AFTER THE FEAST 253 
sentinel bees at the entrance recognise their own 
comrades, while they promptly fall upon all inter- 
loping strangers. 
The preparation of the hive for the winter is of 
a piece with al] else that the bee undertakes. As 
the area of the brood-nest shrinks, the empty cells 
are filled with honey, this being brought down 
from the store-cells farthest away. The foragers 
keep steadily at work whenever the weather holds, 
gathering up the remnants of the feast and bring- 
ing them home to swell the winter-larder. Where 
there is much ivy, a fine October will often see 
the hives as busy again as ever they were in the 
bravest days of June; but the throng of bees is 
manifestly smaller. The rich song of life begins 
later in the day, and lasts only during the brightest 
hours ; and that wonderful night-sound, the deep 
underground thunder of the fanning bees, is gone . 
from the bee-garden, just as the scent of the 
clover-nectar, brewing and steaming in the hives, 
no longer drifts across in the darkness, filling the 
bee-master’s house with the fragrance he loves 
more than all else in the world. 
The old ragged-winged bees, that have stood 
the brunt of the season, are now, too, nearly all 
gone. The hives are filled with bees of the same 
race, inspired by the same traditions ; but they are 
at the beginning of life, the raw recruits of destiny, 
a mere stop-gap crew. They have no memories 
of the time when work was a fever, a tumultuous 
