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and fires-the old Bel-tane fires-were kindled upon the shores, the flames rising suddenly one after another in quick succession, long red tongues of flames, which were reflected in the unruffled lake, and which cast a lurid glow upon volumes of white smoke which curled around them. And upon all, a quiet silver moon smiled down through the balmy May heaven."

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So says the popular proverb; and supposing that our bees have been so well-conducted as to swarm in May, and thus become of the highest value to us, we will now open the pages of a favourite book and learn a little of bees in general, and though our extract may be somewhat of the longest, it will not be found to be by any means tedious.

"If any form of government,' says the author of Episodes of Insect Life, "be faultless, it must be one acting immediately under Divine guidance, and of this class are the instinctive institutions of social animals, which are,

THE QUEEN BEE.

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therefore, perfect in their kind. Under an idea of such perfection, erroneously applied, the people of the hive have been held up to us people of the earth, not only as patterns of industry, but also of political economy, and have been cited, not only as arguments for monarchy, but as models also of monarchical government. Men, however, might just as well attempt to build their cities after the pattern of a honey-comb, as to mould their institutions after those of the honey-comb's inhabitants, and this we shall see by the following outline sketch of the interior of a hive.

"Insect societies, such as those of bees, wasps, ants, and termites, are in fact, things sui generis, standing by themselves; they present natural pictures to which, throughout the animal kingdom, no pendants are to be found, and it is this which makes them really interesting. A well-peopled hive consists of one queen, several hundred males or drones, and many thousand workers, the latter of which are all imperfect females, though bearing no resemblance, either in size or habits, to the pampered individual who nominally fills the throne, and actually fills the hive by supplying its abundant population.

"The royal female to whom this endowment of surpassing productiveness forms the very charter of her authority,-the very bond by which she holds the hearts of her devoted subjects, derives from character but slender claims to their respect. During the entire period of her life and reign, which is generally estimated at about two or three years, she performs not a single labour for the good of the community, save that of increasing its numbers; and her bulky body is seldom roused from its wonted state of luxurious indolence, except when her royal spirit is chafed by the influence of vindictive jealousy.

"The queen of the hive, born, like the queens of the earth, no better than her meaner sisterhood, like them issues from the egg a helpless grub; but the chamber of her birth, as compared with theirs, is of right royal dimensions, vertical in position and of cylindrical instead of octagonal form. Ample room is thus afforded for the full expansion and development of all her members, as she progresses towards maturity; while to hasten and improve her growth, the food supplied her by her assiduous nurses and future

subjects, is of the most nutritious and delicate description; not the simple bee-bread composed of common pollen, and considered good enough for common bee-infancy, but a rare and curious preparation nicely concocted from flowery juices, and, as reserved expressly for royal nourishment, called by bee-farmers, royal jelly.' Thus spaciously lodged and delicately fed, the favoured grub, when arrived at full growth, spins within her cell a silken shroud; therein changes to a nymph or pupa; and thence, in due time, issues forth in all her dignity of majestic size, in all the resplendency of her golden-ringed body-suit, the more conspicuous for the scantiness of her gauze drapery-those filmy wings in which alone her outward gifts, instead of surpassing, are inferior to those of her subjects.

"Come now to the busy workers, of whom the numerous sisterhood, the million of the hive, is made up. From these the bee character has always been painted, and painted justly, as loyal and patriotic, laborious, patient, and skilful, to which might be added, maternally affectionate; for though never mothers themselves, the latter propensity possesses them so strongly as to convert their office as nurses to the queen's progeny, to all, in short, of the infant community, into what would seem truly a labour of love. Although their instinctive virtues, if we may use the term, are so immeasurably expanded beyond the narrow growth of those apparent in their royal mistress, compression is one of the agents employed to effect this mighty difference between them; and the worker bee is, it would seem, made an useful member of the body politic, by a process very similar to that which renders the foot of a Chinese lady a somewhat useless member of her body natural.

