The specialty of rule hath been neglected:
And, look, how many Grecian tents do stand
Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow factions.
When that the general is not like the hive
To whom the foragers shall all repair.
What honey is expected?”
The Dramatist’s knowledge of bee-life appears also in the metaphor used by Warwick (2 Henry VI., act iii. sc. 2, l. 125, vol. v. p. 168),—
“The commons, like an angry hive of bees,
That want their leader, scatter up and down,
And care not who they sting in his revenge.”