THE GENESIS OF THE QUEEN 97 



Right in the heart of the winter-cluster he sees 

 the queen bestirring herself to lay the first eggs, 

 and the bees around her slowly awakening to the 

 duty before them. With the passing of the weeks, 

 he sees the brood-area steadily enlarging ; the 

 hitherto close-packed throng of workers gradually 

 extending itself over a larger space of comb ; the 

 water- fetchers increasingly busy ; the pollen- 

 gathering bees already at work in the crocus- 

 borders of the garden, where the year's first gold 

 and white and purple is gaily flaunting in the sun. 

 He notes that the progress of the colony within 

 the warm hive does not go by the calendar, but 

 checks with each return of cold, and forges ahead 

 only when the spring seems to be coming in right 

 good earnest. He sees, even now, when February 

 is waning and the hazel-catkins fill the bare wood- 

 land with a shimmer of emerald, that the colony 

 still husbands its stores, eking them out with a 

 long-sighted parsimony that shall be more than 

 justified when the inevitable cold break comes in 

 the flowery midst of the English May. It is 

 impossible to overlook the evidence of a wise, 

 directing mind through it all ; and where should 

 this be seated but in the brain of the single large 

 bee, courted and fed and groomed unceasingly by 

 the attendant host around her — she who is the 

 teeming mother of past tens of thousands, and who 

 carries in her body the seed of all the generations 

 to come .■* 



