hey
ruthlessly expel it from the hive. In fact, they belong to another world
of beings that is absolutely oblivious of the world of which we form a
part. They murder or expel the drones, after they have done their work
of fertilizing the queen, in the most cruel and summary manner. Their
apparent attachment to the queen, and their loyalty to her, are not
personal. They do not love her. It is the Spirit of the Hive, or the
cult of the swarm solicitous about itself. There are no brothers,
sisters, fathers, mothers, among the bees; there are only co-workers,
working not for the present, but for the future. When we enter the
kingdom of the bee, we must leave all our human standards behind. These
little people have no red blood, no organs of sense, as we have; they
breathe and hear through their legs, their antennae.

The drones do not know the queen as such in the hive. Their instincts
lead them to search for her in the air during her nuptial flight, and
they know her only there. The drones have thirteen thousand eyes, while
the workers have only six thousand. This double measure of the power of
vision is evidently to make sure that the males discover the queen in
her course through the air.

The guards that take their stand at the gate, the bees that become fans
at the entrance to ventilate the hive, the nurses, the bees that bring
the bee-bread, the bees that pack it into the cells, the bees that go
forth to find a home for the new swarm, the sweepers and cleaners of the
hive, the workers that bring propolis to seal up the cracks and
crevices--all act in obedience to the voiceless Spirit of the Hive.

After we have discounted Maeterlinck so far as the facts will bear us
out in doing, it remains to be said that he is the philosopher of the
insect world. If Fabre is the Homer, as he himself has said, Maeterlinck
is the Plato of that realm. How wisely he speaks of the insect world in
his latest volume, "Mountain Paths":

The insect does not belong to our world. The other
animals, the plants even, notwithstanding their dumb life
and the great secrets which they cherish, do not seem
wholly foreign to us. In spite of all, we feel a certain
earthly brotherhood with them. They often surprise and
amaze our intelligence, but do not utterly upset it. There
is something, on the other hand, about the insect that
does not belong to the habits, the ethics, the psychology
of our globe. One would be inclined to say