THE MYSTERY OF THE SWARM 179 



the full inheritance of her sex, the queen-bee, 

 seems often at the fountain-head of the revolution. 

 Sometimes, undoubtedly, it is she who first de- 

 velops this longing, feverish unrest, and by little 

 and little communicates it to the whole colony. 

 Here the variability of bee-nature comes sharply 

 into evidence. Some hives will show this restless 

 spirit for many days before the swarm issues, 

 while with others the great upheaval seems, as 

 far as the mass of bees is concerned, to be a 

 sudden unpremeditated thing occurring in the 

 midst of the universal content and industry. 

 The preparations for raising new queens are 

 always taken in hand betimes, but probably this is 

 the work of the far-seeing, sober old bees of the 

 hive, with whom communism has become a settled 

 and accepted calamity. The bees who will ulti- 

 mately constitute the swarm may be supposed to 

 nourish their secret desires from the first moment 

 the queen shows signs of mutability ; to neglect 

 all their old tasks, first in heart and then in reality ; 

 and finally — when the queen's mood has reached 

 its culminating point, and her work in the hive is 

 in virtual abeyance — to throw down plummet and 

 trowel and hod, and rush forth in a wild, hilarious 

 company, urged by a longing that they are as 

 powerless to resist as to understand. 



In the study of bee-life one comes upon many 

 questions, but seldom answers to fit all. If the 

 queen's fecundation takes place only once in her 

 12 2 



