THE INHABITANTS OF THE HIVE
One of the remarkable peculiarities of bees, which is also shared by
other social insects, as ants, wasps and termites, is that there are
three distinct kinds of individuals in the community. For, in addition
to the males and females, which are the reproducing members of the
colony, there is a third class which performs the labours of the
community. The females, of which there is usually only one in a colony,
are known as queens; the males as drones; and the labourers as workers.
(Plate V.)
THE QUEEN (Plates V, VI, VII)
The bee-queen is the acme of a long line of communistic development.
It is little wonder that those men of ancient times who observed her,
and the attitude of the other bees toward her, regarded her as regal
and called her queen. But she is a much more important element in the
perfect commune than a mere sovereign, since she is the actual mother
of her subjects.
Too much care cannot be shown in the selection of the queen, or mother
of the bee-colony. Her blood is their blood; her faults are their
faults; her weaknesses are their weaknesses. Any apiarist is likely
to have had two colonies side by side, perhaps each equalling the
other in amount of brood and number of bees, and one may have produced
five dollars’ worth of honey in a season, while the other did not
produce half of that; and the queens alone caused this discrepancy. One
produced energetic, capable offspring, while the progeny of the other
were unenterprising. The offspring of one were perhaps sweet-tempered
and obliging, and those of the other, cross and cranky. Thus it is
all-important to give the colony a good mother. A queen, to be perfect,
should be well-bred, handsome and strong, and capable of laying from
two to three thousand eggs per day during the height of the season, and
especially should she have offspring possessing a kindly disposition.
The laying queen is a very graceful insect; her body is long and
pointed, and extends far behind the tips of her closed wings. _Svelte_
is a graphic word applied to her figure by the _Spectator_; just a
glance at her reveals her splendid physical development and proves
her a queenlier bee than those that gather around her. It is a sight
that makes men feel how very limited is their knowledge of any other
world than their own to see the queen bee, surrounded by her ring of
attendants, each with head toward her, as if she were the centre of a
many-rayed star.
The development of the queen from the egg has ever been a most
interesting and, at the same time, a most puzzling subject for
investigation on the part of the scientists; even now after a century
of study her growth is as miraculous as ever; and the problems in
physiology that lie as yet unsolved in her development will keep many
an investigator busy in the future.
When a colony is queenless, and has young brood or unhatched eggs, it
makes haste to develop new queens; not one alone, but several, since it
cannot afford to put its “eggs all in one basket.” At the height of the
honey season, every day that a colony is queenless means two or three
thousand less bees than should be present to make it successful in
securing the harvest. (Plate V.)
In developing a queen the bees usually proceed as follows: They select
the important egg, which differs in no wise from any other worker egg,
and destroying the partitions between its cell and two adjoining cells,
give it more room. In order to make the royal apartment of good size a
projection is built out over this large cell. This is made of thick wax
and ornamented on the outside with hexagonal fretwork, as if it were
to be the basis of comb with small cells. It seems as if the hexagonal
pattern were in the bee brain and must be expressed, whether it be of
any use or not. As soon as the little white larva hatches from the egg,
it is fed on the regular larval food. Royal jelly is a food developed
in the head glands of the workers; and when it is the fate of a bee
larva to develop into a worker, it is fed with this food for three
days, and then it is weaned by having other food substituted; but the
queen larva is fed with it during her entire development, and thereby
her reproductive organs are stimulated and fully developed, which is
not the case with the workers. Think how much farther advanced are
the bees than we, since, by giving the proper food, they are able to
develop and fit each class of citizens to do the work required of it in
the social organisation!
The queen larva is fed for five days on this most nourishing food, and
then her cell is sealed. Within this cell the royal princess is for the
first time self-dependent, and weaves about herself a silken cocoon
and changes into a pupa. When she issues from this state she waits a
little until she “finds herself,” and then starts to cut an opening in
the cell. She is a good mathematician, and with her jaws, cuts a circle
very accurately, usually leaving it hinged like the lid to a pot.
