82 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 



With hundreds of prolific mothers in the hive, 

 each having enough to do at home in rearing her 

 own children, and a crowd of lazy, irresponsible 

 drones who could do nothing but dance in the 

 sunshine or go a-wooing, how were the daily needs 

 of the hive to be satisfied, leaving out of account 

 the provision that must be made for coming winter 

 days ? It was clearly a case of reform or annihila- 

 tion ; and it may be conceived that the woman- 

 bees, in default of masculine initiative, took the 

 reins into their own hands. 



It is a prophetic story. First they discovered 

 their latent powers. The harmless ovipositor 

 revealed itself as a prime weapon of offence. 

 Thus the army was with the revolutionaries, and 

 the rest was easy. A great, far-reaching scheme 

 was set afoot. Motherhood was to be a privilege 

 of the few and the fittest ; work the compulsory 

 lot of the mass. Hard times had already bred a 

 lean, unfertile gang among them, and it was dis- 

 covered that famine rations in the nursery meant 

 a wholesale increase in these natural spinsters of 

 the race. Henceforth the little sex-atrophied 

 worker-bee was multiplied in the hive, while the 

 fully nurtured mothers were gradually reduced to 

 a few — at last to one alone. It was a triumph 

 of collective self-sacrifice for the well-being and 

 high persistence of the race. 



All this may be imagined as having taken place 

 in infinitely remote times, long before man sue- 



