i8o THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 



life, and nature intends this to suffice for her 

 whole fruitful period, it is not easy to see why she 

 should go out with the swarm at all. That she is 

 not the inveterate recluse as generally believed, 

 and that she does occasionally make short flights 

 in the open during her laying career, is well 

 proved. The desire, therefore, to see the light 

 again after a long incarceration cannot be urged 

 as her reason for going off with the swarm. A 

 much more plausible notion is that the sexual spirit 

 is again roused in the queen, just as it seems to be 

 roused for the first time in the worker-bee ; and 

 that, with all, the journey is undertaken as a 

 mating-flight, a faint re-echo of a racial custom 

 long extinct, bearing the closest analogy to the 

 marriage-swarm from the ant-hill. It must be 

 borne in mind that, although the queen-bee is 

 undoubtedly rendered capable of producing her 

 kind of both sexes during several years, as the 

 result of a single fertilisation,! it cannot be incon- 

 testably held that she never again meets the drone 

 under any circumstances.) There is nothing in 

 her physical organism to prevent a second coition, 

 although with the drone this is impossible, for 

 more reasons than the all-sufficient one — that he 

 dies in his marriage-hour. 



In the old bee-gardens, where the "swarm in 

 May " is still a living, present thing, it is pleasant 

 to sit with the proprietor under the rosy shade of 

 apple-boughs waiting for the swarms to issue, and 



