282 THE BEE NATION. 



thoroughly overlooked the queen is by the workers and how 

 dependent she is upon them, and that her sphere of authority 

 does not nearly approach that of the president of a human 

 Republic. She appears less as ruler than as the first and 

 most important servant of the commonwealth, and homage 

 is paid her more from love and respect and because the 

 existence of the colony depends upon her, than from fear of 

 her sovereign power. Nor has she, like the constitutional 

 human monarch, the remarkable prerogative of personal 

 immunity and irresponsibility, but must give throne and life 

 as security for the fulfilment of her royal duties. 



Statesmen, workmen, and reformers, take ye an example 

 therefrom ! 



But not only in political but also in personal training 

 may the bees serve us as models and examples. For where 

 shall we find united with so much virtue, industry, and self- 

 sacrifice, so much modesty and simplicity of form and of 

 behavior ? What a distance between the quiet bee in its 

 simple dress, and the glittering thousand-hued butterfly, a 

 coquettish idler, fluttering from flower to flower, from 

 pleasure to pleasure, and delighting the eye of the spectator 

 with its wealth of color ! or the proud buzzing and humming 

 beetle, letting the rays of the sunlight glance back from the 

 golden and glittering wing-cases ! And although they both 

 draw the eyes of the world on them and are admired and 

 sought by all, yet how far they stand below our bees in 

 intelligence and accomplishments, for which they only can 

 feel admiration who know them, and who are able to judge 

 their merit and to prize them. What a wonderful picture 

 of human life and common-place human estimation ! The 

 thoughtful Greeks indeed, with a warm fondness for the 

 famous honey of Hymettus, have shown excellent views of 

 true virtue and true merit by calling their God the Father, 

 Zeus, the God of Bees and the Father of Bees, and by 

 making sacred bees guard the grotto in which he was born. 

 In the form of bees the Muses showed to the lonians the 

 path from Attica over the sea to Asia, and priestesses were 

 named bees on account of their peculiar sanctity. Born of the 

 sun, the bee ever remembers its home, while the lazy drone is 

 born from the carcase of the horse. Bee-souls are therefore 

 those souls which keep themselves pure and think of results. 

 Bees avoid all that is base. They placed sweet honey on the 



