194 THE LIFE OF THE BEE 



good hive has presented him with eighty or a hundred pounds 

 of honey ; the most remarkable will sometimes even give two 

 hundred, which represent an enormous expanse of liquefied 

 light, immense fields of flowers that have been visited daily 

 one or two thousand times. He throws a last glance over 

 the colonies, which are slowly becoming torpid. From the 

 richest he takes their superfluous wealth to distribute it among 

 those whom misfortune, unmerited always in this laborious 

 world, may have rendered necessitous. He covers the dwell- 

 ings, half-closes the doors, removes the useless frames, and 

 leaves the bees to their long winter sleep. They gather in 

 the centre of the hive, contract themselves, and cUng to 

 the combs that contain the faithful urns, whence there shall 

 issue, during days of frost, the transmuted substance of summer. 

 The queen is in the midst of them, surrounded by her guard. 

 The first row of the workers attach themselves to the sealed 

 cells ; a second row cover the first, a third the second, and 

 so in succession to the last row of all, which form the enve- 

 lope. When the bees of this envelope feel the cold stealing 

 over them they re-enter the mass, and others take their place. 

 The suspended cluster is like a sombre sphere that the walls 

 of the comb divide ; it rises imperceptibly or falls, it advances 

 or retires, in proportion as the cells grow empty to which 

 it clings. For, contrary to what is generally believed, the 

 winter life of the bee is not arrested, although it be slackened. 

 By the concerted beating of their wings — little sisters that 

 have survived the flames of the sun — which go quickly or 

 slowly in accordance as the temperature without may vary, 

 they maintain in their sphere an unchanging warmth, equal 

 to that of a day in spring. This secret spring comes from 



