[74]

But so potent is the law of the future that none of these uncertainties, these perils of death, will cause a single bee to waver.  The enthusiasm displayed by the second and third swarms is not less than that of the first.  No sooner has the mother-city pronounced its decision than a battalion of workers will flock around each dangerous young queen, eager to follow her fortunes, to accompany her on the voyage where there is so much to lose, and so little to gain beyond the desire of a satisfied instinct.  Whence do they derive the energy we ourselves never possess, whereby they break with the past as though with an enemy?  Who is it selects from the crowd those who shall go forth, and declares who shall remain?  No special class divides those who stay from those who wander abroad; it will be the younger here and the elder there; around each queen who shall never return veteran foragers jostle tiny workers, who for the first time shall face the dizziness of the blue.  Nor is the proportionate strength of a swarm controlled by chance or accident, by the momentary dejection or transport of an instinct, thought, or feeling.  I have more than once tried to establish a relation between the number of bees composing a swarm and the number of those that remain; and although the difficulties of this calculation are such as to preclude anything approaching mathematical precision, I have at least been able to gather that this relation—­if we take into account the brood-cells, or in other words the forthcoming births—­is sufficiently constant to point to an actual and mysterious reckoning on the part of the genius of the hive.

[75]

We will not follow these swarms on their numerous, and often most complicated, adventures.  Two swarms, at times, will join forces; at others, two or three of the imprisoned queens will profit by the confusion attending the moment of departure to elude the watchfulness of their guardians and join the groups that are forming.  Occasionally, too, one of the young queens, finding herself surrounded by males, will cause herself to be impregnated in the swarming flight, and will then drag all her people to an extraordinary height and distance.  In the practice of apiculture these secondary and tertiary swarms are always returned to the mother-hive.  The queens will meet on the comb; the workers will gather around and watch their combat; and, when the stronger has overcome the weaker they will then, in their ardour for work and hatred of disorder, expel the corpses, close the door on the violence of the future, forget the past, return to their cells, and resume their peaceful path to the flowers that await them.

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