The honey-bee: its nature, homes and products

One of the earliest facts ascertained in the study of bees was that there existed in each colony one individual differing considerably from all the rest in appearance and in functions. Early observers, it is true, mistook even the sex of the one so distinguished. Vergil says:

And, again,

Shakespeare, in the passage quoted in a previous chapter, talks of "a king," and other writers were equally ignorant of the true state of the case. The headship of the hive is, in fact, held by a solitary female, to whom the name of "queen" has been given, both on account of the respect she receives, and the controlling influence she appears to exercise over the other inmates of her domain. The Germans, on perfectly safe grounds, call her "the mother-bee"; and it is, doubtless, owing to the all-important circumstance of the continued existence of the race depending upon her, that she is the object of such intense affection, attention, and devotion.

This is corroborated by the circumstance that it is only after she has been fertilised, and begins to lay, that she is much honoured. As princess merely, not the slightest respect is paid to her. She is not even fed by the workers, but has to help herself, and in doing so must scramble over the busy crowd in her way, not one of whom will trouble to move out of her path.

Two or three prominent characteristics serve readily to distinguish the queen from the rest of the bees. In the first place, her body is much longer and more tapering towards its lower extremity. Her wings are shorter in comparison with her length. The upper surface of her body is of a darker and more glossy hue than that of her subjects. Her movements are slower and less anxious in appearance than those of the workers, except at swarming time, when excitement quickens her steps, and gives' her an air of purposeless solicitude; though, in reality, her anxiety is caused by the desire to slay a royal and rival daughter, whose co-existence in the hive she cannot tolerate.

A closer examination reveals several other points of difference. In our English species, of which we are now especially speaking, her colour is yellowish underneath; her head is rounder, her legs are longer, her tongue is more slender and not so extensile as that of the other bees; and her sting is curved instead of being straight, like the formidable weapon of the workers. It is asserted by some writers that she has a peculiar odour readily distinguishable, and so powerfully attractive to her people, that they will alight on the finger of any one who has been handling their queen.

Several characteristics of a negative kind may also be noted. Her proboscis is not fitted for extracting the nectar of flowers, and she can only lap food, or take it from the tongues of her attendants. She, moreover has no expansion of the gullet for a honey-bag, since she never requires to collect and carry home the sweet liquid. She possesses no cysts for the elaboration of wax, as she takes no part in contributing to the materials of her dwelling. The last pair of legs are convex on the outside, containing no pocket for carrying pollen or propolis; and the other legs are without the brushes of the workers, which enable them to clear their bodies of the powdery discharge of the anthers of flowers, for she never visits plants. All her wants in the way of nourishment are supplied by her subjects.

She mates once in her life, when she is a few days old, with a single drone, and on the wing. That is the only occasion of her leaving the hive, except when she leads forth a swarm. Her grand function is to lay eggs, and every part of her structure and every power she has is more or less related to this all-important duty. She is, as we have implied, freed from every other office. The hatching, the tending, the rearing, the instruction of her progeny, are entirely taken out of her hands, and it is doubtful whether she has any affection for her children. She is constantly attended by a retinue of ten or twelve "maids of honour," who all keep their heads turned towards her, clear the way for her, prevent all crowding round her, and supply her with the most nutritious food, previously half digested by themselves. They caress her with their antennæ, and seem to find a real joy in mere proximity to their monarch. Should she, by more rapid movements than usual, outstrip her retiring attendants, the bees with whom she thus unexpectedly comes in contact appear excited and alarmed, and move hastily from her path. So long as she remains sound and well in the hive, all the varied works go on peacefully and incessantly. Should she die or be removed, immediate consternation is manifested. Her subjects rush about in excitement and distress. They buzz around the neighbourhood of the hive, but all active and productive work ceases. They know that unless the disastrous loss can be repaired, their community must perish for lack of new progeny, and when despair seizes them, they seem to act upon the motto, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."

