In the pamphlet referred to, M. Hermann gives the following description of what he insists on designating as Apis helvetica: "The Yellow Italian Alp bee is a mountain insect; it is found between two mountain chains to the right and left of Lombardy and the Rhetian Alps, and comprises the whole territory of Ticino, Val Tellina, and the southern Grisons.[9] It thrives up to the height of 4,500 feet above the level of the sea, and appears to prefer the northern clime to the warmer, for in the south of Italy it is not found. The Alps are their native country, therefore they are called Yellow Alp or tame house bees, in contradistinction to the black European bees, which we might call common forest bees, and which, on the slightest touch, fly like lightning into your face.[?]

"As all good and noble things in the world are more scarce than common ones, so there are more common black bees than of the noble yellow race, which latter inhabit only a very small piece of country, while the black ones are at home everywhere in Europe, and even in America."

Our own experience with the Italian bee enables us to corroborate the statements which have been made in its favour. We find the queens more prolific than those of the common kind, and the quantity of honey produced is greater. These two facts stand as cause and effect: the bees being multiplied more quickly, the store of honey is accumulated more rapidly, and the Italian bees consume, if anything, less food than the common kind. When of pure Italian blood these bees are, by some apiarians, thought to be hardier than our own. That they forage for stores with greater eagerness, and have little hesitation in paying visits to other hives, we can testify from our own observation. The following anecdote will illustrate their intrusive propensities; Another bee-keeper, who lived in the same neighbourhood, was once inspecting our hives, when, on observing the yellow bees, he exclaimed, "Now I have found out where those strange-looking bees come from; for," said he, "these yellow-jackets are incessant visitors to my hives. I thought they were a species of wasp that had come to rob, and until now I have been unable to account for their appearance at the entrance of my hive, so that I have killed them by hundreds." This was not at all pleasing intelligence for us, and we trust that our neighbour has been more lenient to "the yellow-jackets" since his visit, for such summary capital punishment was wholly unmerited, because when a bee is peaceably received (see page 169) it becomes naturalised, and works side by side with the others in its fresh abode. We are inclined to believe that more visiting takes place amongst bees of different hives than bee-keepers have been accustomed to suppose; but where the Italian and black bees are kept near each other, the foreigners being conspicuous by their lighter colour, there is less difficulty in identifying them when at the entrance of other hives. Von Berlepsch, we find, remarks that there exists during the gathering season a species of "communism of dwellings" between the bees of neighbouring hives.

The Italian bees are more active than common bees when on the wing. They are also observed to work longer hours than other bees both early and late, as well as in seasons when the latter will not stir abroad. Thus altogether they are much more productive. In many seasons we have had more honey from an Italian stock than from any one of our colonies of black bees. From this hive we have taken a glass super containing forty pounds nett of honey, besides having drawn from it an artificial swarm; and after all it remained the strongest hive in our apiary.

In a private letter received from Mr. Langstroth he informed us that in the season of 1865 he bred over 300 Italian queens; these he disseminated to various' bee-masters on the American continent, and the united opinion of apiarians in that country was increasingly in favour of the decided advantage of the cultivation of the Italian bee. At the present date it is literally "all the rage" with bee-keepers there. With ourselves there is a quieter but not less genuine welcome accorded to it. In the British Bee Journal for May 1877, the distinguished apiarian "A Renfrewshire Bee-keeper" writes: "After careful study and comparison of both I found the Italian superior for beauty, prolificness, power, and activity, and (to my view the greatest value of all) for fresh blood."

To the testimonies already cited we will now add that of the late Mr. Woodbury. The following is extracted from the paper contributed by him to the Bath and West of England Agricultural Journal: "From my strongest Ligurian stock I took eight artificial swarms in the spring, besides depriving it of numerous brood-combs. Finding, in June, that the bees were collecting honey so fast that the queen could not find an empty cell in which to lay an egg, I was reluctantly compelled to put on a super. When this had been filled with thirty-eight pounds of the finest honeycomb,[10] I removed it, and as the stock hive (a very large one) could not contain the multitude of bees which issued from it, I formed them into another very large artificial swarm. The foregoing facts speak for themselves; but as information on this point has been very generally asked, I have no hesitation in saying that I believe the Ligurian honey bee infinitely superior in every respect to the only species that we have hitherto been acquainted with."

