138 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



exhausted and breathless, her claws and teeth glide harmless 

 over the waxen walls. 



The bees that surround her have calmly watched her 

 fury, have stood by inactive, moving only to leave her path 

 clear ; but no sooner has a cell been pierced, and laid waste, 

 than they eagerly flock to it, drag out the corpse of the 

 ravished nymph or the still living larva, and thrust it forth 

 from the hive ; thereupon gorging themselves with the precious 

 royal jelly that adheres to the sides of the cell. And finally, when 

 the queen has become too weak to persist in her passion, they 

 will themselves complete the massacre of the innocents ; and 

 the sovereign race, and their dwellings, will all disappear. 



This is the terrible hour of the hive ; the only occasion, 

 with that of the more justifiable execution of the drones, 

 when the workers suffer discord and death to be busy 

 amongst them ; and here, as often in nature, it is the 

 favoured of love who attract to themselves the most extra- 

 ordinary shafts of violent death. 



It will happen at times that two queens will be hatched 

 simultaneously, the occurrence being rare, however, for the 

 bees take special care to prevent it. But whenever this does 

 take place, the deadly combat will begin the moment they 

 emerge from their cradles ; and of this combat Huber was 

 the first to remark an extraordinary feature. Each time, it 

 would seem, that the queens, in their passes, present their 

 chitrinous cuirasses to each other in such a fashion that the 

 drawing of the sting would prove mutually fatal, one might 

 almost believe that, even as a god or a goddess was wont 

 to interpose in the combats of the Iliad, so a god or a 

 goddess, the divinity of the race perhaps, interposes here ; 



