22 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



this duty done there result only tribulation and sorrow. An 

 invincible power menaces her tranquillity ; she will soon be 

 forced to quit this city of hers, where she has reigned. But 

 this city is her work ; it is she, herself. She is not its queen 

 in the sense in which men use the word. She issues no orders ; 

 she obeys, as meekly as the humblest of her subjects, the masked 

 power, sovereignly wise, that for the present, and till we 

 attempt to locate it, we will term the " spirit of the hive." 

 But she is the unique organ of love ; she is the mother of 

 the city. She founded it amid uncertainty and poverty. She 

 has peopled it with her own substance ; and all who move 

 within its walls — workers, males, larvas, nymphs, and the 

 young princesses whose approaching birth will hasten her own 

 departure, one of them being already designed as her successor 

 by the " spirit of the hive " — all have issued from her flanks. 



lO 



What is this "spirit of the hive" — where does it reside ? 

 It is not like the special instinct that teaches the bird to con- 

 struct its well-planned nest, and then seek other skies when 

 the day for migration returns. Nor is it a kind of mechanical 

 habit of the race, or blind craving for life, that will fling the 

 bees upon any wild hazard the moment an unforeseen event 

 shall derange the accustomed order of phenomena. On the 

 contrary, be the event never so masterful, the " spirit of the 

 hive " still will follow it, step by step, like an alert and quick- 

 witted slave, who is able to derive advantage even from his 

 master's most dangerous orders. 



It disposes pitilessly of the wealth and the happiness, the 