The chorus of praise is not however universal. Most noticeable is the broad divergence of views between the two greatest apiarians of Germany—Dr. Dzierzon and Baron von Berlepsch. The former pronounces this bee less given to stinging, less sensitive of cold, more prolific, earlier in brood-raising and swarming, forwarder also in comb-building, more industrious and honey-yielding, more courageous in defence of its stores, and prompter in expelling the drones. The Baron examines these and other assertions one by one, and declares emphatically that, after a long course of experience, he has not found them true in a single particular. He calls the bee "the Italian humbug," and sums up as follows: "While it may perhaps be distinguished from our own by a somewhat slighter disposition to sting, but, on the other hand, it begins building drone comb and raising numbers of drones in the first year, and its queens grow unfertile so early, and that mostly at so inopportune a time, it stands manifestly inferior to our own in a relation of economic utility, and has therefore for us no practical value at all."[11]

Though we are unshaken in our adhesion to the Italian bee by these opposite views, it is impossible to treat them as beneath consideration. They are not a mere prejudice, for the Baron was at first as much prepossessed in the strangers' favour as any one. But it would be still less possible to set aside on their account the united testimony of Dzierzon, Langstroth, and a host of others who are above delusion on such a point. How then can we account for this one notable divergence? In the first place, much of Von Berlepsch's data are negative only, and negative evidence can never set aside positive; thus when he tells us that he "has not observed" earlier activity or greater courage or less sensitiveness, while others of unquestioned judgment have observed these points, we cannot hesitate to decide in the favour of the latter. As to less disposition to sting, the positive evidence should be on the Baron's side when he says that they do sting; but in this case, as we have seen, he partly concedes the point. As to productiveness and fecundity, there may be some undetected peculiarity about this bee to which something in the Seebach apiary or neighbourhood is not so congenial as in other parts. At all events. Dr. Dzierzon is unmoved from his faith, for we find him in the present year giving as the result of twenty-five years experience that this bee is "as gentle, diligent, and prolific as it is beautiful;" that it "bears our German climate well, and that its preservation in purity is with some care quite possible."

Still some persons are sure to be disappointed with a foreign bee, just as some will be with a foreign country. Some have had their expectations raised too highly, and expect wonderful results to follow without effort; others, on the contrary, are so wrapt up in the new treasure that they cherish it with vastly greater pains than their other bees, and thus attribute to the bee itself what is partly to be credited to their own superior care. In particular, with regard to the greater fecundity of the queens, we think some allowance ought to be made for the circumstance that in order to meet the demand for Italian queens they are being continuously bred, so that when united to English stocks they are always young and in the prime as to fertility; whilst the common black queens are allowed to exist in the hives their appointed time, as there is nothing to call for encouraging their special propagation. In making comparisons we think this fact has been a little overlooked; but though too much may have been thus credited to the Italians, we think there is a clear balance on this point in their favour, and they retain altogether our most decided preference.

§ VI. OTHER FOREIGN VARIETIES.

1. Carniolan Bees.—In appearance this variety is very much like our English bee. The difference is that the rings on the abdomen are whiter; otherwise (except by a close observer) one would not be known from the other.

Eight years ago the Rev. W. C. Cotton (brother of Lord Justice Cotton and author of "My Bee Book") had a stock of these bees from Austria, where they are largely cultivated, and he left them under our charge. We placed them in our own apiary at Hampstead, where they did very well, working a capital super in the first year, as well as parting with a fine swarm. The second year Mr. Cotton had the swarm sent to his own apiary, near Chester, because he wanted the original queen, which of course this had with it. This swarm had rather a remarkable adventure, and was nearly lost, as related at page 78. The Carniolans have been praised as possessing similar good qualities with the Italians, and though Von Berlepsch laughs at them and calls them "a new grand swindle," yet, as he declares them to be "closely allied, if not altogether identical," with the following variety, for which he has only good reports, his denunciations of these seem reasonably open to qualification.

2. Lower Austrian Bees.—Baron von Berlepsch mentions these as a variety which he found, to his surprise, in the neighbourhood of Vienna, but which must have been the same that Von Ehrenfels had cultivated and described. They scarcely differ from the Carniolan, but about one in fifty is rather strongly marked with red upon the first ring of the back. The Baron speaks of their habitat as "the El Dorado of the Bee," and he declares them wholly free from the vices of the next sort, and thinks they raise fewer drones than ordinary bees. He recommends, as likely to be a profitable breed, a cross of these with our own variety.

3. Heath Bees.—This is a race of a very different character, deriving its name from the district known as Luneburg Heath, and found also about Oldenburg, Schleswig, and Holstein. In form and appearance Heath bees are wholly identical with our own, but they seem like bees in a lower state of civilisation, perpetually swarming without occasion and with unmanageable impulse, and producing principally drones and drone comb even with a queen of the first year. "Undoubtedly," says Von Berlepsch, "this is by far the worst kind of bee existing in Germany."

