The Life of the Bee 
sufficient; the first are mere hypotheses 
that cannot be verified, the others do no 
more than transplant the mystery. And 
useful as it may be to transplant mystery 
as often as we possibly can, it were not 
wise to imagine that a mystery has 
ceased to be because we have shifted its 
home. 
[61 ] 
Now let us leave these dreary building 
grounds, this geometrical desert of cells. 
The combs have been started, and are 
becoming habitable. Though it be here 
the infinitely little that, without apparent 
hope, adds itself to the infinitely little; 
though our eye with its limited vision 
look and see nothing, the work of wax, 
halting neither by day nor by night, will 
advance with incredible quickness. The 
impatient queen already has more than 
once paced the stockades that gleam white 
212 
