272 The Poets and Nature. 



"As they sat, 



A bee alighted on a clover tuft 

 Ceased for an instant its laborious hum, 

 And peer'd in petals of the purple flowers 

 With busy pleasure. ' There,' said Montague, 

 ' Yon little insect, wiser than mankind, 

 Might teach the world a lesson that it needs.' 

 ' What ! in its ruthless murder of the drones 

 And pampering of a fat luxurious queen ? ' 

 ' Not so, but in its love of daily toil, 

 A toil unselfish. In the social hive 

 One labours for the whole community, 

 And the community for every one. 

 Toil is their joy.' " 



' ' Without a soul ! unless the bees have souls ! 

 These yield a blind obedience to their chief, 

 And feed and swaddle it and make it fat, 

 And toil and moil until th' appointed hour 

 When in hot swoop they fall upon the drones, 

 And kill the fluttering fathers of the state 

 Or may be choose another sovereign." Mackay. 



For a long time it was supposed that the sovereign 

 of the hive was a male, "the king;" and I think this 

 sentence from Pliny is worth quoting, " Hath the king 

 of the bees alone no sting, and is he armed only with 

 majesty? or hath nature bestowed on him a sting and 

 yet denied him only the use thereof? For certain it is, 

 that this great commander over the rest does nothing 

 with his sting, and yet a wonder it is to see how they all 

 readily obey him." Virgil has a king-bee, and he describes 

 how his subjects defend their monarch : 



"Onward they troop, and brandishing their wings, 

 Fit their fierce claws and point their poison'd stings, 

 Throng to the imperial tent, their king surround, 

 Provoke the foe, and loud defiance sound." 



That the queen-bee has a sting is abundantly proved 

 every year by her using that weapon to kill her possible 

 rivals, but it is one of the curiosities of bee-life that, 

 however irritated (and her subjects treat her with the 