4. Greek or Cecropian Bees.—In some particulars these are like a cross between the Italian and common bees. The queen is dark bronze on the abdomen as far as the second scale, but the common colour above. Most of the workers have a ring and a half of bronze or a reddish rust-colour; some have two entire rings of this hue. They are stated to be more industrious and productive than common bees, and the drones to be smaller.

This and the two previous varieties we thus briefly notice on the basis of the remarks of Von Berlepsch. We are not aware that either of them has been introduced into this country, nor do they appear to have attained much success in Germany. Thus humorously does our author dismiss this last: "Since 1864, when Deumer sounded his trumpet with distended cheeks, we have heard not so much as a last dying speech from the Cecropian bee, and she seems already in Germany to have gone the way of all flesh. May the earth lie lightly on her!"

5 and 6. Cyprian and Smyrnæan Bees.—"A Country Doctor" writes in the British Bee Journal that he had prepared a translation from the Bienenzeitung of an article by Herr Corri, in which he speaks most highly of the good qualities of the Cyprian bees, and considers them in advance of any other bee that he has cultivated. In this opinion he is borne out by Count Rudolph Kolowrat of Tabor.

"It so frequently happens," proceeds the correspondent, "that the last pet receives the highest honours, and we are so apt to believe that that must have special value which has cost considerable pains to obtain, that a certain amount of caution is advisable in receiving these enthusiastic statements. Herr Corri's opinion, however, is deserving of the highest respect; for both he and the Count have been most perseveringly engaged for many years past in importing various races of bees from their native lands, and making comparative observations as to their merits, and this without being biased by the expectation of commercial gain.

"The bees got from Smyrna (1864) seem to stand next in their estimation. Both the originally imported stocks, and those subsequently raised from them, presented, however, a certain number of black bees, and after the most painstaking attempts to breed them pure the results remained the same. The conclusion come to was that they were of a mixed race."

Our own experience tallies very much with this opinion. We imported from Germany stocks of both the Cyprian and Smyrnæan bees, and exhibited them at the bee shows of the British Bee Association. Previous to doing so we submitted specimens to Mr. F. Smith of the British Museum, and he reported favourably of them—that although resembling the Italian (Apis ligustica), the Cyprian were clearly of a different species, but more nearly approaching the Egyptian (A. fasciata): they certainly possessed the irascible qualities so distinctive of the Egyptians, and used their stilettoes unmercifully on some of the gentlemen connected with the show. We have not been sufficiently enamoured of them to pursue their cultivation further. The resemblance is so close to those bees already domiciled here that we see no special advantage to be gained by doing so.

7. Asiatic Bees.—This bee (Apis dorsata) is a distinct species; it is larger than our own, and exists in a wild state in the woods of India. Mr. Woodbury made considerable exertions to have a colony brought to England, but without success. The stings of these bees, are more formidable than those of the varieties possessed here, and except as a matter of curiosity we can see nothing to recommend their introduction.

8. Egyptian Bees.—These bees, though called Apis fasciata, are considered by many as a variety of the same species as ordinary bees. They are rather smaller and slenderer than our own and the Italian, though closely resembling the latter in appearance. They have white hairs all about them, and the first two and a half rings of the abdomen are of a reddish yellow. The drones are also well marked with similar rings, and the queen is even more beautiful than the Italian. Baron von Berlepsch recommends crossing the handsomest Italian queens with Egyptian drones, with a view solely to the æsthetic purpose of raising the most beautiful breed of bees to be obtained.

The German apiarian Herr Vogel has given special attention to this variety, and has discovered in it some interesting peculiarities. It never gathers propolis, but uses wax in its place; and it seems almost proof against the cold. But the most singular fact that has come to his knowledge is that there exist regularly in an Egyptian colony some twelve or so small drone-laying queens, which would be called fertile workers but that they have a distinctive appearance, consisting in the waxen yellow of their breasts—a feature which is possessed also by the drones of their progeny. This is assuredly one of the most curious discoveries that have ever been made in relation even to this most curious of insects.

The late Mr. Woodbury imported some of these bees, but found them exceedingly vicious, and really to possess no superiority over our English bees. Some years since Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins, the naturalist, bought a stock of Mr. Woodbury, and brought them with him in order to place in the Horticultural Gardens at South Kensington. Being unacquainted with the placing of bees, he asked our aid in doing so. From the experience of them thereby acquired our own idea would be that no one could ever desire such bees; they came out with a rush, and stung everybody within reach, right and left, who was not provided with a veil.[12] This is the kind of bee found in Palestine, and therefore the one which Samson found in the carcase of the lion.

