THE SWARM 41 



23 

 To-day this is all changed. A certain number of workers, 

 it is true, will peacefully go to the fields, as though nothing 

 were happening ; will come back, clean the hive, attend to 

 the brood-cells, and hold altogether aloof from the general 

 ecstasy. These are the ones that will not accompany the 

 queen ; they will remain to guard the old home, feed the 

 nine or ten thousand eggs, the eighteen thousand larvas, the 

 thirty-six thousand nymphs and seven or eight royal princesses 

 that to-day shall all be abandoned. Why they have been 

 singled out for this austere duty, by what law, or by whom, 

 it is not in our power to divine. To this mission of theirs 

 they remain inflexibly, tranquilly faithful ; and though I 

 have many times tried the experiment of sprinkling a colour- 

 ing matter over one of these resigned Cinderellas, that are 

 moreover easily to be distinguished in the midst of the re- 

 joicing crowds by their serious and somewhat ponderous gait, 

 it is rarely indeed that I have found one of them in the 

 delirious throng of the swarm. 



24 



And yet, the attraction must seem irresistible. It is 

 the ecstasy of the perhaps unconscious sacrifice the god has 

 ordained ; it is the festival of honey, the triumph of the 

 race, the victory of the future ; the one day of joy, of for- 

 getfulness and folly ; the only Sunday known to the bees. 

 It would appear to be also the solitary day upon which all 



