THE SWARM 27 



with provisions sufficient to feed the whole people for several 

 weeks. Here, lodged in transparent cells, are the pollens, 

 love-ferment of every flower of spring, making brilliant splashes 

 of red and yellow, of black and mauve. Close by, sealed 

 with a seal to be broken only in days of supreme distress, 

 the honey of April is stored, most limpid and perfumed of 

 all, in twenty thousand reservoirs that form a long and magni- 

 ficent embroidery of gold, whose borders hang stiff and rigid. 

 Still lower the honey of May matures, in great open vats by 

 whose side watchful cohorts maintain an incessant current of 

 air. In the centre, and far from the light whose diamond 

 rays steal in through the only opening, in the warmest part 

 of the hive, there stands the abode of the future ; here does 

 it sleep, and wake. For this is the royal domain of the brood- 

 cells, set apart for the queen and her acolytes ; about 1 0,000 

 cells wherein the eggs repose, 1 5 or 1 6,000 chambers tenanted 

 by larvag, 40,000 dwellings inhabited by white nymphs to whom 

 thousands of nurses minister.^ And finally, in the holy of 

 holies of these parts, are the three, four, six, or twelve sealed 

 palaces, vast in size compared with the others, where the 

 adolescent princesses lie who await their hour ; wrapped in 

 a kind of shroud, all of them motionless and pale, and fed 

 in the darkness. 



12 



On the day, then, that the spirit of the hive has ordained, 

 a certain part of the population will go forth, selected in ac- 

 cordance with sure and immovable laws, and make way for 



* The figures given here are scrupulously exact. They are those of a well-filled 

 hive in full prosperity. 



