Deborah: " The Honey- Bee." 275 



is stoked with food incessantly, and a certain number of 

 workers are always in attendance to see to the cleanliness 

 of every part of their patient egg-layer and her surroundings. 

 Having made only one perfect female, they are most anxious 

 to save themselves loss of time and, as they think them, of 

 earnings, by any accident to her. But affection there is 

 none. When she is getting used up, and either does not 

 lay eggs fast enough, or begins to lay undersized ones, or 

 drone-eggs only, they hustle her off the premises, and let 

 the poor creature die at the door of the hive from cold 

 and hunger. Or if by mismanagement there happen to be 

 superfluous " queens," the horny-handed display an abomin- 

 able eagerness in having the redundant females done to 

 death. They themselves are sexless, or rather are abortive 

 females, and it is not difficult from a human standpoint to 

 understand the bitter glee with which these horrid neuters 

 assist in the murder of the perfect females, who if permitted 

 to live, would enjoy those privileges of the sex which are 

 denied to their misformed selves. And yet, atrocious to 

 relate, these very neuters are able of their own act, by the 

 mere fact of having accidentally eaten some of the "royal 

 jelly," to lay eggs, and these eggs, monstrous ova that they 

 are, actually produce bees ! Has nature offered anywhere 

 in all her works a more baffling problem of all-round per- 

 plexity than this ? 



Then too the drone, with his big silly head, and his eyes 

 meeting atop and giving him a foolish blank-eyed look, think- 

 ing himself so fine a fellow. Watch him come out of the hive 

 on a fine morning. How cautiously he pokes out his feelers 

 to see if it be cold or not ; how he stops up the doorway 

 against the industrious neuters, who have been up and at 

 work since daybreak ; how he loiters on the ledge, elaborat- 

 ing his toilet, exasperating the laden folk who cannot find 

 room to settle. And then he thinks of breakfast, and flies 

 off with a slow heavy droning flight to the nearest flowers. 



