110 THE BEE-MASTER OF WARRILOW 
bee, who does not hibernate in the common sense 
of the term, must devise a means of supporting life 
through the famine period. Many creatures can 
and do accomplish this by merely laying up in 
a comatose condition until such time as their 
natural food is plentiful again, and they may safely 
resume their old activities. But this will not do 
for the doughty honey-bee. A curious aspect of 
her life is the way in which she appears to recognise 
the competitive spirit in all the higher forms of 
earthly existence, and deliberately sets herself in 
the fore-rank of affairs with that principle in view. 
It would be easy for a few hundred worker-bees to 
get together in some warm nook underground, 
with that carefully tended piece of egg-laying 
mechanism, their queen, in their midst; and in a 
semi-dormant condition to pass the dark winter 
months through, gradually rousing their own fires 
of life as the year warmed up again in the spring. 
But such a system would mean that the colony 
would have to start afresh from the bottom of 
the ladder of progress with every year. The hive- 
bee has conceived a better plan, and the basis, the 
essential factor of it all, is this thing of mystery 
which we call honey. 
The True Purpose of the Hive 
The ancient Roman name for a beehive was 
alvus, which, translated into its blunt Anglo-Saxon 
equivalent, means belly. And this gives us in a word 
the whole secret about honey-making. As a matter 
of fact, the hive in summer acts as a digestive 
chamber, wherein the winter aliment of the stock is 
