The Life of the Bee 
population will go forth, selected in ac- 
cordance with sure and immovable laws, 
and make way for hopes that as yet are 
formless. In the sleeping city there re- 
main the males from whose ranks the 
royal lover shall come, the very young 
bees that tend the brood-cells, and some 
thousands of workers who continue to 
forage abroad, to guard the accumulated 
treasure and preserve the moral traditions 
of the hive. For each hive has its own 
code of morals. There are some that are 
very virtuous and some that are very per- 
verse; and a careless bee-keeper will often 
corrupt his people, destroy their respect 
for the property of others, incite them to 
pillage, and induce in them habits of con- 
quest and idleness which will render them 
sources of danger to all the little republics 
around. These things will result from 
the bees’ discovery that work among distant 
flowers, whereof many hundreds must be 
visited to form one drop of honey, is not 
the only or promptest method of acquiring 
wealth, but that it is easier to enter ill- 
guarded cities by stratagem, or force their 
42 
