Here, as in all places, the hives lent a new meaning to the flowers and the silence, the balm of the air and the rays of the sun. One seemed to have drawn very near to all that was happiest in nature. One was content to sit down and rest at this radiant cross-road, along which the busy and tuneful bearers of all country perfumes were incessantly passing from dawn until dusk. One heard the musical voice of the garden, whose loveliest hours seemed to rejoice and to sing of their gladness. One came here, to the school of the bees, to be taught how nature is always at work, always scheming and planning; and to learn too the lesson of whole-hearted labor which is always to benefit others. In order to follow, as simply as possible, the life of the bees through the year, we will take a hive that awakes in the Spring and duly starts on its labors; and then we shall meet, in their order, all the great events of the bees. These are, first of all, the formation and departure of the swarm; then, the foundation of the new city, the birth and flight of the young queens, the massacre of the males, and, last of all, the return of the sleep of winter. We will try to give the reasons for each event, and to show the laws and habits that bring it about; and so, when we have arrived at the end of the bees' short year, which extends only from April to the last days of September, we shall have gazed on all the mysteries of the palace of honey. Before we knock at the door, and let our inquisitive glance travel round, it need merely be said that the hive is composed of a queen, who is the mother of all her people; of thousands of female worker-bees, who are neuters or spinsters; and, finally, of some hundreds of males, who never do any work, and are known as drones. When for the first time we take the cover off a hive we cannot help some feeling of fear, as though we were looking at something not meant for our eyes, something alarming and frightening. We have always thought of the bee as rather a dangerous creature. There is the distressful recollection of its sting, which produces so peculiar a pain that one knows not with what to compare it: a sort of dreadful dryness, as though a flame of the desert had scorched the wounded limb; and one asks oneself whether these daughters of the sun may not have distilled a dazzling poison from their father's rays, in order to defend the treasure which they have gathered during his shining hours.