It seems that the queen and even the workers can without fecundation lay eggs which will hatch into males; but copulation is necessary in order to produce females and queens; now as only the queen can receive the male, a hive without a queen is doomed. That is the practical point of view, the sexual point of view leads to other reflections. A female can, quite alone, give birth to a male: but to have an egg hatch female, it must be fecundated by a male born spontaneously: one observes here the real exteriorization of the male organ, a segmentation of the genital power, into two forces, the male force and the female. Thus disunited, it acquires a new faculty which will fully unfold itself by the reintegration of the two halves of the initial force into a single force. But why do the virgin-born ovules necessarily give birth to males, among bees, and to females among plant lice? That is the question defying answer. All that one sees is that parthenogenesis is always transitory, and that after a number of virginal generations, normal fecundation always intervenes. One can not say that the mother bee is a true queen, a veritable chief, but she is the important personage in the hive, the one without whom life stops. The workers have the air of being mistresses; in reality their nervous centre is in the queen; they act only for her, and by her. Her disappearance sets the hive crazy, and drives it to absurd endeavours, such as the transformation of a nurse into a layer, though she will give eggs of one sex only, so many useless mouths. In reflecting on this last expedient one can measure the importance of sex, and understand the absolutism of its royalty. Sex is king, and there is no royalty save the sexual. The making neuter of the workers, which sets them out of norm, if it is a cause of order in the hive, is above all a cause of death. There are no living creatures save those who can perpetuate life.