In giving a broad sketch of the geography of the genera of bees which are native to our islands, but whose local distribution I shall reserve for notice in the account of the genera themselves, I must regret at the outset the lack of materials for its satisfactory treatment.
There are but very few exceptions to the dearth of assiduity in this direction; a very favourable one is that of the son of the late venerable hymenopterologist, the Count le Pelletier de St. Fargeau, who, at his military post as an officer of the French army in Algeria, stationed at Oran, collected energetically for his father in that district, and where, in one of his collecting excursions, he was severely wounded by a musket-ball. Another equally favourable exception is that of Sydney Smith Saunders, Esq., residing at Prevesa, in Albania, who has strenuously and perseveringly collected in that country. Here and there we can point to something having been done in Upper India, in the vicinity of Poonah, at Pondicherry, in Java, in some limited localities of China, and to some extent in Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand, but nothing of any magnitude. There is much hope that a great deal has been done in Ceylon by Mr. Thwaites, who, when resident at Bristol, was a most ardent and successful hymenopterologist.
The Egyptian Hymenoptera have been extensively and admirably figured by Savigny, in the Imperial superb work published under the auspices of Napoleon I., but to these, unfortunately, no descriptive text was published, and they are therefore as useless to science as if they had not been figured. But those collected by Ehrenberg, and figured by Klug, in the ‘Symbolæ Physicæ,’ exhibit how rich in variety is that remarkable region. These figures may be called the ne plus ultra of entomological artistic skill.
Unfortunately, this Order has been sadly neglected for the sake of the less troublesome Coleoptera, and the more conspicuous Lepidoptera. This is plainly perceptible from the paucity of species recorded as having been once in the Count Dejean’s collection, where we might have expected to have obtained a rich view of the Hymenoptera of Spain; as also in those of other French collectors, who have had rare but neglected opportunities for the purpose. It is true M. Brullé has done a good deal in Greece. We are, as yet, in comparative ignorance, from the same cause of neglect, of the Hymenoptera of Italy, excepting something that has been done by the Marquis Spinola, in Liguria, and by Rossi, in Tuscany. A little has been contributed towards that of Carniola, but we are almost ignorant of the Hymenoptera of Sicily, which, from various causes, are likely to be very peculiar. Mr. Swainson’s collection of them, although not numerous, were neglected until they became unintelligible. The only European countries that have been tolerably gleaned are Germany, Sweden, a part of Russia, and even Finland. It is impossible for any entomologist to examine every locality for himself, he must, in great measure, depend on the labours of others; and, of course, I can only speak of the collections which are accessible to me, or which are described in monographs, or have been named in lists that have been published. Doubtless the Museum of Berlin, so long under the administration of a lover of the Order, Dr. Klug, would present a large contribution to our knowledge of the distribution of the forms, did a list of its riches exist. Such a list of the menoptera of Portugal, contained in Count Hoffmansegg’s collection, was published many years ago in Illiger’s ‘Magazin der Insectenkunde.’
It has been a fatality incidental to this entomological branch of the study of natural history that some of its most energetic cultivators have been taken early away. There was formerly Illiger, then our own Leach, and then Erichsen. Leach, but for his afflicting malady, would have done much for the science; still, let us hope that the Hymenoptera, and especially the bees, are gaining ground in the estimation of entomologists generally, and that not many years will pass before collectors will possess them in abundance. For the present, I can but give a slight summary of the knowledge we possess on this subject.
Thus science has sustained great loss by reason of the unfortunate neglect which the family of bees, and, indeed, the Order of Hymenoptera generally, has met with from collectors in distant localities whose tastes have led so directly to the collection of other more favoured Orders, and the opportunities for repairing the consequences of such neglect being in some cases extremely rare. The present slight attempt to trace the geography and cosmopolitan range of our native genera of bees will necessarily be affected to some considerable extent by this neglect.
Although the materials in our possession will yield some fruit, yet their collection will be but the gleaner’s handful, instead of a loaded wain from a rich and abundant harvest. As what I have gathered may still have an interest for some of my readers, I will lay it before them, and in doing so I shall take the genera in their methodical series.
The genus Colletes comes first, a position the more remarkable from the peculiarities of its economy and form, which bring it closely to the true bees, as do also its aptitude, by reason of its structure, for collecting pollen, and its energy in gathering it. The divergence in the form of the tongue brings it, however, to the extreme commencement of the series, it being the closest structural link we find for connecting the bees with the preceding family of wasps. This genus, in our own species, ranges through northern Europe to the high latitude of Finland, passing through Sweden; and it occurs also in Russia and in the Polish Ukraine. In other species than ours, and differing among themselves, it occurs at both extremities of Africa, in Egypt, and Algeria, and at the Cape of Good Hope; but whether throughout the wide interval collections do not inform us. It has been sent from Turkey, but whence?—for this is as vague a designation as Russia, both being empires which spread over vast areas,—and, if found in their Asiatic divisions, are the only instances we know of its Asiatic occurrence. It is so easy for collectors to add to their specimens a defined and precise locality, that its omission in any instance is to be regretted, as in many ways, and in all kinds of collections, it might be very serviceable to science. To our present purpose it has but a collateral interest as an object of curiosity, yet curiosity has led to many discoveries which have proved valuable to mankind. All the divisions of natural science have a mutual and convertible bearing, and closely interlink in their relations. Thus, insects denote the botany, which further indicates the climate or elevation and soil; and the superficial soil will point geological conclusions to subsoil and substructure. One natural science well mastered gives a key to the great storehouse of nature’s riches, and yields a harvest of many different crops. This episode may be excused for the hint it is intended to give of the paramount importance of the correct registration of special localities.
