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The Life of the Bee ally, in the holy of holies of these parts, are the three, four, six, or twelve sealed palaces, vast in size compared with the others, where the adolescent princesses lie who await their hour, wrapped in a kind of shroud, all of them motionless and pale, and fed in the darkness.

On the day, then, that the Spirit of the Hive has ordained, a certain part of the population will go forth, selected in accordance with sure and immovable laws, and make way for hopes that as yet are formless. In the sleeping city there remain the males, from whose ranks the royal lover shall come, the very young bees that tend the brood-cells, and some thousands of workers who continue to forage abroad, to guard the accumulated treasure, and preserve the moral traditions of the hive. For each hive 50