For insensibly the hours have worn on—it is noon—and the tense thronging life, the deep rich labour-song, of the bee-garden seem to have reached their height. But suddenly a greater noise than ever arises on all sides: a steady stream of bees, larger and bulkier than the rest, is pouring out of every hive. The drones, the lazy brothers of these laborious vestals, have roused at last from their sleep, and are coming abroad for their daily flight. In twos and threes, in whole battalions, they hustle out, and begin their noontide gambols about the hive, filling the air with a gay, roistering song. In a little while they will be all gone to their revels, and the bee-garden will seem, by comparison, strangely quiet. But now the sudden accession of energy is unmistakable. With the awakening of the drones there seems to be a new spirit abroad. The air is no longer filled to overflowing with busy foragers. Many of these have joined the dance round the hives, so that each bee-dwelling is the centre of a singing, gambolling crowd, moved rather by a spirit of play, almost of idleness. But this brief moment of relaxation soon passes. The drones betake themselves to their marital pleasuring in the fields. The noisy midday symphony dies down to the old steady monotone of work. And the watcher at the gates of the bee-city turns to retrace his steps down the flower-garlanded way of the old pleasance, satiated with wonders, yet not satisfied, his curiosity only quickened a thousandfold for that which has been inexorably held from him, a glimpse of what is happening behind those baffling walls of straw. Wending slowly homeward, and pondering, he asks himself many questions. What is the reason, the final outcome, of all this earnest, well-directed labour? What is done with the pollen that has been carried in all the morning long? Where there is obviously so much system, and unanimity, and ingenious division of endeavour, there cannot fail to be a supreme and governing intelligence to allot the part that each must play. This story of a queen—of a single bee, larger than all the rest, to whom all pay allegiance, and who spends her whole life in the dim labyrinth of the hive, like the Pope in the Vatican—is it a truth, or only a figment of the ignorant, bucolic brain? If this queen exist, if every hive have indeed its absolute monarch, who directs the whole complex life and policy of the bee-city, where in the scale of reasoning creatures must she be placed?