144 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 
when they have put by what they consider a 
sufficiency of stores, and an idle spirit spreads 
visibly among them. In a few cases there is a 
distinct moral twist in the national character, and 
the bees take to robbing their neighbours’ larders 
instead of working to furnish their own. 
Permanent queenlessness is a calamity which 
affects different colonies in different ways. With 
some it means complete despair, a cessation of all 
enterprise or interest in life. Work is stopped; 
the guards are withdrawn from the gate; the 
community seems to give up in a body, and to 
await extinction with no more hope than a batch 
of criminals in the condemned cell. But with 
others the common disaster is but a signal for 
a universal quickening of wits, a furbishing-up of 
all possible and impossible resources. To bees of 
this temper we should look for such episodes as 
the egg-purloining to supply a queen-cell, which 
has been already dealt with. But for supreme in- 
genuity, even though it be the forlornest of forlorn 
hopes, perhaps there is nothing to equal a device 
sometimes resorted to in this last emergency. 
Looking through a hive which is not only with- 
out a queen, but which is without any means of 
raising one, certain mysterious eggs are unex- 
pectedly discovered. These eggs are obviously 
quite newly laid, but not in the orthodox way. 
A normal queen works consistently from cell to 
cell, over a fairly regular patch of comb, and 
