THE BRIDE-WIDOW 119 
sunshine at lightning speed. Yet the first drone 
has hardly stretched a wing before another is after 
him, and still another. Thick and fast from all 
points they gather for the race, until the fleeing 
queen has drawn a whole bevy of them, streaming 
like a little grey cloud behind her. This much you 
can see as you strain your eyes in their track; but in 
a moment quarry and huntsmen have vanished 
together, volleying, as it seemed, straight up into 
the farthermost skies. 
From her birth to the day when that terrible, 
living cordon closes about her, almost the whole 
life of the queen-bee can be followed step by step. 
Only. this one moment of her bridal stands un- 
revealed, and perhaps for ever unrevealable, to 
human eyes. You can picture to yourself the wild 
chevy-chase through the clear June air and sun- 
shine ; you can give, in fancy, the prize to the 
strongest and the fleetest ; but all you will know 
for certain is that in a little while the queen returns 
to the hive, sobered and solitary, trailing behind 
her infallible evidence of her impregnation and the 
death of the victorious drone. She has been the 
bride of a moment; now she is to be the widow 
of a lifetime. Henceforward her days are to be 
spent in the twilight cloisters of the hive, flying 
abroad so rarely that many an old experienced bee- 
man will say she comes forth only once a year 
when she leads a swarm. But in her body now 
she carries the seed from which will spring up a 
