ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE HIVE 13 



and another lesson, too, with a moral as good, that these heroic 

 workers taught there, and emphasised, as it were, with the 

 fiery darts of their myriad wings, was to appreciate the delicate 

 savour of leisure, to enjoy the almost unspeakable delights 

 of those immaculate days that revolved on themselves in the 

 fields of space, forming merely a transparent globe, as void of 

 memory as the happiness without alloy. 



5 



In order to follow, as simply as possible, the life of the 

 bees through the year, we will take a hive that awakes in the 

 spring and duly starts on its labours ; and then we shall meet, 

 in their natural order, all the great episodes, viz., the formation 

 and departure of the swarm, the foundation of the new city, 

 the birth, combat, and nuptial flight of the young queens, the 

 massacre of the males, and, finally, the return of the sleep of 

 winter. With each of these episodes there will go the necessary 

 explanations as to the laws, habits, peculiarities, and events that 

 produce and accompany it ; so that, when arrived at the end 

 of the bee's short year, which extends only from April to the 

 last days of September, we shall have gazed upon all the 

 mysteries of the palace of honey. Before we open it, therefore, 

 and throw a general glance round, we only need say that the 

 hive is composed of a queen, the mother of all her people ; 

 of thousands of workers, or neuters, who are incomplete and 

 sterile females ; and, lastly, of some hundreds of males, from 

 whom one shall be chosen as the sole and unfortunate consort of 

 the queen that the workers will elect in the future, after the 

 more or less voluntary departure of the reigning mother. 



