Page:The life of the bee (IA cu31924101469827).pdf/63

The Swarm has its own code of morals. There are some that are very virtuous and some that are very perverse; and a careless bee-keeper will often corrupt his people, destroy their respect for the property of others, incite them to pillage, and induce in them habits of conquest and idleness which will render them sources of danger to all the little republics around. These things result from the bee's discovery that work among distant flowers, whereof many hundreds must be visited to form one drop of honey, is not the only or promptest method of acquiring wealth, but that it is easier to enter ill-guarded cities by stratagem, or force her way into others too weak for self-defence. Nor is it easy to restore to the paths of duty a hive that has become thus depraved. 51