The genus Colletes also occurs in the Canary Islands, which shows a trending tendency to its southern habitat at the Cape of Good Hope. It occurs on the western edge of South America, in Chili; it is found on its northern boundary in Columbia, and has been discovered in the southern States of North America, in Florida and Georgia; but there is no record of its further northern occurrence upon that continent. About thirty species are known.
The genus Prosopis, or as it is more familiarly known by the name of Hylæus, is found in some of our native species throughout France and Germany, and, like the preceding, as high up as Finland, through Denmark and Sweden, to the adjacent parts of Russia. It is remarkable that it is caught in Algeria, although not recorded as occurring in several of the southern European States. But the apparent restriction of some of our species to our own islands possibly arises from the fact of special attention having been paid to them in this country only.
The genus itself, in other and more variegated forms than ours, presents itself in some portions of southern and south-western Europe, where the highly ornamented species would point almost to the certainty of its being a parasitical genus, great decoration being in our native genera of bees the badge of parasitism, and may be indicative of those habits, combined as they are conjunctively with their destitution of polliniferous organs. Some of our native entomologists have, however, assumed, upon what appears to me very inconclusive grounds, that the genus is not parasitical. The observations, however, of the most distinguished French hymenopterologists confirm the notion of their being parasites, which appears strengthened by the argument above suggested with regard to colour.
This genus is apparently fond of hot climates. In eastern Europe, it occurs in Albania and the Morea, its extreme western domicile is Portugal, and its southern European habitat is Sicily. It is found in Algeria and Egypt, and at the Cape of Good Hope. We discover it in India, in the southern tropics at the Brazils, and in the northern tropics at the Sandwich Islands; and it ranges along the southern edge of Australia, from Swan River through Adelaide and Port Phillip to Tasmania. The United States of North America furnish it, and on that continent it seems to contradict its ordinary tropical inclination by being exceptionally found upon the confines of the arctic circle at Hudson’s Bay. Nearly sixty well-distinguished species are recorded.
The genus Sphecodes has also a wide distribution. Our native species are found throughout France and Germany, Greece and Spain, still one or two seem limited to our islands. The genus is recorded as in Albania, Algeria, and Egypt; it is found on the western edge of Africa at the Canaries; it occurs also in northern India, in the United States, on the western side of South America at Chili, and then we have a wide gap, for its next appearance is at Sydney, New South Wales. About twenty species are known.
The genus Andrena, although infinitely more numerous in species than the genus Halictus, which is also abundant, does not appear to have so wide a distribution as the latter. Peculiarities of habits possibly limit its diffusion, although nothing has occurred to naturalists to explain the circumstance, unless it be the adventitious fact of no specimens having fallen into the hands of the collector. Our own species, represented by one or several members, are found (although some seem restricted to England) throughout Europe, north and south, east and west, as also in its islands. In Africa it is seen in Algeria and Egypt, and it occurs in the Canaries; and in Asia it is found in Siberia, and in northern India; but we have no connecting chain to link those Asiatic and African localities,—although we may well suppose that it might be discovered amongst the steppes of Thibet and Tartary, revelling amidst the flowers of their luxuriant pastures, and even amongst the Persian sands. It passes through the United States from Florida up and to our own colony of Nova Scotia, and extends its range to Hudson’s Bay. We do not trace it further. Nearly two hundred species occur.
The genus Cilissa, too, has a limited distribution, and occurs in the same countries, but ranges as high as Lapland; it also crosses the Atlantic, being found in the United States. About six are known.
Our solitary species of the genus Macropis, which is isolated possibly only from having been overlooked, appears to have but a European existence, and is found in France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland.
The genus Halictus is very cosmopolitan. Some of our own species occur throughout Europe, excepting only Italy and Sicily, although they are to be found in Portugal and Dalmatia, thus traversing its entire breadth; but from the latter country they do not seem to range down to Albania and Greece, yet are they discovered in Malta, and even in southern Africa, but they have not been recorded as extant in northern portions of that continent. Other species have been sent from the western coast of Africa and the adjacent Canaries, with their adjunct, Madeira, and the genus ranges from Barbary through Senegal and Sierra Leone; some species also are found at the Cape of Good Hope.
