PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



It is, moreover, the one half-obscure point in bee life. 

 One knows all the rest, their three sexes, rigorously 

 specialized, the precise industry of the wax-workers, the 

 diligence of the collectresses, the political sense of these 

 extraordinary amazons, their initiatives, when the hive 

 is too full, their starts for the formation of new swarms, 

 the duels of queens where the populace intervene, the 

 massacre of males as soon as they are useless, the nurse's 

 art in transforming a vulgar larva into the larva of a 

 queen, the methodical activity of these republics where 

 all wills, united in a single conscience, have no other aim 

 but the common well-being and the conservation of the 

 race. It is however these over-mechanical virtues which 

 constitute the inferiority of the bee; the workers are 

 extremely laborious and well-behaved, but they lack even 

 that slight personality which characterizes sexed insects. 

 The much less reasonable queen is more living, she is 

 capable of jealousy, rage, of despair when she feels her 

 royalty menaced by the new queen whom the nurses 

 have bred up in secret. Even the useless, noisy, pillag- 

 ing, parasitic males, drunk and swollen with vain sperm 

 are more attractive than the honest workers, and hand- 

 somer also, stronger, more slender, more elegant. Bee- 

 lovers generally despise these musketeers, yet it is they 

 who incarnate the animality, that is to say the beauty 

 of the specie. If it is true as M. Maeterlinck believes 

 (La Vie des Abeilles), that the most vigorous of seven 

 or eight hundred males finally seduces the royal virgin, 

 then their laziness, their greediness, their giddy stagger- 

 ing are but so many virtues. 



It seems that the queen and even the workers can 

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