plans 
 extending over a period considerable in- 
 deed when compared with the brevity of 
 the bee's existence. 
 
 251
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 These measures concern the care of the 
 youthful queens who still lie immured in 
 their waxen prisons. Let us assume that 
 the " spirit of the hive " has pronounced 
 against the despatch of a second swarm. 
 Two courses still remain open. The 
 bees may permit the first-born of the 
 royal virgins, the one whose birth we have 
 witnessed, to destroy her sister-enemies ; 
 or they may elect to wait till she have 
 performed the perilous ceremony known 
 as the " nuptial flight," whereon the 
 nation's future depends. The immediate 
 massacre will be authorised often, and 
 often denied ; but in the latter case it is 
 of course not easy for us to pronounce 
 whether the bees' decision be due to a de- 
 sire for a second swarm, or to their recog- 
 nition of the dangers attending the nuptial 
 flight ; for it will happen at times that, on 
 252
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 account of the weather unexpectedly be- 
 coming less favourable, or for some other 
 reason we cannot divine, they will suddenly 
 change their mind, renounce the cast that 
 they had decreed, and destroy the royal 
 progeny they had so carefully preserved. 
 But at present we will suppose that they 
 have determined to dispense with a second 
 swarm, and that they accept the risks 
 of the nuptial flight. Our young queen 
 hastens towards the large cradles, urged 
 on by her great desire, and the guard 
 make way before her. Listening only to 
 her furious jealousy, she will fling herself 
 on to the first cell she comes across, 
 madly strip off the wax with her teeth 
 and claws, tear away the cocoon that car- 
 pets the cell, and divest the sleeping 
 princess of every covering. If her rival 
 should be already recognisable, the queen 
 will turn so that her sting may enter the 
 capsule, and will frantically stab it with 
 253
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 her venomous weapon until the victim 
 perish. She then becomes calmer, ap- 
 peased by the death that puts a term to 
 the hatred of every creature ; she with- 
 draws her sting, hurries to the adjoining 
 cell, attacks it and opens it, passing it 
 by should she find in it only an im- 
 perfect larva or nymph ; nor does she 
 pause till, at last, exhausted and breath- 
 less, her claws and teeth glide harmless 
 over the waxen walls. 
 
 The bees that surround her have calmly 
 watched her fury, have stood by, inac- 
 tive, moving only to leave her path clear; 
 but no sooner has a cell been pierced 
 and laid waste than they eagerly flock 
 to it, drag out the corpse of the rav- 
 ished nymph, or the still living larva, 
 and thrust it forth from the hive, there- 
 upon gorging themselves with the pre- 
 cious royal jelly that adheres to the sides 
 of the cell. And finally, when the queen 
 254
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 has become too weak to persist in her 
 passion, they will themselves complete the 
 massacre of the innocents ; and the sover- 
 eign race, and their dwellings, will all 
 disappear. 
 
 This is the terrible hour of the hive ; 
 the only occasion, with that of the more 
 justifiable execution of the drones, when 
 the workers suffer discord and death to be 
 busy amongst them ; and here, as often in 
 nature, it is the favoured of love who 
 attract to themselves the most extraor- 
 dinary shafts of violent death. 
 
 It will happen at times that two queens 
 will be hatched simultaneously, the occur- 
 rence being rare, however, for the bees 
 take special care to prevent it. But when- 
 ever this does take place, the deadly com- 
 bat will begin the moment they emerge 
 from their cradles ; and of this combat 
 Huber was the first to remark an extraor- 
 dinary feature. Each time, it would seem 
 *SS
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 that the queens, in their passes, present 
 their chitrinous cuirasses to each other in 
 such a fashion that the drawing of the 
 sting would prove mutually fatal ; one 
 might almost believe that, even as a god 
 or goddess was wont to interpose in the 
 combats of the Iliad, so a god or a god- 
 dess, the divinity of the race, perhaps, 
 interposes here; and the two warriors, 
 stricken with simultaneous terror, divide 
 and fly, to meet shortly after and separate 
 again should the double disaster once more 
 menace the future of their people ; till at 
 last one of them shall succeed in surprising 
 her clumsier or less wary rival, and in 
 killing her without risk to herself. For 
 the law of the race has called for one 
 sacrifice only. 
 
 The cradles having thus been destroyed 
 and the rivals all slain, the young queen is 
 256
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 accepted by her people ; but she will net 
 truly reign over them, or be treated as was 
 her mother before her, until the nuptial 
 flight be accomplished ; for until she be 
 impregnated the bees will hold her but 
 lightly, and render most passing homage. 
 Her history, however, will rarely be as un- 
 eventful as this, for the bees will not often 
 renounce their desire for a second swarm. 
 In that case, as before, quick with the 
 same desires, the queen will approach the 
 royal cells ; but instead of meeting with 
 docile servants who second her efforts, 
 she will find her path blocked by a 
 numerous and hostile guard. In her fury, 
 and urged on by her fixed idea, she will 
 endeavour to force her way through, or to 
 outflank them ; but everywhere sentinels 
 are posted to protect the sleeping prin- 
 cesses. She persists, she returns to the 
 charge, to be repulsed with ever increasing 
 severity, to be somewhat roughly handled 
 17 257
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 even, until at last she begins vaguely 
 to understand that these little inflexible 
 workers stand for a law before which that 
 law must bend whereby she is inspired. 
 
 And at last she goes, and wanders from 
 comb to comb, her unsatisfied wrath find- 
 ing vent in a war-song, or angry complaint, 
 that every bee-keeper knows ; resembling 
 somewhat the note of a distant trumpet 
 of silver; so intense, in its passionate 
 feebleness, as to be clearly audible, in the 
 evening especially, two or three yards 
 from the double walls of the most carefully 
 enclosed hive. 
 
 Upon the workers this royal cry has a 
 magical effect. It terrifies them, it in- 
 duces a kind of respectful stupor; and 
 when the queen sends it forth, as she 
 halts in front of the cells whose approach 
 is denied her, the guardians who have but 
 this moment been hustling her, pushing 
 her back, will at once desist, and wait, 
 258
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 with bent head, till the cry shall have 
 ceased to resound. Indeed, some believe 
 that it is thanks to the prestige of this 
 cry, which the Sphinx Atropos imitates, 
 that the latter is able to enter the hive, 
 and gorge itself with honey, without the 
 least molestation on the part of the bees. 
 
 For two or three days, sometimes even 
 for five, this indignant lament will be 
 heard, this challenge that the queen ad- 
 dresses to her well protected rivals. And 
 as these in their turn develop, in their turn 
 grow anxious to see the light, they too set 
 to work to gnaw the lids of their cells. 
 A mighty disorder would now appear to 
 threaten the republic. But the genius of 
 the hive, at the time that it formed its 
 decision, was able to foretell every conse- 
 quence that might ensue ; and the guar- 
 dians have had their instructions : they 
 know exactly what must be done, hour by 
 hour, to meet the attacks of a foiled in- 
 259
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 stinct, and conduct two opposite forces to 
 a successful issue. They are fully aware 
 that if the young queens should escape who 
 now clamour for birth, they would fall into 
 the hands of their elder sister, by this time 
 irresistible, who would destroy them one by 
 one. The workers, therefore, will pile on 
 fresh layers of wax in proportion as the 
 prisoner reduces, from within, the walls of 
 her tower ; and the impatient princess will 
 ardently persist in her labour, little sus- 
 pecting that she has to deal with an en- 
 chanted obstacle, that rises ever afresh 
 from its ruin. She hears the war-cry of 
 her rival ; and already aware of her royal 
 duty and destiny, although she has not 
 yet looked upon life, nor knows what a 
 hive may be, she answers the challenge 
 from within the depths of her prison. 
 But her cry is different ; it is stifled and 
 hollow, for it has to traverse the walls of 
 a tomb ; and, when night is falling, and 
 260 

 
 The Young Queens 
 
 noises are hushed, and high over all there 
 reigns the silence of the stars, the apiarist 
 who nears these marvellous cities and 
 stands, questioning, at their entrance, 
 recognises and understands the dialogue 
 that is passing between the wandering 
 queen and the virgins in prison. 
 
 To the young princesses, however, this 
 prolonged reclusion is of material benefit ; 
 for when they at last are freed they have 
 grown mature and vigorous, and are able 
 to fly. But during this period of waiting 
 the strength of the first queen has also 
 increased, and is sufficient now to enable 
 her to face the perils of the voyage. The 
 time has arrived, therefore, for the depar- 
 ture of the second swarm, or " cast," with 
 the first-born of the queens at its head. 
 No sooner has she gone than the workers 
 left in the hive will set one of the prisoners 
 261
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 free ; and she will evince the same murder- 
 ous desires, send forth the same cries of 
 anger, until, at last, after three or four 
 days, she will leave the hive in her turn, 
 at the head of the tertiary swarm ; and so 
 in succession, in the case of " swarming 
 fever," till the mother-city shall be com- 
 pletely exhausted. 
 
 Swammerdam cites a hive that, through 
 its swarms and the swarms of its swarms, 
 was able in a single season to found no 
 less than thirty colonies. 
 
 Such extraordinary multiplication is 
 above all noticeable after disastrous win- 
 ters ; and one might almost believe that 
 the bees, forever in touch with the secret 
 desires of nature, are conscious of the 
 dangers that menace their race. But at 
 ordinary times this fever will rarely occur 
 in a strong and well-governed hive. 
 There are many that swarm only once; 
 and some, indeed, not at all. 
 262
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 After the second swarm the bees, as a 
 rule, will renounce further division, owing 
 either to their having observed the exces- 
 sive feebleness of their own stock, or to 
 the prudence urged upon them by threaten- 
 ing skies. In that case they will allow 
 the third queen to slaughter the captives ; 
 ordinary life will at once be resumed, and 
 pursued with the more ardour for the 
 reason that the workers are all very young, 
 that the hive is depopulated and impover- 
 ished, and that there are great voids to 
 fill before the arrival of winter. 
 
 [73] 
 
 The departure of the second and third 
 swarms resembles that of the first, and the 
 conditions are identical, with the exception 
 that the bees are fewer in number, less 
 circumspect, and lacking in scouts ; and 
 also that the young and virgin queen, 
 being unencumbered and ardent, will fly 
 263
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 much further, and in the first stage lead 
 the swarm to a considerable distance from 
 the hive. The conduct of these second 
 and third migrations will be far more rash, 
 and their future more problematical. The 
 queen at their head, the representative of 
 the future, has not yet been impregnated. 
 Their entire destiny depends on the ensu- 
 ing nuptial flight. A passing bird, a few 
 drops of rain, a mistake, a cold wind 
 any one of these may give rise to irreme- 
 diable disaster. Of this the bees are so 
 well aware that when the young queen 
 sallies forth in quest of her lover, they 
 often will abandon the labours they have 
 begun, will forsake the home of a day that 
 already is dear to them, and accompany 
 her in a body, dreading to let her pass 
 out of their sight, eager, as they form 
 closely around her, and shelter her be- 
 neath their myriad devoted wings, to lose 
 themselves with her, should love cause 
 264
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 her to stray so far from the hive that the 
 as yet unfamiliar road of return shall grow 
 blurred and hesitating in every memory. 
 
 [74] 
 
 But so potent is the law of the future 
 that none of these uncertainties, these 
 perils of death, will cause a single bee 
 to waver. The enthusiasm displayed by 
 the second and third swarms is not less 
 than that of the first. No sooner has 
 the mother-city pronounced its decision 
 than a battalion of workers will flock 
 around each dangerous young queen, 
 eager to follow her fortunes, to accom- 
 pany her on the voyage where there is 
 so much to lose, and so little to gain 
 beyond the desire of a satisfied instinct. 
 Whence do they derive the energy we 
 ourselves never possess, whereby they 
 break with the past as though with an 
 enemy ? Who is it selects from the 
 265
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 crowd those who shall go forth, and de- 
 clares who shall remain ? No special 
 class divides those who stay from those 
 who wander abroad ; it will be the 
 younger here and the elder there ; around 
 each queen who shall never return vete- 
 ran foragers jostle tiny workers, who 
 for the first time shall face the dizziness 
 of the blue. Nor is the proportionate 
 strength of a swarm controlled by chance 
 or accident, by the momentary dejection 
 or transport of an instinct, thought, or 
 feeling. I have more than once tried 
 to establish a relation between the num- 
 ber of bees composing a swarm and the 
 number of those that remain ; and al- 
 though the difficulties of this calculation 
 are such as to preclude anything ap- 
 proaching mathematical precision, I have 
 at least been able to gather that this 
 relation if we take into account the 
 brood-cells, or in other words the forth- 
 266
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 coming births is sufficiently constant 
 to point to an actual and mysterious 
 reckoning on the part of the genius of 
 the hive. 
 
 [75] 
 
 We will not follow these swarms on 
 their numerous, and often most compli- 
 cated, adventures. Two swarms, at times, 
 will join forces ; at others, two or three 
 of the imprisoned queens will profit by 
 the confusion attending the moment of 
 departure to elude the watchfulness of 
 their guardians and join the groups that 
 are forming. Occasionally, too, one of 
 the young queens, finding herself sur- 
 rounded by males, will cause herself to 
 be impregnated in the swarming flight, 
 and will then drag all her people to an 
 extraordinary height and distance. In 
 the practice of apiculture these secondary 
 and tertiary swarms are always returned 
 267
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 to the mother-hive. The queens will 
 meet on the comb ; the workers will 
 gather around and watch their combat ; 
 and, when the stronger has overcome 
 the weaker they will then, in their ardour 
 for work and hatred of disorder, expel 
 the corpses, close the door on the vio- 
 lence of the future, forget the past, return 
 to their cells, and resume their peaceful 
 path to the flowers that await them. 
 
 [76] 
 
 We will now, in order to simplify 
 matters, return to the queen whom the 
 bees have permitted to slaughter her 
 sisters, and resume the account of her 
 adventures. As I have already stated, 
 this massacre will be often prevented, and 
 often sanctioned, at times even when the 
 bees apparently do not intend to issue a 
 second swarm ; for we notice the same 
 diversity of political spirit in the differ- 
 268
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 ent hives of an apiary as in the different 
 human nations of a continent. But it is 
 clear that the bees will act imprudently 
 in giving their consent ; for if the queen 
 should die, or stray in the nuptial flight, 
 it will be impossible to fill her place, 
 the workers' larvae having passed the 
 age when they are susceptible of royal 
 transformation. Let us assume, how- 
 ever, that the imprudence has been 
 committed ; and behold our first-born, 
 therefore, unique sovereign, and recog- 
 nised as such in the spirit of her people. 
 But she is still a virgin. To become as 
 was the mother before her, it is essential 
 that she should meet the male within the 
 first twenty days of her life. Should the 
 event for some reason be delayed beyond 
 this period, her virginity becomes irrevo- 
 cable. And yet we have seen that she is 
 not sterile, virgin though she be. There 
 confronts us here the great mystery or 
 269
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 precaution of Nature, that is known 
 as parthenogenesis, and is common to a 
 certain number of insects, such as the 
 aphides, the lepidoptera of the Psyche 
 genus, the hymenoptera of the Cynipede 
 family, etc. The virgin queen is able to 
 lay; but from all the eggs that she will 
 deposit in the cells, be these large or 
 small, there will issue males alone ; and 
 as these never work, as they live at the 
 expense of the females, as they never go 
 foraging except on their own account, 
 and are generally incapable of providing 
 for their subsistence, the result will be, 
 at the end of some weeks, that the last 
 exhausted worker will perish, and the 
 colony be ruined and totally annihilated. 
 The queen, we have said, will produce 
 thousands of drones ; and each of these 
 will possess millions of the spermatozoa 
 whereof it is impossible that a single one 
 can have penetrated into the organism of 
 270
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 the mother. That may not be more as- 
 tounding, perhaps, than a thousand other 
 and analogous phenomena; and, indeed, 
 when we consider these problems, and 
 more especially those of generation, the 
 marvellous and the unexpected confront 
 us so constantly occurring far more fre- 
 quently, and above all in far less human 
 fashion, than in the most miraculous fairy 
 stories that after a time astonishment 
 becomes so habitual with us that we almost 
 cease to wonder. The fact, however, is 
 sufficiently curious to be worthy of notice. 
 But, on the other hand, how shall we 
 explain to ourselves the aim that nature 
 can have in thus favouring the valueless 
 drones at the cost of the workers who are 
 so essential? Is she afraid lest the fe- 
 males might perhaps be induced by their 
 intellect unduly to limit the number of 
 their parasites, which, destructive though 
 they be, are still necessary for the preser- 
 271
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 vation of the race? Or is it merely an 
 exaggerated reaction against the misfor- 
 tune of the unfruitful queen ? Can we 
 have here one of those blind and extreme 
 precautions which, ignoring the cause of 
 the evil, overstep the remedy ; and, in 
 the endeavour to prevent an unfortunate 
 accident, bring about a catastrophe? In 
 reality though we must not forget that 
 the natural, primitive reality is different 
 from that of the present, for in the origi- 
 nal forest the colonies might well be far 
 more scattered than they are to-day 
 in reality the queen's unfruitfulness will 
 rarely be due to the want of males, for 
 these are very numerous always, and will 
 flock from afar ; but rather to the rain, or 
 the cold, that will have kept her too long 
 in the hive, and more frequently still to the 
 imperfect state of her wings, whereby she 
 will be prevented from describing the high 
 flight in the air that the organ of the male 
 272
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 demands. Nature, however, heedless of 
 these more intrinsic causes, is so deeply 
 concerned with the multiplication of 
 males, that we sometimes find, in mother- 
 less hives, two or three workers possessed 
 of so great a desire to preserve the race 
 that, their atrophied ovaries notwithstand- 
 ing, they will still endeavour to lay ; and, 
 their organs expanding somewhat beneath 
 the empire of this exasperated sentiment, 
 they will succeed in depositing a few eggs 
 in the cells ; but from these eggs, as from 
 those of the virgin mother, there will 
 issue only males. 
 
