236 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 
kind; but each worker is deliberately manufactured 
to a set pattern by the authorities in the hive, 
obedient to the call of the State. And when did 
the female bees begin this tampering with the 
springs of life, this improving upon Creation, which 
was the first vital step, failing which the present 
bee-commonwealth had been impossible? It looks 
very like a superb act of generalship in the great 
primeval war of sex—a brilliant piece of strategy 
that gave victory at a blow, and rendered the 
after-steps in the scheme of conquest a matter of 
logical sequence. 
The whole question of the artificial production 
of the worker-bee is surrounded with difficulties ; 
and it seems possible, on our present level of 
knowledge, to do little more than state the facts, 
and there leave them. The supremacy of the 
females in hive-life appears to have dated from 
the time that the vast majority deprived themselves, 
or were deprived by their immediate ancestors, of 
their share in procreation, and the ovipositor dis- 
covered itself as a weapon of offence and defence. 
Before the worker-bees existed as an armed force, 
there is no reason to suppose that the female bee 
had a great physical advantage over the drone. 
The queen-bee’s propensity to thrust her ovipositor 
into the spiracles of her rival, and so effectually to 
despatch her, as well as her inveterate hatred of 
her kind, may both be late developments, due to 
the isolated, artificial life she now leads, While 