In connection with this species, the Rev. H. B. Tristram, in his valuable book, "The Land of Israel," has an interesting account of the bees in that country. In Palestine bee-keeping is an important item of industry, and every house has a pile of beehives in its yard. Their bee, he says, "is amazingly abundant, both in hives, in rocks, and in old hollow trees. It is smaller than our ordinary bees, with brighter yellow bands on the thorax and abdomen, which is rather wasp like in shape, and with very long antennæ. In its habits, and especially in the immense population of neuters in each community, and in the drones cast forth in autumn, it resembles the other species. Its sting also is quite as sharp. The hives are very simple, consisting of large tubes of sun-dried mud, like gas-pipes, about four feet long, and closed with mud at each end, leaving only an aperture in the centre large enough for two or three bees to pass at a time. The insects appear to frequent both doors equally. The tubes are laid in rows horizontally, and piled in a pyramid. I counted one of these colonies, consisting of seventy-eight tubes, each a distinct hive. Coolness being the great object, the whole is thickly plastered over with mud and covered with boughs, white a branch is stuck in the ground at each end to assist the bees in alighting. At first we took these singular structures for ovens or hen-houses. The barbarous practice of destroying the swarms for their honey is unknown. When the hives are full the clay is removed from the ends of the pipes, and the honey extracted with an iron hook; those pieces of comb which contain young bees being carefully replaced, and the hives then closed up again. Everywhere during our journey we found honey was always to be purchased; and it is used by the natives for many culinary purposes, and especially for the preparation of sweet cakes. It has the delicate aromatic flavour of the thyme-scented honey of Hybla or Hymettus.

"But, however extensive are the bee colonies of the villages, the number of wild bees of the same species is far greater. The innumerable fissures and clefts of the limestone rocks, which everywhere flank the valleys, afford in their recesses secure shelter for any number of swarms; and many of the Bedouin, particularly in the wilderness of Judæa, obtain their subsistence by bee-hunting, bringing into Jerusalem jars of that wild honey on which John the Baptist fed in the wilderness, and which Jonathan had long before unwittingly tasted, when the comb had dropped on the ground from the hollow tree in which it was suspended. The visitor to the Wady Kurn, when he sees the busy multitudes of bees about its cliffs, cannot but recall to mind the promise, 'With honey out of the stony rock would I have satisfied thee.' There is no epithet of the Land of Promise more true to the letter, even to the present day, than this, that it was 'a land flowing with milk and honey.'"

The question as to the worth or worthlessness of the above respective varieties is not yet so decided a matter as it is with the Italians. Those interested in the sale of a particular race will praise it up, while those who have had a single disappointment with it will run it down—and that is nearly the sum of the experience to be gathered from current literature. Thus we find Dathe announcing, "I have discontinued the rearing of Cyprian, Egyptian, and Carniolan bees." That is intelligible; but in the same paper we read, "Between the German and Heath bees there is no particular difference"—which so staggers us after Von Berlepsch's vituperations of the latter that we do not know how much confidence we ought to place in the rest of the sentence, which is given as the summing up of a discussion in that famous bee country, Silesia: "The Egyptian bee ranks after the German and Italian; the Carniolan, at the expense of honey, produces many bees; the Cyprians are diligent, but quite inclined to sting. The Herzegovinian bee is praised. Bees obtained by judicious crossing have the preference over the pure races."

Numbers of other varieties may be expected to crop up from time to time, as for instance the one last named. Della Rocca in the last century spoke of a "dawn-coloured" bee that was brought from Holland and Belgium, and which is probably one of the races included with the Italian. Dr. Gerstäcker thus classifies the varieties: The North European (now spread all over the world), the Italian with black breasts, the Italian with yellow breasts, the Egyptian, the African, and the Madagascar. Three South Asiatic bees he regards as specifically distinct—Apis dorsata, indica, and florea. Mr. F. Smith adds zonata and nigrocincta, and inclines to make a species of fasciata (the Egyptians).

§ VII. FACULTIES AND FUNCTIONS.

It would be trenching too much upon our limits if we were to venture into the inviting field to which this heading might introduce us. Still the extreme interest of the subject renders it perhaps desirable that some succinct allusion should be made to it, even if it be for little more than to remark that the information we have to give is scattered through other sections and chapters. Especially as some might be disposed to skip the unattractive portion on "Anatomy and Physiology," it may be well to state here that in the second section of that chapter will be found a brief account of the sight and other senses of bees, and of the uses of their antennæ, by which they seem to feel, hear, smell, and communicate. A remark upon their power of distinguishing colours, and its practical value, will be found in connection with our description of bee-houses for twelve hives (Chap. IV. § i.). On the senses of taste and smell we have some further observations in the sections of Chapter VI. upon "Stings," "Robbing," and "Bee-keeping in London."

