Cities of Wax, Julie Classon Kenly (1935)

First published: 1935.
Library copy published: 1935.

Cities of Wax, Julie Classon Kenly

“With the bees, as with the fingers, it is as if they were all acting under the orders of a single mind, a single brain, instead of the thousands of separate brain-specks in their bee heads.” p. 79

“The queen of the bees is the most important individual in the hive, and she seems to know it, for she always moves in a slow, dignified manner, as befits royalty. … When one calls her a queen, however, it does not mean that she is a ruler in the sense of commanding her subjects against their own wills : she is a ruler merely because they allow her to be one.” p. 99

“We have discovered so many points of likeness between ourselves and the bees that one wonders if human nature and bee nature are not, in some respects, the same thing : a great web of feeling and thinking in which all creatures are caught, whether they be men, mice or honey-bees?” p. 244