THE BEE IS SUMMER. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE BEE IN SUMMER. 



14. A Crisis. — About the time that sees the clover showing 

 white in growing meadows, affairs within the hive approach 

 a crisis. 50,000 gatherers, speeding upon the fragrant breezes 

 through every sunny hour of May, have carried home great 

 quantities of nectar to fill to oversowing each vacant cell. The 

 queen, who, possessed of an insatiable desire for re-production 

 and in the full flow of maternal vigour, has increased by 

 thousands daily the number of her children, now finds herself 

 encroached upon in her domain. The combs are fully occupied. 

 The hive is crowded. The little bands of " fanners " at the 

 door exhaust themsehes in vain endeavours to ventilate their 

 over-heated home (59). The bees returning from the fields 

 loiter at the entrance, and hesitate to add their presence to the 

 close-packed mass within. Some will cluster there, victims of 

 a strange inertia ; 



" The slow hours measuring off an idle day." 



Within a week the hatching brood will add a new congestion. 

 Plainly a crisis has arrived. Something must be done, and 

 done at once ; for in bee life, excei^t in winter, inactivity is the 

 extreme vice that merits naught of mercy. 



15. Tlie Mysterious Influence — Now that subtle, mysterious 

 Influence which governs the whole life of the bee from the 

 moment in which she struggles from her uncapped cell, a 

 downy, awkward infant, until worn out with strain of excessive 

 industry she drops from some i^ink heather bell, in the autumn 

 evening, to rise no more : that silent, persistent, irresistible 

 Influence which orders the economy of the hive ; inspires each 

 tiny occupant with courage of a hero ; makes all instinct with 

 uniformity of splendid purpose ; and endows them with glorious 

 spirit of self-sacrifice above all human imitation — a willingness 

 to leave all, to lose all, and to bear all that may be, for love 

 of the race and reverence for its destiny — asserts itself. A 

 tremor passes through the bees, and an entirely new emotion 

 seizes them. That love of others which recks not of personal 

 suffering; that awe of the future which counts not of present 



