The Life of the Bee 
Whence do they derive the energy we our- 
selves never possess, whereby they break with 
the past as though with an enemy? Who is 
it selects from the crowd those who shall 
go forth, and declares who shall remain? 
No special class divides those who stay from 
those who wander abroad; it will be the 
younger here and the elder there; around 
each queen who shall never return veteran 
foragers jostle tiny workers who for the 
first time shall face the dizziness of the 
blue. Nor is the proportionate strength of 
a swarm controlled by chance or accident, by 
the momentary dejection, or transport, of an 
instinct, thought, or feeling. I have more 
than once tried to establish a relation between 
the number of bees composing a swarm and 
the number of those that remain; and al- 
though the difficulties of this calculation are 
such as to preclude anything approaching 
mathematical ‘precision, I have at least been 
able to gather that this relation—if we take 
into account the brood-cells, or, in other 
words, the forthcoming births—is sufficiently 
constant to point to an actual and mysterious 
reckoning on the part of the genius of the hive. 
216 