On the other side of Africa the genus has been discovered at the Isle of Bourbon; it then takes a wide sweep, occurring first in northern India; it then springs up at Foo-chow-foo, and it is found in northern China. In western Asia it occurs in Syria. Across the Pacific it is found in Chili. Its next appearance on the rich and diversified continent of America is across its southern bulk, presenting itself in the Brazils, and on its northern boundary at Cayenne, and in Columbia; and it then appears again in Jamaica. In North America it occurs throughout the United States from Florida upwards, where the genus in its species has a very English aspect, and if they be dissimilar, as may be fairly surmised, they are so very like our own that one is said to be absolutely identical throughout Europe and in Ohio. It passes still forward and occurs in Nova Scotia, Hudson’s Bay, and elsewhere in arctic America, where the botanist might almost herbalize through the agency of our insects, for the pollen they carry and still retain in cabinets would often indicate the plants which they there frequent. Thus those stern regions are not barren in fragrant and attractive beauties. We find it, too, in common with Sphecodes at Sydney, New South Wales, whence, doubtless, it passed to New Zealand, where it has been collected. About one hundred and fifty are registered.
With the next genus, Dasypoda, I terminate the geography of the Andrenidæ. Our own single species of these very elegant bees occurs throughout France and Germany, and abounds in Sweden. Other species, all elegant, occur in the Isles of Greece, in Albania, and the Morea; profusely at Malaga in Spain, and at the further extremity of northern Africa in Tunis, and in Egypt. Twenty are known.
The genus Panurgus is the advanced guard of the true bees, for, although it still retains much of the appearance and structure of the terminal genus of the preceding subfamily of Andrenidæ, it is strictly distinct, and well links the two subfamilies together. This very peculiar form is limited in number of species and in distribution, for five only have been recorded.
Our own species occur throughout France, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland, and one of them has also been sent from Oran. The genus is small, and may have been overlooked in other countries, although its appearance is sufficiently distinct and marked to have caught the eye. It is as lithe and active as a Malay, as black as a negro, and as hairy as a gorilla, looking like a little ursine sweep.
The genus Eucera, of which we have but one representative, although considerably more than fifty species are known, has not so wide a range as might be expected from their numbers. Our own is found throughout Europe and in Algeria. Other species occur in Russia, the Morea, Albania, Dalmatia, and Egypt. In Asia some are found in Syria, and at Bagdad; and from the New World they have been sent from Cayenne and the United States.
The genus Anthophora, to which the genus Saropoda is very closely allied,—so closely, indeed, that by the celebrated hymenopterologist Le Pelletier de St. Fargeau the species of both are incorporated together,—has, even as now restricted, a world-wide dissemination, and numbers nearly a hundred and fifty species. Several of our own occur throughout France and Italy and the whole of northern Europe, and even among the Esquimaux in the arctic regions, showing that a bridal bouquet may be gathered even there; for where bees are flowers must abound.
The genus in other species shows itself in the south of Europe, viz. in Spain, Sicily, the Morea, and Dalmatia; by way of Syria and Arabia Felix it passes down to Egypt and occurs in Nubia and also in Algeria. It dots the western coast of Africa at Senegal and Guinea, and has been discovered in the Canaries, and again makes its appearance at the Cape of Good Hope, rounding it to Natal. It travels round the peninsula of India, being found at Bombay, in Bengal, and in the island of Ceylon, and passes onward by way of Hongkong to northern China, where, dipping to the Philippines, it next occurs in Australia. In the New World it is found on its western side at Chili, and traverses that continent to Paraguay and Pará, and has been sent from the West India Islands of Cuba, St. Domingo, and Guadaloupe. From Mexico, where we next find it, it passes to Indiana, and occurs throughout the United States, and thus completes its progress round the world. About one hundred and thirty are known.
The genus Saropoda is closely allied to Anthophora, as closely as Heriades is to Chelostoma, and is very limited in numbers, ten only being known, and but one of which is native with us. The genus occurs throughout France and Germany, and has been sent from Russia, Egypt, South Africa, and Australia, thus having a very wide range notwithstanding the paucity of its species.
The very pretty genus Ceratina, although numbering but few species,—fewer than thirty,—and although not found in Australasia, is widely scattered throughout the Old and the New Worlds. Our own species inhabits as far north as Russia. Other species occur throughout France, and in the south of Europe, and show themselves in the Morea, and in Albania. North, South, and Western Africa possess the genus, it being found in Algeria and at the Cape of Good Hope, and in the intervening district of Senegal. It has been brought from Ceylon and Bengal, and also from the north of India. It reaches China by way of Java and Hongkong: and in the New World has been found in the Brazils and Cayenne, in the Southern, and throughout the United States in the Northern continent.
