From her birth to the day when that terrible, living cordon closes about her, almost the whole life of the queen-bee can be followed step by step. Only this one moment of her bridal stands unrevealed, and perhaps for ever unrevealable, to human eyes. You can picture to yourself the wild chevy-chase through the clear June air and sunshine; you can give, in fancy, the prize to the strongest and the fleetest; but all you will know for certain is that in a little while the queen returns to the hive, sobered and solitary, trailing behind her infallible evidence of her impregnation and the death of the victorious drone. She has been the bride of a moment; now she is to be the widow of a lifetime. Henceforward her days are to be spent in the twilight cloisters of the hive, flying abroad so rarely that many an old experienced beeman will say she comes forth only once a year when she leads a swarm. But in her body now she carries the seed from which will spring up a whole nation. Before her marriage-flight she was the least considered of all the colony; now she is welcomed home with public ovation; lauded, fed, and fondled; set up in the high place, a living symbol of the tens of thousands unborn. As in olden, savage times, the royal festivals had their human sacrifices, so this paramount day in the perfected communism of the bee-people must vent its rejoicing in slaughter. But it is not tribute of common slaves that is now to redden the State-shambles, nor will the work fall to the common executioner’s knife. There are captive queens in the citadel—a royal sacrifice ready to hand, and a royal blade hungering for the task. Once the queen has proved her intrinsic motherhood, and the first few worker-eggs have been laid in the comb, the guards will stand away from the royal prison-cells and let her wreak her will upon them. It is all very ghastly in a miniature way, yet very queenly, as old traditions of human queenhood go. She gives over her nursery-work gladly enough for a moment, and flies to the slaughter, tearing down the prison-doors, and putting each clamorous captive fiercely to the sword.