The Swarm 
deep loyalty, gravity, and unsleeping watch- 
fulness man alone can betray: a wisdom that 
makes and unmakes, and keeps careful watch 
over all that happens within and without the 
city. If sudden flowers abound, or the 
queen grow old or less fruitful, if the popula- 
tion increase and be pressed for room, you 
then shall find that the bees will proceed 
to rear royal cells. But these cells may be 
destroyed if the harvest fail or the hive be 
enlarged. Often they will be retained so 
long as the young queen have not accom- 
plished, or succeeded in, her marriage flight, 
to be at once annihilated when she returns, 
trailing behind her, trophy-wise, the infal- 
lible sign of her impregnation. Who shall 
say where the wisdom resides that can thus 
balance present and future, and prefer what 
is not yet visible to that which already 
is seen? Where the anonymous prudence 
that selects and abandons, raises and lowers ; 
that of so many workers makes so many 
queens, and of so many mothers can make 
a people of virgins? We have said else- 
where that it lodged in the “spirit of the 
hive,” but where shall this spirit of the 
97 G : 
