Also maidenhood of body without wem is common to them all, and so is
birth also. For they are not medlied with service of Venus, nother
resolved with lechery, nother bruised with sorrow of birth of
children. And yet they bring forth most swarms of children.

Bees make among them a king, and ordain among them common people. And
though they be put and set under a king, yet they are free and love
their king that they make, by kind love, and defend him with full
great defence, and hold [it] honour and worship to perish and be spilt
for their king, and do their king so great worship that none of them
dare go out of their house, nor to get meat, but if the king pass out
and take the principality of flight. And bees chose to their king him
that is most worthy and noble in highness and fairness, and most clear
in mildness, for that is chief virtue in a king. For though their king
have a sting yet he useth it not in wreck. And also bees that are
unobedient to the king, they deem themselves by their own doom for to
die by the wound of their own sting. And of a swarm of bees is none
idle. Some fight, as it were in battle, in the field against other
bees, some are busy about meat, and some watch the coming of showers.
And some behold concourse and meting of dues, and some make wax of
flowers, and some make cells now round, now square with wonder binding
and joining, and evenness. And yet nevertheless, among so diverse
works none of them doth espy nor wait to take out of other's travail,
neither taketh wrongfully, neither stealeth meat, but each seeketh and
gathereth by his own flight and travail among herbs and flowers that
are good and convenable.

Bees sit not on fruit but on flowers, not withered but fresh and new,
and gather matter of the which they make both honey and wax. And when