THE QUEEN BEE. 



45 



As she cuts so she turns in her cell, until she cuts a lid almost 

 clear away, but frequently hanging by a silken hinge, then she 

 is ready to make her escape. But, perhaps circumstances are not 

 sufficiently ripe for her to take charge of the hive. The mother 

 bee may not be ready to quit, the weather may not be what is 

 desired for swarming, or there may be a sudden cessation in the 

 honey flow. In the latter case she is executed without much 

 ceremony, but in the two former cases she is again sealed up and 

 fed where she is by the bees until the conditions that caused her 

 re-imprisonment are removed; then she is permitted to enter the 

 busy home, and ready to commence the journey from maturity to 

 maternity. 



The beehive and its inhabitants are like the conjurer's inex- 

 haustible bottle, only there is no trickery about it; nevertheless, 

 they contain a never-ending theme. Dr. Johnson said: "I have 

 often amused myself with thinking how different a place London 

 is to different people," and I have said, if not in so many words, 

 the same in regard to the beehive and its inhabitants. The 



scientist, from his standpoint, sees only the wonders of the sociality 

 of insects and their wonderful architecture. Both of these, to the 

 uninitiated, are mysterious adaptations to the domestic economy in 

 bee-life. Solomon of old held up the ant as an example of in- 

 dustry — "Consider the ant." The moralist of to-day points the 

 improvident and lazy to the thrift of the hive — "Consider the 

 bee." Paterfamilias takes his text from the same source from 

 which to reprove and improve his share of the coming generation. 

 The commercial man looks upon bees only as a source from which 

 financial profits may be obtained. The school-master refers his 

 class to them (the bees) as one of Nature's greatest object lessons, 

 teeming with incentives for the acquisition of knowledge. I 

 venture to affirm there is not a school-teacher in the Public Service 

 but has given an object lesson to his class on some phase or other 

 of bee-life. If all the good things that have been said in schools 

 about bees were gathered together, what an interesting volume 

 they would make ! Every writer on natural history, of course, 

 must say something about bees ; but how they let their fancy rove 

 from facts ! Neither is there an insect in the whole entomological 

 catalogue that has had so much poetry written about it as the bee. 

 And what wonder-imaginations the poets have taken into rhyme! 



The most interesting point of any and everything is the centre 

 from which radiate the facts which give knowledge. By far too 

 many beekeepers "have eyes and see not" beyond* the commercial 



