236 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 



kind; but each worker is deliberately manufactured 

 to a set pattern by the authorities in the hive, 

 obedient to the call of the State. And when did 

 the female bees begin this tampering with the 

 springs of life, this improving upon Creation, which 

 was the first vital step, failing which the present 

 bee-commonwealth had been impossible ? It looks 

 very like a superb act of generalship in the great 

 primaeval war of sex — a brilliant piece of strategy 

 that gave victory at a blow, and rendered the 

 after-steps in the scheme of conquest a matter of 

 logical sequence. 



The whole question of the artificial production 

 of the worker-bee is surrounded with difficulties ; 

 and it seems possible, on our present level of 

 knowledge, to do little more than state the facts, 

 and there leave them. The supremacy of the 

 females in hive-life appears to have dated from 

 the time that the vast majority deprived themselves, 

 or were deprived by their immediate ancestors, of 

 their share in procreation, and the ovipositor dis- 

 covered itself as a weapon of offence and defence. 

 Before the worker-bees existed as an armed force, 

 there is no reason to suppose that the female bee 

 had a great physical advantage over the drone. 

 The queen-bee's propensity to thrust her ovipositor 

 into the spiracles of her rival, and so effectually to 

 despatch her, as well as her inveterate hatred of 

 her kind, may both be late developments, due to 

 the isolated, artificial life she now leads. While 