The genus Nomada is the first of the genuine parasitical bees, and about the habits of which no doubt can be entertained; certainly not the same as attaches both to Hylæus and Sphecodes, among the Andrenidæ. The parasitical habits of Nomada are evident and unmistakable. This is the handsomest genus, in variety of colour and elegance of form, of all our native bees, but the species are never conspicuous for size. They have much of the appearance of wasps, and are often mistaken for them even by entomologists, who have not paid attention to bees. Many of our native species seem limited to our own islands: others of our species occur in France and Germany, and through Denmark in direct line to Lapland, turning down into Russia, and have been caught as far south as Albania. One of our species, or so like as to want distinguishing characteristics, is found in Canada. Did ours migrate there? and how? The genus is of wide distribution, but occurs only north of the Equator, where it spreads from Portugal to the Philippine Islands. It is found in Siberia and Northern China, whence through the Philippines it passes to Tranquebar, then up to Northern India, and thence by Bagdad to the Morea and Albania, and dips down to Northern Africa at Tunis, and on to Oran and Tangiers, and completes its circuit in Portugal. It is doubtless parasitical upon many more genera and species than we find it infest in this country, although all that the several species pair off with here are not fully designated, especially among the Andrenæ, and smaller Halicti. The number of species, British and foreign, known to collectors approximate to a hundred.
The genus Melecta is another handsome parasitical insect. This is always a dark beauty, and is very limited in species, for, as far as they may be estimated from the contents of collections, its numbers do not reach twenty. Our own species occur throughout the whole of Europe, north and south. Others are found in Sicily, Albania, the Morea, and show themselves at Bagdad. The genus has been sent from the Canaries, and crosses the tropics into Chili, but does not seem to have occurred elsewhere in either North or South America, although one of the genera (Eucera) on which, with us, it is parasitical, is found in the latter country, and the other genus (Anthophora), which it also infests, is found throughout the world, excepting in Australasia. In all those countries, the closely-allied exotic genus Crocisa, which is very numerous in species, may supply its place.
The elegant genus Epeolus occurs in our own species throughout northern Europe, as high as Lapland, and is found also at the southern extremity of the continent of the Old World, at the Cape of Good Hope. It has been brought from Sicily, and other species come from Siberia. The genus in America passes down from the United States, by way of Mexico, to the Brazils, where it crosses the southern continent, having been transmitted from Chili. It is very limited in the number of its species, considering its wide diffusion, for not more than twenty are registered. It is almost identical in distribution with the genus Colletes, upon which it is with us parasitical. The species are never so large as those of the preceding genus, Melecta.
The genus Stelis is limited both in number of species and distribution, although the spots whence it has come are wide apart. Our own species are found throughout France and northern Europe, as far as Finland. Other species occur in North America, and the Brazils, but the whole number yet described is under ten.
The remarkable form in both sexes of the genus Cælioxys occurs in identity with our own species throughout France and Austria, and spreads north to Finland and Russia, and through all the intervening countries. It is singular that it should not be recorded from southern or south-western Europe, as it is found in Oran. Other species of the genus have been found in northern Africa, Egypt, and Algeria. On the western coast of Africa it has been caught on the Gambia, at Sierra Leone, and on the coast of Guinea. It doubles the Cape of Good Hope, where it is found extending its range to Port Natal. From Asia we have it from Turkey, and again from India. It has been sent from the hither side of South America, from the Brazils, and separately from Pará, and occurs at Cayenne, and in the West India Islands, Cuba, and St. Thomas’s, and extends as high in North America, through the United States, as Canada. It is quite probable that it has as wide a range as the bees upon which it is parasitical (Megachile), although it has not yet come from such extensively-spread localities. More than fifty species are known, but some of our own have not yet been enumerated amongst those found elsewhere.
The genus Megachile, which embraces the most renowned of the mechanical bees, is extremely cosmopolitan, spreading north and south, east and west; and is also very abundant in the numbers of its species, the census extending to not far short of two hundred. Some one, or several of our species, although other species are limited to our own country,—spread through Italy and France, and all the countries of northern Europe to the high latitude of Lapland, which is higher than where even one of ours (viz. the M. centuncularis) is again found, which occurs in Canada and at Hudson’s Bay. The genus also frequents southern Europe, in Spain, Sicily, and Albania, and in the East, in the Caucasus and Dalmatia. It traverses Turkey by Bagdad to India, having been captured in Nepaul, and it descends southward in the Indian peninsula, where it has been found at Bombay. From India it stretches to the Mauritius, thence across the Indian Ocean to Java, and thence to Hongkong and northern China. It then dips to the Philippines, and doubtless through the islands of the Indian Archipelago to Australasia, from which continent none are registered from its northern and eastern settlements, but species abound along its southern edge from Western Australia, through Adelaide to Tasmania. The genus has been brought from the West India islands, St. Thomas’s, St. Croix, and Cuba: it is found upon the main from Mexico, descending to the Brazils. It skirts all the coasts of Africa, being discovered in Egypt and Algeria, along the western coast by the Gambia, Senegal and Sierra Leone to Guinea, and the island of Fernando Po, and then again occurs at the Cape of Good Hope. Ascending the eastern coast by Natal, it stretches to Abyssinia. The species are very abundant in India, Africa, and Australasia.
