286 The Poets and Nature. 



These wretched workers are no sooner out of their cells 

 than they go to work at first in the hive, on menial jobs, 

 "doing the chores," and then in the toil of collecting 

 honey, pollen, and propolis. Their bodies therefore are 

 mere portmanteaus. Inside they are bags for holding 

 fluid honey, and outside they have six pockets, into which 

 they exude wax, and two trough-like receptacles on their 

 thighs for holding pollen. Miserable little omnibuses. 

 All day long they fly from " the Bank " to the flower, and 

 from the flowers back to " the Bank," full inside and full out. 

 Even the fur upon their backs is used to augment their 

 loads, for the pollen of the flowers catches in it and sticks ; 

 and when they get home they are tooth-combed out by 

 attendants. It is a dreadful life, and a very immoral one, 

 for what is the end of it ? A comfortable winter of leisure 

 and luxury, in a warm hive, with plenty of companions 

 and abundant food? Not a bit of it. The toilers who 

 secrete the wax and build the cells, who collect the honey 

 and the bee-bread to fill those cells "against winter," are 

 all dead before winter comes 



" So bees to feed another's need, 

 From flowers doe honey gather." 



They live only about six weeks. And if by any accident 

 they should come to harm, be maimed, or sick, they are 

 either murdered or thrust out from the hive, to die as they 

 please on the ledge outside the door. 



Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes. Yet, sexless, soul- 

 less, as these assiduous little "neuters" are, there is a great 

 pathos in the thought that nothing but the feeding which they 

 might have had separates them from the life of a " mother- 

 bee," who lives several years, is always attended to with un- 

 ceasing care, and defended from every vexation and want, 

 and who, by the accident of a different diet for a week, 

 is endowed with every feminine susceptibility, and achieves 

 the highest ambitions of her sex is repeatedly married, 