 [77] 
 
 Here we behold the active intervention 
 of a superior though perhaps imprudent 
 will, which offers irresistible obstruction 
 to the intelligent will of a life. In the 
 insect world such interventions are com- 
 paratively frequent, and much can be 
 
 18 273
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 gained from their study ; for this world 
 being more densely peopled and more 
 complex than others, certain special desires 
 of nature are often more palpably revealed 
 to us there ; and she may even at times 
 be detected in the midst of experiments 
 we might almost be warranted in regard- 
 ing as incomplete. She has one great and 
 general desire, for instance, that she dis- 
 plays on all sides ; the amelioration of 
 each species through the triumph of the 
 stronger. This struggle, as a rule, is 
 most carefully organised. The hecatomb 
 of the weak is enormous, but that matters 
 little so long as the victors' reward be 
 effectual and certain. But there are cases 
 when one might almost imagine that na- 
 ture had not had time enough to disen- 
 tangle her combinations; cases where 
 reward is impossible, and the fate of the 
 victor no less disastrous than that of the 
 vanquished. And of such, selecting an 
 274
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 instance that will not take us too far from 
 our bees, I know of no instance more 
 striking than that of the triongulins of the 
 Sitaris colletes. And it will be seen that, 
 in many details, this story is less foreign 
 to the history of man than might perhaps 
 be imagined. 
 
 These triongulins are the primary larvae 
 of a parasite proper to a wild, obtuse- 
 tongued, solitary bee, the Colletes, which 
 builds its nest in subterranean galleries. 
 It is their habit to lie in wait for the bee 
 at the approach to these galleries ; and 
 then, to the number of three, four, five, 
 or often of more, they will' leap on her 
 back, and bury themselves in her hair. 
 Were the struggle of the weak against the 
 strong to take place at this moment there 
 would be no more to be said, and all would 
 pass in accordance with universal law. 
 But, for a reason we know not, their in- 
 stinct requires, and nature has consequently 
 275
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 ordained, that they should hold them- 
 selves tranquil so long as they remain on 
 the back of the bee. They patiently bide 
 their time while she visits the flowers, and 
 constructs and provisions her cells. But 
 no sooner has an egg been laid than they 
 all spring upon it ; and the innocent col- 
 letes carefully seals down her cell, which 
 she has duly supplied with food, never 
 suspecting that she has at the same time 
 ensured the death of her offspring. 
 
 The cell has scarcely been closed when 
 the triongulins grouped round the egg 
 engage in the inevitable and salutary com- 
 bat of natural selection. The stronger, 
 more agile, will seize its adversary be- 
 neath the cuirass, and, raising it aloft, will 
 maintain it for hours in its mandibles until 
 the victim expire. But, while this fight 
 is in progress, another of the triongulins, 
 that had either no rival to meet, or already 
 has conquered, takes possession of the 
 276
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 egg and bursts it open. The ultimate 
 victor has therefore this fresh enemy to 
 subdue ; but the conquest is easy, for the 
 triongulin, deep in the satisfaction of its 
 pre-natal hunger, clings obstinately to the 
 egg, and does not even attempt to defend 
 itself. It is quickly despatched; and the 
 other is at last alone, and possessor of 
 the precious egg it has won so well. It 
 eagerly plunges its head into the opening 
 its predecessor had made ; and begins the 
 lengthy repast that shall transform it into 
 a perfect insect. But nature, that has 
 decreed this ordeal of battle, has, on the 
 other hand, established the prize of vic- 
 tory with such miserly precision that 
 nothing short of an entire egg will suffice 
 for the nourishment of a single triongulin. 
 So that, as we are informed by M. Mayet, 
 to whom we owe the account of these dis- 
 concerting adventures, there is lacking to 
 our conqueror the food its last victim con- 
 277
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 sumed before death ; and incapable there- 
 fore of achieving the first stage of its 
 transformation, it dies in its turn, adher- 
 ing to the skin of the egg, or adding itself, 
 in the sugary liquid, to the number of 
 the drowned. 
 
 [78] 
 
 This case, though rarely to be followed 
 so closely, is not unique in natural history. 
 We have here, laid bare before us, the 
 struggle between the conscious will of the 
 triongulin, that seeks to live, and the 
 obscure and general will of nature, that 
 not only desires that the triongulin should 
 live, but is anxious even that its life should 
 be improved, and fortified, to a degree 
 beyond that to which its own will impels 
 it. But, through some strange inadver- 
 tence, the amelioration nature imposes sup- 
 presses the life of even the fittest, and the 
 Sitaris Colletes would have long since dis- 
 278
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 appeared had not chance, acting in oppo- 
 sition to the desires of nature, permitted 
 isolated individuals to escape from the 
 excellent and far-seeing law that ordains 
 on all sides the triumph of the stronger. 
 
 Can this mighty power err, then, that 
 seems unconscious to us, but necessarily 
 wise, seeing that the life she organises and 
 maintains is forever proving her to be 
 right ? Can feebleness at times overcome 
 that supreme reason, which we are apt to 
 invoke when we have attained the limits 
 of our own ? And if that be so, by whom 
 shall this feebleness be set right ? 
 
 But let us return to that special form 
 of her resistless intervention that we find 
 in parthenogenesis. And we shall do 
 well to remember that, remote as the 
 world may seem in which these problem" 
 confront us, they do indeed yet concern 
 ourselves very nearly. Who would dart 
 to affirm that no interventions take place 
 279
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 in the sphere of man interventions that 
 may be more hidden, but not the less 
 fraught with danger ? And in the case 
 before us, which is right, in the end, the 
 insect, or nature ? What would happen 
 if the bees, more docile perhaps, or 
 endowed with a higher intelligence, were 
 too clearly to understand the desires of 
 nature, and to follow them to the extreme ; 
 to multiply males to infinity, seeing that 
 nature is imperiously calling for males? 
 Would they not risk the destruction of 
 their species ? Are we to believe that 
 there are intentions in nature that it is 
 dangerous to understand too clearly, fatal 
 to follow with too much ardour ; and that 
 it is one of her desires that we should not 
 divine, and follow, all her desires ? Is it 
 not possible that herein there may lie one 
 of the perils of the human race? We too 
 are aware of unconscious forces within us, 
 that would appear to demand the reverse 
 280
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 of what our intellect urges. And this 
 intellect of ours, that, as a rule, its own 
 boundary reached, knows not whither to 
 go can it be well that it should join 
 itself to these forces, and add to them its 
 unexpected weight? 
 
 [79] 
 
 Have we the right to conclude, from 
 the dangers of parthenogenesis, that nature 
 is not always able to proportion the means 
 to the end ; and that what she intends to 
 preserve is preserved at times by means of 
 precautions she has to contrive against her 
 own precautions, and often through foreign 
 circumstances she has not herself foreseen ? 
 But is there anything she does foresee, 
 anything she does intend to preserve? 
 Nature, some may say, is a word where- 
 with we clothe the unknowable ; and few 
 things authorise our crediting it with 
 intelligence, or with aim. That is true, 
 281
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 We touch here the hermetically sealed 
 vases that furnish our conception of the 
 universe. Reluctant, over and over 
 again, to label these with the inscription 
 " UNKNOWN," that disheartens us and 
 compels us to silence, we engrave upon 
 them, in the degree of their size and 
 grandeur, the words " Nature, life, death, 
 infinite, selection, spirit of the race," and 
 many others, even as those who went 
 before us affixed the words " God, Provi- 
 dence, destiny, reward," etc. Let it be 
 so, if one will, and no more. But, though 
 the contents of the vases remain obscure, 
 there is gain at least in the fact that the 
 inscriptions to-day convey less menace to 
 us, that we are able therefore to approach 
 them and touch them, and lay our ears 
 close to them and listen, with wholesome 
 curiosity. 
 
 But whatever the name we attach to 
 these vases, it is certain that one of them, 
 282
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 at least, and the greatest that which 
 bears on its flank the name " Nature " 
 encloses a very real force, the most real 
 of all, and one that is able to preserve an 
 enormous and marvellous quantity and 
 quality of life on our globe, by means so 
 skilful that they surpass all that the genius 
 of man could contrive. Could this quan- 
 tity and quality be maintained by other 
 means ? Is it we who deceive ourselves 
 when we imagine that we see precautions 
 where perhaps there is truly no more than 
 a fortunate chance, that has survived a 
 million unfortunate chances? 
 
 [so] 
 
 That may be ; but these fortunate 
 chances teach us a lesson in admiration 
 as valuable as those we might learn in re- 
 gions superior to chance. If we let our 
 gaze travel beyond the creatures that are 
 possessed of a glimmer of intellect and 
 283
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 consciousness, beyond the protozoa even, 
 which are the first nebulous representatives 
 of the dawning animal kingdom, we find, 
 as has been abundantly proved by the ex- 
 periments of Mr. H. J. Carter, the cele- 
 brated microscopist, that the very lowest 
 embryos, such as the myxomycetes, mani- 
 fest a will and desires and preferences ; 
 and that infusoria, which apparently have 
 no organism whatever, give evidence of a 
 certain cunning. The Amoebae, for in- 
 stance, will patiently lie in wait for the 
 new-born Acinetes, as they leave the ma- 
 ternal ovary ; being aware that these must 
 as yet be lacking their poisonous tentacles. 
 Now, the Amoebae have neither a nervous 
 system nor distinguishable organs of any 
 kind. Or if we turn to the plants, which, 
 being motionless, would seem exposed to 
 every fatality, without pausing to con- 
 sider carnivorous species like the Drusera, 
 which really act as animals, we are struck 
 284
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 by the genius that some of our humblest 
 flowers display in contriving that the visit 
 of the bee shall infallibly procure them 
 the crossed fertilisation they need. See 
 the marvellous fashion in which the Or- 
 chis Moris, our humble country orchid, 
 combines the play of its rostellum and 
 retinacula; observe the mathematical and 
 automatic inclination and adhesion of its 
 pollinia ; as also the unerring double see- 
 saw of the anthers of the wild sage, which 
 touch the body of the visiting insect at a 
 particular spot in order that the insect 
 may, in its turn, touch the stigma of the 
 neighbouring flower at another particular 
 spot; watch, too, in the case of the Pedi- 
 cularis Sylvatica, the successive, calculated 
 movements of its stigma; and indeed the 
 entrance of the bee into any one of these 
 three flowers sets every organ vibrating, 
 just as the skilful marksman who hits the 
 black spot on the target will cause all the 
 285
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 figures to move in the elaborate mechan- 
 isms we see in our village fairs. 
 
 We might go lower still, and show, as 
 Ruskin has shown in his " Ethics of the 
 Dust," the character, habits, and artifices 
 of crystals ; their quarrels, and mode of 
 procedure, when a foreign body attempts 
 to oppose their plans, which are more 
 ancient by far than our imagination can 
 conceive; the manner in which they ad- 
 mit or repel an enemy, the possible vic- 
 tory of the weaker over the stronger, as, 
 for instance, when the all-powerful quartz 
 submits to the humble and wily epidote, 
 and allows this last to conquer it ; the 
 struggle, terrible sometimes and some- 
 times magnificent, between the rock-crystal 
 and iron ; the regular, immaculate expan- 
 sion and uncompromising purity of one 
 hyaline block, which rejects whatever is 
 foul, and the sickly growth, the evident 
 immorality, of its brother, which admits 
 286
 
 The Young Queens 
 corruption, and writhes miserably in the 
 void ; as we might quote also the strange 
 phenomena of crystalline cicatrisation and 
 reintegration mentioned by Claude Ber- 
 nard, etc. But the mystery here becomes 
 too foreign to us. Let us keep to our 
 flowers, which are the last expression of a 
 life that has yet some kinship with our 
 own. We are not dealing now with ani- 
 mals or insects, to which we attribute a 
 special, intelligent will, thanks to which 
 they survive. We believe, rightly or 
 wrongly, that the flowers possess no such 
 will ; at least we cannot discover in them 
 the slightest trace of the organs wherein 
 will, intellect, and initiative of action, are 
 usually born and reside. It follows, 
 therefore, that all that acts in them in so 
 admirable a fashion must directly proceed 
 from what we elsewhere call nature. We 
 are no longer concerned with the intellect 
 of the individual ; here we find the un- 
 2 8 7
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 conscious, undivided force in the act of 
 ensnaring other forms of itself. Shall we 
 on that account refuse to believe that 
 these snares are pure accidents, occurring 
 in accordance with a routine that is also 
 incidental ? We are not yet entitled to 
 such a deduction. It might be urged 
 that these flowers, had these miraculous 
 combinations not been, would not have 
 survived, but would have had their place 
 filled by others that stood in no need of 
 crossed fertilisation ; and the non-exist- 
 ence of the first would have been per- 
 ceived by none, nor would the life that 
 vibrates on the earth have seemed less in- 
 comprehensible to us, less diverse, or less 
 astounding. 
 
 And yet it would be difficult not to ad- 
 mit that acts which bear all the appearance 
 of acts of intelligence and prudence pro- 
 duce and support these fortunate chances. 
 Whence do they issue, from the being 
 288
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 itself, or from the force whence that being 
 draws life ? I will not say " it matters but 
 little," for, on the contrary, to know the 
 answer were of supreme importance to us. 
 But, in the meantime, and till we shall learn 
 whether it be the flower that endeavours 
 to maintain and perfect the life that nature 
 has placed within it, or whether it be na- 
 ture that puts forth an effort to maintain 
 and improve the degree of existence the 
 flower has assumed, or finally whether it 
 be chance that ultimately governs chance, 
 a multitude of semblances invite us to 
 believe that something equal to our lof- 
 tiest thoughts issues at times from a com- 
 mon source, that we are compelled to 
 admire without knowing where it resides. 
 There are moments when what seems 
 error to us comes forth from this com- 
 mon source. But, although we know 
 very few things, proofs abound that the 
 seeming error was in reality an act of 
 19 289
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 prudence that we at first could not grasp. 
 In the little circle, even, that our eyes 
 embrace we are constantly shown that 
 what we regarded as nature's blunder 
 close by was due to her deeming it 
 well to adjust the presumed inadvertence 
 out yonder. She has placed the three 
 flowers we mentioned under conditions 
 of such difficulty that they are unable to 
 fertilise themselves ; she considers it ben- 
 eficial, therefore, for reasons beyond our 
 powers of perception, that they should 
 cause themselves to be fertilised by their 
 neighbours ; and, inasmuch as she en- 
 hances the intelligence of her victims, she 
 displays on our right the genius she failed 
 to display on our left. The byways of 
 this genius of hers remain incomprehen- 
 sible to us, but its level is always the 
 same. It will appear to fall into error 
 assuming that error be possible there- 
 upon rising again at once in the organ 
 290
 
 The Young Queens 
 
 charged to repair this error. Turn where 
 we may, it towers high over our heads. 
 It is the circular ocean, the tideless water, 
 whereon our boldest and most independ- 
 ent thoughts will never be more than 
 mere abject bubbles. We call it Nature 
 to-day ; to-morrow, perhaps, we shall give 
 it another name, softer or more alarming. 
 In the meanwhile it holds simultaneous, 
 impartial sway over life and death ; fur- 
 nishing the two irreconcilable sisters with 
 the magnificent and familiar weapons that 
 adorn and distract its bosom. 
 
 [81] 
 
 Does this force take measures to main- 
 tain what may be struggling on its sur- 
 face, or must we say, arguing in the 
 strangest of circles, that what floats on 
 its surface must guard itself against the 
 genius that has given it life ? That ques- 
 tion must be left open. We have no 
 291
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 means of ascertaining whether it be not- 
 withstanding the efforts of the superior 
 will, or independently of these, or lastly 
 because of these, that a species has been 
 able to survive. 
 
 All we can say is that such a species 
 exists, and that, on this point, therefore, 
 nature would seem to be right. But who 
 shall tell us how many others that we 
 have not known have fallen victim to her 
 restless and forgetful intellect ? Beyond 
 this, we can recognise only the surprising 
 and occasionally hostile forms that the 
 extraordinary fluid we call life assumes, 
 in utter unconsciousness sometimes, at 
 others with a kind of consciousness : the 
 fluid which animates us equally with all 
 the rest, which produces the very thoughts 
 that judge it, and the feeble voice that 
 attempts to tell its story. 
 
 292
 
 VI 
 
 THE NUPTIAL FLIGHT 
 
 293
 
 VI 
 THE NUPTIAL FLIGHT 
 
 [82] 
 
 WE will now consider the manner in 
 which the impregnation of the 
 queen-bee comes to pass. Here again na- 
 ture has taken extraordinary measures to 
 favour the union of males with females 
 of a different stock ; a strange law, whereto 
 nothing would seem to compel her ; a 
 caprice, or initial inadvertence, perhaps, 
 whose reparation calls for the most mar- 
 vellous forces her activity knows. 
 
 If she had devoted half the genius she 
 lavishes on crossed fertilisation and other 
 arbitrary desires to making life more cer- 
 tain, to alleviating pain, to softening death 
 and warding off horrible accidents, the 
 295
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 universe would probably have presented 
 an enigma less incomprehensible, less 
 pitiable, than the one we are striving to 
 solve. But our consciousness, and the 
 interest we take in existence, must grap- 
 ple, not with what might have been, but 
 with what is. 
 
 Around the virgin queen, and dwelling 
 with her in the hive, are hundreds of ex- 
 uberant males, forever drunk on honey ; 
 the sole reason for their existence being 
 one act of love. But, notwithstanding 
 the incessant contact of two desires that 
 elsewhere invariably triumph over every 
 obstacle, the union never takes place in 
 the hive, nor has it been possible to bring 
 about the impregnation of a captive queen. 1 
 
 1 Professor McLain has recently succeeded in caus- 
 ing a few queens to be artificially impregnated ; but 
 this has been the result of a veritable surgical opera- 
 tion, of the most delicate and complicated nature. 
 Moreover, the fertility of the queens was restricted 
 and ephemeral. 
 
