At first she is all hesitancy; wandering to and fro amidst the crowd on the hive-threshold; coquetting with the sunshine; loath to return to the dim, pent, murmurous twilight she has forsaken, yet hardly daring to launch herself on wings that are still untried. For three long days and nights since her release from the prison-cell she has been a curiously solitary figure in the busy throng within the hive. Instead of the enthusiastic, welcoming world she expected, she finds none but unregarding strangers about her. Not a drone glances her way, and the worker-bees go upon their business in seeming unconcern at her presence. They do not even trouble themselves to feed her, and she is left to forage for herself as best she may. A conspiracy of indifference is on the clan—all part of a deep design for her education, if she only knew it, but singularly damping to the ardours, and great ideas of destiny, that gather within her day by day. At length the call comes for which all are secretly waiting, and obeying irresistibly, she presses out into the light. As she stands hesitating, the hot June sun falls upon her, laving her in molten gold. The blue sky beckons her upward. All the world of colour and incense and life calls her to her wooing, and she must needs obey. With a little glad flutter of the wings, she breaks at last from the scrambling company about her, and soars up into the light. Warily now she hovers, taking careful stock of her home and its surroundings. Then round and round, in ever widening and lifting circles, each sweep upward giving her a broader view of the world that lies beyond. And then away into the blue sky so swiftly that no human eye can follow; yet only for a short flight. She is back again now, almost before you have missed her, and hurrying, frightened at her own audacity, into the old safe gloom of the hive. Thus she dallies, to and fro between the sunshine and the darkness, each time adventuring a little farther into the blue playground of the upper air, until at length the inevitable comes to pass. A great drone—one of the roistering crowd that fills the bee-garden with its hoarse noontide music—spies her, and gives instant chase. At sight of him she wheels, and darts away into the sunshine at lightning speed. Yet the first drone has hardly stretched a wing before another is after him, and still another. Thick and fast from all points they gather for the race, until the fleeing queen has drawn a whole bevy of them, streaming like a little grey cloud behind her. This much you can see as you strain your eyes in their track; but in a moment quarry and huntsmen have vanished together, volleying, as it seemed, straight up into the farthermost skies.