The old ragged-winged bees, that have stood the brunt of the season, are now, too, nearly all gone. The hives are filled with bees of the same race, inspired by the same traditions; but they are at the beginning of life, the raw recruits of destiny, a mere stop-gap crew. They have no memories of the time when work was a fever, a tumultuous race with the sun, in which the swiftest must lag behind. They have never known the over-weighty cargoes, the bursting honey-sacs, and pollen-panniers so laden that they could be scarce dragged into the hive, and they will never know them. These bees, born late in the season, have their lot cast in the torpid backwaters of their little world. Theirs is to be but a dreary eking out of days, so that they may have strength enough to warm the first spring broods into life. The few hot days that burn in the midst of the snows of each English March—immeasurably far off now, and unattainable, seemingly—will be all they will ever see of the power of sunshine. Winter bees are born to the prison-house; and in it, and for it, live and die. At the most, a worker-bee sees but six months of life: at the least—and this is the lot of many—she withstands the incessant wear and tear of her hard calling for six, or possibly eight, weeks. Thus, though the hive may be always packed with citizens, the population is for ever changing. Half a dozen times in the year, perhaps, and for a score of years, you may go to your bee-garden, and each time move among tens of thousands to whom you are an utter stranger, and whom you have never seen before. And yet, in all its customs, its propensities, its traditions, the life of the bees is Continuity impersonified. You may go round the world, and spend ten years on the journey; and, coming back to the old leafy nook of the country, find the old green hive still in its corner under the lilac, still the centre of what seems the same crowd of winged merchant-women sailing home under the same gay colours, singing the old glad songs, building the old wondrous fabrics in the darkness, transmuting the same fragrant essences into the same elixir of gold. And what is this mysterious thing called the Bee-Commonwealth, which is alone immortal, while all that composes it, and pertains to it, and upholds it, passes and dies?