 296
 
 The Nuptial Flight 
 
 While she Lves in their midst the lovers 
 about her know not what she is. They 
 seek her in space, in the remote depths of 
 the horizon, never suspecting that they have 
 but this moment quitted her, have shared 
 the same comb with her, have brushed 
 against her, perhaps, in the eagerness of 
 their departure. One might almost be- 
 lieve that those wonderful eyes of theirs, 
 that cover their head as though with a 
 glittering helmet, do not recognise or de- 
 sire her save when she soars in the blue. 
 Each day, from noon till three, when the 
 sun shines resplendent, this plumed horde 
 sallies forth in search of the bride, who is 
 indeed more royal, more difficult of con- 
 quest, than the most inaccessible princess 
 of fairy legend ; for twenty or thirty tribes 
 will hasten from all the neighbouring cities, 
 her court thus consisting of more than 
 ten thousand suitors ; and from these ten 
 thousand one alone will be chosen for the 
 297
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 unique kiss of an instant thr c shall wed 
 him to death no less than to happiness ; 
 while the others will fly helplessly round 
 the intertwined pair, and soon will perish 
 without ever again beholding this prodi- 
 gious and fatal apparition. 
 
 [83] 
 
 1 am not exaggerating this wild and 
 amazing prodigality of nature. The best- 
 conducted hives will, as a rule, contain 
 four to five hundred males. Weaker or 
 degenerate ones will often have as many 
 as four or five thousand ; for the more a 
 hive inclines to its ruin, the more males 
 will it produce. It may be said that, on 
 an average, an apiary composed of ten 
 colonies will at a given moment send an 
 army of ten thousand males into the air, 
 of whom ten or fifteen at most will have 
 the occasion of performing the one act 
 for which they were born. 
 298
 
 The Nuptial Flight 
 
 In the meanwhile they exhaust the sup- 
 plies of the city ; each one of the parasites 
 requiring the unceasing labour of five or 
 six workers to maintain it in its abound- 
 ing and voracious idleness, its activity 
 being indeed solely confined to its jaws. 
 But nature is always magnificent when 
 dealing with the privileges and preroga- 
 tives of love. She becomes miserly only 
 when doling out the organs and instru- 
 ments of labour. She is especially severe 
 on what men have termed virtue, whereas 
 she strews the path of the most unin- 
 teresting lovers with innumerable jewels 
 and favours. " Unite and multiply ; 
 there is no other law, or aim, than love," 
 would seem to be her constant cry on 
 all sides, while she mutters to herself, 
 perhaps : " and exist afterwards if you 
 can ; that is no concern of mine." Do 
 or desire what else we may, we find, 
 everywhere on our road, this morality 
 299
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 that differs so much from our own. 
 And note, too, in these same little crea- 
 tures, her unjust avarice and insensate 
 waste. From her birth to her death, 
 the austere forager has to travel abroad 
 in search of the myriad flowers that 
 hide in the depths of the thickets. She 
 has to discover the honey and pollen 
 that lurk in the labyrinths of the nectaries 
 and in the most secret recesses of the 
 anthers. And yet her eyes and olfactory 
 organs are like the eyes and organs of 
 the infirm, compared with those of the 
 male. Were the drones almost blind, had 
 they only the most rudimentary sense of 
 smell, they scarcely would suffer. They 
 have nothing to do, no prey to hunt 
 down ; their food is brought to them 
 ready prepared, and their existence is spent 
 in the obscurity of the hive, lapping honey 
 from the comb. But they are the agents 
 of love ; and the most enormous, most use- 
 300
 
 The Nuptial Flight 
 
 less gifts are flung with both hands into the 
 abyss of the future. Out of a thousand 
 of them, one only, once in his life, will 
 have to seek, in the depths of the azure, 
 the presence of the royal virgin. Out of 
 a thousand one only will have, for one in- 
 stant, to follow in space the female who 
 desires not to escape. That suffices. The 
 partial power flings open her treasury, 
 wildly, even deliriously. To every one 
 of these unlikely lovers, of whom nine 
 hundred and ninety-nine will be put to 
 death a few days after the fatal nuptials 
 of the thousandth, she has given thirteen 
 thousand eyes on each side of their head, 
 while the worker has only six thousand. 
 According to Cheshire's calculations, she 
 has provided each of their antennae with 
 thirty-seven thousand eight hundred olfac- 
 tory cavities, while the worker has only 
 five thousand in both. There we have 
 an instance of the almost universal dis- 
 301
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 proportion that exists between the gifts 
 she rains upon love and her niggardly 
 doles to labour ; between the favours she 
 accords to what shall, in an ecstasy, create 
 new life, and the indifference wherewith 
 she regards what will patiently have to 
 maintain itself by toil. Whoever would 
 seek faithfully to depict the character of 
 nature, in accordance with the traits we 
 discover here, would design an extraor- 
 dinary figure, very foreign to our ideal, 
 which nevertheless can only emanate from 
 her. But too many things are unknown 
 to man for him to essay such a portrait, 
 wherein all would be deep shadow save 
 one or two points of flickering light. 
 
 Very few, I imagine, have profaned the 
 
 secret of the queen-bee's wedding, which 
 
 comes to pass in the infinite, radiant 
 
 circles of a beautiful sky. But we are 
 
 302
 
 The Nuptial Flight 
 
 able to witness the hesitating departure 
 of the bride-elect and the murderous re- 
 turn of the bride. 
 
 However great her impatience, she will 
 yet choose her day and her hour, and 
 linger in the shadow of the portal till a 
 marvellous morning fling open wide the 
 nuptial spaces in the depths of the great 
 azure vault. She loves the moment when 
 drops of dew still moisten the leaves 
 and the flowers, when the last fragrance 
 of dying dawn still wrestles with burning 
 day, like a maiden caught in the arms 
 of a heavy warrior; when through the 
 silence of approaching noon is heard, once 
 and again, a transparent cry that has lin- 
 gered from sunrise. 
 
 Then she appears on the threshold 
 in the midst of indifferent foragers, if she 
 have left sisters in the hive; or sur- 
 rounded by a delirious throng of workers, 
 should it be impossible to fill her place. 
 303
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 She starts her flight backwards; returns 
 twice or thrice to the alighting-board ; and 
 then, having definitely fixed in her mind 
 the exact situation and aspect of the king- 
 dom she has never yet seen from without, 
 she departs tike an arrow to the zenith of 
 the blue. She soars to a height, a lumi- 
 nous zone, that other bees attain at no 
 period of their life. Far away, caressing 
 their idleness in the midst of the flowers, 
 the males have beheld the apparition, 
 have breathed the magnetic perfume that 
 spreads from group to group till every 
 apiary near is instinct with it. Immedi- 
 ately crowds collect, and follow her into 
 the sea of gladness, whose limpid bounda- 
 ries ever recede. She, drunk with her 
 wings, obeying the magnificent law of the 
 race that chooses her lover, and enacts 
 that the strongest alone shall attain her in 
 the solitude of the ether, she rises still ; 
 and, for the first time in her life, the blue 
 304
 
 The Nuptial Flight 
 
 morning air rushes into her stigmata, 
 singing its song, like the blood of heaven, 
 in the myriad tubes of the tracheal sacs, 
 nourished on space, that fill the centre of 
 her body. She rises still. A region 
 must be found unhaunted by birds, that 
 else might profane the mystery. She 
 rises still ; and already the ill-assorted 
 troop below are dwindling and falling 
 asunder. The feeble, infirm, the aged, 
 unwelcome, ill-fed, who have flown from 
 inactive or impoverished cities, these re- 
 nounce the pursuit and disappear in the 
 void. Only a small, indefatigable cluster 
 remain, suspended in infinite opal. She 
 summons her wings for one final effort; 
 and now the chosen of incomprehensible 
 forces has reached her, has seized her, and 
 bounding aloft with united impetus, the 
 ascending spiral of their intertwined flight 
 whirls for one second in the hostile mad- 
 ness of love'. 
 
 20 305
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 [85] 
 
 Most creatures have a vague belief that 
 a very precarious hazard, a kind of trans- 
 parent membrane, divides death from 
 love; and that the profound idea of 
 nature demands that the giver of life 
 should die at the moment of giving. 
 Here this idea, whose memory lingers still 
 over the kisses of man, is realised in its 
 primal simplicity. No sooner has the 
 union been accomplished than the male's 
 abdomen opens, the organ detaches itself, 
 dragging with it the mass of the entrails ; 
 the wings relax, and, as though struck by 
 lightning, the emptied body turns and 
 turns on itself and sinks down into the 
 abyss. 
 
 The same idea that, before, in partheno- 
 genesis, sacrificed the future of the hive to 
 the unwonted multiplication of males, now 
 sacrifices the male to the future of the hive. 
 306
 
 The Nuptial Flight 
 
 This idea is always astounding; and 
 the further we penetrate into it, the fewer 
 do our certitudes become. Darwin, for 
 instance, to take the man of all men 
 who studied it the most methodically 
 and most passionately, Darwin, though 
 scarcely confessing it to himself, loses 
 confidence at every step, and retreats be- 
 fore the unexpected and the irreconcilable. 
 Would you have before you the nobly 
 humiliating spectacle of human genius 
 battling with infinite power, you have but 
 to follow Darwin's endeavours to unravel 
 the strange, incoherent, inconceivably 
 mysterious laws of the sterility and 
 fecundity of hybrids, or of the varia- 
 tions of specific and generic characters. 
 Scarcely has he formulated a principle 
 when numberless exceptions assail him ; 
 and this very principle, soon completely 
 overwhelmed, is glad to find refuge in 
 some corner, and preserve a shred of 
 307
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 existence there under the title of an 
 exception. 
 
 For the fact is that in hybridity, in 
 variability (notably in the simultaneous 
 variations known as correlations of growth), 
 in instinct, in the processes of vital com- 
 petition, in geologic succession and the 
 geographic distribution of organised be- 
 ings, in mutual affinities, as indeed in 
 every other direction, the idea of nature 
 reveals itself, in one and the same phe- 
 nomenon and at the very same time, as 
 circumspect and shiftless, niggard and 
 prodigal, prudent and careless, fickle and 
 stable, agitated and immovable, one 
 and innumerable, magnificent and squalid. 
 There lay open before her the immense 
 and virgin fields of simplicity ; she chose 
 to people them with trivial errors, with 
 petty contradictory laws that stray through 
 existence like a flock of blind sheep. It 
 is true that our eye, before which these 
 308
 
 The Nuptial Flight 
 
 things happen, can only reflect a reality 
 proportionate to our needs and our stat- 
 ure; nor have we any warrant for believ- 
 ing that nature ever loses sight of her 
 wandering results and causes. 
 
 In any event she will rarely permit 
 them to stray too far, or approach illogi- 
 cal or dangerous regions. She disposes 
 of two forces that never can err ; and 
 when the phenomenon shall have tres- 
 passed beyond certain limits, she will 
 beckon to life or to death which ar- 
 rives, re-establishes order, and unconcern- 
 edly marks out the path afresh. 
 
 [86] 
 
 She eludes us on every side ; she re- 
 pudiates most of our rules and breaks 
 our standards to pieces. On our right 
 she sinks far beneath the level of our 
 thoughts, on our left she towers moun- 
 tain-high above them. She appears to 
 39
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 be constantly blundering, no less in the 
 world of her first experiments than in that 
 of her last, of man. There she invests 
 with her sanction the instincts of the ob- 
 scure mass, the unconscious injustice of 
 the multitude, the defeat of intelligence 
 and virtue, the uninspired morality which 
 urges on the great wave of the race, 
 though manifestly inferior to the morality 
 that could be conceived or desired by 
 the minds composing the small and the 
 clearer wave that ascends the other. And 
 yet, can such a mind be wrong if it ask 
 itself whether the whole truth moral 
 truths, therefore, as well as non-moral 
 had not better be sought in this chaos 
 than in itself, where these truths would 
 seem comparatively clear and precise ? 
 
 The man who feels thus will never 
 
 attempt to deny the reason or virtue of 
 
 his ideal, hallowed by so many heroes 
 
 and sages ; but there are times when he 
 
 310
 
 The Nuptial Flight 
 
 will whisper to himself that this ideal 
 has perhaps been formed at too great a 
 distance from the enormous mass whose 
 diverse beauty it would fain represent. 
 He has, hitherto, legitimately feared that 
 the attempt to adapt his morality to that 
 of nature would risk the destruction of 
 what was her masterpiece. But to-day 
 he understands her a little better ; and 
 from some of her replies, which, though 
 still vague, reveal an unexpected breadth, 
 he has been enabled to seize a glimpse of 
 a plan and an intellect vaster than could 
 be conceived by his unaided imagination ; 
 wherefore he has grown less afraid, nor 
 feels any longer the same imperious need 
 of the refuge his own special virtue and 
 reason afford him. He concludes that 
 what is so great could surely teach noth- 
 ing that would tend to lessen itself. He 
 wonders whether the moment may not 
 have arrived for submitting to a more 
 3' 1
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 judicious examination his convictions, his 
 principles, and his dreams. 
 
 Once more, he has not the slightest de- 
 sire to abandon his human ideal. That 
 even which at first diverts him from this 
 ideal teaches him to return to it. It 
 were impossible for nature to give ill 
 advice to a man who declines to include 
 in the great scheme he is endeavouring 
 to grasp, who declines to regard as suffi- 
 ciently lofty to be definitive, any truth 
 that is not at least as lofty as the truth he 
 himself desires. Nothing shifts its place 
 in his life save only to rise with him ; 
 and he knows he is rising when he finds 
 himself drawing near to his ancient image 
 of good. But all things transform them- 
 selves more freely in his thoughts; and 
 he can descend with impunity, for he has 
 the presentiment that numbers of succes- 
 sive valleys will lead him to the plateau 
 that he expects. And, while he thus 
 312
 
 The Nuptial Flight 
 
 seeks for conviction, while his researches 
 even conduct him to the very reverse of 
 that which he loves, he directs his conduct 
 by the most humanly beautiful truth, and 
 clings to the one that provisionally seems 
 to be highest. All that may add to 
 beneficent virtue enters his heart at once ; 
 all that would tend to lessen it remaining 
 there in suspense, like insoluble salts that 
 change not till the hour for decisive ex- 
 periment. He may accept an inferior 
 truth, but before he will act in accord- 
 ance therewith he will wait, if need be for 
 centuries, until he perceive the connection 
 this truth must possess with truths so 
 infinite as to include and surpass all 
 others. 
 
 In a word, he divides the moral from 
 the intellectual order, admitting in the for- 
 mer that only which is greater and more 
 beautiful than was there before. And 
 blameworthy as it may be to separate the
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 two orders in cases, only too frequent in 
 life, where we suffer our conduct to be in- 
 ferior to our thoughts, where, seeing the 
 good, we follow the worse to see the 
 worse and follow the better, to raise our 
 actions high over our idea, must ever be 
 reasonable and salutary ; for human ex- 
 perience renders it daily more clear that 
 the highest thought we can attain will long 
 be inferior still to the mysterious truth we 
 seek. Moreover, should nothing of what 
 goes before be true, a reason more simple 
 and more familiar would counsel him not 
 yet to abandon his human ideal. For the 
 more strength he accords to the laws which 
 would seem to set egoism, injustice, and 
 cruelty as examples for men to follow, the 
 more strength does he at the same time 
 confer on the others that ordain generosity, 
 justice, and pity ; and these last laws are 
 found to contain something as profoundly 
 natural as the first, the moment he begins 
 3 r 4
 
 The Nuptial Flight 
 to equalise, or allot more methodically, 
 the share he attributes to the universe 
 and to himself. 
 
 [87] 
 
 Let us return to the tragic nuptials of 
 the queen. Here it is evidently nature's 
 wish, in the interests of crossed fertilisa- 
 tion, that the union of the drone and the 
 queen-bee should be possible only in the 
 open sky. But her desires blend network- 
 fashion, and her most valued laws have to 
 pass through the meshes of other laws, 
 which, in their turn, the moment after, are 
 compelled to pass through the first. 
 
 In the sky she has planted so many 
 dangers cold winds, storm-currents, 
 birds, insects, drops of water, all of which 
 also obey invincible laws that she must 
 of necessity arrange for this union to be 
 as brief as possible. It is so, thanks to 
 the startlingly sudden death of the male. 
 3'5
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 One embrace suffices ; the rest all enacts 
 itself in the very flanks of the bride. 
 
 She descends from the azure heights 
 and returns to the hive, trailing behind 
 her, like an oriflamme, the unfolded entrails 
 of her lover. Some writers pretend that 
 the bees manifest great joy at this return 
 so big with promise Biichner, among 
 others, giving a detailed account of it. I 
 have many a time lain in wait for the 
 queen-bee's return, and I confess that I 
 have never noticed any unusual emotion 
 except in the case of a young queen who 
 had gone forth at the head of a swarm, 
 and represented the unique hope of a 
 newly founded and still empty city. In 
 that instance the workers were all wildly 
 excited, and rushed to meet her. But as 
 a rule they appear to forget her, even 
 though the future of their city will often be 
 no less imperilled. They act with con- 
 sistent prudence in all things, till the 
 310
 
 The Nuptial Flight 
 
 moment when they authorise the massacre 
 of the rival queens. That point reached, 
 their instinct halts ; and there is, as it 
 were, a gap in their foresight. They 
 appear to be wholly indifferent. They 
 raise their heads ; recognise, probably, the 
 murderous tokens of impregnation ; but, 
 still mistrustful, manifest none of the glad- 
 ness our expectation had pictured. Being 
 positive in their ways, and slow at illusion, 
 they probably need further proofs before 
 permitting themselves to rejoice. Why 
 endeavour to render too logical, or too 
 human, the feelings of little creatures so 
 different from ourselves ? Neither among 
 the bees nor among any other animals 
 that have a ray of our intellect, do things 
 happen with the precision our books re- 
 cord. Too many circumstances remain 
 unknown to us. Why try to depict the 
 bees as more perfect than they are, by 
 saying that which is not ? Those who 
 317
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 would deem them more interesting did 
 they resemble ourselves, have not yet 
 truly realised what it is that should awaken 
 the interest of a sincere mind. The aim 
 of the observer is not to surprise, but to 
 comprehend; and to point out the gaps 
 existing in an intellect, and the signs of a 
 cerebral organisation different from our 
 own, is more curious by far than the re- 
 lating of mere marvels concerning it. 
 