For the functions and habits of bees we must also refer to the passages already instanced, as well as to the sections above on the "The Queen," etc., that on "The Rationale of Swarming" (page 72), and to those in Chapter VI. on the four substances which bees collect or secrete, as well as (though in a less degree) to those headed "Pasturage" and "General Remarks." Those who will favour our book with a consecutive reading will, we trust, find at the conclusion that all the more important and interesting facts of this class are in one or other of these places tolerably though briefly described.

The service that bees perform to flowers is a subject that has attracted much attention of late years. As every one knows, or should know, a flower has its stamens and pistils, which are respectively its male and female organs, and the pollen contained in the anthers, or little knobs on the summits of the stamens, must be conveyed to the pistils, or no seed will be produced. When the anthers burst; the pollen might happen to fall partly on the pistils, or it might not; but the visits of bees (though they do not roll about in the flower, in the manner that some have stated) are found by experience to be efficacious in conveying this dust to the right spot. Owners of fruit trees have noticed, in a season generally unfavourable to the orchard, that if during only one fine forenoon the bees had spread freely amongst the blossoms of a particular tree, that tree would prove more fruitful than its fellows. On this account the orchard is a good place for the apiary, for it seems that the more abundant the honey the better will be the crop of fruit. The whole subject is scientifically treated in Mr. Darwin's remarkable book, "The Fertilisation of Orchids," but we must add to the foregoing how much more urgent are the services of bees in the case of what are termed monœcious and diœcious plants, the former of which have the stamens and pistils in different flowers, and the latter have these flowers upon different roots. A familiar example of the former is found in the nut tree, whose long catkins, hanging like caterpillars in the early spring, are assemblages of male flowers; while the females, from which the nuts develop, may be detected by their crimson pistil-tips (stigmas), and grow in stalkless clusters of two or three in the openings of remote scaly buds. But for the visits or bees, our autumn nutting rambles would thus have but little prospect of success. In the second case, often very considerable distances intervene between the two flowers; for instance, with the common dog mercury (Mercurialis perennis), a botanist may find plantation after plantation containing male flowers by thousands, but not a single female; and at length in some far-off spot he may succeed in finding the females, equally by themselves, yet in full seed. In these cases there is nothing but the visits of pollen-gathering insects which can convey the fertilising dust to the flower for which it is designed. And according to Mr. Darwin all plants are practically diœcious, for he states that the pollen, to have a fertilising effect, must be brought to the pistils of one flower from the stamens of one on another root. Whether this be considered established or not, there remains the fact of the existence of diœcious plants as explaining the admirable design of the provision that a bee in the course of one flight shall gather pollen solely from one species. As far as honey-gathering is concerned the bee is not governed by this rule; but for this other important function it becomes absolutely essential that the right pollen, and that only, should be conveyed to the right flower. The careful observer may note how the dust on the bodies of bees varies from yellow to red and brown according to the kind of flowers from which it has been gathered, and the "socks," as the Germans call them, on the two hind legs will be found always of the same colour.

To no scientific man are we probably more indebted for observations and deductions upon this branch than to Sir John Lubbock. Whilst this edition was in course of preparation it was the writer's privilege to listen to a lecture upon "Relations of Plants and Insects" delivered by this able investigator before the Society of Arts; and the lecture has since been published as a paper in the Fortnightly Review of April 1877. In the course of his remarks Sir John cited many interesting particulars of the ways in which flowers are protected from the incursions of ants, whose visits would be harmful, both from their rifling the stores from the bees, by whom alone they are likely to be fertilised, and from the liability of the latter to desert any species in which their tender probosces were in danger of being seized by ants—it being the nature of an ant to grapple any pointed thing directed towards her. Kerner was referred to as having observed some of the modes by which such results are obviated. In some cases there are chevaux de frise around the flower, in the form of hairs pointing downwards, or other barriers which the ant cannot penetrate or surmount: notably in the corn bluebottle, which is smooth all over except just beneath the flower, and in the thicket heads of some thistles. In others there are glutinous parts which the ant cannot traverse, as was noticed in the Polygonum amphibium, which, when it grows on land, has sticky glands at the extremities of certain hairs, while when in the water, where it is safe already, it is perfectly smooth. Again, there are pendulous flowers, like the snowdrop, which are so slippery on the surface that an ant would immediately slide off, as was humorously illustrated by a sketch prepared with several others by the lecturer's daughter. Facts were also stated showing how the pollen is sometimes preserved by the closing of certain flowers at times when winged insects were not on the move, and the exclusion thereby of such as would not aid in the work of fructification. "It is not too much to say," as Sir John elsewhere expresses himself ("British Wild Flowers in Relation to Insects "), "that if on the one hand flowers are in many cases necessary to insects, insects on the other hand are still more necessary to the very existence of flowers; that if insects have been in many cases modified and adapted with a view to obtain honey and pollen from flowers, flowers in their turn owe their scent and colour, their honey, and even their distinctive forms, to the action of insects."

