THE BRIDE-WIDOW 119 



sunshine at lightning speed. Yet the first drone 

 has hardly stretched a wing before another is after 

 him, and still another. Thick and fast from all 

 points they gather for the race, until the fleeing 

 queen has drawn a whole bevy of them, streaming 

 like a little grey cloud behind her. This much you 

 can see as you strain your eyes in their track ; but in 

 a moment quarry and huntsmen have vanished 

 together, volleying, as it seemed, straight up into 

 the farthermost skies. 



From her birth to the day when that terrible, 

 living cordon closes about her, almost the whole 

 life of the queen-bee can be followed step by step. 

 Only this one moment of her bridal stands un- 

 revealed, and perhaps for ever unrevealable, to 

 human eyes. You can picture to yourself the wild 

 chevy-chase through the clear June air and sun- 

 shine ; you can give, in fancy, the prize to the 

 strongest and the fleetest ; but all you will know 

 for certain is that in a little while the queen returns 

 to the hive, sobered and solitary, trailing behind 

 her infallible evidence of her impregnation and the 

 death of the victorious drone. She has been the 

 bride of a moment ; now she is to be the widow 

 of a lifetime. Henceforward her days are to be 

 spent in the twilight cloisters of the hive, flying 

 abroad so rarely that many an old experienced bee- 

 man will say she comes forth only once a year 

 when she leads a swarm. But in her body now 

 she carries the seed from which will spring up a 