 But this indifference is not shared by 
 all ; and when the breathless queen has 
 reached the alighting-board, some groups 
 will form and accompany her into the 
 hive ; where the sun, hero of every fes- 
 tivity in which the bees take part, is enter- 
 ing with little timid steps, and bathing in 
 azure and shadow the waxen walls and 
 curtains of honey. Nor does the new 
 bride, indeed, show more concern than 
 her people, there being not room for many 
 emotions in her narrow, barbarous, prac-
 
 The Nuptial Flight 
 tical brain. She has but one thought, 
 which is to rid herself as quickly as pos- 
 sible of the embarrassing souvenirs her 
 consort has left her, whereby her move- 
 ments are hampered. She seats herself 
 on the threshold, and carefully strips off 
 the useless organs, that are borne far away 
 by the workers ; for the male has given 
 her all he possessed, and much more than 
 she requires. She retains only, in her 
 spermatheca, the seminal liquid where 
 millions of germs are floating, which, un- 
 til her last day, will issue one by one, as 
 the eggs pass by, and in the obscurity of 
 her body accomplish the mysterious union 
 of the male and female element, whence 
 the worker-bees are born. Through a 
 curious inversion, it is she who furnishes 
 the male principle, and the drone who 
 provides the female. Two days after the 
 union she lays her first eggs, and her 
 people immediately surround her with the 
 319
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 most particular care. From that moment, 
 possessed of a dual sex, having within her 
 an inexhaustible male, she begins her veri- 
 table life ; she will never again leave the 
 hive, unless to accompany a swarm ; and 
 her fecundity will cease only at the ap- 
 proach of death. 
 
 [88] 
 
 Prodigious nuptials these, the most 
 fairylike that can be conceived, azure and 
 tragic, raised high above life by the im- 
 petus of desire ; imperishable and terrible, 
 unique and bewildering, solitary and infi- 
 nite. An admirable ecstasy, wherein 
 death supervening in all that our sphere 
 has of most limpid and loveliest, in vir- 
 ginal, limitless space, stamps the instant 
 of happiness in the sublime transparence 
 of the great sky ; purifying in that im- 
 maculate light the something of wretched- 
 ness that always hovers around love, 
 320
 
 The Nuptial Flight 
 
 rendering the kiss one that can never be 
 forgotten ; and, content this time with 
 moderate tithe, proceeding herself, with 
 hands that are almost maternal, to intro- 
 duce and unite, in one body, for a long 
 and inseparable future, two little fragile 
 lives. 
 
 Profound truth has not this poetry, but 
 possesses another that we are less apt to 
 grasp, which, however, we should end, 
 perhaps, by understanding and loving. 
 Nature has not gone out of her way to 
 provide these two "abbreviated atoms," 
 as Pascal would call them, with a resplen- 
 dent marriage, or an ideal moment of love. 
 Her concern, as we have said, was merely 
 to improve the race by means of crossed 
 fertilisation. To ensure this she has con- 
 trived the organ of the male in such a 
 fashion that he can make use of it only 
 in space. A prolonged flight must first 
 expand his two great tracheal sacs ; these 
 
 21 321
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 enormous receptacles being gorged on air 
 will throw back the lower part of the 
 abdomen, and permit the exsertion of the 
 organ. There we have the whole physio- 
 logical secret which will seem ordinary 
 enough to some, and almost vulgar to 
 others of this dazzling pursuit and these 
 magnificent nuptials. 
 
 " But must we always, then," the poet 
 will wonder, " rejoice in regions that are 
 loftier than the truth ? " 
 
 Yes, in all things, at all times, let 
 us rejoice, not in regions loftier than the 
 truth, for that were impossible, but in 
 regions higher than the little truths that 
 our eye can seize. Should a chance, a 
 recollection, an illusion, a passion, in a 
 word, should any motive whatever cause 
 an object to reveal itself to us in a more 
 beautiful light than to others, let that 
 322
 
 The Nuptial Flight 
 
 motive be first of all dear to us. It may 
 only be error, perhaps ; but this error 
 will not prevent the moment wherein this 
 object appears the most admirable to us 
 from being the moment wherein we are 
 likeliest to perceive its real beauty. The 
 beauty we lend it directs our attention to 
 its veritable beauty and grandeur, which, 
 derived as they are from the relation 
 wherein every object must of necessity 
 stand to general, eternal, forces and laws, 
 might otherwise escape observation. The 
 faculty of admiring which an illusion may 
 have created within us will serve for the 
 truth that must come, be it sooner or 
 later. It is with the words, the feelings, 
 and ardour created by ancient and imagi- 
 nary beauties, that humanity welcomes to- 
 day truths which perhaps would have never 
 been born, which might not have been 
 able to find so propitious a home, had 
 these sacrificed illusions not first of all 
 3 2 3
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 dwelt in, and kindled, the heart and the 
 reason whereinto these truths should 
 descend. Happy the eyes that need no 
 illusion to see that the spectacle is great! 
 It is illusion that teaches the others to 
 look, to admire, and rejoice. And look 
 as high as they will, they never can look 
 too high. Truth rises as they draw 
 nearer ; they draw nearer when they ad- 
 mire. And whatever the heights may be 
 whereon they rejoice, this rejoicing can 
 never take place in the void, or above 
 the unknown and eternal truth that rests 
 over all things like beauty in suspense. 
 
 [90] 
 
 Does this mean that we should attach 
 ourselves to falsehood, to an unreal and 
 factitious poetry, and find our gladness 
 therein for want of anything better? Or 
 that in the example before us in itself 
 nothing, but we dwell on it because it 
 324
 
 The Nuptial Flight 
 
 stands for a thousand others, as also for 
 our entire attitude in face of divers orders 
 of truths that here we should ignore 
 the physiological explanation, and retain 
 and taste only the emotions of this nuptial 
 flight, which is yet, and whatever the cause, 
 one of the most lyrical, most beautiful acts 
 of that suddenly disinterested, irresistible 
 force which all living creatures obey and 
 are wont to call love? That were too 
 childish ; nor is it possible, thanks to the 
 excellent habits every loyal mind has to- 
 day acquired. 
 
 The fact being incontestable, we must 
 evidently admit that the exsertion of the 
 organ is rendered possible only by the 
 expansion of the tracheal vesicles. But 
 if we, content with this fact, did not let 
 our eyes roam beyond it ; if we deduced 
 therefrom that every thought that rises 
 too high or wanders too far must be of 
 necessity wrong, and that truth must be 
 325
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 looked for only in the material details ; 
 if we did not seek, no matter where, in 
 uncertainties often far greater than the 
 one this little explanation has solved, in 
 the strange mystery of crossed fertilisa- 
 tion for instance, or in the perpetuity of 
 the race and life, or in the scheme of 
 nature ; if we did not seek in these for 
 something beyond the current explana- 
 tion, something that should prolong it, 
 and conduct us to the beauty and gran- 
 deur that repose in the unknown, I would 
 almost venture to assert that we should 
 pass our existence further away from the 
 truth than those, even, who in this case 
 wilfully shut their eyes to all save the 
 poetic and wholly imaginary interpreta- 
 tion of these marvellous nuptials. They 
 evidently misjudge the form and colour 
 of the truth, but they live in its atmo- 
 sphere and its influence far more than 
 the others, who complacently believe that 
 326
 
 The Nuptial Flight 
 
 the entire truth lies captive within their 
 two hands. For the first have made 
 ample preparations to receive the truth, 
 have provided most hospitable lodging 
 within them ; and even though their eyes 
 may not see it, they are eagerly looking 
 towards the beauty and grandeur where 
 its residence surely must be. 
 
 We know nothing of nature's aim, 
 which for us is the truth that dominates 
 every other. But for the very love of 
 this truth, and to preserve in our soul the 
 ardour we need for its search, it behoves 
 us to deem it great. And if we should 
 find one day that we have been on a 
 wrong road, that this aim is incoherent 
 and petty, we shall have discovered its 
 pettiness by means of the very zeal its 
 presumed grandeur had created within us ; 
 and this pettiness once established, it will 
 teach us what we have to do. In the mean- 
 while it cannot be unwise to devote to its 
 3 2 7
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 search the most strenuous, daring efforts 
 of our heart and our reason. And should 
 the last word of all this be wretched, it will 
 be no little achievement to have laid bare 
 the inanity and the pettiness of the aim 
 of nature. 
 
 [91] 
 
 " There is no truth for us yet," a great 
 physiologist of our day remarked to me 
 once, as I walked with him in the 
 country ; " there is no truth yet, but 
 there are everywhere three very good 
 semblances of truth. Each man makes 
 his own choice, or rather, perhaps, has it 
 thrust upon him ; and this choice, whether 
 it be thrust upon him, or whether, as is 
 often the case, he have made it without 
 due reflection, this choice, to which he 
 clings, will determine the form and the 
 conduct of all that enters within him. 
 The friend whom we meet, the woman 
 328
 
 The Nuptial Flight 
 
 who approaches and smiles, the love that 
 unlocks our heart, the death or sorrow 
 that seals it, the September sky above us, 
 this superb and delightful garden, wherein 
 we see, as in Corneille's c Psyche,' bow- 
 ers of greenery resting on gilded statues, 
 and the flocks grazing yonder, with their ' 
 shepherd asleep, and the last houses of 
 the village, and the sea between the trees, 
 all these are raised or degraded before 
 they enter within us, are adorned or de- 
 spoiled, in accordance with the little signal 
 this choice of ours makes to them. We 
 must learn to select from among these 
 semblances of truth. I have spent my 
 own life in eager search for the smaller 
 truths, the physical causes; and now, at 
 the end of my days, I begin to cherish, 
 not what would lead me from these, but 
 what would precede them, and, above all, 
 what would somewhat surpass them." 
 We had attained the summit of a 
 3 2 9
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 plateau in the "pays de Caux," in Nor- 
 mandy, which is supple as an English 
 park, but natural and limitless. It is one 
 of the rare spots on the globe where 
 nature reveals herself to us unfailingly 
 wholesome and green. A little further to 
 the north the country is threatened with 
 barrenness, a little further to the south, it 
 is fatigued and scorched by the sun. At 
 the end of a plain that ran down to the 
 edge of the sea, some peasants were erect- 
 ing a stack of corn. " Look," he said, 
 "seen from here, they are beautiful. 
 They are constructing that simple and 
 yet so important thing, which is above 
 all else the happy and almost unvarying 
 monument of human life taking root 
 a stack of corn. The distance, the air of 
 the evening, weave their joyous cries into 
 a kind of song without words, which re- 
 plies to the noble song of the leaves as 
 they whisper over our heads. Above 
 33
 
 The Nuptial Flight 
 
 them the sky is magnificent ; and one 
 almost might fancy that beneficent spirits, 
 waving palm-trees of fire, had swept all 
 the light towards the stack, to give the 
 workers more time. And the track of 
 the palms still remains in the sky. See 
 the humble church by their side, over- 
 looking and watching them, in the midst 
 of the rounded lime trees and the grass of 
 the homely graveyard, that faces its native 
 ocean. They are fitly erecting their mon- 
 ument of life underneath the monuments 
 of their dead, who made the same gestures 
 and still are with them. Take in the 
 whole picture. There are no special, 
 characteristic features, such as we find in 
 England, Provence, or Holland. It is 
 the presentment, large and ordinary 
 enough to be symbolic, of a natural and 
 happy life. Observe how rhythmic 
 human existence becomes in its useful 
 moments. Look at the man who is 
 33 1
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 leading the horses, at that other who 
 throws up the sheaves on his fork, at the 
 women bending over the corn, and the 
 children at play. . . . They have not 
 displaced a stone, or removed a spadeful 
 of earth, to add to the beauty of the 
 scenery ; nor do they take one step, plant 
 a tree or a flower, that is not necessary. 
 All that we see is merely the involuntary 
 result of the effort that man puts forth to 
 subsist for a moment in nature ; and yet 
 those among us whose desire is only to 
 create or imagine spectacles of peace, 
 deep thoughtfulness, or beatitude, have 
 been able to find no scene more perfect 
 than this, which indeed they paint or 
 describe whenever they seek to present 
 us with a picture of beauty or happiness. 
 Here we have the first semblance, which 
 some will call the truth." 
 
 332
 
 The Nuptial Flight 
 
 " Let us draw nearer. Can you distin- 
 guish the song that blended so well with 
 the whispering of the leaves? It is 
 made up of abuse and insult; and when 
 laughter bursts forth, it is due to an ob- 
 scene remark some man or woman has 
 made, to a jest at the expense of the 
 weaker, of the hunchback unable to lift 
 his load, the cripple they have knocked 
 over, or the idiot whom they make their 
 butt. 
 
 " I have studied these people for many 
 years. We are in Normandy ; the soil is 
 rich and easily tilled. Around this stack 
 of corn there is rather more comfort than 
 one would usually associate with a scene 
 of this kind. The result is that most 
 of the men, and many of the women, are 
 alcoholic. Another poison also, which 
 I need not name, corrodes the race. To 
 333
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 that, to the alcohol, are due the children 
 whom you see there : the dwarf, the one 
 with the hare-lip, the others who are 
 knock-kneed, scrofulous, imbecile. All 
 of them, men and women, young and old, 
 have the ordinary vices of the peasant. 
 They are brutal, suspicious, grasping, and 
 envious ; hypocrites, liars, and slanderers ; 
 inclined to petty, illicit profits, mean in- 
 ferpretations, and coarse flattery of the 
 stronger. Necessity brings them to- 
 gether, and compels them to help each 
 other; but the secret wish of every indi- 
 vidual is to harm his neighbour as soon 
 as this can be done without danger to 
 himself. The one substantial pleasure of 
 the village is procured by the sorrows of 
 others. Should a great disaster befall one 
 of them, it will long be the subject of 
 secret, delighted comment among the rest. 
 Every man watches his fellow, is jealous 
 of him, detests and despises him. While 
 334
 
 The Nuptial Flight 
 
 they are poor, they hate their masters 
 with a boiling and pent-up hatred because 
 of the harshness and avarice these last 
 display ; should they in their turn have 
 servants, they profit by their own experi- 
 ence of servitude to reveal a harshness and 
 avarice greater even than that from which 
 they have suffered. I could give you 
 minutest details of the meanness, deceit, 
 injustice, tyranny, and malice that under- 
 lie this picture of ethereal, peaceful toil. 
 Do not imagine that the sight of this mar- 
 vellous sky, of the sea which spreads out 
 yonder behind the church and presents 
 another, more sensitive sky, flowing over 
 the earth like a great mirror of wisdom 
 and consciousness do not imagine that 
 either sea or sky is capable of lifting their 
 thoughts or widening their minds. They 
 have never looked at them. Nothing has 
 power to influence or move them save 
 three or four circumscribed fears, that of 
 335
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 hunger, of force, of opinion and law, and 
 the terror of hell when they die. To 
 show what they are, we should have to 
 consider them one by one. See that tall 
 fellow there on the right, who flings up 
 such mighty sheaves. Last summer his 
 friends broke his right arm in some tavern 
 row. I reduced the fracture, which was a 
 bad and compound one. I tended him 
 for a long time, and gave him the where- 
 withal to live till he should be able to get 
 back to work. He came to me every 
 day. He profited by this to spread the 
 report in the village that he had discov- 
 ered me in the arms of my sister-in-law, 
 and that my mother drank. He is not 
 vicious, he bears me no ill-will ; on the 
 contrary, see what a broad, open smile 
 spreads over his face as he sees me. It 
 was not social animosity that induced him 
 to slander me. The peasant values wealth 
 far too much to hate the rich man. But 
 336
 
 The Nuptial Flight 
 I fancy my good corn-thrower there could 
 not understand my tending him without 
 any profit to myself. He was satisfied 
 that there must be some underhand 
 scheme, and he declined to be my dupe. 
 More than one before him, richer or 
 poorer, has acted in similar fashion, if not 
 worse. It did not occur to him that he 
 was lying when he spread those inventions 
 abroad ; he merely obeyed a confused 
 command of the morality he saw about 
 him. He yielded unconsciously, against 
 his will, as it were, to the all-powerful de- 
 sire of the general malevolence. . . . But 
 why complete a picture with which all are 
 familiar who have spent some years in the 
 country ? Here we have the second sem- 
 blance that some will call the real truth. 
 It is the truth of practical life. It un- 
 doubtedly is based on the most precise, 
 the only, facts that one can observe and 
 test." 
 
 337
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 [93] 
 
 " Let us sit on these sheaves," he con- 
 tinued, "and look again. Let us reject 
 not a single one of the little facts that 
 build up the reality of which I have 
 spoken. Let us permit them to depart 
 of their own accord into space. They 
 cumber the foreground, and yet we can- 
 not but be aware of the existence behind 
 them of a great and very curious force 
 that sustains the whole. Does it only 
 sustain and not raise ? These men whom 
 we see before us are at least no longer 
 the ferocious animals of whom La 
 Bruyere speaks, the wretches who talked 
 in a kind of inarticulate voice, and 
 withdrew at night to their dens, where 
 they lived on black bread, water, and 
 roots. 
 