The genus Anthidium, although very numerous in species, and differing more remarkably in form amongst themselves than most other genera, has a far less extensive range, no species having been found in Australasia or India, although it occurs in Arabia, Syria, and Mesopotamia. Our own solitary species occurs in France, Italy, and the whole of northern Europe, extending to Finland. In southern Europe the genus inhabits Sicily, Spain, the Morea, Albania, and Dalmatia, and is also very abundant in Southern Russia. In Africa it is found in Nubia and Algeria, and on its north-western edge in Barbary, whence it descends by the Gambia and Sierra Leone to the Cape of Good Hope, and thence reaches to Natal. It is then found in Chili, and crossing the South American continent occurs in the Brazils, whence it ascends to Cayenne, and, by way of Mexico, to the United States. The number of species recorded exceed a hundred.
The remarkable genus Chelostoma is very limited in the numbers of its species, of which less than a dozen are known; as also in the extent of their distribution. Our own are found throughout northern Europe, as far as Lapland, and in Russia. In southern Europe they occur in the Morea, and the genus has been discovered in Georgia in North America.
The closely-allied genus Heriades seems limited to a European habitation, and occurs only in our own solitary species, but it ranges, like the preceding, to the high latitudes of Lapland.
Anthocopa seems limited to our own country and France, possibly only from its having been associated from similarity of general habit with the genus Osmia. Only one species appears to be known, but this has a world-wide celebrity, from the interesting account given by Réaumur, of its hanging its abode with symmetrical cuttings from the petals of the poppy.
The genus Osmia, although not including such able artisans as Megachile, still has in its species very constructive propensities. Indeed, all the bees which convey the pollen on the under side of the abdomen, are more or less builders or upholsterers. The genus has a wide range, and is tolerably numerous, numbering more than fifty species. Some of our own occur throughout Europe, and, like the two preceding genera, are found in the highest continental latitudes. Some of ours also occur in Algeria and the Canaries, other species in Albania and Moravia. In Africa they are found in Egypt, Barbary, and Port Natal, and in the New World from Florida, in the United States, through Nova Scotia to Hudson’s Bay.
The genus Apathus, which is parasitical upon Bombus, and to the uninitiated has all the appearance of this genus, seems to be the only instance of a parasitical genus of bees so closely resembling the οἶτος, (as we may, perhaps, for the sake of avoiding a periphrasis, be allowed to call the bee upon which the parasite is found,) as to be so easily liable to be mistaken for it, and which was indeed the case by even such a sagacious entomologist as the distinguished Latreille; but Kirby had already noticed the difference, suggesting its separation from Bombus, until about the time that St. Fargeau was induced to propose a distribution of the Hymenoptera, based generally upon economy and habits, to which he had been led by a refining investigation of structure, that the distinguishing difference was appreciated, and used generically, by Mr. Newman. This difference, like many other simple facts, now that it has been found, is very obvious. It consists in the genus having no neuters, and the female of the species no polliniferous organs, but the determination of the legitimate males, by means other than empirical, is still difficult. In our own species this genus ranges throughout northern Europe, as high as Lapland; a cause for which we shall discover when we trace the geography of the next genus, Bombus. One species different from any of ours occurs in the Brazils, and others are found in the Polish Ukraine, and in the United States of North America. The genus appears extremely limited in numbers, for although nearly a hundred of the genus Bombus are known, Apathus, in collections, seems limited to ten. This may perhaps arise from want of due observation or from the neglect of their careful separation from that genus, but our own species are far from co-extensive with our native species of Bombus.
The genus Bombus, although with some southern irrepressible propensities, it being found within the tropics in a few instances, is essentially a northern form, which is strongly indicated in its downy habiliments, for it is clothed in fur like the Czar in his costly blue-fox mantle. In the Old World its range extends to Lapland, whither it is followed, as previously noticed, by its parasite Apathus, and in the New World to Greenland, where one species seems an autochthon, perhaps originating there when the land was still verdant, and grew grapes, long before the age of Madoc. Other species occur far away to the north of east, booming through the desolate wilds of Kamtchatka, having been found at Sitka; and their cheerful hum is heard within the Arctic circle, as high as Boothia Felix, thus more northerly than the seventieth parallel. They may, perhaps, with their music often convey to the broken-hearted and lonely exile in Siberia, the momentarily cheering reminiscence of joyful youth, and by this bright and brief interruption break the monotonous and painful dullness of his existence, recalling the happier days of yore: but the flowers of humanity, here typified by the natural flowers which attract these stray comforters, will one day spring where the salt of tears now desolates, and thus the merry bees have sweetness for even these poor outcasts, and froth their bitter cup with bubbling hope.
In the south of Europe the genus occurs in Austria, the island of Zante, and the Pyrenees. It is found in Syria, the island of Java, in China at Chusan and Silhet, and also in northern India; and, although crossing the tropics to fix itself at Monte Video, at the mouth of Rio de la Plata, in Africa it appears to be found at Oran only; nor does it occur in Australasia. In South America it is also found at Pará and Cayenne, and on the opposite side at Columbia, Quito, and Chili, and passes up the isthmus to California, and thence to Mexico, whence it extends to the island of Antigua.
