The Life of the Bee 
quickly from group to group, and from 
the guards at the threshold to the workers 
on the furthest combs, the whole population 
quivers. 
14 
It was for a long time believed that when 
these wise bees, generally so prudent, so 
far-sighted and economical, abandoned the 
treasures of their kingdom and flung them- 
selves upon the uncertainties of life, they 
were yielding to a kind of irresistible folly, 
a mechanical impulse, a law of the species, 
a decree of nature, or to the force that 
for all creatures lies hidden in the revolu- 
tion of time. It is our habit, in the case 
of the bees no less than our own, to re- 
gard as fatality all that we do not as yet 
understand. But now that the hive has 
surrendered two or three of its material 
secrets, we have discovered that this exodus 
is neither instinctive nor inevitable. It is 
not a blind emigration, but apparently the 
well-considered sacrifice of the present 
generation in favour of the generation to 
come. The Pee eee per has only to destroy 
4 