§ VIII. EGGS AND TRANSFORMATIONS.

It is necessary that some explanation should be given, as to the existence of the bee before it emerges from the cell.

The eggs (Plate II. Fig. 7) of all the three kinds of bees, when first deposited, are of an oval shape, slightly curved, and of a bluish-white colour. They are glutinous on the surface when laid, which causes them to adhere to the bases of the cells where the queen deposits them. In three or four days the egg changes to a small white worm, and in this stage is known by the names of larva or grub (Plate II. Fig. 8), in which state it remains four to six days more—a drone six and a half; its dimensions enlarge during this period till it appears as a ring at the base of the cell. While in this stage it is fed by the nurse bees with a mixture of farina and honey, a transparent white fluid in which the larva floats, and the supply of which is so exactly apportioned that not a drop remains on its ceasing to be required.

The next transformation is to the nymph or pupa form. The nurse bees now seal up the cells with a preparation similar to wax, leaving them with coverings which, by their greater convexity and darker colour, distinguish them readily from honey cells. The pupa then spins round itself a film or cocoon, just as a silkworm does in its chrysalis state: workers and drones occupy thirty-six hours with this process; princesses, which spin only half-cocoons, finish them in twenty-four. The microscope shows that this cradle-curtain is perforated with very minute holes, through which the baby bee is duly supplied with air. No farther attention on the part of the bees is now requisite, except a proper degree of heat, which they take care to keep up—a position for the breeding cells being selected in the centre of the hive, where the temperature is likely to be most congenial. The cells destined for the rearing of drones are larger than those from which workers will proceed, the former standing nineteen to the square inch against twenty-seven of the latter: the former are also one-third as deep again as the latter, and are made slightly more convex when sealed over. But between the eggs themselves there is externally no difference whatever.

In from nineteen to twenty-one days after the egg is first laid (unless cold weather should have retarded it) the bee quits the pupa state, and, nibbling its way through the waxen covering that has enclosed it, comes forth a winged insect. The eggs of drones require twenty-four or twenty-five days, and those of queens sixteen or seventeen, to arrive at maturity. In the unicomb observatory hives the young bees may distinctly be seen as they literally fight their way into the world, for the other bees do not take the slightest notice, nor afford them any assistance. We have frequently been amused in watching the eager little new comer, now obtruding its head, and anon compelled to withdraw into the cell to escape being trampled on by the apparently unfeeling throng, until at last it has succeeded in making its exit. The little grey creature, after brushing and shaking itself, enters upon its duties in the hive, and after a while issues forth to the more laborious occupation of gathering honey in the fields—thus early illustrating that character for industry which has been proverbial at least since the days of Aristotle, and which has in our day been rendered familiar even to infant minds through the nursery rhymes of Dr. Watts.

§ IX. REPRODUCTIVE ECONOMY.

The fertilisation of the queen and the determination of the sexes of her progeny are two subjects of so much interest that we must make room for some exposition of the discoveries of the past thirty years in relation thereto. What has been already stated on the former of these under the section on "The Drone" consists of facts which were mainly established by Huber; but within the present generation the great German apiarians have returned to the question, and Dzierzon has set forth some most marvellous deductions, which Baron von Berlepsch has followed up with amplification and further proof. It was found that the queen while in a virgin condition was often capable of depositing eggs, and that these eggs, unlike those of poultry laid under somewhat similar conditions, would hatch equally with others, but they all produced drones. From this arose the question. Whence come the drones after the queen has been fertilised? A fact known from the days of Huber and Riem was by some supposed to settle the difficulty. In many hives there exist what are called "fertile workers"—bees having the female organs sufficiently developed to deposit eggs, but not sufficiently so to receive fecundation; and as it was found that the eggs of these fulfilled the conditions required, and invariably produced drone bees, the theory was erected that these fertile workers were the regular producers of that sex. But this plausible solution of the problem did not stand examination. Every fertile queen does habitually lay eggs in drone cells, and from those eggs drones are uniformly developed. Dissection and microscopic analysis had therefore to be resorted to, and the course of investigation commenced by Swammerdam and pursued by Mlle. Jurine was now pushed to a much further extent.