The genus Apis, or the Hive Bee,—which perhaps in its past and present utility to man, may successfully compete in the aggregate with the silkworm,—with true regal dignity comes the last of the series of genera. The whole array of her precursors, who marshal her way, and derive their significance and importance from the more or less direct resemblance in structure and function to her, deduce their common name of “Bees” from this relationship, and consequently from her. Long before their existence had been traced by the observer of nature or by the naturalist, the comb of the Bee had dropped in exuberant luxuriance its golden stores for the gratification of mankind. This little creature had garnered, from sources inaccessible to man, the luscious nectar concealed within the bosom of the flower, whose exquisitely beautiful varieties, in form, colour, and fragrance, had delighted his sight and his smell long before he had been led by accident to discover that these industrious little workers collected into their treasury, from those same flowers, as exquisite a luxury for his taste, as they themselves had yielded to his other senses. Thus the earliest records speak of honey, and of bees, and of wax; and the land of promise to the restored Israelites, was to be a land flowing with milk and honey.
Réaumur, whose observations upon bees had been pursued with such patient and indefatigable perseverance, combined with such minute accuracy, and then recorded so agreeably, and who conceived the possibility of establishing a standard of length, for the common use of all nations, to be derived from the length of a certain number of the honey-cells of the comb, to which notion he was doubtless led by their mathematical precision and uniform exactitude, appears to have been unaware of the existence of other species of the genus, and hence he assumed, in his ignorance of this fact, that in all countries they were alike.
Travellers had, even for more than a century before, mentioned different kinds of honey, derived from different kinds of bees, which, however, Réaumur does not, from this circumstance, seem to have known. Had he been acquainted with it, his philosophical accuracy of observation and habit of reflection would certainly have assumed the possibility of differences of size in the cells of the different bees, and he would have waited until opportunity had given him the power of determining whether this mode of admeasurement could be safely adopted as certainly being of universal prevalence. It is to be wondered at also, that he did not weigh the possibility that climatic differences in the distribution of even the Apis mellifica might have involved discrepancies, by the effects constantly seen to be produced by climate, and which would have shown that the standard which he sought to establish could not be relied on.
Collections exhibit about sixteen species of the genus Apis, whose natural occurrence is restricted to the Old World, for although the genus, especially in the species A. mellifica, has been naturalized in America, and also in Australasia, and in some of the Islands of the Pacific, these were originally conveyed thither by Europeans. Those countries possess representatives of the genus with analogous attributes and functions, in two other genera, which fulfil the same uses. It is remarkable that the Red Indians used to note the gradual absorption of their territory by the White Man, through the forward advance of his herald Apis mellifica. This species has also been carried to India, to the Isle of Timor, and to northern, western, and southern Africa, in all which countries it is thoroughly naturalized, although they all possess indigenous species, which are quite as, or perhaps more largely, tributary to their inhabitants. Observation has not hitherto confirmed the identity of the manners of these exotic species with our own, owing to the deficiency of observers with the enthusiasm requisite to follow their peculiarities with the patience of a Réaumur, a Bonnet, or a Huber. That they are quite or all but similar, exclusively of differences of size, both in their habits and their nests, may be inferred from their identity of structure. We know that they consist of three kinds of individuals—neuters, females, and males,—and that their combs are made in cakes built vertically, formed of hexagonal contiguous cells, which are placed bottom to bottom, and overlap each other in the same strengthening position as do ours; and also that the cells wherein the males are developed are oval, larger than the honey-cells, and less uniform. With all these similitudes it is fair to suppose that their economy may be the same; but their honey-cells, from their smaller size, (the bee which produces them being smaller,) have a more elegant appearance; and it is concluded from the largeness of the nest, taken conjunctively with the smallness of the cells, and of the bees constructing it, that the communities thus associated must in their collective number be considerably larger than those of our hives.
Instinct, as expressed in the habits, is as sure a line of separation, or means of combination, as structure, and is corroborative in tending to preserve generic conjunction in its inviolability. And, conversely, with certainty, is indicated that such-and-such a form, in the broad and most distinguishing features of its economy, is essentially the same in every climate. The habits, therefore, in whatever country the genus may occur, may be as surely affirmed of the species, from the knowledge we have of those at home, as if observation had industriously tracked them. This is especially the case in a genus, the species of which present such a peculiar identity of structure as does Apis, whose specific differences are derived only from colour and size, and this identity is a peculiarity, so far as I have observed, rarely found in other genera, numbering even no more species, but wherein slight differences of structure often yield a subsidiary specific character, complete structural identity being almost solely incidental to the genus Apis.
The importance of honey and wax throughout the world, as well for the ceremonies of religion, as for the service of the arts, and for medical or domestic purposes, is attested by the vigilance, care, and assiduity with which bees are tended in every country. Although sugar, since its introduction to those northern countries which have not been favoured by nature with the cane that yields it, has superseded for ordinary uses the produce of the hive, this still continues serviceable for many purposes to which sugar cannot be applied. It is used in many ways in pharmacy, and still retains in the interior of some continents, owing to the deficiency of sugar, arising from the difficulties and expenses of transit, all its primitive uses. In the East, even in countries producing sugar in abundance, honey is extensively employed for the preservation of fruits, which in their ripe state in those hot climates would rapidly lose their fulness of flavour were they not thus protected,—honey here being esteemed superior to sugar in the circumstance of its not crystallizing by reason of the heat, and also from its applicability to this use in its natural state.
