76 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 
they can carry in their haversacks, and relinquish- 
ing all claim to the rest. The governing females 
have apparently agreed among themselves that 
only one of their number shall exercise the privi- 
lege of motherhood; and when her fertility declines, 
she is deposed, and a new mother-bee, specially 
raised for the purpose, installed in her place. 
All these, and a host of other facts as to bee- 
life, are crowded into the bewildered brain of the 
tiro until its capacity is exhausted, and he can 
take no more. He begins to see, at length, that 
he is approaching a great matter too fast, and 
from the wrong direction. Like a scholar who, 
resolving on a new and difficult branch of study, 
commences at the end of his treatise instead of 
at the beginning, he finds himself in the midst 
of terms and equations of which he knows nothing. 
All this desultory peering into hive-windows, and 
listening to scraps of astounding information, is 
nothing but opening the book of bee-life here and 
there at odd disjointed pages, getting a swift 
impression of certain lurid, kaleidoscopic details, 
but no grounding in the consecutive science of the 
facts. There is nothing for it—if he be resolved to 
know the life of the honey-bee truly—but to turn 
back to the first page of the volume, and steadily 
work his way through to the end—if end there be. 
Allknow the English honey-bee—the Black Bee, 
as she is called, partly to distinguish her from her 
