THE BEE IN AUTUMN AND WINTER. I3, 



CHAPTER IV. 



THE BEE IN AUTUMN AND WINTER. 



" Morn on the mountain, like a summer bird, 

 Lifts up her purple wing; and in Ihc vales 

 The gentle wind, a sweet and passionate wooer, 

 Kisses the blushing leaf, and stirs up life 

 Within the solerxin woods of ash deep crimsoned, 

 And silver beech, and maple yellow leaved. 

 Where Autumn, like a faint old man, sits down 

 By the wayside aweary." 



24. The Death of the Drones — As autumn with its chill 

 nights and shortening clays advances, the supply of nectar 

 rapidly diminishes in the plants. It is an anxious time for the 

 bees. Stores are not accumulating. The colony has suffered 

 serious losses. From time to time the white-sealed combs of 

 honey — the fruit of many days of earnest labour, have been 

 removed, stolen by some dexterous hand. And daily in the 

 combs to which the queen is wedded fresh mouths cry out for 

 food. It is necessary for the survival of the colony that a limit 

 be set to the consumption of stores. The drones — always 

 heavy feeders, and for whom nature has now no sphere of 

 usefulness, have become, by reason of their appetite, the most 

 immediate danger. They have had their day of indulgence, 

 and sunny idleness. Their continued presence in the hive : 

 their death within its portals when the cold of winter should 

 make their removal impossible and render their decaying 

 bodies a source of peril — must be prevented. The time has 

 come for them to share that sacrifice to the future which is the 

 lot of all alike in the community of high ideals to which they 

 belong. In this is no special injustice. Nor can one say, with 

 any degree of certainty, that in this laying down of life for the 

 sake of others there is none of that glorious spirit of love 

 which has inspired the workers to give themselves and all 

 their energies and endurance even unto death, in faithful 

 adherence to their purpose. The slower intelligeiice of the 

 drone may not realise at once the need that has arisen; and 

 the life of pampered idleness to which, in the nature of things, 

 he has been condemned, may unfit him for that display of 

 voluntary self-abnegation so visible in the other sex. Many, 



