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. 



[32] 



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 



