.BEES IN THE HIVE. 215 
same swarm without finding each other out. But this 
only delays the fight till they get into the new hive ; 
sooner or later one must^e killed. 
And now a third queen begins to reign in the old 
hive, and she is just as restless as the preceding ones, 
for there are still more princesses to be born. But 
this time, if no new swarm wants to start, the workers 
do not try to protect the royal cells. The young 
queen darts at the first she sees, gnaws a hole with 
her jaws, and, thrusting in her sting through the hole 
in the cocoon, kills the young bee while it is still a 
prisoner. She then goes to the next, and the next, 
and never rests till all the young princesses are de- 
stroyed. Then she is contented, for she knows no 
other queen will come to dethrone her. After a few 
days she takes her flight in the air with the drones, and 
comes home to settle down in the hive for the winter. 
Then a very curious scene takes place. The drones 
are no more use, for the queen will not fly out again, 
and these idle bees will never do any work in the 
hive. So the worker-bees begin to kill them, falling 
upon them, and stinging them to death, and as the 
drones have no stings they cannot defend themselves, 
and in a few days there is not a drone, nor even a 
drone-egg, left in the hive. This massacre seems very 
sad to us, since the poor drones have never done any 
harm beyond being hopelessly idle. But it is less sad 
when we know that they could not live many weeks, 
even if they were not attacked, and, with winter com- 
ing, the bees cannot afford to feed useless mouths, 
so a quick death is probably happier for them than 
starvation. 
