The Life of the Bee 
ally, in the holy of holies of these parts, 
are the three, four, six, or twelve sealed 
palaces, vast in size compared with the 
others, where the adolescent princesses lie 
who await their hour, wrapped in a kind 
of shroud, all of them motionless and 
pale, and fed in the darkness. 
[12 ] 
On the day, then, that the Spirit of the 
Hive has ordained, a certain part of the 
population will go forth, selected in ac- 
cordance with sure and immovable laws, 
and make way for hopes that as yet are 
formless. In the sleeping city there 
remain the males, from whose ranks the 
royal lover shall come, the very young 
bees that tend the brood-cells, and some 
thousands of workers who continue to 
forage abroad, to guard the accumu- 
lated treasure, and preserve the moral 
traditions of the hive. For each hive 
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