await their hour, wrapped in a kind of shroud, all of them
motionless and pale, and fed in the darkness.

*The figures given here are scrupulously exact. They are those of a
well-filled hive in full prosperity.

On the day, then, that the Spirit of the Hive has ordained, a
certain part of the population will go forth, selected in accordance
with sure and immovable laws, and make way for hopes that as yet are
formless. In the sleeping city there remain the males, from whose
ranks the royal lover shall come, the very young bees that tend the
brood-cells, and some thousands of workers who continue to forage
abroad, to guard the accumulated treasure, and preserve the moral
traditions of the hive. For each hive has its own code of morals.
There are some that are very virtuous and some that are very
perverse; and a careless bee-keeper will often corrupt his people,
destroy their respect for the property of others, incite them to
pillage, and induce in them habits of conquest and idleness which
will render them sources of danger to all the little republics
around. These things result from the bee's discovery that work among
distant flowers, whereof many hundreds must be visited to form one
drop of honey, is not the only or promptest method of acquiring
wealth, but that it is easier to enter ill-guarded cities by
stratagem, or force her way into others too weak for self-defence.
Nor is it easy to restore to the paths of duty a hive that has
become thus depraved.

[13]

All things go to prove that it is not the queen, but the spirit of