But the skilled bee-keeper comes to the rescue when he has ascertained the death or loss of a queen, and introduces another monarch to the distressed community. Care and caution, however, have to be exercised in this operation; for, until convinced that there is no hope of the restoration of their rightful sovereign, the workers will not tolerate a substitute for her. Even when their hopes are extinguished, it is much safer to cage the new queen, for thirty-six or forty-eight hours, on a comb, so that a gradual acquaintance with one another may be formed before free intercourse is allowed. Otherwise, it will frequently happen that the introduced mother-bee will come to grief by stings or by suffocation. Cases, indeed, have occurred in which it has been found impossible to induce a hive to receive a stranger queen, and it has become necessary to amalgamate such a community with another already possessed of a monarch.

But, under certain circumstances, the bees will, in a marvellous way, provide themselves with a sovereign. If at the time of discovering their loss there are worker-eggs in the hive, and these are only two or three days old, a cell containing one such egg is selected, and enlarged by breaking down the surrounding partitions. The shape and direction of the cell are also altered, being made pyriform, or like a pear, and with its open end downwards. The royal cradle, in fact, is made to look like a small acorn-cup inverted. In this abode is deposited a certain amount of so-called "royal jelly," a more pungent and stimulating food than that supplied to other larvæ, and consisting of a mixture of honey and partially digested pollen. Under the influence of this nourishment, the grub, instead of becoming a worker-bee, as it would have done in the usual course of events, undergoes all those important modifications which distinguish the queen from her ordinary offspring; and, moreover, the necessary transformations from the larval to the perfect condition of the insect are so expedited as to take only sixteen, instead of twenty-one, days. We have said that, if newly-laid eggs exist, these are preferred by the workers for their purpose of queen manufacture; but they will, if shut up to the necessity, thus transform worker-larvæ, if not more than two or three days old. Usually, when prompted in this way to provide themselves with a hive-mother, they begin, not one only, but several, apparently to secure themselves against all danger of failure. But the first which comes to maturity assumes the sovereignty, and, unless the condition of the stock requires the speedy emission of a swarm, she will be allowed to gratify her instinctive enmity to rivals, and will destroy them as they are ready to emerge from their cells.

This hatred of equals is an extraordinary fact, when we consider that the queen knowingly lays eggs under conditions in which they will, in the ordinary course of events, become princesses. Then another circumstance of peculiar significance, and very marvellous, is that, notwithstanding the absolute authority possessed by the queen under other conditions, and in spite of the usual subjection and subservience of the workers, they will not allow their monarch complete liberty in the destruction of her royal progeny. If the crowded state of their dwelling makes it evident that the emission of a colony is necessary, the workers-in-waiting forcibly restrain their sovereign from indulging in her strong desire to slay her fully-developed daughters. She resents the interference, but no assumption of her dignity and authority will avail, and her absolutism is in this direction distinctly limited. Incensed at length beyond endurance, she quits the hive at the head of a swarm of her faithful subjects, and establishes a community where again she will have sole sway. If, on the other hand, circumstances do not necessitate a division of the population, the old queen is allowed to destroy the young ones as they issue from the pupa state.

It is said that the only other condition in which the workers rebel against their monarch is when she is growing worn out with age, and seems likely to fail in power of egg-laying. Then she is believed, in some instances, to be supplanted; but it is not known with certainty whether natural death may not account for her removal, or whether she is slain by her subjects, or by a young queen preserved by their intervention.

Should the loss of the queen take place when there is no brood-comb in the hive, from the season of the year, or from other circumstances, such as the cessation of egg-laying, the bees often manifest a series of almost frantic efforts to repair their loss. Sometimes they will try to develop a female from drone eggs. They have been known even to take a lump of pollen and surround it with a queen cell, in the absurd hope of getting a monarch so. It sometimes happens that one of the workers develops the power of laying eggs, all of which turn to drones—a marvellous fact in parthenogenesis—and the workers treat some of these to a royal abode and royal jelly, in the futile hope of thus raising a sovereign. In fact, as has been wittily but truly said, "when bees have lost their queen they lose their head." This close connection of queen and people is reciprocal, for the sovereign who is forcibly separated from her subjects refuses food, pines away, and speedily dies.

It is only in very rare instances (such as those we have mentioned when speaking of the introduction of a stranger-queen) that the workers attack and kill royalty. Queens, on the other hand, are never known to use their stings against their subjects. They reserve them for combats with their equals, thus realising the salutary arrangement, which might have such practically important political consequences if adopted in human affairs, "Let those who make the quarrels be the only ones to fight."

