The Life of the Bee 
their cells, and disport themselves on the 
combs; and so crowded does the too pros- 
perous city become that hundreds of belated 
workers, coming back from the flowers 
towards evening, will vainly seek shelter 
within, and will be forced to spend the night 
on the threshold, where they will be deci- 
mated by the cold. 
Restlessness seizes the people, and the 
old queen begins to stir. She feels that 
a new destiny is being prepared. She 
has religiously fulfilled her duty as a good 
creatress; and from this duty done there 
result only tribulation and sorrow. An in- 
vincible power menaces her tranquillity; she 
will soon be forced to quit this city of hers, 
where she has reigned. But this city is her 
work; it is she, herself. She is not its 
queen in the sense in which men use the 
word. She issues no orders; she obeys, as 
meekly as the humblest of her subjects, the 
masked power, sovereignly wise, that for the 
present, and till we attempt to locate it, we 
will term the ‘‘spirit of the hive.” But she 
is the unique organ of love; she is the 
mother of the city. She founded it amid 
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