THE BEE NATION. 217 



and that our champions of emancipation should here find an 

 unexpected support of their theory. 



The poor drones, or males, find themselves completely in 

 the power and under the dominion of their working sisters. 

 But even the queen herself, great as is the love and honor 

 usually shown to her, is not secure from the stings of her 

 democratically-minded subjects if she do not fulfil her royal 

 duties in every re.-pect as expected and demanded of her. 

 When, for instance, the time for swarming, the division of 

 the colony, has arrived, the old queen sometimes decides 

 only reluctantly to leave the dear home-hive, and make 

 room for her younger rivals. She comes out, followed by 

 a crowd of her dependents, but soon returns to the hive, 

 still accompanied by them. But if this is repeated two or 

 three times without the queen taking flight, the bees, 

 angered at the repeated deception, fall upon her and kill 

 her, either with their stings or by smothering her, or they 

 pull her off the board so that she may perish outside the 

 hive a friendly proceeding termed " an exile," by bee- 

 masters. Men are wont to be more lenient towards the 

 faults or weaknesses of their kings, and the banishment of 

 them by their rebellious subjects but seldom repeats itself 

 in history, while, as a rule, when the matter is reversed, 

 men are not so punctilious, and the banishment of rebellious 

 and disloyal subjects is a valued and much used privilege of 

 human rulers. 



A late-impregnated queen, who lays more drones' eggs 

 than others, is also not safe from her subjects, which insist 

 on the greatest order and regularity being observed in their 

 household. " A female shut up for thirty days in June was 

 set free and came back impregnated. From the beginning 

 of June until November she laid only male eggs, and con- 

 tinued the same proceeding in the following April. The 

 working bees became wild and unsettled, and killed her in 

 May" (Giebel, "Natural History of Animals," iv.,p. 191). It 

 has already been mentioned that older queens, which in 

 consequence of exhaustion of their store of semen can lay no 

 more fertilized eggs, share a similar fate. 



When the weather is bad, so that the old queen is unable 

 to swarm and found a new colony soon enough before the 

 emergence of her young rivals, the bees will kill her or drive 

 her by force out of the hive, unless, on the other hand, the 



