The bee, essentially so pacific, so long-suffering, the bee, which never
stings (unless you crush her) when looting among the flowers, once she
has returned to her kingdom with the waxen monuments, retains her mild
and tolerant character, or grows violent and deadly dangerous, according
as her maternal city be opulent or poor. Here again, as often happens
when we study the manners of this spirited and mysterious little people,
the provisions of human logic are utterly at fault. It would be natural
that the bees should defend desperately treasures so laboriously
amassed, a city such as we find in good apiaries, where the nectar,
overflowing the numberless cells that represent thousands of casks piled
from cellar to garret, streams in golden stalactites along the rustling
walls and sends far afield, in glad response to the ephemeral perfumes
of calyces that are opening, the more lasting perfume of the honey that
keeps alive the memory of calyces which time has closed. Now this is
not the case. The richer their abode, the less eagerness they display to
fight around it. Open or turn over a wealthy hive; if you take care to
drive the sentries from the entrance with a puff of smoke, it will be
extremely rare for the other bees to contend with you for the liquid
booty conquered from the smiles, from all the charms of the beautiful
azure months. Try the experiment; I promise you impunity, if you touch
only the heavier hives. You can turn them over and empty them; those
throbbing flagons are perfectly harmless. What does it mean? Have the
fierce amazons lost courage? Has abundance unnerved them, and have they,
after the manner of the too fortunate inhabitants of luxurious towns,
delegated the dangerous duties to the unhappy mercenaries who keep watch
at the gates? No, it has never been observed that the greatest good
fortune relaxes the valour of the bee. On the contrary, the more the
republic prospers, the more harshly and severely are its laws applied,
and the worker in a hive where superfluity accumulates labours much more
zealously than her sister in an indigent hive. There are other reasons
which we cannot wholly fathom, but which are likely reasons, if only we
take into account the wild interpretation which the poor bee must needs
place upon our monstrous doings. Seeing suddenly her huge dwelling-place
upheaved, overturned, half-opened, she probably imagines that an
inevitable, a natural catastrophe is occurring against which it were
madness to struggle. She no longer resists, but neither does she flee.
Admitting the ruin, it looks as though already, in her instinct, she saw
the future dwelling which she hopes to build with the materials taken
from the gutted town. She leaves the present defenceless in order to
save the hereafter. Or else, perhaps, does she, like the dog in the
fable, "the dog that carried his master's dinner round his neck,"
knowing that all is irreparably lost, prefer to die taking her share of
the pillage and to pass from life to death in one prodigious orgy? We do
not know for certain. How should we penetrate the motives of the bee,
when those of the simplest actions of our brothers are beyond our ken?