Proceeding from the two ovaries of the queen there are two canals, called oviducts, which presently unite, and immediately beyond their point of juncture is a small globular receptacle which is called the spermatheca. With fertile queens it was found that this appendage is permanently occupied by a fluid identical with that in the reproductive organs of the drones, and that as such it abounds in spermatozoa; while with a virgin queen the fluid is totally destitute of these, and is wholly different in appearance, being thin and transparent. From this discovery the conclusion followed that each egg, as it passes down the oviduct and over the mouth of the spermatheca, may either receive fecundation or not, according as the queen's own will or some other circumstance shall determine. Dzierzon accordingly propounded as the apparent, though still only hypothetical, solution of the enigma, what is known as the doctrine of parthenogenesis or virgin breeding—the law that life is imparted by the mother independently, and that every egg as originally developed in her ovaries is of the male sex, but that whenever fertilised with the male fluid it becomes transformed into a female!

To convert this hypothesis into a demonstration, Von Berlepsch invited to his apiary in succession the two great comparative anatomists Professors Leuckart and Von Siebold, and furnished each with a number of both drone and worker eggs for microscopic examination. Leuckart examined the surfaces of the eggs; Von Siebold, who followed him, tried the interiors, and the latter by this means was triumphantly successful, for, after the most careful preparation of his subjects, he detected in thirty out of forty worker eggs from one to four spermatozoa apiece, while in his twenty-four drone eggs he found not a single one. The exceptions were insufficient to invalidate the results, for the ten worker eggs in which no signs of impregnation were found were only the failures of observation to be naturally expected in so delicate a scrutiny. Thus the fact was established that eggs which produce male bees are descended from the female only—in other words, that drones have no fathers!

Most strikingly has this law been corroborated by a discovery which we owe to the introduction of the Italian bee—a discovery, too, which any bee-keeper can make for himself. If an Italian queen is crossed with an English drone, or vice versa, the workers only of her progeny will be mongrels—the drones will invariably retain the pure blood of the queen, thus proving to demonstration that they owe their origin to her alone. Should a mongrel drone be then observed, it will be a sure sign that a fertile worker is in the hive: the queen will not be its mother. Dr. Dönhoff, we are told, confirmed the same law by a converse method, having in 1855 obtained a worker bee from a drone egg which he had artificially impregnated with the male fluid.

The queen, as we have observed, is capable before fertilisation of becoming the mother of drones, but it is believed by some that if she has once commenced drone-laying it is impossible for her to become subsequently fertilised. Mr. Langstroth, however, mentions an instance to the contrary, where a queen of his, after persistently laying drone eggs for a week or two, became after that the happy mother of a thriving colony of workers. Von Berlepsch alludes to this case (with others like it), but is unconvinced, being suspicious that here again it was a fertile worker and not the queen who laid the drone eggs. But looking to the fact that many permanently unfertile queens lay drone eggs, while others lay no eggs at all, does it not seem reasonable that a similar difference may subsist previous to fecundation? Thus, while the Baron is on firm ground as to the general rule, we incline to a belief that as to the exception the American observer is quite correct.

Dzierzon thus writes: "In general, so long as the young queen continues her wedding flights—which in the warm summer she does at the very most for four weeks, but in the cool spring or autumn, when life and development are slower in the hive, she still pursues for even five or six weeks—she is capable of becoming properly fertile." But some queens continue to fly long after it is hopeless, cases being recorded in which they have gone on for ten or twelve weeks. The same observer speaks of having had several young queens which were either lame in their wings or born in a continued cold season, so that they were prevented from leaving the hive, and thus developed into confirmed drone-breeders. The queen leaves the hive every fine day till her purpose is accomplished, and this led Bevan and others to surmise that she met successively with several drones till one Of them lost his life in consequence; but we do not find in later authorities any confirmation nor even mention of this conjecture, and it may be set down as entirely improbable. In the case observed by Von Klipstein, and referred to above (page 22), as the queen met with her death shortly after, he sent her to Leuckart, who found that from this obviously first impregnation her organs were so completely filled as to imply no need for a second. Leuckart has elsewhere stated that a queen's spermatheca is capable of containing twenty-five millions of spermatozoa, so that there need be no wonder at the fact of a single fecundation being sufficient to answer for her entire term of existence.

