INTRODUCTION aii 
honey-bee or perish? We have still probably a 
few thousand years wherein to think it out, and 
prepare for it; but unless the world comes to an 
end, or human increasing-and-multiplying comes 
to an end, one earth will eventually become too 
small to hold us. With this thought in mind, a 
study of the honey-bee and the arrangements of 
hive-life, takes on a new interest. Supposing that 
the political economy of a beehive may be taken 
as a foreshadowing of the ultimate human state, 
there is no denying that we get a glimpse into an 
eminently disquieting state of things, at least from 
the masculine point of view. We see matriarchy 
triumphant ; the females holding supreme control 
in the State, and not only initiating all rules of 
public conduct, but designing and carrying through 
all public works. The male is reduced to the one 
indispensable office of sex, and even a single 
exercise of this is vouchsafed only to a few in a 
thousand. But to create the large and permanent 
army of workers necessary in a State such as this, 
and to recruit it wholly from the females, it became 
necessary to revise all rules of life from their 
very foundation. There must have been a great 
renunciation among the bees, male and female 
alike, when the resolve was made to leaye the 
whole duty of procreation of their kind to one 
b 
