76 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 



they can carry in their haversacks, and relinquish- 

 ing all claim to the rest. The governing females 

 have apparently agreed among themselves that 

 only one of their number shall exercise the privi- 

 lege, of motherhood; and when her fertility declines, 

 she is deposed, -and a new mother-bee, specially 

 raised for the purpose, installed in her place. 



All these, and a host of other facts as to bee- 

 life, are crowded into the bewildered brain of the 

 tiro until its capacity is exhausted, and he can 

 take no more. He begins to see, at length, that 

 he is approaching a g^eat matter too fast, and 

 from the wrong direction. Like a scholar who, 

 resolving on a new and difficult branch of study, 

 commences at the end of his treatise instead of 

 at the beginning, he finds himself in the midst 

 of terms and equations of which he knows nothing. 

 All this desultory peering into hive-windows, and 

 listening to scraps of astounding information, is 

 nothing but opening the book of bee-life here and 

 there at odd disjointed pages, getting a swift 

 impression of certain lurid, kaleidoscopic details, 

 but no grounding in the consecutive science of the 

 facts. There is nothing for it — if he be resolved to 

 know the life of the honey-bee truly — but to turn 

 back to the first page of the volume, and steadily 

 work his way through to the end — if end there be. 



All know the English honey-bee — the Black Bee, 

 as she is called, partly to distinguish her from her 



