70 Life and Love. 



His life culminates and ends in his power to 

 reproduce his race. That is his only excuse for 

 existing, his companions seem to think. Helpless, 

 stingless, he is cared for by his hive-mates until 

 he has provided life for future generations. 



In her season of greatest activity the queen bee 

 sometimes lays as many as two or three thousand 

 eggs a day, and in the course of her life may lay 

 more than a million; and this astounding number 

 of eggs she is able to fertilize by that one gift from 

 the drone I 



On the surface it seems a harsh decree that 

 takes from him his life in return for such inesti- 

 mable service, but when one looks beyond the one 

 drone into the great world of bees, striving for 

 their place in nature's crowded courts, one loses 

 sight of the individual and is borne along in sym- 

 pathy for the whole beautiful race, struggling to 

 insure its continued existence, it may be for some 

 final end, some development undreamed of by the 

 man of to-day. 



Unlike the butterfly, the bee is not exhausted 

 beyond recovery by the labor of maternity, in part 

 perhaps because her hive-mates have kept her so 

 bountifully nourished from the very beginning, 

 and continue to supply her with the nutriment 

 which will most quickly repair her loss. 



Her obligation in life is to reproduce ; the 

 workers, which are practically sexless, have no 

 obligation but to care for their teeming queen and 