"The baby-bee, destined to become a bee-labourer, finds herself on emerging from the egg, an inhabitant of one of those common six-sided cells, which as it would appear, is so proportioned as in some measure to limit her growth, and thus prevent her from attaining her full development. To this outward restriction is superadded an inward check in the quality of food administered by her nurses. In lieu of the 'royal-jelly,' that stimulating and nutritious extract prepared only for the queen-bee, her infancy is supported on the simple fare of bee-bread, which while it suffices to bring

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to maturity every useful endowment of activity, affords no food for the development of the sensual and vindictive passions; and with all these smothered in the cradle, our worker comes forth, mature in all apian excellence-modest in habits, a nun among insects, and a very sister of charity among her fellows.

"Thus much for the queen and the commonalty, the females of the hive; and now for the three or four hundred of the opposite sex, as partakers of the royal favour, or as candidates for the same, as well as for their worthless qualities, may fairly be compared to the aristocracy of a state where birth, not worth, makes the man. We need not describe the drone, whether of a biped or a bee community, since the one is a pattern of, and lends name to, the other. The chief difference between them is this, that bipeddrones are to be seen every day of the year, while bee-drones are to be only seen because they are only allowed to exist, during those days of summer which intervene between April and August. And truly, living as they do, to eat, a quarter's span of luxurious existence, at the expense of those who only eat to live, is a tolerably fair proportion. Such at least would seem to be the opinion of the workers of the hive; for the queen, having in the meantime chosen a royal partner, or partners from among them, the whole three or four hundred fall by a general massacre towards the end of July or beginning of August. This Amazonian city is thus rid of all useless mouths before winter, with her icy batteries, lays siege to its straw-built outworks and waxen walls.

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"Have those by whom her economy has been held up human imitation, ever thought about the awful consequences which would be involved in even a partial copy of the above severely wholesome policy?

"Having now glanced separately at each of the anomalous classes of a bee-community, we will take another look at them as they stand together socially related.

"Let us suppose ourselves one moonlight evening in this month of May taking a garden stroll beside a range of bee-hives. Instead of the nightly stillness which is wont in bee-cities to succeed the daily hum, there arises from one of these a loud, uneasy murmur, which, instead of lessening,

continues to increase with the lateness of the hour. Our hive is not of glass, but if it were, the restlessness thus audible without, would become apparent within, by the evidences of crowding, confusion, and jostling,-by all the tokens, in short, usually attendant on some grand event in expectation. From so violent a ferment of vitality, something must of necessity arise; but through the livelong night nothing comes of it, and the morning sun rises on nothing but the same scene and sound of agitated turmoil. From tokens such as these, an ordinary keeper of bees would merely surmise that a swarm was coming, and an oldfashioned dame would be getting in readiness her frying-pan and iron ladle, to ring the parting colony to their new abode. But there are those who have pretended to see much further through bee-confusion, and to enter much deeper into bee-councils. In the midst of all this bustle of movement and Babel of sound they would distinguish, shrill above the murmur of her subjects, the authoritative voice of the queen-mother about to lead, or at all events to accompany, the departing swarm of emigrants. They, doubtless, would be able to report correctly, the sovereign's harangue on this important occasion, more full, doubtless, of significance than royal speeches are wont to be, combining the pathetic, the dictatorial, and the cheering farewell, and council to the body of her people left at home, command and encouragement to the party about to attend her to a new settlement.

Mid-day now approaches; the royal speech is made; the applauding murmurs have subsided; farewells are taken, and the body of emigrants rush forth, headed, or, it may be followed, by their sovereign lady. These, however, we mean not to accompany, because we shall see more by keeping to the parent hive, through the portal of which we must, fairy-like, effect a passage at this epoch of interest and importance-the loss of its queen, with a large proportion of its population. Row upon row of hexagonal houses hang suspended in clusters from a common roof. Most of them are occupied, some as store-houses for honey and beebread, others as nurseries for bee-infancy, and, where not otherwise engaged, as dormitories for bee-labourers, who, with head and shoulders ensconced within their cells, are

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