pepe WILLIAM MORTON WHEELER 
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 of abundance, the embarrassing presence 
in the hive of three or four hundred males, from whose ranks the queen 
about to be born shall select her lover; three or four hundred foolish, 
clumsy, useless, noisy creatures, who are pretentious, gluttonous, dirty, 
coarse, totally and scandalously 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 general 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 larve, 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; the architects, masons, 
wax-workers, and sculptors who form the chain and construct 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 larve, 
the propolis that welds and strengthens the buildings of the city, or the 
water and salt required by the youth of the nation. Its orders have gone 
to the chemists who ensure 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, recognize the novices who return from their very first 
flight, scare away vagabonds, marauders and loiterers, expel all intruders, 
attack redoubtable foes in a body, and, if need be, barricade the en- 
trance. 
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 pinnacle of pros- 
perity 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 
