The Young Queens 
reaction against the misfortune of the un- 
fruitful queen? Can we have here one of 
those blind and extreme precautions which, 
ignoring the cause of the evil, overstep the 
remedy, and, in the endeavour to prevent 
an unfortunate accident, bring about a 
catastrophe? In reality—though we must 
not forget that the natural, primitive reality 
is different from that of the present, for 
in the original forest the colonies might 
well be far more scattered than they are 
to-day—in reality the queen’s unfruitful- 
ness will rarely be due to the want of males, 
for these are very numerous always, and 
will flock from afar; but rather to the rain 
or the cold, that will have kept her too 
long in the hive, and more frequently still 
to the imperfect state of her wings, whereby 
she will be prevented from describing the 
high flight in the air that the organ of the 
male demands. Nature, however, heedless 
of these more intrinsic causes, is so deeply 
concerned with the multiplication of males, 
that we sometimes find, in motherless hives, 
two or three workers possessed of so great 
a desire to preserve the race that, their 
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