 " The race, you will tell me, is neither 
 as strong nor as healthy. That may be ; 
 338
 
 The Nuptial Flight 
 
 alcohol and the other scourge are accidents 
 that humanity has to surmount ; ordeals, 
 it may be, by which certain of our organs, 
 those of the nerves, for instance, may 
 benefit; for we invariably find that life 
 profits by the ills that it overcomes. Be- 
 sides, a mere trifle that we may discover 
 to-morrow may render these poisons in- 
 nocuous. These men have thoughts and 
 feelings that those of whom La Bruyere 
 speaks had not." " I prefer the simple, 
 naked animal to the odious half-animal," 
 I murmured. " You are thinking of the 
 first semblance now," he replied, " the 
 semblance dear to the poet, that we saw 
 before ; let us not confuse it with the 
 one we are now considering. These 
 thoughts and feelings are petty, if you 
 will, and vile; but what is petty and 
 vile is still better than that which is 
 not at all. Of these thoughts and feel- 
 ings they avail themselves only to hurt 
 339
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 each other, and to persist in their pres- 
 ent mediocrity; but thus does it often 
 happen in nature. The gifts she accords 
 are employed for evil at first, for the ren- 
 dering worse what she had apparently 
 sought to improve ; but, from this evil, a 
 certain good will always result in the end. 
 Besides, I am by no means anxious to 
 prove that there has been progress, which 
 may be a very small thing or a very great 
 thing, according to the place whence we 
 regard it. It is a vast achievement, the 
 surest ideal, perhaps, to render the condi- 
 tion of men a little less servile, a little less 
 painful ; but let the mind detach itself for 
 an instant from material results, and the 
 difference between the man who marches 
 in the van of progress and the other 
 who is blindly dragged at its tail ceases 
 to be very considerable. Among these 
 young rustics, whose mind is haunted 
 only by formless ideas, there are many 
 340
 
 The Nuptial Flight 
 
 who have in themselves the possibility of 
 attaining, in a short space 'of time, the 
 degree of consciousness that we both en- 
 joy. One is often struck by the narrow- 
 ness of the dividing line between what we 
 regard as the unconsciousness of these 
 people and the consciousness that to us 
 is the highest of all 
 
 " Besides, of what is this consciousness 
 composed, whereof we are so proud ? Of 
 far more shadow than light, of far more 
 acquired ignorance than knowledge ; of 
 far more things whose comprehension, we 
 are well aware, must ever elude us, than 
 of things that we actually know. And 
 yet in this consciousness lies all our dig- 
 nity, our most veritable greatness; it is 
 probably the most surprising phenomenon 
 this world contains. It is this which per- 
 mits us to raise our head before the un- 
 known principle, and say to it : * What 
 you are I know not; but there is some-
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 thing within me that already enfolds you. 
 You will destroy me, perhaps, but if your 
 object be not to construct from my ruins 
 an organism better than mine, you will 
 prove yourself inferior to what I am ; and 
 the silence that will follow the death of 
 the race to which I belong will declare to 
 you that you have been judged. And 
 if you are not capable even of caring 
 whether you be justly judged or not, of 
 what value can your secret be ? It must 
 be stupid or hideous. Chance has en- 
 abled you to produce a creature that you 
 yourself lacked the quality to produce. 
 It is fortunate for him that a contrary 
 chance should have permitted you to 
 suppress him before he had fathomed 
 the depths of your unconsciousness ; 
 more fortunate still that he does not 
 survive the infinite series of your awful 
 experiments. He had nothing to do in 
 a world where his intellect corresponded 
 342
 
 The Nuptial Flight 
 to no eternal intellect, where his desire 
 for the better could attain no actual 
 good.' 
 
 " Once more, for the spectacle to absorb 
 us, there is no need of progress. The 
 enigma suffices; and that enigma is as 
 great, and shines as mysteriously, in the 
 peasants as in ourselves. As we trace life 
 back to its all-powerful principle, it con- 
 fronts us on every side. To this principle 
 each succeeding century has given a new 
 name. Some of these names were clear 
 and consoling. It was found, however, 
 that consolation and clearness were alike 
 illusory. But whether we call it God, 
 Providence, Nature, chance, life, fatality, 
 spirit, or matter, the mystery remains un- 
 altered ; and from the experience of thou- 
 sands of years we have learned nothing 
 more than to give it a vaster name, one 
 nearer to ourselves, more congruous with 
 our expectation, with the unforeseen. 
 343
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 That is the name it bears to-day, where- 
 fore it has never seemed greater. Here 
 we have one of the numberless aspects 
 of the third semblance, which also is 
 truth." 
 
 344
 
 VII 
 
 THE MASSACRE OF THE 
 MALES 
 
 345
 
 VII 
 
 THE MASSACRE OF THE 
 MALES 
 
 [94] 
 
 IF skies remain clear, the air warm, and 
 pollen and nectar abound in the 
 flowers, the workers, through a kind of 
 forgetful indulgence, or over-scrupulous 
 prudence perhaps, will for a short time 
 longer endure the importunate, disastrous 
 presence of the males. These comport 
 themselves in the hive as did Penelope's 
 suitors in the house of Ulysses. Indeli- 
 cate and wasteful, sleek and corpulent, 
 fully content with their idle existence as 
 honorary lovers, they feast and carouse, 
 throng the alleys, obstruct the passages, 
 and hinder the work ; jostling and jos- 
 347
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 tied, fatuously pompous, swelled with 
 foolish, good-natured contempt ; harbour- 
 ing never a suspicion of the deep and 
 calculating scorn wherewith the workers 
 regard them, of the constantly growing 
 hatred to which they give rise, or of the 
 destiny that awaits them. For their 
 pleasant slumbers they select the snuggest 
 corners of the hive ; then, rising carelessly, 
 they flock to the open cells where the 
 honey smells sweetest, and soil with their 
 excrements the combs they frequent. The 
 patient workers, their eyes steadily fixed 
 on the future, will silently set things 
 right. From noon till three, when the 
 purple country trembles in blissful lassi- 
 tude beneath the invincible gaze of a 
 July or August sun, the drones will ap- 
 pear on the threshold. They have a 
 helmet made of enormous black pearls, 
 two lofty, quivering plumes, a doublet 
 of iridescent, yellowish velvet, an heroic 
 348
 
 The Massacre of the Males 
 tuft, and a fourfold mantle, translucent 
 and rigid. They create a prodigious 
 stir, brush the sentry aside, overturn 
 the cleaners, and collide with the for- 
 agers as these return laden with their 
 humble spoil. They have the busy 
 air, the extravagant, contemptuous gait, 
 of indispensable gods who should be sim- 
 ultaneously venturing towards some des- 
 tiny unknown to the vulgar. One by 
 one they sail off into space, irresistible, 
 glorious, and tranquilly make for the 
 nearest flowers, where they sleep till the 
 afternoon freshness awake them. Then, 
 with the same majestic pomp, and still 
 overflowing with magnificent schemes, 
 they return to the hive, go straight to 
 the cells, plunge their head to the neck 
 in the vats of honey, and fill themselves 
 tight as a drum to repair their exhausted 
 strength ; whereupon, with heavy steps, 
 they go forth to meet the good, dreamless 
 349
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 and careless slumber that shall fold them 
 in its embrace till the time for the next 
 repast. 
 
 [95] 
 
 But the patience of the bees is not 
 equal to that of men. One morning 
 the long-expected word of command goes 
 through the hive; and the peaceful work- 
 ers turn into judges and executioners. 
 Whence this word issues, we know not ; 
 it would seem to emanate suddenly from 
 the cold, deliberate indignation of the 
 workers ; and no sooner has it been ut- 
 tered than every heart throbs with it, 
 inspired with the genius of the unanimous 
 republic. One part of the people re- 
 nounce their foraging duties to devote 
 themselves to the* work of justice. The 
 great idle drones, asleep in unconscious 
 groups on the melliferous walls, are rudely 
 torn from their slumbers by an army 
 35
 
 The Massacre of the Males 
 of wrathful virgins. They wake, in 
 pious wonder; they cannot believe their 
 eyes ; and their astonishment struggles 
 through their sloth as a moonbeam 
 through marshy water. They stare 
 amazedly round them, convinced that 
 they must be victims of some mistake ; 
 and the mother-idea of their life being 
 first to assert itself in their dull brain, 
 they take a step towards the vats of 
 honey to seek comfort there. But ended 
 for them are the days of May honey, the 
 wine-flower of lime trees and fragrant am- 
 brosia of thyme and sage, of marjoram 
 and white clover. Where the path once 
 lay open to the kindly, abundant reser- 
 voirs, that so invitingly offered their 
 waxen and sugary mouths, there stands 
 now a burning-bush all alive with poi- 
 sonous, bristling stings. The atmosphere 
 of the city is changed ; in lieu of the 
 friendly perfume of honey, the acrid odour 
 35*
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 of poison prevails ; thousands of tiny 
 drops glisten at the end of the stings, 
 and diffuse rancour and hatred. Before 
 the bewildered parasites are able to realise 
 that the happy laws of the city have crum- 
 bled, dragging down in most inconceivable 
 fashion their own plentiful destiny, each 
 one is assailed by three or four envoys 
 of justice ; and these vigorously proceed 
 to cut off his wings, saw through the peti- 
 ole that connects the abdomen with the 
 thorax, amputate the feverish antennas, 
 and seek an opening between the rings 
 of his cuirass through which to pass their 
 sword. No defence is attempted by the 
 enormous, but unarmed, creatures ; they 
 try to escape, or oppose their mere bulk 
 to the blows that rain down upon them. 
 Forced on to their back, with their re- 
 lentless enemies clinging doggedly to 
 them, they will use their powerful claws 
 to shift them from side to side ; or, turn- 
 35 2
 
 The Massacre of the Males 
 
 ing on themselves, they will drag the 
 whole group round and round in wild 
 circles, which exhaustion soon brings to 
 an end. And, in a very brief space, their 
 appearance becomes so deplorable that 
 pity, never far from justice in the depths 
 of our heart, quickly returns, and would 
 seek forgiveness, though vainly, of the 
 stern workers who recognise only nature's 
 harsh and profound laws. The wings of 
 the wretched creatures are torn, their 
 antennae bitten, the segments of their legs 
 wrenched off; and their magnificent eyes, 
 mirrors once of the exuberant flowers, 
 flashing back the blue light and the inno- 
 cent pride of summer, now, softened by 
 suffering, reflect only the anguish and 
 distress of their end. Some succumb to 
 their wounds, and are at once borne away 
 to distant cemeteries by two or three of 
 their executioners. Others, whose injuries 
 are less, succeed in sheltering themselves 
 2 3 353
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 in some corner, where they lie, all huddled 
 together, surrounded by an inexorable 
 guard, until they perish of want. Many 
 will reach the door, and escape into space 
 dragging their adversaries with them ; 
 but, towards evening, impelled by hunger 
 and cold, they return in crowds to the 
 entrance of the hive to beg for shelter. 
 But there they encounter another piti- 
 less guard. The next morning, before 
 setting forth on their journey, the work- 
 ers will clear the threshold, strewn with 
 the corpses of the useless giants ; and 
 all recollection of the idle race disappear 
 till the following spring. 
 
 [96] 
 
 In very many colonies of the apiary 
 this massacre will often take place on the 
 same day. The richest, best-governed 
 hive will give the signal ; to be fol- 
 lowed, some days after, by the little 
 354
 
 The Massacre of the Males 
 
 and less prosperous republics. Only the 
 poorest, weakest colonies those whose 
 mother is very old and almost sterile 
 will preserve their males till the approach 
 of winter, so as not to abandon the hope 
 of procuring the impregnation of the 
 virgin queen they await, and who may 
 yet be born. Inevitable misery follows ; 
 and all the tribe mother, parasites, 
 workers collect in a hungry and closely 
 intertwined group, who perish in silence 
 before the first snows arrive, in the ob- 
 scurity of the hive. 
 
 In the wealthy and populous cities 
 work is resumed after the execution of 
 the drones, although with diminishing 
 zeal, for flowers are becoming scarce. 
 The great festivals, the great dramas, are 
 over. The autumn honey, however, that 
 shall complete the indispensable provi- 
 sions, is accumulating within the hospi- 
 table walls; and the last reservoirs are 
 355
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 sealed with the seal of white, incorrupti- 
 ble wax. Building ceases, births diminish, 
 deaths multiply ; the nights lengthen, and 
 days grow shorter. Rain and inclement 
 winds, the mists of the morning, the am- 
 bushes laid by a hastening twilight, carry 
 off hundreds of workers who never re- 
 turn ; and soon, over the whole little 
 people, that are as eager for sunshine as 
 the grasshoppers of Attica, there hangs 
 the cold menace of winter. 
 
 Man has already taken his share of the 
 harvest. Every good hive has presented 
 him with eighty or a hundred pounds of 
 honey ; the most remarkable will some- 
 times even give two hundred, which rep- 
 resent an enormous expanse of liquefied 
 light, immense fields of flowers that 
 have been visited daily one or two thou- 
 sand times. He throws a last glance 
 over the colonies, which are becoming 
 torpid. From the richest he takes their 
 356
 
 The Massacre of the Males 
 superfluous wealth to distribute it among 
 those whom misfortune, unmerited always 
 in this laborious world, may have ren- 
 dered necessitous. He covers the dwell- 
 ings, half closes the doors, removes the 
 useless frames, and leaves the bees to 
 their long winter sleep. They gather 
 in the centre of the hive, contract them- 
 selves, and cling to the combs that con- 
 tain the faithful urns ; whence there shall 
 issue, during days of frost, the transmuted 
 substance of summer. The queen is in 
 the midst of them, surrounded by her 
 guard. The first row of the workers 
 attach themselves to the sealed cells ; a 
 second row cover the first, a third the 
 second, and so in succession to the last 
 row of all, which form the envelope. 
 When the bees of this envelope feel the 
 cold stealing over them, they re-enter 
 the mass, and others take their place. 
 The suspended cluster is like a sombre 
 357
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 sphere that the walls of the comb di- 
 vide ; it rises imperceptibly and falls, 
 it advances or retires, in proportion as 
 the cells grow empty to which it clings. 
 For, contrary to what is generally believed, 
 the winter life of the bee is not arrested, 
 although it be slackened. By the con- 
 certed beating of their wings little 
 sisters that have survived the flames of 
 the sun which go quickly or slowly 
 in accordance as the temperature without 
 may vary, they maintain in their sphere 
 an unvarying warmth, equal to that of 
 a day in spring. This secret spring 
 comes from the beautiful honey, itself but 
 a ray of heat transformed, that returns 
 now to its first condition. It circulates 
 in the hive like generous blood. The 
 bees at the full cells present it to their 
 neighbours, who pass it on in their turn. 
 Thus it goes from hand to hand and from 
 mouth to mouth, till it attain the extrem- 
 358
 
 The Massacre of the Males 
 
 ity of the group in whose thousands of 
 hearts one destiny, one thought, is scat- 
 tered and united. It stands in lieu of the 
 sun and the flowers, till its elder brother, 
 the veritable sun of the real, great spring, 
 peering through the half-open door, glides 
 in his first softened glances, wherein 
 anemones and violets are coming to life 
 again ; and gently awakens the workers, 
 showing them that the sky once more is 
 blue in the world, and that the uninter- 
 rupted circle that joins death to life has 
 turned and begun afresh. 
 
 359
 
 VIII 
 THE PROGRESS OF THE RACE 
 
 361
 
 
 VIII 
 THE PROGRESS OF THE RACE 
 
 [97] 
 
 BEFORE closing this book as we 
 have closed the hive on the torpid 
 silence of winter I am anxious to meet 
 the objection invariably urged by those 
 to whom we reveal the astounding indus- 
 try and policy of the bees. Yes, they 
 will say, that is all very wonderful ; but 
 then, it has never been otherwise. The 
 bees have for thousands of years dwelt 
 under remarkable laws, but during those 
 thousands of years the laws have not 
 varied. For thousands of years they 
 have constructed their marvellous combs, 
 whereto we can add nothing, wherefrom 
 we can take nothing, combs that unite 
 363
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 in equal perfection the science of the 
 chemist, the geometrician, the architect, 
 and the engineer ; but on the sarcophagi, 
 on Egyptian stones and papyri, we find 
 drawings of combs that are identical in 
 every particular. Name a single fact that 
 wilkshow the least progress, a single in- 
 stance of their having contrived some 
 new feature or modified their habitual 
 routine, and we will cheerfully yield, and 
 admit that they not only possess an ad- 
 mirable instinct, but have also an intellect 
 worthy to approach that of man, worthy 
 to share in one knows not what higher 
 destiny than awaits unconscious and sub- 
 missive matter. 
 
 This language is not even confined to 
 the profane ; it is made use of by ento- 
 mologists of the rank of Kirby and 
 Spence, in order to deny the bees the 
 possession of intellect other than may 
 vaguely stir within the narrow prison of 
 3 6 4
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 an extraordinary but unchanging instinct. 
 " Show us," they say, " a single case where 
 the pressure of events has inspired them 
 with the idea, for instance, of substituting 
 clay or mortar for wax or propolis ; show 
 us this, and we will admit their capacity 
 for reasoning." 
 
 This argument, that Romanes refers to 
 as the "question-begging argument," and 
 that might also be termed the " insatiable 
 argument," is exceedingly dangerous, and, 
 if applied to man, would take us very far. 
 Examine it closely, and you find that it 
 emanates from the " mere common- 
 sense," which is often so harmful ; the 
 " common-sense " that replied to Galileo : 
 " The earth does not turn, for I can see 
 the sun move in the sky, rise in the 
 morning and sink in the evening ; and 
 nothing can prevail over the testimony of 
 my eyes." Common-sense makes an 
 admirable, and necessary, background for 
 365
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 the mind ; but unless it be watched by a 
 lofty disquiet ever ready to remind it, 
 when occasion demand, of the infinity of 
 its ignorance, it dwindles into the mere 
 routine of the baser side of our intellect. 
 But the bees have themselves answered 
 the objection Messrs. Kirby and Spence 
 advanced. Scarcely had it been formu- 
 lated when another naturalist, Andrew 
 Knight, having covered the bark of some 
 diseased trees with a kind of cement made 
 of turpentine and wax, discovered that his 
 bees were entirely renouncing the collec- 
 tion of propolis, and exclusively using 
 this unknown matter, which they had 
 quickly tested and adopted, and found in 
 abundant quantities, ready prepared, in 
 the vicinity of their dwelling. 
 
