18 THE BEE-MASTER OF WARRILOW 
been fully dealt with in an earlier volume by the 
same writer—‘‘ The Lore of the Honey-Bee ’— 
and to this the reader is referred. But the fact 
is pretty generally admitted that, while the little 
worker-bee is a creature specially evolved to suit 
a unique environment, the mother-bee remains 
practically identical with the mother-bees of untold 
ages back. She retains many of the instincts of the 
race as it existed under tropic conditions, when there 
was no alternation of hot and cold seasons; and 
hence her complete inability to understand, and 
consequent rebellion against the needs of modern 
times. 
The Future Evolution of the Hive 
Whether the worker-bees will ever teach her to 
conform to the changed conditions is an interesting 
problem. We know how they have ‘ improved” 
life in the hive—how a matriarchal system of 
government has been established there, the duty of 
motherhood relegated to one in the thirty thousand 
or so, and how the males are suffered to live only 
so long as their procreative powers are useful to the 
community. It is little likely that the omnipotent 
worker-bee will stop here. Failing the eventual 
production of a queen-bee who can be put to sleep 
for the winter, they may devise means of getting 
rid of her in the same way as they disburden them- 
selves of the drones. In some future age the 
mother-bee may be ruthlessly slaughtered at the end 
of each season, another queen being raised when 
breeding-time again comes round. Then, no 
doubt, honey-bees would hibernate, as do so many 