The fertile workers, which by their course of adding to the drone stock may prove a terrible nuisance in a hive, were ascertained by Huber to be always hatched in close proximity to the queen cells, whence he conjectured that they obtained by accident a portion of the royal jelly designed for the rearing of princesses. Von Berlepsch and Langstroth prefer the theory that such jelly was purposely given them, and the conversion of their own cells into royal ones commenced, but that the intention was afterwards abandoned, as it is known that bees often, start more of such cells than they ultimately proceed with. They are of only exceptional occurrence in hives in a normal condition, but in a queenless stock they very often appear, sometimes even in considerable numbers, having been probably fostered with the jelly, but at too late a period to convert them into queens. They usually deposit their eggs correctly in drone cells, though drone-breeding queens lay in those of workers and even in royal cells—thus evincing a presence of the will though an absence of the power. To get rid of a fertile worker it has been recommended by Mr. Rorl to "drive" the bees (Chap. V. § iv.) to an empty hive, and place this in a near spot; all will return to their old home except the one to be got rid of, she having probably never flown before, and therefore not knowing her way.

§ X. RELATION OF SEX TO CELLS.

There remains the very interesting question of the connection between sex and cells, which, if it be not paradoxical to say so, is as a general rule invariable; that is to say, when both the queen and the hive are in a normal condition, the eggs laid in each class of cells produce respectively workers and drones without failure or exception. But in abnormal circumstances, as with a drone-breeding queen, the law does not hold, and drones of a diminished size are hatched from worker cells, though the bees, on discovering the state of things, do their best by subsequent elongation to adapt the cradles to their unexpected occupants. Such is the explanation of the existence of "small drones;" but workers hatched in drone cells do not appear to be in any way peculiar. In regard then to the main fact we are confronted with the question, Has the queen a knowledge, at the moment of laying, of the gender of each particular egg? Rather, it would seem, she has the power of making it what gender she pleases by compressing her spermatheca or not at the instant of its passing down her oviduct. We must however refer to an ingenious theory to the contrary, quoted by Langstroth as started by his friend the late Mr. Wagner of Philadelphia, and which has been approved by many in this country and Germany also. It is to the effect that not the queen's own will, but the narrow limits of the worker cells, administer the above compression, while the more spacious drone cells allow her body to be inserted without such effect. Von Berlepsch however, it is safe to say, has absolutely demolished this mechanical explanation; and as some recent writers have quoted the "Wagner theory" with approval, it may be best to give the German observer's principal objections in his own words:—

"This explanation is thoroughly untenable; for—(a) perfectly new worker cells are fully as wide as very old drone cells in which breeding has taken place many times, and yet, as found by experience, female bees come from the former and males from the latter, (b) Many queens are of a strikingly slender form, some of them occasionally so small that they can scarcely be distinguished from workers, and yet they have no proclivity to drone-laying—which must however have been the case if the narrow cell effected the fertilisation of the egg by pressure.... (c) A queen lays even in cells that are scarcely begun, with which, therefore, the proportion of the diameter to the thickness of her body can exercise no influence at all, and yet drones come forth from the drone cells and workers from the worker cells. (d) If there are no drone cells at her command, and the stock is in want of drones, the queen lays male eggs in worker cells, and drones hatch from them.... (i) A fertile queen, if introduced with her colony into a hive containing nothing but drone comb, would naturally [on such hypothesis] furnish the drone cells with eggs as she would worker cells, and make no difficulty about it. But she does make a very great difficulty—for a long time she lays no eggs in the cells at all, but lets them drop, or tries to escape abroad with her entire colony. But at last she does lay in the drone cells, and what ensues? Ordinary worker bees come forth." Instances follow of experiments decisively proving this. It is only fair, however, to add that Mr. Wagner's theory does not necessarily degrade the monarch of the hive into "a mere egg-laying machine," as Von Berlepsch regards it in some of his arguments, for she might still exhibit intelligence in deciding which cells to lay in, even if the determination of the sex of the egg rested finally with the cell which she had chosen.

The queen then exercises a personal control over each egg as she deposits it, but, unless interfered with by irregular circumstances, she adapts her will to the cells and chooses the cells according to the requirements of the hive. But when both drones and workers are in requisition she lays her eggs in each class of cells just as she comes to them, as to which fact the Baron gives abundant evidence, having in one instance observed a queen make no fewer than five changes in a day from worker to drone cells or vice versa without any intermission. Inconsistent as it may appear, she also herself deposits in royal cells the eggs which are to hatch into her rivals—that is, when these cells have been prepared with a view to swarming;—for the preponderance of argument goes against the belief that eggs are ever removed into these by the workers.[13] In addition to determining the sex she is further capable of regulating to a large extent the total number of eggs she lays, and thus of modifying the growth of the population with the character of the season and the condition of the colony; thus a queen that has been transferred from a weak to a strong hive has been know to vary in two or three days from no eggs at all to two thousand a day. She lays during some ten months of the year, suspending the process in November and December. For her first season she lays almost exclusively worker eggs.