MAY 15, 1914 



revenge. The greed for 

 gold is still slumbering. 

 The more of the liquid 

 gold that the bees store, 

 the more does love re- 

 cede — exactly as with 

 men. The covetous ones 

 begin to listen to sug- 

 gestions of Malthusian 

 ideas. The brood is re- 

 strained more and more, 

 and the number of 

 births diminishes fear- 

 fully; and when only a 

 little of the gold is com- 

 ing in a great change 

 takes place. The drones, 

 once the charm of the 

 sisters' hearts, have 

 grown old, and the bees 

 recognize that they are 

 practically parasites at 

 present, and it is no 

 longer worth while to 

 feed them.. Almost in a 

 night the bees have be- 

 come niggardly and 

 selfish, and their sole 

 object in life seems to 

 be to hold together their 

 riches. Cruelly the lit- 

 tle amazons push out 

 the defenseless ones 

 through the entrance, or 

 they place them in the 

 background of the hive, 

 thus inducing starvation. Soon thousands 

 of drone corpses cover the ground before 

 the hive. 



At such a time it is not pleasant to deal 

 with the resentful bees. They watch the 

 entrance suspiciously, and woe to the 

 strange bee which they surprise on the 

 alighting-board. Two or three rush upon 

 it, dragging it by tlm wings and legs, and 

 try to kill it. A bee which has stung an- 

 other bee seldom loses its weapon, as the 

 barbs are not caught in the smooth edges of 

 the wound made in the stiff chitinous har- 

 ness. 



In this country, in July the honey-flow 

 may again reappear with a consequent re- 

 vival of enthusiasm on the part of the 

 colony getting old. For a short time the 

 bees nurse the brood with more love than 

 before; but all the brightness of youth has 

 disappeared, and there remains only the 

 suspicion and the greed for moi'e gold. In 

 the last days of summer the bees pi'epare 

 them.selves for another winter's sleep by 

 pitching all the cracks of their home with 

 propolis. They have filled their storerooms 



An African jungle, the home of bees, elephants, and reptiles. 



with gold, and occasionally a bee is seen 

 flying out to get more pollen from a retard- 

 ed flower. Finally the bees again go to 

 sleep, sometimes for months, and the life 

 in the hive pulses but faintly. Quietly the 

 bees cluster around their queen, taking as 

 little of their stored treasure as possible, 

 and distributing it to their sisters. The 

 food is thus transformed into the necessary 

 warmth to preserve the inhabitants from 

 chilling. The honey is more valuable to the 

 bees than gold is to mankind, for the honey 

 not only heats the bee-home by its slow 

 combustion in winter and spring, but it 

 gives vigor to the muscles, and enables those 

 active little pets to do their stupendous 

 work in and out of the hive. The honey is 

 an important component of the food of the 

 young generation, and the very wax palace 

 in which the bees live is nothing but trans- 

 formed honey — transformed in the body of 

 the bee by certain glands. It is, therefore, 

 no wonder that the bees set a high value 

 upon their treasures of gold, and watch 

 them svispiciously. There are a few Door 

 creatures that, for one reason or another, 



