INTRODUCTION xxi 
these mysterious hive-people cause their queen- 
mother to give them either sons or daughters 
according to the needs of the community. They 
lead her to the drone-cells, and she forthwith 
deposits eggs that hatch out infallibly as drones ; 
and in the combs specially made wherein to rear 
the aborted females, the workers, the queen is 
caused to lay eggs that just as assuredly produce 
only the worker-bee. 
It is the oldest civilisation in the world, this 
wonderful commonwealth of the bee-people, and 
it is not unprofitable to examine it in the light 
of ideas which are at present only flickering up 
uncertainly on the distant path, but which might 
well broaden out some day into general confla- 
gration. It is conceivable that a time existed 
when the conditions of bee-life were very different 
from those we see to-day. Bees have drawn 
together into vast communities, just as men are 
slowly, but surely, gathering into cities. A time 
may come when individual existence outside the 
city may be as impracticable for men, as life has 
become for separate bee-families away from the 
hive ; and then there may arise a purely masculine 
dilemma. It may be that once the magnificent 
drone was,of real consequence in domestic affairs. 
Bee-life may have consisted of numberless small 
