THE COMMONWEALTH OF THE HIVE 8: 
together with her kind for warmth during the 
cold season; and then, as this got longer and 
longer, to make some food-provision for winter 
days that would eke out endurance until the spring 
sun again wooed the earth into flower-giving. 
Thus the first communal bee-nests must have been 
evolved from the universal need: of the race: the 
first common storehouses instituted : a host of un- 
foreseen difficulties and side-issues encountered, 
and means for dealing with them contrived. The 
spirit of invention must have been busy then with 
the race, and taxed to the limit, of her resources, 
For never did Pandora open celestial casket upon 
earth with more redoubtable consequences, than 
when the Great Artificer set up the honey-bee as 
an examplar of city-building to the nomadic world 
of men. 
From the crowding together of the separate 
bee-families for mutual protection against the ele- 
ments, to a complete and permanent fusion of life 
and interests, must have been only a step, as 
Nature works. But then there must have been 
stirring times—social upheavals, educative dis- 
asters, a cataclysmic war of sex. Bee-life must 
have been shaken to its very foundations. When 
and how the woman-bee first got the upper hand 
in the direction of affairs, it is unimportant to 
determine. But it is,certain that she got it, and 
has kept it ever since. The population problem 
must have been the great, overwhelming one. 
6 
