We must admit that her technique is admirable; our human murderers could do no better.
Her posture of attack, which is very different to that of the paralysers, is infallibly fatal to the victim.

Whether she delivers the attack in the erect position or prone, she holds the bee before her, head to head and thorax to thorax.

In this position it suffices to flex the abdomen in order to reach the joint of the neck, and to plunge the sting obliquely upwards into the head of the captive.

If the bee were seized in the inverse position, or if the sting were to go slightly astray, the results would be totally different; the sting, penetrating the bee in a downward direction, would poison the first thoracic ganglion and provoke a partial paralysis only.

What art, to destroy a miserable bee! In what fencing-school did the slayer learn that terrible upward thrust beneath the chin?
And as she has learned it, how is it that her victim, so learned in matters of architecture, so conversant with the politics of Socialism, has so far learned nothing in her own defence?
As vigorous as the aggressor, she also carries a rapier, which is even more formidable and more painful in its results--at all events, when my finger is the victim! For centuries and centuries Philanthus has stored her cellars with the corpses of bees, yet the innocent victim submits, and the annual decimation of her race has not taught her how to deliver herself from the scourge by a well-directed thrust.