And yet, the attraction must seem irresistible.  It is the ecstasy of the perhaps unconscious sacrifice the god has ordained; it is the festival of honey, the triumph of the race, the victory of the future:  the one day of joy, of forgetfulness and folly; the only Sunday known to the bees.  It would appear to be also the solitary day upon which all eat their fill, and revel, to heart’s content, in the delights of the treasure themselves have amassed.  It is as though they were prisoners to whom freedom at last had been given, who had suddenly been led to a land of refreshment and plenty.  They exult, they cannot contain the joy that is in them.  They come and go aimlessly,—­they whose every movement has always its precise and useful purpose—­they depart and return, sally forth once again to see if the queen be ready, to excite their sisters, to beguile the tedium of waiting.  They fly much higher than is their wont, and the leaves of the mighty trees round about all quiver responsive.  They have left trouble behind, and care.  They no longer are meddling and fierce, aggressive, suspicious, untamable, angry.  Man—­the unknown master whose sway they never acknowledge, who can subdue them only by conforming to their every law, to their habits of labour, and following step by step the path that is traced in their life by an intellect nothing can thwart or turn from its purpose, by a spirit whose aim is always the good of the morrow—­on this day man can approach them, can divide the glittering curtain they form as they fly round and round in songful circles; he can take them up in his hand, and gather them as he would a bunch of grapes; for to-day, in their gladness, possessing nothing, but full of faith in the future, they will submit to everything and injure no one, provided only they be not separated from the queen who bears that future within her.

[25]

But the veritable signal has not yet been given.  In the hive there is indescribable confusion; and a disorder whose meaning escapes us.  At ordinary times each bee, once returned to her home, would appear to forget her possession of wings; and will pursue her active labours, making scarcely a movement, on that particular spot in the hive that her special duties assign.  But to-day they all seem bewitched; they fly in dense circles round and round the polished walls like a living jelly stirred by an invisible hand.  The temperature within rises rapidly,—­to such a degree, at times, that the wax of the buildings will soften, and twist out of shape.  The queen, who ordinarily never will stir from the centre of the comb, now rushes wildly, in breathless excitement, over the surface of the vehement crowd that turn and turn on themselves.  Is she hastening their departure, or trying to delay it?  Does she command, or haply implore?  Does this prodigious emotion issue from her, or is she its victim?  Such knowledge as we possess of the general psychology of the bee warrants the belief that the swarming always takes place against