The queen, though developed more rapidly than the drones and the workers, enjoys a much longer life than her subjects. In some instances this period has been known to extend to five or even six years; but her fecundity is said to diminish after her second year, or, if it continues, she will in her old age lay a majority of drone eggs, to the serious weakening of the community. The skilled apiarian, therefore, takes care that every hive shall have a queen of an age when her fertility is greatest.

The process of egg-laying begins from two to four days after the flight for mating, depending somewhat on the preparation of cells for that purpose. The queen, on finding comb adapted to her needs, thrusts her head into a cell, apparently to ascertain if it is empty, and of the right depth and size for one of the two different kinds of eggs—those for workers, and those to become drones. Satisfied on these points, she withdraws her head, and, curving herself downwards, inserts her abdomen, and giving the lower part of her body a half-turn towards the thorax, she expels an egg from her oviduct, and then retires in search of other cells in which to make similar deposits. She rarely, and only by mistake, lays more than one egg in a cell. If she falls into the error, the worker-bees immediately remove all but one.

The examination of each cell by the queen to ascertain its fitness for the two kinds of eggs is an essential point; for, in the first place, the nature of drone-eggs is radically different from that of those which will produce workers; and the size of the cells in which the former are hatched is considerably greater than that in which the latter will be developed, nineteen ends of the larger covering a square inch of surface, while twenty-seven of the smaller will occupy the same space.

It seems an indisputable fact that the queen has the power of laying which of the two kinds of eggs she pleases. The essential difference between the two seems to be, that those which will become drones are not fertilised by spermatozoa just previous to leaving the oviduct, while the worker-eggs are thus specially vivified, and the operation appears to be under volitional control.

A further remarkable circumstance is that the rate of egg-laying is also a matter of determination, and not of necessity, on the part of the queen; for when a transfer has been made from a weak to a strong hive, the number of eggs deposited has been known to vary, within two days, from none to two thousand in twenty-four hours. In the one case the mother-bee knew her colony was not strong enough to keep up the requisite warmth for hatching and developing her progeny; in the other, she proceeded vigorously with her functions, the further progress of the young being secured by the abundance of the population sufficing to keep up the proper temperature, and to render all needed attention to the larvæ in their further development.

The ordinary rate of laying, under favourable conditions, varies from 600 to 800 eggs a day; but, under pressure of specially suitable conditions, from i,000 to 1,200 are not unfrequently deposited. Langstroth and Von Berlepsch have seen six laid in a minute; and the latter observer, on supplying a queen with some new empty comb, found after twenty-four hours more than 3,000 eggs had been laid. If this queen on the average got rid of five eggs per minute, the total number just mentioned would have been deposited in ten hours, so that she would have had fourteen hours for rest. The queen kept up her rate for twenty days, in which time she had filled 57,000 cells, and, what is very remarkable, her fecundity is said to have continued for five years, during which period she must have laid nearly a million and a-half of eggs. Dzierzon says, "Most queens, in spacious hives, and in a favourable season, lay 60,000 in a month, and a specially fertile queen, in the four years which she on an average lives, lays over a million eggs." These numbers will give some idea of the immense expenditure of life that is continually going on.

To keep up these very great productive energies, it is evident that large quantities of food must be consumed by the mother-bee, and, as we should expect, the amount taken varies in the ratio of the vigour of egg-laying.

It sometimes happens that, in the very height of her duties, sufficient cells are not forthcoming as places of deposit for eggs; and, in that case, the queen leaves some on the combs, or at the bottom of the hive. Strange to say, the worker-bees greedily devour such waifs and strays. In this respect we observe a great difference between ants and bees. Among the latter we do not find that passionate love and care for the eggs and larvæ which so strongly mark the former. Other circumstances of a similar kind, to be noted later on, show, on the part of bees, an intense regard for stores rather than progeny, notwithstanding their affection and devotion to the mother-bee, whose functions they thus acknowledge as all-important to the race.

The egg-laying of the queen goes on more or less for nine or ten months of the year, under favouring conditions; but the season of greatest activity is during April, May, and June. Various circumstances after that time cause a diminution of the number of eggs, till in November, December, and January, as a rule, the queen ceases her motherly functions.