Much is happening inside this mass that seems so inactive, but it will take you some time to grasp it and see it. The truth is that every single creature in the little groups that appear scarcely to move is hard at work, each one at its own particular trade. There is not one of them that knows what it means to be idle; and those, for instance, that seem fast asleep, as they hang in great clusters against the glass, are entrusted with the most mysterious and fatiguing task of all; it is their duty to create the marvelous wax. But we shall tell later, and in its place, precisely what each of the bees is doing; for the moment we will merely point out why it is that the different classes of workers all cluster together so strangely. The fact is that the bee, even more than the ant, is only happy when she is in the midst of a crowd; she can only live in the crowd. When she leaves the hive, which is so densely packed that she has to keep on butting with her head in order to pass, she is out of her element, away from what she loves. She will dive for an instant into flower-filled space, as the swimmer will dive into the sea that is filled with pearls; but, just as the swimmer must come to the surface and breathe the air, so must she, at regular intervals, return and breathe the crowd—or she will die. Take her away from her comrades, and however abundant the food may be, however gentle the climate, she will perish in a few days, not of hunger or cold, but merely of loneliness. She needs the crowd, she needs her own city, just as she needs the honey on which she lives. This craving for companionship in some way helps us to understand the nature of the laws that govern the hive. For in these laws the individual bee, the one bee apart from the other, simply does not count. Her entire life is sacrifice, and only sacrifice, to the bees as a race; as it were, to the everlasting community, of which she forms part.
This, however, has not always been the case, for there is a lower order of bees that prefers to work alone, and very miserably too, sometimes never seeing its young, and at others, like the bumble-bee, living in the midst of its own little family. From these we arrive, through one stage after another, to the almost perfect but pitiless society of our hives, where the individual bee exists only for the republic of which it forms a part, and where that republic itself will at all times be sacrificed in the interests of the immortal city of the future.
II
THE SWARM
We will now leave our observation hive, and, in order to get nearer to nature, consider the different events of the swarm as they come to pass in an ordinary hive, which is about ten times larger than the other, and offers entire freedom to the bees.
Here, then, they have shaken off the sluggishness of winter. The queen started laying her eggs in the very first days of February, and the workers have gone in streams to the willows and nuttrees, the gorse and violets, anemones and lungworts. Then Spring comes upon the earth, and in the hive honey and pollen abound in cellar and attic, while each day sees the birth of thousands of bees. The overgrown males now all sally forth from their cells, and sun themselves on the combs. So crowded does the city become that hundreds of workers, coming back from the flowers in the evening, will vainly seek shelter within, and will be forced to spend the night on the threshold of the hive, where many will die from the cold.
The inhabitants of the hive become restless, and the old queen begins to stir. She feels that there is something to be done; something strange, that she has to do. So far, she has religiously fulfilled her duty as a good mother; but, to her, the accomplishment of this duty will bring no reward. An unknown power threatens her tranquillity; she will soon be forced to quit this city of hers, where she has so long reigned. But this city has been made by her. She is not its queen in the sense in which men use the word. She gives no orders; she obeys, as meekly as the humblest of her subjects, the hidden power that for the present we will call the "spirit of the hive." But she is the mother of the city; its inhabitants are all her children. It is she who has founded it, brought it together out of nothing, triumphed over the uncertainty and poverty of its beginning; it is she who has peopled it; and those who move within its walls—the workers, the males, the larvæ, the nymphs and young princesses—she is the mother of them all.
What is this "spirit of the hive"—where is it to be found? It is not like the special instinct that teaches the bird to build its well-planned nest, and then seek other skies when winter threatens. It is not a fixed and unchanging habit; it is not a law that deals with special cases. On the contrary, it deals with all cases; it studies them, watches them—and then gives orders for the right thing to be done—just as a faithful steward might do who had only the interests of his master at heart.
It deals unmercifully with the wealth and the happiness, the liberty and the life, of all this winged people; and yet it always acts with judgment and wisdom, as though it were itself directed by some overpowering duty. It is the "spirit of the hive" that decides how many bees shall be born every day, arranging this in accordance with the number of flowers that gladden the country-side. It is the "spirit of the hive" that warns the queen when it is time to depart, that compels her to allow the young princesses to come into the world, although these princesses shall be her own rivals. Or perhaps, when the season is on the wane, and the flowers are growing less plentiful, the spirit will instruct the workers to do away with the princesses, so that there may be no chance of disturbance, and work may once again become the sole object of all.