i 
The Swarm 
it would seem, that nature’s laws are some- 
what wild and extravagant in all that per- 
tains to love, it tolerates, during summer 
days of abundance, the embarrassing presence 
in the hive of three or four hundred males, 
from whose ranks the queen about to be 
born shall select her lover; three or four 
hundred foolish, clumsy, useless, noisy crea- 
tures, who are pretentious, gluttonous, dirty, 
coarse, totally and scandalously idle, in- 
satiable, and enormous. 
But after the queen’s impregnation, when 
flowers begin to close sooner and open later, 
the spirit one morning will coldly decree the 
simultaneous and general massacre of every 
male. It regulates the workers’ labours, 
with due regard to their age; it allots their 
task to the nurses who tend the nymphs and 
the larve, the ladies of honour who wait on 
the queen, and never allow her out of their 
sight; the house-bees who air, refresh, or 
heat the hive by fanning their wings, and 
hasten the evaporation of the honey that 
may be too highly charged with water; the 
architects, masons, waxworkers and sculp- 
tors who form the chain and construct 
35 
