XVili THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 
pair alone of their number—one pair only out 
of every thirty thousand or so—in order that the 
rest could devote themselves to ceaseless, sexually 
incommoded toil. 
This may be imagined as following on a great 
discovery, an epoch-making discovery, changing 
the whole face and future of bee-life—how, by the 
nursing and feeding of the young grub of the 
female bee, she could be atrophied into a mere, 
sexless, over-intellectual labourer, or glorified into 
a creature lacking, it is true, all initiative and 
almost all mental power, but possessing a body 
capable of mothering the whole nation. Here is 
socialistic political economy carried to its sternest, 
most logical conclusions. All is sacrificed for the 
good of the State. The individual is nothing: 
the race is everything. ‘ Thorough” is the motto 
of the honey-bee, and she drives every theory 
home to its last notch. Men are pleased to call 
themselves bee-masters; but the best of them can 
do no more than study the ways of their bees, 
learn in what directions it is their will to move, 
and then try to smooth the way for them. The 
worker-bees collectively are the whole brains in 
the business, and the bee-keeper is as much the 
slave of the conditions and systems they have 
inaugurated as they are themselves; while the 
