PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE 



neuter of the workers, which sets them out of norm, 

 if it is a cause of order in the hive, is above all a cause 

 of death. There are no living creatures save those 

 who can perpetuate life. 



The interest offered by bees is very great, but does 

 not pass that offered by the observation of most hymenop- 

 tera, social or solitary, or of certain neuroptera, such as 

 termites ; or even by beavers, and many birds. But bees 

 have been through many ages our sugar-producers, and 

 they alone; hence man's tenderness for insects more valu- 

 able than all others to him. Their intelligence is well de- 

 veloped, but soon shows its limitations. People pretend 

 that bees know their master, a manifest error. The 

 relations of bees and man are purely human. It is evi- 

 dent that they are as ignorant of man as are all the 

 other insects, and all other invertebrata. They allow 

 themselves to be exploited, in the sense of their instinct, 

 to the limit of famine and muscular exhaustion. Virgil's 

 phrase is excessively true, in all the senses one wishes 

 to take: Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes. (Bees mak- 

 ing honey not for yourselves.) These clever, witty 

 creatures are fooled by the gross fakes of our industrial 

 cunning. When they have stacked their winter's pro- 

 visions, honey, into their wax combs, one removes the 

 honeycombs, and replaces them by sockets of varnished 

 paper: and the solemn bees, set themselves to forgetting 

 their long labours; before these virgin combs, they have 

 but one idea: to fill them. They restart work with a 

 bustle which would excite veritable pity in any man but 

 a bee-keeper. These commercials have invented a hive 

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