How
beautifully her body tapers, how distinguished she looks, how
deliberate her movements! The bees do not fall down before her, but
caress her and touch her person. The drones or males, are large bees
too, but coarse, blunt, broad-shouldered, masculine-looking. There is
but one fact or incident in the life of the queen that looks imperial
and authoritative: Huber relates that when the old queen is restrained
in her movements by the workers, and prevented from destroying the
young queens in their cells, she assumes a peculiar attitude and utters
a note that strikes every bee motionless, and makes every head bow;
while this sound lasts not a bee stirs, but all look abashed and
humbled, yet whether the emotion is one of fear, or reverence, or of
sympathy with the distress of the queen mother, is hard to determine.
The moment it ceases and she advances again toward the royal cells,
the bees bite and pull and insult her as before.
I always feel that I have missed some good fortune if I am away from
home when my bees swarm. What a delightful summer sound it is; how
they come pouring out of the hive, twenty or thirty thousand bees each
striving to get out first; it is as when the dam gives way and lets the
waters loose; it is a flood of bees which breaks upward into the air,
and becomes a maze of whirling black lines to the eye and a soft chorus
of myriad musical sounds to the ear.
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