The Life of the Bee

Here, yet again, there confronts us an enigma of the hive; and in this case one of the most unfathomable. We know that the virgin queen is not sterile; but the eggs that she lay...

It is to the future, therefore, that the bees subordinate all things; and with a foresight, a harmonious co-operation, a skill in interpreting events and turning them to the bes...

This is the terrible hour of the hive; the only occasion, with that of the more justifiable execution of the drones, when the workers suffer discord and death to be busy amongst...

And indeed every one of the little almost motionless groups in the hive is incessantly working, each at a different trade. Repose is unknown to any; and such, for instance, as s...

Once more, he has not the slightest desire to abandon his human ideal. That even which at first diverts him from this ideal teaches him to return to it. It were impossible for n...

And yet, for all this, there exists not a single instance of a swarm refusing its duty, or allowing itself to be baffled or discouraged by the strangeness of its surroundings, e...

When satisfied, she flew away and returned to the hive. I followed, saw her pass over the surface of the crowd, plunge her head into an empty cell, disgorge her honey, and prepa...

"The race, you will tell me, is neither as strong nor as healthy. That may be; alcohol and the other scourge are accidents that humanity has to surmount; ordeals, it may be, by...

The bees do not, like ourselves, dwell in towns free to the sky, and exposed to the caprice of rain and storm, but in cities entirely covered with a protecting envelope. In a st...

There is a theory, originally propounded by Buffon and now revived, which assumes that the bees have not the least intention of constructing hexagons with a pyramidal base, but...

They are not without prescience, therefore, of what is to befall them on this the most dangerous day of all their existence. Absorbed by the cares, the prodigious perils of this...

But whatever the name we attach to these vases, it is certain that one of them, at least, and the greatest--that which bears on its flank the name "Nature"--encloses a very real...

The prosperity of the humble-bees never exceeds a certain limit, their laws are ill-defined and ill-obeyed, primitive cannibalism and infanticide reappear at intervals, the arch...

IT is not my intention to write a treatise on apiculture, or on practical bee-keeping. Excellent works of the kind abound in all civilised countries, and it were useless to atte...

There is another instance, and one that reveals most palpably the ultimate gesture of filial love and devotion. It arises from one of the extraordinary ordeals that our recent a...

E. Blanchard, "Metamorphoses, Moeurs et Instincts des Insectes;" Vid: "Histoire des Insectes;" Darwin, "Origin of Species;" Fabre, "Souvenirs Entomologiques" (3d series); Romane...