<h3><SPAN name="I" id="I"></SPAN>I</h3>
<h3>ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE HIVE</h3>
<p>I have not yet forgotten the first apiary I saw, where I learned to love
the bees. It was many years ago, in a large village of Dutch Flanders,
the sweet and pleasant country that rejoices in brilliant flowers; a
country that gladly spreads out before us, as so many pretty toys, her
illuminated gables and wagons and towers; her cupboards and clocks that
gleam at the end of the passage; her little trees marshaled in line
along quays and canal-banks, waiting, one almost might think, for some
splendid procession to pass; her boats and her barges with sculptured
sterns, her flower-like doors and windows, her spotless dams and
many-coloured drawbridges; and her little varnished houses, bright as
new pottery, from which bell-shaped dames come forth, all a-glitter with
silver and gold, to milk the cows in the white-hedged fields, or spread
the linen on flowery lawns that are cut into patterns of oval and
lozenge and are most amazingly green.</p>
<p>To this spot an aged philosopher had retired, having become a little
weary; and here he had built his refuge. His happiness lay all in the
beauties of his garden; and best-loved, and visited most often, were the
bee-hives. There were twelve of them, twelve domes of straw; and some he
had painted a bright pink, and some a clear yellow, but most were a
tender blue, for he had noticed the fondness of the bees for this
color. These hives stood against the wall of the house, in the angle
formed by one of those pleasant and graceful Dutch kitchens whose
earthenware dresser, all bright with copper and brass, was reflected
through the open door on to the peaceful water of the canal. And the
water, carrying these familiar images beneath its curtain of poplars,
led one's eyes to a calm horizon of meadows and of mills.</p>
<p>Here, as in all places, the hives lent a new meaning to the flowers and
the silence, the balm of the air and the rays of the sun. One seemed to
have drawn very near to all that was happiest in nature. One was content
to sit down and rest at this radiant cross-road, along which the busy
and tuneful bearers of all country perfumes were incessantly passing
from dawn until dusk. One heard the musical voice of the garden, whose
loveliest hours seemed to rejoice and to sing of their gladness. One
came here, to the school of the bees, to be taught how nature is always
at work, always scheming and planning; and to learn too the lesson of
whole-hearted labor which is always to benefit others.</p>
<p>In order to follow, as simply as possible, the life of the bees through
the year, we will take a hive that awakes in the Spring and duly starts
on its labors; and then we shall meet, in their order, all the great
events of the bees. These are, first of all, the formation and departure
of the swarm; then, the foundation of the new city, the birth and flight
of the young queens, the massacre of the males, and, last of all, the
return of the sleep of winter. We will try to give the reasons for each
event, and to show the laws and habits that bring it about; and so,
when we have arrived at the end of the bees' short year, which extends
only from April to the last days of September, we shall have gazed on
all the mysteries of the palace of honey.</p>
<p>Before we knock at the door, and let our inquisitive glance travel
round, it need merely be said that the hive is composed of a queen, who
is the mother of all her people; of thousands of female worker-bees, who
are neuters or spinsters; and, finally, of some hundreds of males, who
never do any work, and are known as drones.</p>
<p>When for the first time we take the cover off a hive we cannot help some
feeling of fear, as though we were looking at something not meant for
our eyes, something alarming and frightening. We have always thought of
the bee as rather a dangerous creature. There is the distressful
recollection of its sting, which produces so peculiar a pain that one
knows not with what to compare it: a sort of dreadful dryness, as though
a flame of the desert had scorched the wounded limb; and one asks
oneself whether these daughters of the sun may not have distilled a
dazzling poison from their father's rays, in order to defend the
treasure which they have gathered during his shining hours.</p>
<p>There is no doubt that if some person, who neither knows nor respects
the habits of the bee, were suddenly to fling open the hive, this would
turn itself immediately into a burning-bush of heroism and fury; but the
slight amount of skill needed to deal with the matter can be readily
acquired. Let but a little smoke be deftly applied, let us be gentle and
careful in our movements, and the heavily-armed workers will permit
themselves to be robbed without the least thought of using their sting.
It is not the fact, as some people have stated, that the bees recognize
their owner, nor have they any fear of man; but, when the smoke reaches
them, when they become aware of what is happening, so quietly and
without any haste or disturbance, they imagine that this is not the
attack of an enemy against whom any defense is possible, but that it is
some natural catastrophe, to which they will do well to submit. Instead
of vainly struggling, therefore, their one thought is to safeguard their
future; and they rush at once to their reserves of honey, into which
they eagerly plunge themselves in order to possess the material for
starting a new city immediately, no matter where, should the old one be
destroyed or they compelled to abandon it.</p>
<p>A person who knows nothing of bees will be a little disappointed the
first time he looks into a hive. Let us say that it is an
observation-hive, made of glass, with black curtains and shutters and
only one comb, thus enabling the spectator to study both sides. These
hives can be placed in a drawing-room or a library without any
inconvenience or danger. The bees that live in the one I have in my
study in Paris are able—even in that great city—to do their own
marketing, as it were—in other words, to find the food they
require—and to prosper. You will have been told, when you are shown
this little glass box, that it is the home of a most extraordinary
activity; that it is governed by a number of wise laws, that it
enshrines deep mysteries; and all you will see is a mass of little,
reddish groups, somewhat resembling roasted coffee-berries or bunches of
raisins, all huddled up against the glass. They look more dead than
alive; their movements are slow, and seem confused and without any
purpose. We ask ourselves, can these be the dazzling creatures we had
seen, but a moment ago, flashing and sparkling as they darted among the
pearls and the gold of a thousand wide-open flowers?</p>
<div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/img02-heart_flower.jpg" width-obs="583" alt="In the heart of the flower." title="" /> <span class="caption"><SPAN name="In_the_heart_of_the_flower" id="In_the_heart_of_the_flower"></SPAN>In the heart of the flower.</span></div>
<p>Now, in the darkness, they seem to be shivering; to be numbed,
suffocated, so closely are they huddled together. They look as though
they were prisoners; or shall we say queens who have lost their throne,
who have had their one moment of glory in the midst of their radiant
garden, and are now compelled to return to the dingy misery of their
poor overcrowded home.</p>
<p>It is with them as it is with all the real things in life; they must be
studied, and we have to learn how to study them.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
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