THE FAERY YEAR 



golden combs, is enacted. That princess first hatched 

 out and most capable of action will visit her sister 

 princesses and destroy them one by one in their 

 cells. If two princesses hatch out at the same time 

 and are about equal in strength and fitness to reign, 

 there may be a long duel. Darwin was sure that 

 the " hatred " which the worker bees show towards 

 their brother drones at the autumn massacre and the 

 hatred of princess bee towards princess bee have 

 come through natural selection ; it is the rule that 

 selects for survival the strongest or fittest, and is 

 ever destroying the weaker a kind of " To him 

 that hath shall be given, and from him that hath 

 not shall be taken away even that which he hath." 



But is hatred, in the sense we employ it of 

 human feeling, the right word ? True, the shrill 

 cry of the queens or princesses preparing for the 

 contest has sounded to human ears one of menace 

 and wrath, a war-cry. But a friend whose bee- 

 garden among raspberry fields I want to be visiting 

 at the height of the honey-flow gave me an account 

 of a deeply interesting duel he arranged and witnessed 

 between two rival queens, taken from the hive and 

 shut up together in a box with a glass top. Does it 

 ever happen that two queens or princesses, finely 

 matched, both sting one another and both die ? If 

 so, there would be danger of the whole hive or 

 swarm dying out for there might be no worker 

 grubs in the cells of the right age to enqueen by 

 diet of royal jelly. But my friend, a bee master of 

 long experience, believes that the duel is not to the 

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