The Life of the Bee 
all the mysteries of the palace of honey. 
Before we open it, therefore, and throw a 
general glance around, we only need say 
that the hive is composed of a queen, the 
mother of all her people; of thousands 
of workers or neuters who are incomplete 
and sterile females; and lastly of some 
hundreds of males, from whom one shall 
be chosen as the sole and unfortunate 
consort of the queen that the workers 
will elect in the future, after the more or 
less voluntary departure of the reigning 
mother. 
[6] 
The first time that we open a hive there 
comes over us an emotion akin to that we 
might feel at profaning some unknown 
object, charged perhaps with dreadful 
surprise, as a tomb. A legend of menace 
and peril still clings to the bees. There 
is the distressful recollection of her sting, 
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