This is especially the case in China, where a conserve of green ginger, and of a fragrant orange (the Cum Quat), are in high repute, and which are peculiarly grateful to Europeans on the spot. These, however, are so delicately susceptible of change of climate, that they lose some of the aroma that constitutes much of their attraction, upon transportation, and, indeed, like many kinds of Southern wines, can be appreciated only within their own country, from their extreme delicacy and tendency to spoil.
Honey is a very favourite food and medicine with the Bedouins in Northern Arabia. Bees make their hives in all the crevices of rocks in Hedscha, finding everywhere aromatic plants and flowers. At Taif, bees yield most excellent honey, and the honey at Mecca is exquisite. At Veit-el-Fakeh, wax from the mountainous country of Yemen is exchanged for European goods and for spices from the further Indies. In Syria and Palestine we find bees abound. At Ladakiah there are large exports both of honey and wax; and the honey of Ainnete, on the declivities of the Lebanon, is considered the finest of the whole of that mountain-range. Antonine the Martyr, in the seventh century, speaks of the honey of Nazareth being most excellent, and in the present day bees are extensively cultivated at Bethlehem, for the sake of the profit derived from the wax tapers supplied to the pilgrims. Some of the members of the German colony at Wadi Urtas speak of the purchase of eleven beehives at this place, and express themselves as very sanguine of an abundant harvest from the luxuriance and profusion of flowers, although they say the bees are smaller than those of Westphalia, and are of a yellowish-brown colour. The eastern side of this peninsula, especially the district of Oman, is wholly destitute of bees, contrasting thus unfavourably with its western fertility.
The enormous quantities of honey produced may be comparatively estimated by the collateral production of beeswax, which it exceeds by at least ten to one. When we reflect upon what masses of the latter are consumed in the rites of the Roman Catholic and Greek churches throughout the many and large countries where those religions prevail, we shall be able to form a general estimate of the extensiveness and universality of the cultivation of bees. Nor are those the only uses to which wax is applied, and the collective computation of its consumption will show that bees abound in numbers almost transcending belief.
The name of bougie for wax-candle or taper, is used by all the languages of the south of Europe, and is derived from the name of Bugia, a town of Northern Africa, whence, even as long back as the time of the Roman Empire, wax was obtained to make candles for lighting. The inhabitants of Trebizonde paid their tribute to the Roman Empire in wax. Both honey and wax are largely employed in pharmacy, and were also, in ancient times, both extensively used in embalming. The honey of Mount Hymetta in Attica, and of Hybla in Sicily, were each in as high repute in classical countries as is that of Narbonne in Languedoc, by reason of its choice delicacy, with us, and throughout France. Distributed over the wide pastures of the Ukraine, every peasant has his store of hives, which frequently, in their harvests, realize more largely than their crops of grain,—multitudes of that peasantry computing as important items in the estimate of their wealth the number of their beehives, which often exceed five hundred to the individual possessor. In Spain and Italy bees are largely cultivated; and in the former country many a poor parish priest, the religious monitor of an obscure hamlet, can count his five thousand.
In countries so rich in the productions of Flora, whose seasons there are perennial, and which fluctuate only in special locality, bees are removed to and fro to meet these peculiarities. Thus in the south of France, where large tracts are cultivated with aromatic shrubs and flowers, for the distillation of essential oils and fragrant waters, the hives of bees are moved up and down the adjacent rivers upon rafts, as the flowering of the crops succeed each other. In Italy, Spain, and Southern Russia, the same practices are pursued, although we have no detailed accounts of the precise spots; but we know from Niebuhr, Savigny, and Sir Gardiner Wilkinson, that upon the Nile it is customary thus to transport the bees from flower-region to flower-region upon rafts containing about four thousand hives, each numbered by the proprietors of the hives for identification, who thus double the seasons by continually shifting their bees from Lower Egypt to the Upper Nile and back again.
In ancient Greece also, they were conveyed for this purpose from Achaia to Attica; in the former of these provinces, owing to its higher temperature, flowers had passed their bloom before spring had opened in the latter. All these circumstances tend to show that the experience of bee-masters, both ancient and modern, has ascertained that their insects have not a very extensive range of flight.
Of the fact that the honey of bees is not always salutary to man, there is a remarkable instance recorded in Xenophon, in his narrative of the retreat of “The Ten Thousand,” who reports that upon falling in with quantities of it, in Asia Minor, those who indulged in its enjoyment were seized with vertigo, or headache, and violent diarrhœa, attended with sickness, but which had no fatal consequences, although they did not recover from its injurious effects for a couple of days, and were left then in a very prostrated condition. The celebrated physician and botanist Tournefort, when travelling in the East, towards the end of the seventeenth century, found, in the neighbourhood of Trebizonde, an excessive luxuriance of the flowers of the Rhododendron ponticum and of the Azalea pontica, which, although sumptuous in their blossoms, were held in bad repute by the inhabitants, who ascribed to their odour the deleterious effect of causing headache and vertigo. He was thence induced to surmise that these had possibly been the flowers the bees had extracted the honey from which had been so baneful to the troops of Xenophon.
