1 6 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



garden, and are now compelled to return to the shameful 

 squalor of their poor overcrowded home. 



It is with them as with all that is deeply real ; they 

 must be studied, and one must learn how to study them. The 

 inhabitant of another planet who should see men and women 

 coming and going almost imperceptibly through our streets, 

 crowding at certain times round certain buildings, or waiting 

 for one knows not what without apparent movement in the 

 depths of their dwellings, might conclude therefrom that they, 

 too, were miserable and inert. It takes time to distinguish 

 the manifold activity contained in this inertia. 



And indeed every one of the little almost motionless groups 

 in the hive is incessantly working, each at a different trade. 

 Repose is unknown to any ; and such, for instance, as seem 

 the most torpid, as they hang in dead clusters against the 

 glass, are entrusted with the most mysterious and fatiguing task 

 of all : it is they who secrete and form the wax. But the 

 details of this universal activity will be given in their place. 

 For the moment we need only call attention to the essential 

 trait in the nature of the bee which accounts for the extra- 

 ordinary agglomeration of the various workers. The bee is 

 above all, and even to a greater extent than the ant, a creature 

 of the crowd. She can only live in the midst of a multitude. 

 When she leaves the hive, which is so densely packed that 

 she has to force her way with blows of her head through the 

 living walls that enclose her, she departs from her element. 

 She will dive for an instant into flower-filled space as the 

 swimmer will dive into the sea that is filled with pearls, but 

 under pain of death it behoves her at regular intervals to return 

 and breathe the crowd as the swimmer must return and breathe 



