This hatred of equals is an extraordinary fact, when we consider that the queen knowingly lays eggs under conditions in which they will, in the ordinary course of events, become princesses. Then another circumstance of peculiar significance, and very marvellous, is that, notwithstanding the absolute authority possessed by the queen under other conditions, and in spite of the usual subjection and subservience of the workers, they will not allow their monarch complete liberty in the destruction of her royal progeny. If the crowded state of their dwelling makes it evident that the emission of a colony is necessary, the workers-in-waiting forcibly restrain their sovereign from indulging in her strong desire to slay her fully-developed daughters. She resents the interference, but no assumption of her dignity and authority will avail, and her absolutism is in this direction distinctly limited. Incensed at length beyond endurance, she quits the hive at the head of a swarm of her faithful subjects, and establishes a community where again she will have sole sway. If, on the other hand, circumstances do not necessitate a division of the population, the old queen is allowed to destroy the young ones as they issue from the pupa state. It is said that the only other condition in which the workers rebel against their monarch is when she is growing worn out with age, and seems likely to fail in power of egg-laying. Then she is believed, in some instances, to be supplanted; but it is not known with certainty whether natural death may not account for her removal, or whether she is slain by her subjects, or by a young queen preserved by their intervention. Should the loss of the queen take place when there is no brood-comb in the hive, from the season of the year, or from other circumstances, such as the cessation of egg-laying, the bees often manifest a series of almost frantic efforts to repair their loss. Sometimes they will try to develop a female from drone eggs. They have been known even to take a lump of pollen and surround it with a queen cell, in the absurd hope of getting a monarch so. It sometimes happens that one of the workers develops the power of laying eggs, all of which turn to drones--a marvellous fact in parthenogenesis--and the workers treat some of these to a royal abode and royal jelly, in the futile hope of thus raising a sovereign. In fact, as has been wittily but truly said, "when bees have lost their queen they lose their _head_." This close connection of queen and people is reciprocal, for the sovereign who is forcibly separated from her subjects refuses food, pines away, and speedily dies.