But it seems that bees themselves cannot collect with impunity the honey of noxious flowers, for they are occasionally subject to a disease resembling vertigo, from which they do not recover, and which is attributed to the poisonous nature of the flowers they have been recently visiting.
Several different kinds of honey and wax have been described, but some degree of uncertainty exists as to whether they are all the produce of genuine species of the genus Apis; for it will be found, in a rapid notice I purpose giving of the more conspicuous genera of foreign bees, that there are two exotic genera of this section of the family, both social in their habits, and which both produce the same materials; there is a wasp also that makes honey. But of all the many kinds of honey noticed, the green kind furnished to Western India by the island of Réunion, the produce of an Apis indigenous to Madagascar, but which has been naturalized in the French island, and also in the Mauritius, is perhaps the most remarkable. It is of a thick syrupy consistency, and has a peculiar aroma. It is much esteemed upon the most proximate coasts of the peninsula of India, where it bears a high price. Whether its greenness of colour is derived from the flowers which this species frequents, or whether it be incidental to the nature of the bee, has not been ascertained, but the honey of the South American wasp, the sole species producing the material, has also a green tinge.
Nature has assigned the task of thus catering for man, by collecting and garnering from the recondite crypts within the blossoms of flowers, to about sixteen species congenerical with our honey-bee, but sufficiently differing. As I have before noticed, the species of this genus greatly more resemble each other in structure than perhaps do the species collocated within any other genus of insects, and whence may be inferred an exact similitude of habits, although as yet unconfirmed by direct observation.
The second European species, the Apis Ligustica, or Ligurian bee, is rather larger, but very like ours, and inhabits the whole of the north of Italy, its occupation of that country extending from Genoa to the vicinity of Trieste; its progress further north being impeded by the Alps of Switzerland and the Tyrol. It is also found in Naples, and may likewise spread to the Morea, Turkey, and the Archipelago of Greece, and is perhaps the bee noticed by Virgil. Either this species, or possibly one distinct from ours, is that which is so extensively cultivated in Spain, although ours is found in Barbary.
Another smaller kind, the Apis fasciata, has been cultivated in Egypt from time immemorial, and which yielded its abundant harvests for the gratification of the ancient Romans. Only five other distinct species, so far as is yet known to us, appear to occupy the vast continent of Africa,—two on its western coast at Senegal and Congo, the A. Adansonii and the A. Nigritarium; two in Caffraria, the A. scutellata and the Apis Caffra. That at Madagascar, and doubtless on the adjacent mainland, which has also been naturalized in the Mauritius and at Réunion, is the Apis unicolor, which produces the green honey mentioned above.
India, however, at present appears to be the true metropolis of the genus. Further discoveries in Africa may hereafter give that vastly larger continent the predominancy; but there is no doubt that, so far as present information extends, India has the superiority. Thus Apis dorsata, Apis nigripennis, and Apis socialis, are cultivated in Bengal, the latter being also found along the Malabar coast and at Java. It is singular that the only instance of the occurrence of the very distinct genera of Apis and Mellipona, both honey-storing genera, yet known to exist indigenously in the same locality, is found in this island. At Pondicherry and its vicinity are found Apis Delessertii and Apis Indica. This latter bee is extensively cultivated, and its hives are perhaps the most largely inhabited of any of the species; the numbers occupying a single nest being estimated at above eighty thousand.
From India also, but to which no special locality is assigned, come Apis Perrottetii, Apis lobata, as likewise Apis Peronii, which is equally native to the Isle of Timor. The honey produced by this last bee is yellow, more liquid than ours, and of a very agreeable flavour.
Thus science dissipates the popular supposition, that a multiplicity of the individuals of one species of this insect produces the tons of wax and the myriads of gallons of honey that are annually consumed.
Which of these bees first benefited the human race, in its primitive seat, and before the multiplication of mankind forced them to take divergent courses from the cradle of their birthrace, “to people the whole earth,” it is impossible to say. And it is equally impossible to conjecture whether, like man, they by this course of migration have assumed the features they now exhibit of distinctly different species; yet they do not vary so considerably among themselves as do many other creatures that have come under the direct influence of man,—the chief differences consisting in the comparatively slight distinctions of colour and of size, but which are sufficiently marked to constitute them good species.
The earliest manuscript extant, which is the Medical papyrus, now in the Royal Collection at Berlin, and of which Brugsch[2] has given a facsimile and a translation, dates from the nineteenth or twentieth Egyptian dynasty, accordingly from the reign of Ramses II., and thus goes back to the fourteenth century before our era. But a portion of this papyrus indicates a much higher antiquity, extending as far back as the period of the sovereigns who built the Pyramids, consequently to the very earliest period of the history of the world.