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THE POLITY OF THE BEE-HIVE. 
is a female. Thereupon one is driven to say, This female is a queen. 
Another error. Not only does she not govern, or reign, or control, but 
in certain conjunctions she is governed, and sometimes even placed in 
private confinement. She is at once something more and something less 
than a queen. She is an object of legal and public adoration; I should 
say legal and constitutional, for this adoration is not so blind but that 
the idol, in some cases, as we shall see, may be treated very severely. 
“ Then, at bottom, the government will be democratic ? ” Yes; if we 
take into consideration the unanimous devotion of the people, the spon¬ 
taneous labour of everybody. No one commands. But, nevertheless, 
you can clearly see that in every higher work an intelligent body of 
the elite , an aristocracy of artists, takes the lead. The city is not built 
or organized by the entire people, but by a special class, a kind of 
guild or corporation. While the mob of bees seeks the common nour¬ 
ishment abroad, certain much larger bees, the wax-makers, elaborate 
the wax, prepare it, shape it, and skilfully make use of it. Like the 
medieval freemasons, this respectable corporation of architects toils 
and builds on the principles of a profound geometry. Like those of the 
old days, they are the masters of the living stone. But our worthy 
bees are far more deserving of the title ! The materials which they 
employ they have made, have elaborated by their vital action, and vivi¬ 
fied with their internal juices. 
Neither the honey nor the wax is a vegetable substance. Those 
little light bees which go in quest of the essence of the flowers bring it 
back already transformed and enriched by their virginal life. Sweet 
and pure, it passes from their mouth to the mouth of their elder sisters. 
These, the grave wax-makers, having received the aliment vivified and 
endowed with the charming sweetness which is, as it were, the soul of 
the race, elaborate it in their turn, and communicate to it their own 
peculiar life,—solidity. Wise and sedentary, they work up the liquid 
into a sedentary honey, a honey of the second quality, a kind of reflected 
honey. This is not all: the substance twice elaborated, and twice 
penetrated with animal juice, they incessantly moisten with their 
saliva, when using it so as to render it softer for working, but more 
tenacious afterwards. 
