46 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



or brutal ; should they suffer from famine, from cold or 

 disease, and perish by thousands, it will still be almost 

 invariably found that the queen will be safe and alive 

 beneath the corpses of her faithful daughters. For they 

 will protect her and help her to escape ; their bodies will 

 provide both rampart and shelter ; for her will be the last 

 drop of honey, the wholesomest food. And be the disaster 

 never so great, the city of virgins will not lose heart so 

 long as the queen be alive. Break their comb twenty times 

 in succession, take twenty times from them their young and 

 their food, you still shall never succeed in making them 

 doubt of the future ; and though they be starving, and 

 their number so small that it scarcely suffices to shield 

 their mother from the enemy's gaze, they will set about 

 to reorganise the laws of the colony, and to provide for 

 what is most pressing ; they will distribute the work in 

 accordance with the new necessities of this disastrous mo- 

 ment, and thereupon will immediately reassume their labours 

 with an ardour, a patience, a tenacity and intelligence not 

 often to be found existing to such a degree in nature, true 

 though it be that most of its creatures display more con- 

 fidence and courage than man. 



But the presence of the queen is not even essential for 

 their discouragement to vanish and their love to endure. It 

 is enough that she should have left, at the moment of her 

 death or departure, the very slenderest hope of descendants. 

 " We have seen a colony," says Langstroth, one of the 

 fathers of modern apiculture, " that had not bees sufficient 

 to cover a comb of three inches square, and yet endeavoured 

 to rear a queen. For two whole weeks did they cherish 



