CHAPTER, El 

 Crip and the 

 Impostor* m 



N the earlier occasion of the loss 

 of the Queen there had been a 

 brief spasm of despair; but it had yielded, for the 

 possibility of rearing another rose uppermost. Now 

 that possibility had vanished. There was absolutely 

 no hope. Death stalked abroad, and one by one, the 

 eldest first, the bees would go to their doom. There 

 were no young bees to take their places, nothing but 

 dust and darkness. 



Several days passed, when one morning a great cry 

 rang through the hive that eggs had been found and 

 that queen-cells had been started. It was a strange and 

 pathetic mystery, for we knew that we had no Queen, 

 and yet exulted over the finding of eggs. 



Still hoping beyond hope, we tried to create a 

 Queen from the eggs all in vain. The eggs we now 



112 



