148 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 
to set aside obvious, humdrum duties in beeman- 
ship has a still more capable ally. 
The beeman with a microscope has given the 
seven-leagued boots to his conscience; he will 
never catch up with it again in a whole life’s 
march. If the daily work in the hive, as seen 
with the naked eye, is a fascinating, duty-dispers- 
ing study, a microscopic acquaintance with the 
hive-worker herself, and the details of her extra- 
ordinary equipment, lets one into a whole new 
world of fact and thought. 
It is only under a strong glass that the true. 
place of the honey-bee in the scale of creation can 
be entirely estimated. Her work is evident to the 
most casual eye, but of the worker herself we get 
only a vague idea of a dim-hued, crystal-winged 
atom running a perpetual race with the wind and 
sunshine, or forming an all but undistinguishable 
speck in the seething, heaving multitudes within 
the hive. 
But here, on the stage of the microscope, the 
honey-bee is revealed as a totally new creature ; 
and, by little and little, a story unfolds itself about 
her which, in its way, is a perfect epic of life. 
No one can study the perplexities of hive-life for 
long without a conviction that a creature executing 
such varied and elaborate works must, of necessity, 
be herself highly developed in body and mind. 
But it seldom happens, even with the veriest tiro, 
that the expectation comes anywhere near the 
