There are also strange fights--regular duels--between the bees of the same hive. Very hot weather has the effect of irritating them, and making them boil over with rage. They are then dangerous to man, whom they attack boldly. But more often it is amongst themselves that they quarrel. One often sees two bees which meet seize each other by the neck in the air. It happens also that a bee, in a state of fury, throws itself on another who is walking quietly and unsuspiciously along the edge of its hive. When two bees are struggling in this manner they descend to the ground, for in the air they would not be able to get purchase enough to be sure of striking each other. They then engage in a hand-to-hand fight, as the gladiators used formerly to do in the circus. They are continually making stabs with their stings, but almost always the point slips over the scales with which they are covered. The combat is sometimes prolonged during an hour, before one of them has found the weak point in the other's natural cuirass, and has buried its terrible weapon in the flesh. The victor often leaves its sting in the wound which it has made, and then dies, in its moment of triumph, through the loss of this organ. Sometimes the two combatants, in spite of long and savage assaults, cannot succeed in injuring either's solid armour. In such a case they leave each other, tired of war, and fly away, despairing of obtaining a victory. At the end of autumn, when the bees no longer find any flowers in the fields to plunder, they finish rearing their eggs on the pollen, which they keep in store, and the queen ceases to lay. Numbed by the cold of the winter, the workers cease to go out. Crowded together they mutually warm each other, and thus hold out, when the cold is not too intense, against the rigour of the frosts. Huddled up between the cakes of the honeycomb, they wait for the return of fine weather, to recommence their labours at home and abroad. After two or three years of this laborious existence the bee dies, but to live again in a numerous posterity, as Virgil says:-- "At genus immortale manet, multosque per annos Stat fortuna domus, et avi numerantur avorum!"