THE GENESIS OF THE QUEEN 115 
of killing has once been hers; she will never know 
it again. Now her own fate is in the balance. 
It may be death, or a new life in a new home: 
all depends on the deliberate decree of those who 
have made her, and who now use or discard her, 
for their own purposes. If it be late spring, and 
the condition of the stock warrant it, this govern- 
ing spirit may decide for colonisation, and the old 
queen may be disposed of by sending her off with 
a swarm. But other counsels may prevail. The 
times may be unripe, or the weather inopportune. 
And then Fate, in the shape of a merciless appli- 
cation of principles, will descend upon her, and 
her own wise children will ruthlessly put her to 
death. 
This. State-execution of the queen, at the first 
sign of waning fertility, is a peculiarly pathetic as 
well as a tragic phase of bee-life. The stern, 
soured amazons of the hive must have their 
systems and conventions in everything they under- 
take; and they cannot even bring about the 
supersession of the old queen without due circum- 
stance and ceremonial. Given that it would be 
against the best interests of the common weal that 
she should retain her life after the loss of her 
queenhood, one swift stroke would immediately 
determine the matter, and the law—that there 
shall be no useless members in the bee-republic— 
would have its due fulfilment. But old tradition 
rules that the queen shall suffer no violence from 
8—2 
