On the Threshold of the Hive 



or cold, but of loneliness. From the 

 crowd, from the city, she derives an 

 invisible aliment that is as necessary 

 to her as honey. This craving will 

 help to explain the spirit of the laws of 

 the hive. For in them the individual is 

 nothing, her existence conditional only, 

 and herself, for one indifferent moment, 

 a winged organ of the race. Her whole 

 life is an entire sacrifice to the manifold, 

 everlasting being whereof she forms part. 

 It is strange to note that it was not always 

 so. We find even to-day, among the 

 melliferous hymenoptera, all the stages 

 of progressive civilisation of our own do- 

 mestic bee. At the bottom of the scale 

 we find her working alone, in wretched- 

 ness, often not seeing her offspring (the 

 Prosopis, the CoUetes, etc.) ; sometimes 

 living in the midst . of the limited 

 family that she produces annually (as in 

 the case of the humble-bee). Then she 

 3* 



