THE COMMONWEALTH OF THE HIVE 75 
the sexes, communal or individual ownership in 
property, due qualification for parenthood, the 
hegemony of might or right—all seem to have 
been happily settled long ago in this remarkable 
bee-commonwealth. In itself a prosperous, well- 
conducted hive appears to offer a living example, 
a perfect object-lesson of what Socialism, carried 
out to its last and sternest conclusions, must mean 
to human and apiarian communities alike. Here is 
a number of individuals—counting anything from 
ten thousand to fifty or sixty thousand, according 
to their condition and the time of year—living 
heathily and comfortably in the space of a few 
cubic feet. The principle, all for the greatest 
good of the greatest number, is elevated into a 
prime maxim, to which every one must bow. The 
fiction of royalty is maintained in harmony with 
the perfect republican spirit. The females are 
supreme in everything, the males in nothing. 
Growth of population is accelerated or retarded, 
according to estimations of the immediate or 
future supply of food. The proportion of the 
sexes is varied at will. The rule, that those who 
cannot work must not live, is applied with relent- 
less consistency. All the garnered wealth of the 
State is held in common for the common good. 
When the settlement becomes too populous, and 
the boundaries cannot be extended, a large part 
of its inhabitants are forced to emigrate, taking 
with them only so much of the state property as 
