196 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 



among themselves the tendency is rather to 

 magnify the virtues and achievements of their 

 charges; to be over-lavish of inference from too 

 scanty or too isolated facts. And the proved 

 impossibility of having anything to do with the 

 honey-bee without being carried away sooner or 

 later on a high wave of enthusiasm, makes any 

 attempt at holding the balances truly between the 

 zealous bee-lover and the interested but temperate- 

 minded reader, a difficult and delicate task. Any 

 writer on the honey-bee nowadays must be 

 reckoned an ultra-specialist in an age of specialism ; 

 and here it is not easy to preserve the sense of 

 proportion undimmed, especially for one admittedly 

 speaking out of the ranks of beemanship, where all 

 are aiders and abettors in ardour, impatient of any 

 estimation falling short of high-water mark. 



The story of the Comb-Builders, however, sets 

 none of the usual pitfalls in the way of the over- 

 enthusiastic penman. In its soberest incident and 

 least important detail it is so wonderful, that 

 exuberance of language is as powerless to exag- 

 gerate, as a niggardly tongue to minimise, its true 

 and due effect. I f the ordering of the bee-common- 

 wealth — the intricate systems of sanitation, division 

 of labour, treatment of the queen and worker-larvae, 

 and the like — is subject for marvel, and seems 

 infallibly to denote the possession of high facul- 

 ties, a much greater degree of acumen must be 

 conceded to the worker-bee, when we come to 