 And indeed, one-half of the science 
 
 and practice of apiculture consists in 
 
 giving free rein to the spirit of initiative 
 
 possessed by the bees, and in providing 
 
 366
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 their enterprising intellect with opportuni- 
 ties for veritable discoveries and veritable 
 inventions. Thus, for instance, to aid in 
 the rearing of the larvae and nymphs, the 
 bee-keeper will scatter a certain quantity 
 of flour close to the hive when the pollen 
 is scarce of which these consume an enor- 
 mous quantity. In a state of nature, in 
 the heart of their native forests in the 
 Asiatic valleys, where they existed prob- 
 ably long before the tertiary epoch, the 
 bees can evidently never have met with 
 a substance of this kind. And yet, if 
 care be taken to "bait" some of them 
 with it, by placing them on the flour, 
 they will touch it and test it, they will 
 perceive that its properties more or less 
 resemble those possessed by the dust of 
 the anthers ; they will spread the news 
 among their sisters, and we shall soon 
 find every forager hastening to this un- 
 expected, incomprehensible food, which, 
 367
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 in their hereditary memory, must be in- 
 separable from the calyx of flowers where 
 their flight, for so many centuries past, 
 has been sumptuously and voluptuously 
 welcomed. 
 
 [98] 
 
 It is a little more than a hundred years 
 ago that Huber's researches gave the first 
 serious impetus to our study of the bees, 
 and revealed the elementary important 
 truths that allowed us to observe them 
 with fruitful result. Barely fifty years 
 have passed since the foundation of ra- 
 tional, practical apiculture was rendered 
 possible by means of the movable combs 
 and frames devised by Dzierzon and 
 Langstroth, and the hive ceased to be 
 the inviolable abode wherein all came to 
 pass in a mystery from which death alone 
 stripped the veil. And lastly, less than 
 fifty years have elapsed since the improve- 
 368
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 
 ments of the microscope, of the ento- 
 mologist's laboratory, revealed the precise 
 secret of the principal organs of the 
 workers, of the mother, and the males. 
 Need we wonder if our knowledge be 
 as scanty as our experience ? The bees 
 have existed many thousands of years; 
 we have watched them for ten or twelve 
 lustres. And if it could even be proved 
 that no change has occurred in the hive 
 since we first opened it, should we have 
 the right to conclude that nothing had 
 changed before our first questioning 
 glance? Do we not know that in the 
 evolution of species a century is but as a 
 drop of rain that is caught in the whirl 
 of the river, and that millenaries glide as 
 swiftly over the life of universal matter 
 as single years over the history of a 
 people ?
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 [99] 
 
 But there is no warrant for the state- 
 ment that the habits of the bees are un- 
 changed. If we examine them with an 
 unbiassed eye, and without emerging 
 from the small area lit by our actual ex- 
 perience, we shall, on the contrary, dis- 
 cover marked variations. And who shall 
 tell how many escape us ? Were an ob- 
 server of a hundred and fifty times our 
 height and about seven hundred and fifty 
 thousand times our importance (these 
 being the relations of stature and weight 
 in which we stand to the humble honey- 
 fly), one who knew not our language, and 
 was endowed with senses totally different 
 from our own ; were such an one to have 
 been studying us, he would recognise 
 certain curious material transformations 
 in the course of the last two thirds of 
 the century, but would be totally un- 
 
 37
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 
 able to form any conception of our moral, 
 social, political, economic or religious 
 evolution. 
 
 The most likely of all the scientific 
 hypotheses will presently permit us to 
 connect our domestic bee with the great 
 tribe of the " Apiens," which embraces 
 all wild bees, and where its ancestors are 
 probably to be found. We shall then 
 perceive physiological, social, economic, 
 industrial, and architectural transforma- 
 tions more extraordinary than those of 
 our human evolution. But for the mo- 
 ment we will limit ourselves to our do- 
 mestic bee properly so called. Of these, 
 sixteen fairly distinct species are known; 
 but, essentially, whether we consider the 
 Apis Dorsata, the largest known to us, or 
 the Apis Florea, which is the smallest, 
 the insect is always exactly the same, ex- 
 cept for the slight modifications induced 
 by the climate and by the conditions 
 37 1
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 whereto it has had to conform. 1 The 
 difference between these various species 
 is scarcely greater than that between an 
 Englishman and a Russian, a Japanese 
 and a European. In these preliminary 
 remarks, therefore, we will confine our- 
 selves to what actually lies within the 
 range of our eyes, refusing the aid of 
 hypothesis, be this never so probable or 
 so imperious. We shall mention no facts 
 
 1 The scientific classification of the domestic bee is 
 as follows : 
 
 Class Insecta 
 
 Order Hymenoptera 
 
 Family Apidae 
 
 Genus Apis 
 
 Species Mellifica 
 
 The term "Mellifica" is that of the Linnasan 
 classification. It is not of the happiest, for all the 
 Apidse, with the exception of certain parasites per- 
 haps, are producers of honey. Scopoli uses the 
 term " Cerifera " ; Reaumur " Domestica " ; Geof- 
 froy " Gregaria." The "Apis Ligustica," the 
 Italian bee, is another variety of the *' Mellifica." 
 
 37 2
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 that are not susceptible of immediate 
 proof; and of such facts we will only 
 rapidly refer to some of the more sig- 
 nificant. 
 
 [.00] 
 
 Let us consider first of all the most 
 important and most radical improvement, 
 one that in the case of man would have 
 called for prodigious labour : the external 
 protection of the community. 
 
 The bees do not, like ourselves, dwell 
 in towns free to the sky, and exposed to 
 the caprice of rain and storm, but in cities 
 entirely covered with a protecting envel- 
 ope. In a state of nature, however, in 
 an ideal climate, this is not the case. If 
 they listened only to their essential in- 
 stinct, they would construct their combs 
 in the open air. In the Indies, the Apis 
 Dorsata will not eagerly seek hollow trees, 
 or a hole in the rocks. The swarm will 
 373
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 hang from the crook of a branch ; and the 
 comb will be lengthened, the queen lay 
 her eggs, provisions be stored, with no 
 shelter other than that which the work- 
 ers' own bodies provide. Our Northern 
 bees have at times been known to revert 
 to this instinct, under the deceptive influ- 
 ence of a too gentle sky ; and swarms have 
 been found living in the heart of a bush. 
 But even in the Indies, the result of 
 this habit, which would seem innate, is 
 by no means favourable. So considerable 
 a number of the workers are compelled to 
 remain on one spot, occupied solely with 
 the maintenance of the heat required by 
 those who are moulding the wax and rear- 
 ing the brood, that the Apis Dorsata, 
 hanging thus from the branches, will con- 
 struct but a single comb ; whereas if she 
 have the least shelter she will erect four 
 or five, or more, and will proportionately 
 increase the prosperity and the population 
 374
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 of the colony. And indeed we find that 
 all species of bees existing in cold and tem- 
 perate regions have abandoned this primi- 
 tive method. The intelligent initiative 
 of the insect has evidently received the 
 sanction of natural selection, which has 
 allowed only the most numerous and best 
 protected tribes to survive our winters. 
 What had been merely an idea, therefore, 
 and opposed to instinct, has thus by slow 
 degrees become an instinctive habit. But 
 it is none the less true that in forsaking 
 the vast light of nature that was so dear 
 to them and seeking shelter in the ob- 
 scure hollow of a tree or a cavern, the 
 bees have followed what at first was an 
 audacious idea, based on observation, 
 probably, on experience and reasoning. 
 And this idea might be almost declared 
 to have been as important to the destinies 
 of the domestic bee as was the invention 
 of fire to the destinies of man. 
 375
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 [10,] 
 
 This great progress, not the less actual 
 for being hereditary and ancient, was fol- 
 lowed by an infinite variety of details 
 which prove that the industry, and even 
 the policy, of the hive have not crystal- 
 lised into infrangible formulae. We have 
 already mentioned the intelligent substi- 
 tution of flour for pollen, and of an arti- 
 ficial cement for propolis. We have seen 
 with what skill the bees are able to adapt 
 to their needs the occasionally discon- 
 certing dwellings into which they are in- 
 troduced, and the surprising adroitness 
 wherewith they turn combs of foundation- 
 wax to good account. They display ex- 
 traordinary ingenuity in their manner of 
 handling these marvellous combs, which 
 are so strangely useful, and yet incomplete. 
 In point of fact, they meet man half-way. 
 Let us imagine that we had for centuries 
 376
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 
 past been erecting cities, not with stones, 
 bricks, and lime, but with some pliable 
 substance painfully secreted by special 
 organs of our body. One day an all- 
 powerful being places us in the midst of 
 a fabulous city. We recognise that it is 
 made of a substance similar to the one 
 that we secrete, but, as regards the rest, it 
 is a dream, whereof what is logical is so 
 distorted, so reduced, and as it were con- 
 centrated, as to be more disconcerting 
 almost than had it been incoherent. Our 
 habitual plan is there ; in fact, we find 
 everything that we had expected ; but all 
 has been put together by some antecedent 
 force that would seem to have crushed it, 
 arrested it in the mould, and to have 
 hindered its completion. The houses 
 whose height must attain some four or 
 five yards are the merest protuberances, 
 that our two hands can cover. Thousands 
 of walls are indicated by signs that hint 
 377
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 at once of their plan and material. Else- 
 where there are marked deviations, which 
 must be corrected ; gaps to be filled and 
 harmoniously joined to the rest, vast 
 surfaces that are unstable and will need 
 support. The enterprise is hopeful, but 
 full of hardship and danger. It would 
 seem to have been conceived by some 
 sovereign intelligence, that was able to 
 divine most of our desires, but has ex- 
 ecuted them clumsily, being hampered by 
 its very vastness. We must disentangle, 
 therefore, what now is obscure, we must 
 develop the least intentions of the super- 
 natural donor ; we must build in a few 
 days what would ordinarily take us years ; 
 we must renounce organic habits, and 
 fundamentally alter our methods of labour. 
 It is certain that all the attention man 
 could devote would not be excessive for 
 the solution of the problems that would 
 arise, or for the turning to fullest account 
 378
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 
 the help thus offered by a magnificent 
 providence. Yet that is, more or less, 
 what the bees are doing in our modern 
 hives. 1 
 
 [102] 
 
 I have said that even the policy of the 
 bees is probably subject to change. This 
 point is the obscurest of all, and the most 
 difficult to verify. I shall not dwell on 
 their various methods of treating the 
 queens, or the laws as to swarming that 
 are peculiar to the inhabitants of every 
 hive, and apparently transmitted from 
 generation to generation, etc. ; but by 
 the side of these facts which are not suffi- 
 
 1 As we are now concerned with the construction of 
 the bee, we may note, in passing, a strange peculiarity 
 of the Apis Florea. Certain walls of its cells for males 
 are cylindrical instead of hexagonal. Apparently she 
 has not yet succeeded in passing from one form to the 
 other, and indefinitely adopting the better. 
 379
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 ciently established are others so precise 
 and unvarying as to prove that the same 
 degree of political civilisation has not 
 been attained by all races of the domestic 
 bee, and that, among some of them, the 
 public spirit still is groping its way, seek- 
 ing perhaps another solution of the 
 royal problem. The Syrian bee, for 
 instance, habitually rears 120 queens and 
 often more, whereas our Apis Mellifica 
 will rear ten or twelve at most. Cheshire 
 tells of a Syrian hive, in no way abnormal, 
 where 120 dead queen-mothers were 
 found, and 90 living, unmolested queens. 
 This may be the point of departure, or 
 the point of arrival, of a strange social 
 evolution, which it would be interesting 
 to study more thoroughly. We may add 
 that as far as the rearing of queens is con- 
 cerned, the Cyprian bee approximates to 
 the Syrian. And finally, there is yet 
 another fact which establishes still more 
 380
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 clearly that the customs and prudent or- 
 ganisation of the hive are not the results 
 of a primitive impulse, mechanically fol- 
 lowed through different ages and climates, 
 but that the spirit which governs the little 
 republic is fully as capable of taking note 
 of new conditions and turning these to 
 the best advantage, as in times long past it 
 was capable of meeting the dangers that 
 hemmed it around. Transport our black 
 bee to California or Australia, and her 
 habits will completely alter. Finding that 
 summer is perpetual and flowers forever 
 abundant, she will after one or two years 
 be content to live from day to day, and 
 gather sufficient honey and pollen for the 
 day's consumption; and, her thoughtful 
 observation of these new features triumph- 
 ing over hereditary experience, she will 
 cease to make provision for the winter. 1 
 
 1 Buchner cites an analogous fact. In the Barbadocs, 
 the bees whose hives are in the midst of the refineries, 
 
 38'
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 In fact it becomes necessary, in order to 
 stimulate her activity, to deprive her 
 systematically of the fruits of her labour. 
 
 So much for what our own eyes can 
 see. It will be admitted that we have 
 mentioned some curious facts, which by 
 no means support the theory that every 
 intelligence is arrested, every future clear- 
 ly defined, save only the intelligence and 
 future of man. 
 
 But if we choose to accept for one mo- 
 ment the hypothesis of evolution, the 
 spectacle widens, and its uncertain, gran- 
 diose light soon attains our own destinies. 
 Whoever brings careful attention to bear 
 will scarcely deny, even though it be not 
 evident, the presence in nature of a will 
 that tends to raise a portion of matter to 
 
 where they find sugar in abundance during the whole 
 
 year, will entirely abandon their visits to the flowers. 
 
 382
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 
 a subtler and perhaps better condition, 
 and to penetrate its substance little by 
 little with a mystery-laden fluid that we at 
 first term life, then instinct, and finally 
 intelligence; a will that, for an end we 
 know not, organises, strengthens, and fa- 
 cilitates the existence of all that is. There 
 can be no certainty, and yet many in- 
 stances invite us to believe that, were an 
 actual estimate possible, the quantity of 
 matter that has raised itself from its begin- 
 nings would be found to be ever increas- 
 ing. A fragile remark, I admit, but the 
 only one we can make on the hidden force 
 that leads us ; and it stands for much in a 
 world where confidence in life, until certi- 
 tude to the contrary reach us, must remain 
 the first of all our duties, at times even 
 when life itself conveys no encouraging 
 clearness to us. 
 
 I know all that may be urged against 
 the theory of evolution. In its favour 
 3^3
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 are numerous proofs and most powerful 
 arguments, which yet do not carry irre- 
 sistible conviction. We must beware of 
 abandoning ourselves unreservedly to the 
 prevailing truths of our time. A hundred 
 years hence, many chapters of a book 
 instinct to-day with this truth, will appear 
 as ancient as the philosophical writings of 
 the eighteenth century seem to us now, 
 full as they are of a too perfect and non- 
 existing man, or as so many works of the 
 seventeenth century, whose value is less- 
 ened by their conception of a harsh and 
 narrow god. 
 
 Nevertheless, when it is impossible to 
 
 know what the truth of a thing may be, 
 
 it is well to accept the hypothesis that 
 
 appeals the most urgently to the reason 
 
 of men at the period when we happen to 
 
 ne into the world. The chances 
 
 e" Liiat it will be false; but so long as 
 
 we believe it to be true it will serve a use- 
 
 3*4
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 
 ful purpose by restoring our courage and 
 stimulating research in a new direction. 
 It might at the first glance seem wiser, 
 perhaps, instead of advancing these in- 
 genious suppositions, simply to say the 
 profound truth, which is that we do not 
 know. But this truth could only be help- 
 ful were it written that we never shall 
 know. In the meanwhile it would induce 
 a state of stagnation within us more per- 
 nicious than the most vexatious illusions. 
 We are so constituted that nothing takes 
 us further or leads us higher than the 
 leaps made by our errors. In point of 
 fact we owe the little we have learned *x> 
 hypotheses that were always hazardous 
 and often absurd, and, as a general rule, 
 less discreet than they are to-day. They 
 were unwise, perhaps, but they kept alive 
 the ardour for research. To the t Her, 
 shivering with cold, who reaches t. 
 man Hostelry, it matters little whether he 
 25 3SS
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 by whose side he seats himself, he who 
 has guarded the hearth, be blind or very 
 old. So long as the fire still burn that he 
 has been watching, he has done as much 
 as the best could have done. Well for 
 us if we can transmit this ardour, not as 
 we received it, but added to by ourselves ; 
 and nothing will add to it more than this 
 hypothesis of evolution, which goads us to 
 question with an ever severer method and 
 ever increasing zeal all that exists on the 
 earth's surface and in its entrails, in the 
 depths of the sea and expanse of the sky. 
 Reject it, and what can we set up against it, 
 what can we put in its place ? There is 
 but the grand 'confession of scientific igno- 
 rance, aware of its knowing nothing but 
 this is habitually sluggish, and calculated 
 to discourage the curiosity more needful 
 to man than wisdom or the hypothesis 
 of the fixity of the species and of divine 
 creation, which is less demonstrable than
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 the other, banishes for all time the livino- 
 
 O 
 
 elements of the problem, and explains 
 nothing. 
 
 Of wild bees approximately 4500 vari- 
 eties are known. It need scarcely be said 
 that we shall not go through the list. 
 Some day, perhaps, a profound study, 
 and searching experiments and observa- \ 
 tions of a kind hitherto unknown, that 
 would demand more than one lifetime, 
 will throw a decisive light upon the his- 
 tory of the bee's evolution. All that 
 we can do now is to enter this veiled re- 
 gion of supposition, and, discarding all posi- 
 tive statement, attempt to follow a tribe 
 of hymenoptera in their progress towards 
 a more intelligent existence, towards a little 
 more security and comfort, lightly indi- 
 cating the salient features of this ascen- 
 sion that is spread over many thousands 
 387
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 of years. The tribe in question is already 
 known to us ; it is that of the " Apiens," 
 whose essential characteristics are so dis- 
 tinct and well-marked that one is inclined 
 to credit all its members with one common 
 ancestor. 1 
 
 The disciples of Darwin, Hermann 
 Miiller among others, consider a little 
 wild bee, the Prosopis, which is to be 
 found all over the universe, as the actual 
 representative of the primitive bee whence 
 all have issued that are known to us 
 to-day. 
 
