it would seem, that nature's laws are somewhat wild and extravagant
in all that pertains to love, it tolerates, during summer days of
abundance, the embarrassing presence in the hive of three or four
hundred males, from whose ranks the queen about to be born shall
select her lover; three or four hundred foolish, clumsy, useless,
noisy creatures, who are pretentious, gluttonous, dirty, coarse,
totally and scandalously idle, insatiable, and enormous.

But after the queen's impregnation, when flowers begin to close
sooner, and open later, the spirit one morning will coldly decree
the simultaneous and general massacre of every male. It regulates
the workers' labours, with due regard to their age; it allots their
task to the nurses who tend the nymphs and the larvae, the ladies of
honour who wait on the queen and never allow her out of their sight;
the house-bees who air, refresh, or heat the hive by fanning their
wings, and hasten the evaporation of the honey that may be too
highly charged with water; the architects, masons, wax-workers, and
sculptors who form the chain and construct the combs; the foragers
who sally forth to the flowers in search of the nectar that turns
into honey, of the pollen that feeds the nymphs and the larvae, the
propolis that welds and strengthens the buildings of the city, or
the water and salt required by the youth of the nation. Its orders
have gone to the chemists who ensure the preservation of the honey
by letting a drop of formic acid fall in from the end of their
sting; to the capsule-makers who seal down the cells when the
treasure is ripe, to the sweepers who maintain public places and
streets most irreproachably clean, to the bearers whose duty it is
to remove the corpses; and to the amazons of the guard who keep
watch on the threshold by night and by day, question comers and
goers, recognise the novices who return from their very first