THE GENESIS OF THE QUEEN 105 



because more destructive of old, hallowed conven- 

 tion, than any that has gone before. 



The hive that has lost its mother-bee, and failed 

 to provide her with a fully developed, fertile suc- 

 cessor, is seen to be rapidly declining in its ^vorker- 

 population, while the horde of drones is increasing 

 at a greater rate than ever. But where do these 

 drones come from, if the very fount of bee-life has 

 been dried up at its source by the loss of a ferti- 

 lised queen ? The question brings the student to 

 what is perhaps the most remarkable fact in the 

 whole great book of natural history. 



We are not concerned, for the moment, with 

 theological matters ; nor will the thread of the 

 story of the honey-bee be laid down, however 

 briefly, for an excursion into the pulpit. Yet here 

 is something that may well give wherewithal for 

 thought. For nearly two thousand years the 

 Doctrine of the Virgin Birth has been the centre of 

 a bitter human controversy. Its liegemen uphold it 

 as a main article of faith, eternally exalted from the 

 odious need of proof ; its temperate opposers sadly 

 and quietly set it aside as a natural impossibility. On 

 one side the charge is want of faith; on the other 

 of blind credulity. And yet no one seems to have 

 thought of looking into paths of creation other than 

 human, to see if no parallel exists that may help 

 both sides, and send the swords to sheath before a 

 common mystery. The honey-bee is small among 

 the fowls, but here she looms large in the world, a 