 The unfortunate Prosopis stands more 
 
 1 It is important that the terms we shall succes- 
 sively employ, adopting the classification of M. fimile 
 Blanchard, "APIENS, APID^E and APIT^, 
 should not be confounded. The tribe of the Apiens 
 comprises all families of bees. The Apidae constitute 
 the first of these families, and are subdivided into three 
 groups : the Meliponse, the Apitze, and the Bombi 
 (humble-bees). And, finally, the Apitas include all 
 the different varieties of our domestic bees. 
 388
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 or less in the same relation to the inhabi- 
 tants of our hives as the cave-dwellers to 
 the fortunate who live in our great cities. 
 You will probably more than once have 
 seen her fluttering about the bushes, in 
 a deserted corner of your garden, without 
 realising that you were carelessly watching 
 the venerable ancestor to whom we prob- 
 ably owe most of our flowers and fruits 
 (for it is actually estimated that more than 
 a hundred thousand varieties of plants 
 would disappear if the bees did not visit 
 them) and possibly even our civilisation, 
 for in these mysteries all things inter- 
 twine. She is nimble and attractive, the 
 variety most common in France being 
 elegantly marked with white on a black 
 background. But this elegance hides an 
 inconceivable poverty. She leads a life 
 of starvation. She is almost naked, 
 whereas her sisters are clad in a warm 
 and sumptuous fleece. She has not, like 
 3SQ
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 the Apidae, baskets to gather the pollen, 
 nor, in their default, the tuft of the 
 Andrenae, nor the ventral brush of the 
 Gastrilegidae. Her tiny claws must labor- 
 iously gather the powder from the calices, 
 which powder she needs must swallow 
 in order to take it back to her lair. She 
 has no implements other than her tongue, 
 her mouth and her claws ; but her tongue 
 is too short, her legs are feeble, and her 
 mandibles without strength. Unable to 
 produce wax, bore holes through wood, 
 or dig in the earth, she contrives clumsy 
 galleries in the tender pith of dry berries ; 
 erects a few awkward cells, stores these 
 with a little food for the offspring she 
 never will see ; and then, having accom- 
 plished this poor task of hers, that tends 
 she knows not whither and of whose aim 
 we are no less ignorant, she goes off and 
 dies in a corner, as solitarily as she had 
 lived. 
 
 39
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 
 We shall pass over many intermediary 
 species, wherein we may see the gradual 
 lengthening of the tongue, enabling more 
 nectar to be extracted from the cups of 
 corollas, and the dawning formation and 
 subsequent development of the appara- 
 tus for collecting pollen, hairs, tufts, 
 brushes on the tibia, on the tarsus, and 
 abdomen, as also claws and mandibles 
 becoming stronger, useful secretions being 
 formed, and the genius that presides over 
 the construction of dwellings seeking 
 and finding extraordinary improvement 
 in every direction. Such a study would 
 need a whole volume. I will merely 
 outline a chapter of it, less than a chapter, 
 a page, which shall show how the hesitat- 
 ing endeavours of the will to live and be 
 happier result in the birth, development, 
 and affirmation of social intelligence. 
 39'
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 We have seen the unfortunate Prosopis 
 silently bearing her solitary little destiny 
 in the midst of this vast universe charged 
 with terrible forces. A certain number 
 of her sisters, belonging to species already 
 more skilful and better supplied with 
 utensils, such as the well-clad Colletes, 
 or the marvellous cutter of rose-leaves, 
 the Megachile Centuncularis, live in 
 an isolation no less profound; and if 
 by chance some creature attach itself to 
 them, and share their dwelling, it will 
 either be an enemy, or, more often, a 
 parasite. 
 
 For the world of bees is peopled with 
 phantoms stranger than our own ; and 
 many a species will thus have a kind of 
 mysterious and inactive double, exactly 
 similar to the victim it has selected, save 
 only that its immemorial idleness has 
 caused it to lose one by one its imple- 
 ments of labour, and that it exists solely 
 39 2
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 
 at the expense of the working type of 
 its race. 1 
 
 Among the bees, however, which are 
 somewhat too arbitrarily termed the " sol- 
 itary Apidae," the social instinct already 
 is smouldering, like a flame crushed be- 
 neath the overwhelming weight of matter 
 that stifles all primitive life. And here 
 and there, in unexpected directions, as 
 though reconnoitring, with timid and 
 sometimes fantastic outbursts, it will 
 succeed in piercing the mass that op- 
 
 1 The humble-bees, for instance, have the Psithyri 
 as parasites, while the Stelites live on the Anthidia. 
 " As regards the frequent identity of the parasite with 
 its victim," M. J. Perez very justly remarks in his book 
 "The Bees," "one must necessarily admit that the 
 two genera are only different forms of the same type, 
 and are united to each other by the closest affinity. And 
 to naturalists who believe in the theory of evolution 
 this relationship is not purely ideal, but real. The 
 parasitic genus must be regarded as merely a branch 
 of the foraging genus, having lost its foraging organs 
 because of its adaptation to parasitic life." 
 393
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 presses it, the pyre that some day. shall 
 feed its triumph. 
 
 If in this world all things be matter, 
 this is surely its most immaterial move- 
 ment. Transition is called for from a 
 precarious, egotistic and incomplete life 
 to a life that shall be fraternal, a little 
 more certain, a little more happy. The 
 spirit must ideally unite that which in the 
 body is actually separate ; the individual 
 must sacrifice himself for the race, and 
 substitute for visible things the things 
 that cannot be seen. Need we wonder 
 that the bees do not at the first glance 
 realise what we have not yet disentangled, 
 we who find ourselves at the privileged 
 spot whence instinct radiates from all 
 sides into our consciousness ? And it is 
 curious too, almost touching, to see how 
 the new idea gropes its way, at first, in 
 the darkness that enfolds all things that 
 come to life on this earth. It emerges 
 394
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 from matter, it is still quite material. It 
 is cold, hunger, fear, transformed into 
 something that as yet has no shape. It 
 crawls vaguely around great dangers, 
 around the long nights, the approach 
 of winter, of an equivocal sleep which 
 almost is death. . . . 
 
 ['06] 
 
 The Xylocopae are powerful bees which 
 worm their nest in dry wood. Their life 
 is solitary always. Towards the end of 
 summer, however, some individuals of a 
 particular species, the Xylocopa Cyanes- 
 cens, may be found huddled together in a 
 shivering group, on a stalk of asphodel, 
 to spend the winter in common. Among 
 the Xylocopae this tardy fraternity is ex- 
 ceptional, but among the Ceratinae, which 
 are of their nearest kindred, it has become 
 a constant habit. The idea is germinat- 
 ing. It halts immediately ; and hitherto 
 395
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 has not succeeded, among the Xylo- 
 copae, in passing beyond this first obscure 
 line of love. 
 
 Among other Apiens, this groping idea 
 assumes other forms. The Chalicodomae 
 of the out-houses, which are building- 
 bees, the Dasypodae and Halicti, which 
 dig holes in the earth, unite in large 
 colonies to construct their nests. But it 
 is an illusory crowd composed of solitary 
 units, that possess no mutual understand- 
 ing, and do not act in common. Each 
 one is profoundly isolated in the midst 
 of the multitude, and builds a dwelling 
 for itself alone, heedless of its neighbour. 
 "They are," M. Perez remarks, "a mere 
 congregation of individuals, brought to- 
 gether by similar tastes and habits, but 
 observing scrupulously the maxim of each 
 one for itself; in fact, a mere mob of 
 workers, resembling the swarm of a hive 
 only as regards their number and zeal. 
 396
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 Such assemblies merely result from a 
 great number ofindividuals inhabiting the 
 same locality." 
 
 But when we come to the Panurgi, 
 which are cousins of the Dasypodae, a 
 little ray of light suddenly reveals the 
 birth of a new sentiment in this fortui- 
 tous crowd. They collect in the same 
 way as the others, and each one digs its 
 own subterranean chambers ; but the en- 
 trance is common to all, as also the gal- 
 lery which leads from the surface of the 
 ground to the different cells. " And thus," 
 M. Perez adds, " as far as the work of 
 the cells is concerned, each bee acts as 
 though she were alone; but all make 
 equal use of the gallery that conducts to 
 the cells, so that the multitude profit by 
 the labours of an individual, and are 
 spared the time and trouble required for 
 the construction of separate galleries. It 
 would be interesting to discover whether 
 397
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 this preliminary work be not executed 
 in common, by relays of females, reliev- 
 ing each other in turn." 
 
 However this may be, the fraternal idea 
 has pierced the wall that divided two 
 worlds. It is no longer wild and unrec- 
 ognisable, wrested from instinct by cold 
 and hunger, or by the fear of death ; it is 
 prompted by active life. But it halts 
 once more; and in this instance arrives 
 no further. No matter, it does not lose 
 courage ; it will seek other channels. It 
 enters the humble-bee, and, maturing 
 there, becomes embodied in a different 
 atmosphere, and works its first decisive 
 miracles. 
 
 The humble-bees, the great hairy, noisy 
 
 creatures that all of us know so well, so 
 
 harmless for all their apparent fierceness, 
 
 lead a solitary life at first. At the begin- 
 
 398
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 
 ning of March the impregnated female 
 who has survived the winter starts to con- 
 struct her nest, either underground or in 
 a bush/according to the species to which 
 she belongs. She is alone in the world, 
 in the midst of awakening spring. She 
 chooses a spot, clears it, digs it and car- 
 pets it. Then she erects her somewhat 
 shapeless waxen cells, stores these with 
 honey and pollen, lays and hatches the 
 eggs, tends and nourishes the larvae that 
 spring to life, and soon is surrounded by 
 a troop of daughters who aid her in all 
 her labours, within the nest and without, 
 while some of them soon begin to lay in 
 their turn. The construction of the cells 
 improves ; the colony grows, the comfort 
 increases. The foundress is still its soul, 
 its principal mother, and finds herself 
 now at the head of a kingdom which 
 might be the model of that of our honey- 
 bee. But the model is still in the rough. 
 399
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 The prosperity of the humble-bees never 
 exceeds a certain limit, their laws are ill- 
 defined and ill-obeyed, primitive cannibal- 
 ism and infanticide reappear at intervals, 
 the architecture is shapeless and entails 
 much waste of material ; but the cardinal 
 difference between the two cities is that 
 the one is permanent, and the other 
 ephemeral. For, indeed, that of the hum- 
 ble-bee will perish in the autumn ; its 
 three or four hundred inhabitants will 
 die, leaving no trace of their passage or 
 their endeavours ; and but a single female 
 will survive, who, the next spring, in the 
 same solitude and poverty as her mother 
 before her, will recommence the same use- 
 less work. The idea, however, has now 
 grown aware of its strength. Among the 
 humble-bees it goes no further than we 
 have stated, but, faithful to its habits and 
 pursuing its usual routine, it will im- 
 mediately undergo a sort of unwearying 
 400
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 
 metempsychosis, and re-incarnate itself, 
 trembling with its last triumph, rendered 
 all-powerful now and nearly perfect, in 
 another group, the last but one of the 
 race, that which immediately precedes our 
 domestic bee wherein it attains its crown ; 
 the group of the Meliponitae, which 
 comprises the tropical Meliponae and 
 Trigonae. 
 
 [108] 
 
 Here the organisation is as complete as 
 in our hives. There is an unique mother, 
 there are sterile workers and males. Cer- 
 tain details even seem better devised. The 
 males, for instance, are not wholly idle ; 
 they secrete wax. The entrance to the 
 hive is more carefully guarded; it has a 
 door that can be closed when nights are 
 cold, and when these are warm a kind of 
 curtain will admit the air. 
 
 But the republic is less strong, general 
 26 401
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 life less assured, prosperity more limited, 
 than with our bees ; and wherever these 
 are introduced, the Meliponitae tend to 
 disappear before them. In both races 
 the fraternal idea has undergone equal 
 and magnificent development, save in 
 one point alone, wherein it achieves no 
 further advance among the Meliponitae 
 than among the limited offspring of the 
 humble-bees. In the mechanical organ- 
 isation of distributed labour, in the pre- 
 cise economy of effort ; briefly, in the 
 architecture of the city, they display man- 
 ifest inferiority. As to this I need only 
 refer to what I said in section 42 of this 
 book, while adding that, whereas in the 
 hives of our Apitae all the cells are equally 
 available for the rearing of the brood and 
 the storage of provisions, and endure as 
 long as the city itself, they serve only one 
 of these purposes among the Meliponitae, 
 and the cells employed as cradles for the 
 402
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 
 nymphs are destroyed after these have 
 been hatched. 1 It is in our domestic 
 bees, therefore, that the idea, of whose 
 movements we have given a cursory and 
 incomplete picture, attains its most per- 
 fect form. Are these movements defi- 
 nitely, and for all time, arrested in each 
 one of these species,, and does the con- 
 necting-line exist in our imagination alone? 
 Let us not be too eager to establish a sys- 
 tem in this ill-explored region. Let our 
 conclusions be only provisional, and prefer- 
 entially such as convey the utmost hope ; 
 
 1 It is not certain that the principle of unique 
 royalty, or maternity, is strictly observed among the 
 Meliponitae. Blanchard remarks very justly, that as 
 they possess no sting and are consequently less readily 
 able than the mothers of our own bees to kill each 
 other, several queens will probably live together in 
 the same hive. But certainty on this point has hitherto 
 been unattainable owing to the great resemblance that 
 exists between queens and workers, as also to the im- 
 possibility of rearing the Meliponitae in our climate. 
 403
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 for, were a choice forced upon us, occa- 
 sional gleams would appear to declare 
 that the inferences we are most desirous 
 to draw will prove to be truest. Besides, 
 let us not forget that our ignorance still is 
 profound. We are only learning to open 
 our eyes. A thousand experiments that 
 could be made have as yet not even been 
 tried. If the Prosopes, for instance, were 
 imprisoned, and forced to cohabit with 
 their kind, would they, in course of time, 
 overstep the iron barrier of total solitude, 
 and be satisfied to live the common life 
 of the Dasypodae, or to put* forth the fra- 
 ternal effort of the Panurgi ? And if we 
 imposed abnormal conditions upon the 
 Panurgi, would these, in their turn, pro- 
 gress from a general corridor to general 
 cells ? If the mothers of the humble- 
 bees were compelled to hibernate together, 
 would they arrive at a mutual understand- 
 ing, a mutual division of labour ? Have 
 404
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 
 combs of foundation-wax been offered to 
 the Meliponitae ? Would they accept them, 
 would they make use of them, would they 
 conform their habits to this unwonted 
 architecture ? Questions, these, that we 
 put to very tiny creatures ; and yet they 
 contain the great word of our greatest 
 secrets. We cannot answer them, for 
 our experience dates but from yesterday. 
 Starting with Reaumur, about a hundred 
 and fifty years have elapsed since the 
 habits of wild bees first received atten- 
 tion. Reaumur was acquainted with only 
 a few of them ; we have since then ob- 
 served a few more ; but hundreds, thou- 
 sands perhaps, have hitherto been noticed 
 only by hasty and ignorant travellers. 
 The habits of those that are known to 
 us have undergone no change since the 
 author of the " Memoirs " published his 
 valuable work ; and the humble-bees, all 
 powdered with gold, and vibrant as the 
 405
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 sun's delectable murmur, that in the year 
 I 73 g or g e d themselves with honey in 
 the gardens of Charenton, were absolutely 
 identical with those that to-morrow, when 
 April returns, will be humming in the 
 woods of Vincennes, but a few yards 
 away. From Reaumur's day to our own, 
 however, is but as the twinkling of an 
 eye ; and many lives of men, placed end 
 to end, form but a second in the history 
 of Nature's thought. 
 
 [ I0 9] 
 
 Although the idea that our eyes have 
 followed attains its supreme expression in 
 our domestic bees, it must not be inferred 
 therefrom that the hive reveals no faults. 
 There is one masterpiece, the hexagonal 
 cell, that touches absolute perfection, a 
 perfection that all the geniuses in the 
 world, were they to meet in conclave, 
 could in no way enhance. No living 
 406
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 
 creature, not even man, has achieved, in 
 the centre of his sphere, what the bee has 
 achieved in her own ; and were some one 
 from another world to descend and ask 
 of the earth the most perfect creation of 
 the logic of life, we should needs have 
 to offer the humble comb of honey. 
 
 But the level of this perfection is not 
 maintained throughout. We have al- 
 ready dealt with a few faults and short- 
 comings, evident sometimes and sometimes 
 mysterious, such as the ruinous super- 
 abundance and idleness of the males, 
 parthenogenesis, the perils of the nuptial 
 flight, excessive swarming, the absence of 
 pity, and the almost monstrous sacrifice 
 of the individual to society. To these 
 must be added a strange inclination to 
 store enormous masses of pollen, far in 
 excess of their needs ; for the pollen, 
 soon turning rancid, and hardening, en- 
 cumbers the surface of the comb ; and 
 407
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 further, the long sterile interregnum be- 
 tween the date of the first swarm and the 
 impregnation of the second queen, etc., 
 etc. 
 
