THE MYSTERY OF THE SWARM 175 



or wings away into the upper skies, irrevocable 

 as last year's mill-water. 



Beemen call it the swarming fever; and fever it 

 is in very truth. The reasons for it have long 

 ago been crystallised into exact and accepted 

 phrases. An overcrowded condition of the hive ; 

 the desire of the bees to get rid of a failing 

 queen ; the excitement of the queen herself at the 

 menace of coming rivals ; the natural instinct of 

 colonies to increase and multiply — anything but 

 the one all-sufficient and obvious reason, that 

 bees swarm because they suddenly and intensely 

 desire it. 



The story of the Sioux Indian, — won for civili- 

 sation from boyhood, over-educated and over- 

 refined, decorated with a high college-degree and 

 adorning a great pulpit, and then casting it all to 

 the four winds, stripping and painting himself, and 

 raging away with his kind on the war-trail, — has 

 a near parallel in the behaviour of bees at 

 swarming-time. Instinct could never be a party 

 to such an inconsequent, outrageous, brilliantly 

 reckless, joyous proceeding. But it is ever in the 

 way of reason to be splendidly unreasonable at 

 times, and here the honey-bee shows herself the 

 true child of her origins. From a stern, self- 

 elected destiny-maker, callously pressing to the 

 forefront of life over all obstacles ot heart and 

 hearth, she changes back, for the nonce, into the 

 aboriginal bee- woman, thoughtless, pleasure-loving. 



