44 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



for her use alone. She has an escort that watches over her 

 by day and by night, that facilitates her maternal duties and 

 gets ready the cells wherein the eggs shall be laid ; she 

 has loving attendants who pet and caress her, feed her 

 and clean her, and even absorb her excrement. Should 

 the least accident befall her the news will spread quickly 

 from group to group, and the whole population will rush 

 to and fro in loud lamentation. Seize her, imprison her, 

 take her away from the hive at a time when the bees shall 

 have no hope of filling her place, owing, it may be, to 

 her having left no predestined descendants, or to there 

 being no larvas less than three days old (for a special 

 nourishment is capable of transforming these into royal 

 nymphs, such being the grand democratic principle of 

 the hive, and a counterpoise to the prerogatives of maternal 

 predestination), and then, her loss once known, after two 

 or three hours, perhaps, for the city is vast, work will 

 cease almost everywhere. The young will no longer be 

 cared for;' part of the inhabitants wilL wander in every 

 direction, seeking their mother, in quest of whom others 

 will sally forth from the hive ; the workers engaged in 

 constructing the comb will fall asunder and scatter, the 

 foragers no longer will visit the flowers, the guard at the 

 entrance will abandon their post ; and foreign marauders, 

 all the parasites of honey, forever on the watch for oppor- 

 tunities of plunder, will freely enter and leave without any 

 one giving a thought to the defence of the treasure that 

 has been so laboriously amassed. And poverty, little by 

 little, will steal into the city ; the population will dwindle, 

 and the wretched inhabitants soon will perish of distress 



