The Young Queens 
massacre of the innocents; and the sovereign 
race, and their dwellings, will all disappear. 
This is the terrible hour of the hive; the 
only occasion, with that of the more justi- 
fiable execution of the drones, when the 
workers suffer discord and death to be busy 
amongst them ; and here, as often in nature, 
it is the favoured of love who attract to 
themselves the most extraordinary shafts of 
violent death. 
It will happen at times that two queens 
will be hatched simultaneously, the occur- 
rence being rare, however, for the bees take 
special care to prevent it. But whenever 
this does take place, the deadly combat will 
begin the moment they emerge from their 
cradles; and of this combat Huber was the 
first to remark an extraordinary feature. 
Each time, it would seem, that the queens, 
in their passes, present their chitrinous 
cuirasses to each other in such a fashion 
that the drawing of the sting would prove 
mutually fatal, one might almost believe 
that, even as a god or a goddess was wont 
to interpose in the combats of the Iliad, so 
a god or a goddess, the divinity of the 
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