THE YOUNG QUEENS 129 



brush her, and at the tip of their tongue they present the first 

 honey of the new life. But the bee that has come from 

 another world is bewildered still, trembling and pale ; she 

 wears the feeble look of a little old man who might have 

 escaped from his tomb, or perhaps of a traveller strewn with 

 the powdery dust of the ways that lead unto life. She is 

 perfect, however, from head to foot ; she knows at once all 

 that has to be known ; and, like the children of the people, 

 who learn, as it were, at their birth, that for them there 

 shall never be time to play or to laugh, she instantly makes 

 her way to the cells that are closed, and proceeds to beat her 

 wings and to dance in cadence, so that she in her turn may 

 quicken her buried sisters ; nor does she for one instant 

 pause to decipher the astounding enigma of her destiny, or 

 her race. 



67 



The most arduous labours will, however, at first be 

 spared her. A week must elapse from the day of her birth 

 before she will quit the hive ; she will then perform her first 

 " cleansing flight," and absorb the air into her trachese, which, 

 filling, expand her body, and proclaim her the bride of space. 

 Thereupon she returns to the hive, and waits yet one week 

 more ; and then, with her sisters, born the same day as her- 

 self, she will for the first time set forth to visit the flowers. 

 A special emotion, now, will lay hold of her ; one that French 

 apiarists term the soleil d'artijice, but which might more 

 rightly perhaps be called the " sun of disquiet." For it 

 is evident that the bees are afraid, that these daughters 



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