The Life of the Bee 
ciently established are others so precise 
and unvarying as to prove that the same 
degree of political civilisation has not 
been attained by all races of the domestic 
bee, and that, among some of them, the 
public spirit still is groping its way, seek- 
ing perhaps another solution of the 
royal problem. The Syrian bee, for 
instance, habitually rears 120 queens and 
often more, whereas our Apis Mellifica 
will rear ten or twelve at most. Cheshire 
tells of a Syrian hive, in no way abnormal, 
where 120 dead queen-mothers were 
found, and go living, unmolested queens. 
This may be the point of departure, or 
the point of arrival, of a strange social 
evolution, which it would be interesting 
to study more thoroughly. We may add 
that as far as the rearing of queens is con- 
cerned, the Cyprian bee approximates to 
the Syrian. And finally, there is yet 
another fact which establishes still more 
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