The life of the bee - Taschenbuch

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill THE FOUNDATION OF THE CITY Let us rather consider the proceedings of the swarm the apiarist shall have gathered into his hive. And, first of all, let us not be forgetful of the sacrifice these fifty thousand virgins have made, who, as Ron- sard sings, " In a little body bear so true a heart," and let us, yet once again, admire the courage with which they begin life anew in the desert whereon they have fallen. They have forgotten the splendour and wealth of their native city, where existence had been so admirably organised and certain; where the essence of every flower reminiscent of sunshine had enabled them to smile at the menace of winter. There, asleep in the depths of their cradles, they have left thousands and thousands of daughters, whom they never again will see. They have abandoned, not only the enormous treasure of pollen and propolis they had gathered together, but also more than 120 pounds of honey, a quantity representing more than twelve times the entire weight of the population, and close on 600,000 times that of the individual bee. To man this would mean 42,000 tons of provisions, a vast fleet of mighty ships laden with nourishment more precious than any known to us, for to the bee honey is a kind of liquid life, a species of chyle that is at once assimilated, with almost no waste whatever. Here, in the new abode, there is nothing; not a drop of honey, not a morsel of wax; neither guiding-mark nor point of support. There is only the dreary emptiness of an enormous monument that has nothing but sides and roof. Within the smooth and rounded walls there is only darkness; and the enormous arch above rears itself over nothingness. But useless regrets are unknownto the bee; or in any event it does not allow them to hinder its action. Far from being ...