210 LIFE AND SPORT IN HAMPSHIRE 



But, in a few months at most, unless man comes to their 

 aid and gives them a new queen, the stock must perish. 



That is the slow ruin of the hive. But sometimes 

 when the stock is weak the hive will be destroyed in 

 a day. I have watched the storm and sack of a society 

 of bees. This is all desperate heroism and bravo, a 

 piece of Nature's melodrama, with a scene at the close 

 full of strange pathos. A mere battle of bees is of no 

 special moment. It is quite common. At the end of 

 summer, when the plants yield no more honey, bees 

 will often turn robbers, and try to carry off the stores 

 of neighbour hives ; for the honey-bee has no morality 

 outside its hive, its ethics beginning and ending at 

 home. But a fierce, prolonged onslaught by a great 

 body of bees upon another hive, ending in the annihila- 

 tion of the defenders, is another and rarer event. 



In this case, after two or three skirmishes or recon- 

 naissances, the robbers came in a large and resolute 

 body. Their numbers were quickly swelled by many 

 hundreds of eager wasps, and after a savage fight, 

 lasting nearly all day, the hive was carried by storm, and 

 its population, as an organised society, had ceased to be. 



At sundown, when the uproar had almost ended, I 

 was able to examine the field of battle, and find out 

 what had been done. By this time most of the in- 

 vader bees had left the ruined hive, laden on many 

 journeys with the spoil. The field was held by the 

 wasps, still ravening for prey. The ground around the 

 hive was sprinkled with maimed and perishing bees, 



