Where is the fatality here, save in the love of the race of to-day for the race of to-morrow?  This fatality exists in the human species also, but its extent and power seem infinitely less.  Among men it never gives rise to sacrifices as great, as unanimous, or as complete.  What far-seeing fatality, taking the place of this one, do we ourselves obey?  We know not; as we know not the being who watches us as we watch the bees.

But the hive that we have selected is disturbed in its history by no interference of man; and as the beautiful day advances with radiant and tranquil steps beneath the trees, its ardour, still bathed in dew, makes the appointed hour seem laggard.  Over the whole surface of the golden corridors that divide the parallel walls the workers are busily making preparation for the journey.  And each one will first of all burden herself with provision of honey sufficient for five or six days.  From this honey that they bear within them they will distil, by a chemical process still unexplained, the wax required for the immediate construction of buildings.  They will provide themselves also with a certain amount of propolis, a kind of resin with which they will seal all the crevices in the new dwelling, strengthen weak places, varnish the walls, and exclude the light; for the bees love to work in almost total obscurity, guiding themselves with their many-faceted eyes, or with their antennae perhaps, the seat, it would seem, of an unknown sense that fathoms and measures the darkness.

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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 mighty adventure, they will have no time now to visit the gardens and meadows; and to-morrow, and after tomorrow, it may happen that rain may fall, or there may be wind; that their wings may be frozen or the flowers refuse to open.  Famine and death would await them were it not for this foresight of theirs.  None would come to their help, nor would they seek help of any.  For one city knows not the other, and assistance never is given.  And even though the bee-keeper deposit the hive, in which he has gathered the old queen and her attendant cluster of bees, by the side of the abode they have but this moment quitted, they would seem, be the disaster never so great that shall now have befallen them, to have wholly forgotten the peace and the happy activity that once they had known there, the abundant wealth and the safety that had then been their portion; and all, one by one, and down to the last of them, will perish of hunger and cold around their unfortunate queen rather than return to the home of their birth, whose sweet odour of plenty, the fragrance, indeed, of their own past assiduous labour, reaches them even in their distress.

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