NEWS OF SPRING 



their bronze-ringed bellies stretch and swell like strangled 

 leather bottles. Now the bee, when bursting with honey, can 

 no longer curve her abdomen at the requisite angle to unsheathe 

 her sting. She becomes, so to speak, mechanically harmless 

 from that moment. It is generally imagined that the bee- 

 keeper employs the fumigator to stupefy, to half-asphyxiate 

 the warriors that gather their treasure in the blue and thus, 

 under favour of a defenceless slumber, to effect an entrance into 

 the palace of the innumerous sleeping amazons. This is a mis- 

 take: the smoke serves first to drive back the guardians of the 

 threshold, who are ever on the alert and extremely combative; 

 then, two or three whiffs come to spread panic among the work- 

 ers: the panic provokes the mysterious orgy and the orgy help- 

 lessness. Thus is the fact explained that, with bare arms and 

 unprotected face, one can open the most populous hives, ex- 

 amine their combs, shake off the bees, spread them at one's 

 feet, heap them up, pour them out like grains of corn and 

 quietly collect the honey, in the midst of the deafening cloud 

 of evicted workers, without incurring a single sting. 



5 

 But woe to whoso touches the poor hives! Keep away 



[210] 



