The faculty, or instinct of bees is sometimes at fault, for we often hear
of their adopting the strangest and most unsuitable tenements for the
construction of cells. A hussar's cap, so suspended from a moderate sized
branch of a tree, as to be agitated by slight winds, was found filled
with bees and comb. An old coat, that had been thrown over the decayed
trunk of a tree and forgotten, was filled with comb and bees. Any thing,
in short, either near the habitations of man, or in the forests, will
serve the bees for a shelter to their combs.
The average number of a hive, or swarm, is from fifteen to twenty
thousand bees. Nineteen thousand four hundred and ninety-nine are neuters
or working bees, five hundred are drones, and the remaining _one_ is the
queen or mother! Every living thing, from man down to an ephemeral insect,
pursues the bee to its destruction for the sake of the honey that is
deposited in its cell, or secreted in its honey-bag. To obtain that which
the bee is carrying to its hive, numerous birds and insects are on the
watch, and an incredible number of bees fall victims, in consequence, to
their enemies. Independently of this, there are the changes in the
weather, such as high winds, sudden showers, hot sunshine; and then there
is the liability to fall into rivers, besides a hundred other dangers to
which bees are exposed.
When a queen bee ceases to animate the hive, the bees are conscious of
her loss; after searching for her through the hive, for a day or more,
they examine the royal cells, which are of a peculiar construction and
reversed in position, hanging vertically, with the mouth underneath. If
no eggs or larvae are to be found in these cells, they then _enlarge_
several of those cells, which are appropriated to the eggs of neuters,
and in which _queen eggs have been deposited_. They soon attach a royal
cell to the enlarged surface, and the queen bee, enabled now to grow,
protrudes itself by degrees into the royal cell, and comes out perfectly
formed, to the great pleasure of the bees.
The bee seeks only its own gratification in procuring honey and in
regulating its household, and as, according to the old proverb, what is
one man's meat is another's poison, it sometimes carries honey to its
cell, which is prejudicial to us. Dr. Barton in the fifth volume, of the
"American Philosophical Transactions," speaks of several plants that
yield a poisonous syrup, of which the bees partake without injury, but
which has been fatal to man. He has enumerated some of these plants,
which ought to be destroyed wherever they are seen, namely, dwarf-laurel,
great laurel, kalmia latifolia, broad-leaved moorwort, Pennsylvania
mountain-laurel, wild honeysuckle (the bees, cannot get much of this,)
and the stramonium or Jamestown-weed.
A young bee can be readily distinguished from an old one, by the greyish
coloured down that covers it, and which it loses by the wear and tear of
hard labour; and if the bee be not destroyed before the season is over,
this down entirely disappears, and the groundwork of the insect is seen,
white or black. On a close examination, very few of these black or aged
bees, will be seen at the opening of the spring, as, not having the
stamina of those that are younger, they perish from inability to
encounter the vicissitudes of winter.--_American Farmer's Manual_.
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