48 CONFESSIONS OF A BEACHCOMBER 



some of the wonders they perform. Only by those " who 

 list with care extreme," are their gentle tones heard aright ; 

 and even from such are some secrets hidden. How is it 

 that an egg deposited by the queen-mother in a more than 

 ordinarily capacious compartment hatches a grub, "just like 

 any other," which grub, feasting upon the concentrated food 

 stored within its cell, expands and lengthens and emerges 

 an amber queen in all her glory ? Bee-keepers learn that 

 the queen and the drones are the only perfect insects in the 

 hive, the hoard of willing, bustling slaves being females in a 

 state of arrested development. Each worker might have 

 been a queen but for the fact that environment and a 

 special food were not vouchsafed in the embryonic stage. 

 By making artificial queen-cells, which the workers pro- 

 vide for, men bring about the birth of queens at will. Not 

 yet has the secret of the manufacture of royal jelly been 

 revealed. But is it not the common belief that the spacious 

 compartment and the special food work the transformation 

 of what otherwise would have been a brief-lifed toiler to an 

 insect of majestic proportions, regal adornment and imperial 

 instinct, whose wants are anticipated and who has no duty 

 to perform save that of increasing and multiplying her 

 faithful subjects? Man controls the development of an 

 insect. May not those who complain of the disparity 

 between the births of females and males still listen to hope's 

 " flattering tale " ? Such is one of the homilies of the hive. 

 Interest in bee-culture grows ; and some of the habits 

 of the insect came to be understood and, inevitably, ad- 

 mired, the while all convenient vessels available, even to 

 the never-to-be-despised kerosene tins, were utilised to 

 store the nectar garnered from myriads of blossoms. But 

 as time passed the fair prospects faded. Less and less 

 quantities of honey were stored. The separator seldom 

 buzzed with soothing melody as the honey, whirled from 

 the dripping frames of combs, pattered against its resonant 

 sides. Bees seemed less and less numerous. An air of 

 idleness, almost dissoluteness and despair, brooded over 

 some of the hives. The strong robbed the weak ; and the 



