V
THE YOUNG QUEENS
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Here let us close our hive, where we find that life is reassuming its circular movement, is extending and multiplying, to be again divided as soon as it shall attain the fulness of its happiness and strength; and let us for the last time reopen the mother-city, and see what is happening there after the departure of the swarm.
The tumult having subsided, the hapless city, that two thirds of her children have abandoned for ever, becomes feeble, empty, moribund; like a body from which the blood has been drained. Some thousands of bees have remained, however; and
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