THE COMMONWEALTH OF THE HIVE 8i 



together with her kind for warmth during the 

 cold season ; and then, as this got longer and 

 longer, to make some food-provision for winter 

 days that would eke out endurance until the spring 

 sun again wooed the earth into flower-giving. 

 Thus the first communal bee-nests must have been 

 evolved from the universal need of the race : the 

 first common storehouses instituted : a host of un- 

 foreseen difficulties and side-issues encountered, 

 and means for dealing with them contrived. The 

 spirit of invention must have been busy then with 

 the race, and taxed to the limit, of her resources. 

 For never did Pandora open celestial casket upon 

 earth with more redoubtable consequences, than 

 when the Great Artificer set up the honey-bee as 

 an examplar of city-building to the nomadic world 

 of men. 



From the crowding together of the separate 

 bee-families for mutual protection against the ele- 

 ments, to a complete and permanent fusion of life 

 and interests, must have been only a step, as 

 Nature works. But then there must have been 

 stirring times — social upheavals, educative dis- 

 asters, a cataclysmic war of sex. Bee-life must 

 have been shaken to its very foundations. When 

 and how the woman-bee first got the upper hand 

 in the direction of affairs, it is unimportant to 

 determine. But it is certain that she got it, and 

 has kept it ever since. The population problem 

 must have been the great, overwhelming one. 

 6 