 Of these faults the gravest, the only 
 one which in our climates is invariably 
 fatal, is the repeated swarming. But here 
 we must bear in mind that the natural 
 selection of the domestic bee has for 
 thousands of years been thwarted by man. 
 From the Egyptian of the time of Pha- 
 raoh to the peasant of our own day, the 
 bee-keeper has always acted in opposition 
 to the desires and advantages of the race. 
 The most prosperous hives are those 
 which throw only one swarm after the 
 beginning of summer. They have ful- 
 filled their maternal duties, assured the 
 maintenance of the stock and the neces- 
 sary renewal of queens ; they have guar- 
 anteed the future of the swarm, which, 
 being precocious and ample in numbers, 
 408
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 
 has time to erect solid and well-stored 
 dwellings before the arrival of autumn. 
 If left to themselves, it is clear that these 
 hives and their offshoots would have 
 been the only ones to survive the rigours 
 of winter, which would almost invariably 
 have destroyed colonies animated by dif- 
 ferent instincts ; and the law of restricted 
 swarming would therefore by slow de- 
 grees have established itself in our north- 
 ern races. But it is precisely these 
 prudent, opulent, acclimatised hives that 
 man has always destroyed in order to 
 possess himself of their treasure. He 
 has permitted only he does so to this 
 day in ordinary practice the feeblest 
 colonies to survive ; degenerate stock, 
 secondary or tertiary swarms, which have 
 just barely sufficient food to subsist 
 through the winter, or whose miserable 
 store he will supplement perhaps with a 
 few droppings of honey. The result is, 
 409
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 probably, that the race has grown feebler, 
 that the tendency to excessive swarming 
 has been hereditarily developed, and that 
 to-day almost all our bees, particularly 
 the black ones, swarm too often. For 
 some years now the new methods of 
 " movable " apiculture have gone some 
 way towards correcting this dangerous 
 habit ; and when we reflect how rapidly 
 artificial selection acts on most of our 
 domestic animals, such as oxen, dogs, 
 pigeons, sheep and horses, it is permissible 
 to believe that we shall before long have 
 a race of bees that will entirely renounce 
 natural swarming and devote all their ac- 
 tivity to the collection of honey and 
 pollen. 
 
 [no] 
 
 But for the other faults : might not an 
 intelligence that possessed a clearer con- 
 sciousness of the aim of common life 
 410
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 emancipate itself from them ? Much 
 might be said concerning these faults, 
 which emanate now from what is unknown 
 to us in the hive, now from swarming and 
 its resultant errors, for which we are 
 partly to blame. But let every man 
 judge for himself, and, having seen what 
 has gone before, let him grant or deny 
 intelligence to the bees, as he may think 
 proper. I am not eager to defend them. 
 It seems to me that in many circum- 
 stances they give proof of understanding, 
 but my curiosity would not be less were 
 all that they do done blindly. It is 
 interesting to watch a brain possessed 
 of extraordinary resources within itself 
 wherewith it may combat cold and 
 hunger, death, time, space, and solitude, 
 all the enemies of matter that is springing 
 to life ; but should a creature succeed in 
 maintaining its little profound and com- 
 plicated existence without overstepping 
 411
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 the boundaries of instinct, without doing 
 anything but what is ordinary, that would 
 be very interesting too, and very extraor- 
 dinary. Restore the ordinary and the 
 marvellous to their veritable place in the 
 bosom of nature, and their values shift ; 
 one equals the other. We find that their 
 names are usurped ; and that it is not 
 they, but the things we cannot under- 
 stand or explain that should arrest our 
 attention, refresh our activity, and give a 
 new and juster form to our thoughts and 
 feelings and words. There is wisdom in 
 attaching oneself to nought beside. 
 
 [,] 
 
 And further, our intellect is not the 
 proper tribunal before which to summon 
 the bees, and pass their faults in review. 
 Do we not find, among ourselves, that 
 consciousness and intellect long will dwell 
 in the midst of errors and faults without 
 412
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 perceiving them, longer still without ef- 
 fecting a remedy ? If a being exist whom 
 his destiny calls upon most specially, al- 
 most organically, to live and to organise 
 common life in accordance with pure rea- 
 son, that being is man. And yet see 
 what he makes of it, compare the mis- 
 takes of the hive with those of our own 
 society. How should we marvel, for 
 instance, were we bees observing men, as 
 we noted the unjust, illogical distribution 
 of work among a race of creatures that in 
 other directions appear to manifest eminent 
 reason ! We should find the earth's sur- 
 face, unique source of all common life, 
 insufficiently, painfully cultivated by two 
 or three tenths of the whole population ; 
 we should find another tenth absolutely 
 idle, usurping the larger share of the pro- 
 ducts of this first labour ; and the remain- 
 ing seven-tenths condemned to a life of 
 perpetual half-hunger, ceaselessly exhaust- 
 413
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 ing themselves in strange and sterile efforts 
 whereby they never shall profit, but only 
 shall render more complex and more in- 
 explicable still the life of the idle. We 
 should conclude that the reason and 
 moral sense of these beings must belong 
 to a world entirely different from our own, 
 and that they must obey principles hope- 
 lessly beyond our comprehension. But 
 let us carry this review of our faults no 
 further. They are always present in our 
 thoughts, though their presence achieves 
 but little. From century to century only 
 will one of them for a moment shake off 
 its slumber, and send forth a bewildered 
 cry ; stretch the aching arm that supported 
 its head, shift its position, and then lie 
 down and fall asleep once more, until a 
 new pain, born of the dreary fatigue of 
 repose, awaken it afresh. 
 
 414
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 
 The evolution of the Apiens, or at 
 least of the Apitae, being admitted, or 
 regarded as more probable than that they 
 should have remained stationary, let us 
 now consider the general, constant direc- 
 tion that this evolution takes. It seems 
 to follow the same roads as with ourselves. 
 It tends palpably to lessen the struggle, 
 insecurity, and wretchedness of the race, 
 to augment authority and comfort, and 
 stimulate favourable chances. To this 
 end it will unhesitatingly sacrifice the in- 
 dividual, bestowing general strength and 
 happiness in exchange for the illusory and 
 mournful independence of solitude. It is 
 as though Nature were of the opinion 
 with which Thucydides credits Pericles : 
 viz., that individuals are happier in the 
 bosom of a prosperous city, even though 
 they suffer themselves, than when indi- 
 415
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 vidually prospering in the midst of a 
 languishing state. It protects the hard- 
 working slave in the powerful city, while 
 those who have no duties, whose associa- 
 tion is only precarious, are abandoned to 
 the nameless, formless enemies who dwell 
 in the minutes of time, in the movements 
 of the universe, and in the recesses of 
 space. This is not the moment to dis- 
 cuss the scheme of nature, or to ask 
 ourselves whether it would be well for 
 man to follow it ; but it is certain that 
 wherever the infinite mass allows us to 
 seize the appearance of an idea, the ap- 
 pearance takes this road whereof we know 
 not the end. Let it be enough that we 
 note the persistent care with which nature 
 preserves, and fixes in the evolving race, 
 all that has been won from the hostile 
 inertia of matter. She records each happy 
 effort, and contrives we know not what 
 special and benevolent laws to counteract 
 416
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 
 the inevitable recoil. This progress, 
 whose existence among the most intelli- 
 gent species can scarcely be denied, has 
 perhaps no aim beyond its initial impetus, 
 and knows not whither it goes. But at 
 least, in a world where nothing save a few 
 facts of this kind indicates a precise will, 
 it is significant enough that we should see 
 certain creatures rising thus, slowly and 
 continuously ; and should the bees have 
 revealed to us only this mysterious spiral 
 of light in the overpowering darkness, 
 that were enough to induce us not to re- 
 gret the time we have given to their little 
 gestures and humble habits, which seem 
 so far away and are yet so nearly akin to 
 our grand passions and arrogant destinies. 
 
 ["3] 
 
 It may be that these things are all vain ; 
 and that our own spiral of light, no less 
 than that of the bees, has been kindled for 
 27 417
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 no other purpose save that of amusing the 
 darkness. So, too, is it possible that 
 some stupendous incident may suddenly 
 surge from without, from another world, 
 from a new phenomenon, and either in- 
 form this effort with definitive meaning, or 
 definitively destroy it. But we must pro- 
 ceed on our way as though nothing abnor- 
 mal could ever befall us. Did we know 
 that to-morrow some revelation, a mes- 
 sage, for instance, from a more ancient, 
 more luminous planet than ours, were to 
 root up our nature, to suppress the laws, 
 the passions, and radical truths of our being, 
 our wisest plan still would be to devote 
 the whole of to-day to the study of these 
 passions, these laws, and these truths, 
 which must blend and accord in our 
 mind ; and to remain faithful to the des- 
 tiny imposed on us, which is to subdue, 
 and to some extent raise within and 
 around us the obscure forces of life. 
 418
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 
 None of these, perhaps, will survive the 
 new revelation; but the soul of those who 
 shall up to the end have fulfilled the mis- 
 sion that is pre-eminently the mission of 
 man, must inevitably be in the front rank 
 of all to welcome this revelation; and. 
 should they learn therefrom that indiffer- 
 ence, or resignation to the unknown, is 
 the veritable duty, they will be better 
 equipped than the others for the compre- 
 hension of this final resignation and in- 
 difference, better able to turn these to 
 account. 
 
 ["4l 1 
 
 But such speculations may well be 
 avoided. Let not the possibility of gen- 
 eral annihilation blur our perception of 
 the task before us ; above all, let us not 
 count on the miraculous aid of chance. 
 Hitherto, the promises of our imagina- 
 tion notwithstanding, we have always been 
 419
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 left to ourselves, to our own resources. 
 It is to our humblest efforts that every 
 useful, enduring achievement of this earth 
 is due. It is open to us, if we choose, to 
 await the better or worse that may follow 
 some alien accident, but on condition that 
 such expectation shall not hinder our 
 human task. Here again do the bees, 
 as Nature always, provide a most excel- 
 lent lesson. In the hive there has truly 
 been prodigious intervention. The bees 
 are in the hands of a power capable of 
 annihilating or modifying their race, of 
 transforming their destinies ; the bees' 
 thraldom is far' more definite than our 
 own. Therefore none the less do they 
 perform their profound and primitive 
 duty. And, among them, it is precisely 
 those whose obedience to duty is most 
 complete who are able most fully to 
 profit by the supernatural intervention 
 that to-day has raised the destiny of their 
 420
 
 The Progress of the Race 
 species. And indeed, to' discover the 
 unconquerable duty of a being is less 
 difficult than one imagines. It is ever 
 to be read in the distinguishing organs, 
 whereto the others are all subordinate. 
 And just as it is written in the tongue, 
 the stomach, and mouth of the bee that 
 it must make honey, so is it written in 
 our eyes, our ears, our nerves, our mar- 
 row, in every lobe of our head, that we 
 must make cerebral substance ; nor is there 
 need that we should divine the purpose 
 this substance shall serve. The bees know 
 not whether they will eat the honey they 
 harvest, as we know not who it is shall 
 reap the profit of the cerebral substance we 
 shall have formed, or of the intelligent fluid 
 that issues therefrom and spreads over the 
 universe, perishing when our life ceases 
 or persisting after our death. As they 
 go from flower to flower collecting more 
 honey than themselves and their offspring 
 421
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 can need, let us go from reality to real- 
 ity seeking food for the incomprehensi- 
 ble flame, and thus, certain of having 
 fulfilled our organic duty, preparing our- 
 selves for whatever befall. Let us nour- 
 ish this flame on our feelings and passions, 
 on all that we see and think, that we hear 
 and touch, on its own essence, which is 
 the idea it derives from the discoveries, 
 experience and observation that result 
 from its every movement. A time then 
 will come when all things will turn so 
 naturally to good in a spirit that has 
 given itself to the loyal desire of this sim- 
 ple human duty, that the very suspicion 
 of the possible aimlessness of its exhaust- 
 ing effort will only render the duty the 
 clearer, will only add more purity, power, 
 disinterestedness, and freedom to the ar- 
 dour wherewith it still seeks. 
 
 422
 
 Appendix 
 
 TO give a complete bibliography of the 
 bee were outside the scope of this book ; 
 we shall be satisfied, therefore, merely to indi- 
 cate the more interesting works : 
 
 i. The Historical Development of Apia- 
 rian Science : 
 
 (a) The ancient writers : Aristotle, " His- 
 tory of Animals " (Trans. Bart. St. Hilaire) ; 
 T. Varro, " De Agricultura," L. III. xvi. ; 
 Pliny, " Hist. Nat.," L. xi. ; Columella," De 
 Re Rustica ; " Palladius, " De Re Rustica," 
 L. L xxxvii., etc. 
 
 (b) The moderns : Swammerdam, " Biblia 
 Naturae," 1737 ; Maraldi, " Observations sur 
 les Abeilles," 1712; Reaumur, " Memoires 
 pour servir a PHistoire des Insectes," 1740; 
 Ch. Bonnet, " CEuvres d'Histoire Naturelle," 
 1779-1783 ; A. G. Schirach, Physikalische 
 
 423
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 Untersuchung der bisher unbekannten aber 
 nachher entdeckten Erzeugung der Bienen- 
 mutter," 1767; J. Hunter, "On Bees" 
 (Philosophical Transactions, 1732); J. A. 
 Janscha, u Hinterlassene Vollstandige Lehre 
 von der Bienenzucht," 1773; Francois 
 Huber, " Nouvelles Observations sur les 
 Abeilles," 1794, etc. 
 
 2. Practical Apiculture : 
 
 Dzierzon, " Theorie und Praxis des neuen 
 Bienenfreundes ; " Langstroth, " The Honey- 
 bee " (translated into French by Ch. Dadant : 
 " L'Abeille et la Ruche," which corrects and 
 completes the original) ; Georges de Layens 
 and Bonnier, " Cours Complet d'Apicul- 
 ture ; " Frank Cheshire, " Bees and Bee-keep- 
 ing" (vol. ii. Practical); Dr. E.Bevan,"The 
 Honey-bee ; " T. W. Cowan, " The British 
 Bee-keeper's Guidebook ; " A. Root, " The 
 A B C of Bee-Culture;" Henry Allen, 
 "The Bee-keeper's Handy-book;" L'Abbe 
 Collin, " Guide du Proprietaire des Abeilles ; " 
 Ch. Dadant, " Petit Cours d'Apiculture 
 Pratique ; " Ed. Bertrand, " Conduite du 
 Rucher ; " Weber, " Manuel pratique d'Api- 
 424
 
 Appendix 
 
 culture;" Hamet, " Cours Complet d'Api- 
 culture ; " De Bauvoys, " Guide de 1'Apicul- 
 teur ; " Pollmann, " Die Biene und ihre 
 Zucht ; " Jeker, Kramer, and Theiler, " Der 
 Schweizerische Bienenvater ; " S. Simmins, 
 " A Modern Bee Farm ; " F. W. Vogel, 
 " Die Honigbiene und die Vermehrung der 
 Bienvolker ; " Baron A. Von Berlepsch, 
 " Die Biene und ihre Frucht," etc. 
 
 3. General Monographs : 
 
 F. Cheshire, " Bees and Bee-keeping" 
 (vol. i. Scientific); T. W. Cowan, "The 
 Honey-bee ; " J. Perez, " Les Abeilles ; " 
 Girard, "Manuel d'Apiculture" (Les Abeilles, 
 Organes et Fonctions) ; Schuckard, " British 
 Bees ; " Kirby and Spence, " Introduction to 
 Entomology ; " Girdwoyn, " Anatomic et 
 Physiologic de 1'Abeille;" F. Cheshire, 
 " Diagrams on the Anatomy of the Honey- 
 bee ; " Gunderach, " Die Naturgeschichte 
 der Honigbiene ; " L. Buchner, " Geistes- 
 leben der Thiere ; " O. Biitschli, " Zur Ent- 
 wicklungsgeschichte der Biene ; " J. D. 
 Haviland, "The Social Instincts of Bees, 
 their Origin and Natural Selection."
 
 The Life of the Bee 
 
 . Special Monographs (Organs, Func- 
 tions, Undertakings, etc.) : 
 
 F. Dujardin, " Memoires sur le Systeme 
 nerveux' des Insectes ; " Dumas and Milne 
 Edwards, " Sur la Production de la Cire des 
 Abeilles ; " E. Blanchard, " Recherches ana- 
 tomiques sur le Systeme nerveux des Insectes;" 
 L. R. D. Brougham, " Observations, Demon- 
 strations, and Experiences upon the Structure 
 of the Cells of Bees; " P. Cameron, " On Par- 
 thenogenesis in the Hymenoptera " (Trans- 
 actions Natural Society of Glasgow, 1888); 
 Erichson, " De Fabrica et Usu Antennarum in 
 Insectis ; " B. T. Lowne, " On the Simple 
 and Compound Eyes of Insects " (Philosophi- 
 cal Transactions, 1879); G. K. Waterhouse, 
 " On the Formation of the Cells of Bees and 
 Wasps ; " Dr. C. T. E. von Siebold, " On a 
 True Parthenogenesis in Moths and Bees ; " 
 F. Leydig, " Das Auge der Gliederthiere ; " 
 Pastor Schonfeld, " Bienen-Zeitung," 1854- 
 1883; " Illustrierte Bienen-Zeitung," 1885- 
 1890; Assmuss, "Die Parasiten der Honig- 
 biene." 
 
 426
 
 Appendix 
 5. Notes on Melliferous Hymenoptera : 
 
 E. Blanchard, " Metamorphoses, Moeurs et 
 Instincts des Insectes ; " Vid : u Histoire des 
 Insectes ; " Darwin, " Origin of Species ; " 
 Fabre, u Souvenirs Entomologiques " (36 
 series) ; Romanes, " Mental Evolution in 
 Animals ; " id., " Animal Intelligence ; " 
 Lepeletier et Fargeau, " Histoire Naturelle 
 des Hymenopteres ;" V. Mayet, " Memoire 
 sur les Moeurs et sur les Metamorphoses d'une 
 Nouvelle Espece de la Famille des Vesicants " 
 (Ann. Soc. Entom. de France, 1875) ; H. Mul- 
 ler, " Ein Beitrag zur Lebensgeschichte der 
 Dasypoda Hirtipes ;" E. Hoffer, "Biologische 
 Beobachtungen an Hummeln und Schmarot- 
 zerhummeln ; " Jesse, " Gleanings in Natural 
 History ; " Sir John Lubbdck, " Ants, Bees, 
 and Wasps ; " id., " The Senses, Instincts, and 
 Intelligence of Animals ; " Walkenaer, Les 
 Haclites ; " Westwood, " Introduction to the 
 Study of Insects;" V. Rendu, De 1'Intelli- 
 gence des Betes;" Espinas, "Animal Com- 
 munities," etc. 
 
 427

 
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