44 HOW TO KEEP BEES 



usefulness when about a month old, and at that time 

 she will do any of the duties of the hive which she 

 deems necessary, even to helping the young bees in 

 the housework. She still has all her fur and her 

 wings are as yet whole; but if there is much to do she 

 is untiring and unremitting in her labours and, with 

 never a thought of self, wears herself out. Her old 

 age is evident by the loss of the fuzz, which was the 

 pride of her youth, and the segments of her body 

 become bald and shiny. Then her hard-worked 

 wings begin to fray at the edges until there comes a 

 day when, out on her quest for food for the colony, 

 the broken wings and tired muscles refuse to sup- 

 port her, and she falls into the grass and dies; even 

 then her last thought is not for self, but for the 

 precious load which she struggles to carry home. 

 Better thus for her to die in the field than to faint 

 in the hive, for then do her vigorous sisters seize 

 her and thrust her forth, and she falls into the refuse 

 heap in front of the home, which she has so eagerly 

 wasted her life to sustain. There is no gratitude 

 and no pensioning in the bee-world; death and 

 oblivion are meted mercilessly to the most ardent 

 workers when they fail, for thus, and thus only, can 

 the colony be kept strong. The individual is nothing 

 in the perfect socialism, and the colony is everything; 

 the treatment is Spartan, with none of the weakness 

 which makes us keep alive the hopelessly insane, 

 the idiotic, and the criminal. 