Professor Kellogg tells us that sometimes when she cuts this door, the
workers do not wish her to come out. They accomplish their purpose by
carrying wax and pasting it over the opening as fast as she cuts it, at
the same time quite devotedly feeding her through a small crevice. But
if they wish her to come out, they rush to assist her, and perhaps for
two or three days before she issues, make the wax thin where she is to
cut. It usually requires sixteen days to develop a queen from the egg
to the adult.
[Illustration:
PLATE VI. (Original, drawn by A. G. Hammar.) _d_, head of drone;
_q_, head of queen; _w_, head of worker; _x_, ventral surface of
worker showing plates of wax.]
[Illustration:
PLATE VII. Legs and antenna of the honey-bee (original drawn
by A. G. Hammar). _A_, outer surface of hind leg showing the
nine segments and claws; _pb_, the pollen basket of tibia; _B_,
inner surface of part of hind leg; _wp_, wax-pincers; _pc_,
pollen-combs; _C_, inner surface of part of hind leg of queen;
_D_, inner surface of part of hind leg of drone; _E_, part of
middle leg of worker; _s_, spur; _F_, part of fore leg showing
the antenna cleaner _a_; _G_, part of antenna showing sense-hairs
and sense-pits.]
When a queen issues from her cell, she is light-coloured and, as her
body is not yet distended with eggs, it is scarcely larger than that
of one of the workers. Sometimes she chooses to stay in her cell for
a day or two after it is opened. When she comes out, she runs about
over the comb, taking exercise on her own royal legs, and perhaps
taking a little honey out of the cells on her own account; especially
does she hunt for other queen cells, for she has no wish to share her
duties or honours with another. If she finds such a cell, she usually
makes a hole in its side, and in some way, she stings to death the
hapless princess within. Some observers claim that she merely takes
the initiative, tearing down the wall of the cell, and the bees finish
by tearing it down as they would any broken comb, and destroy the
inmate in the process. If, in her promenade, she discovers another
full-grown queen, a contest ensues; it is a duel to the death and the
weapons are stings, which are kept sacred for this special occasion.
It is interesting that the queen reserves her weapon for her peers,
and never attempts to sting workers, and may be handled fearlessly by
the bee-keeper. As the plate armour of the bee is so arranged that the
sting may enter in only at certain spots, this duel resolves itself
into a fencing match, until one thrusts her weapon into some vulnerable
portion of the other. One morning we found fifteen dead queens outside
of one of our hives; a grim tribute to the prowess of the queen within,
and quite as much a tribute to our carelessness in letting so many
queens be developed uselessly.
The belligerent attitude of the queens toward each other seems to have
been so strong an emotion that a voice has been developed to express
it, and is eloquent with rage and fear. This note must be heard to
be understood; as nearly as I am able to spell it, it is “tse-ep,
tse-e-e-ep, tse-e-ep, tsep, tsp, tsp, ts,” in a sort of diminuendo.
She makes the noise when she discovers another queen cell; if there is
within this cell a full-fledged queen, she pipes back, but it sounds
quite differently and the note is more like “quock, quock.” This piping
of queens is especially evident before an after-swarm is to issue. The
queen will also pipe when the bees gather about her and try to ball
her, which is often the fate of a new queen introduced into a colony
not ready to receive her. In this case the note is one of righteous
anger at the indignity to her royal person. She makes this piping
with some vocal instrument, not well understood. Her wings vibrate
tremulously while she is piping, but she can pipe quite as vociferously
after her wings have been entirely cut off.
After she has made good her title to empire, the queen thinks about
marriage; some warm day she will run out of the hive to see how the
world looks, and especially to determine beyond doubt upon just what
point of the universe her own hive is situated. The first flight of
the queen bee is very pretty to see. She makes many graceful circles
about, and plays in the sunshine as if she were thoroughly enjoying
herself. When she finally leaves the hive to find a prince, she makes
several little _détours_, always coming back so that she can commit to
memory, beyond peradventure, the home place, and then off she goes in
the sunshine to find her lover. Unfortunately she is not discriminating
in the matter of love, and any sort of a prince, however lowly,
is acceptable. Thus does many a fine, highly bred queen return to
her hive, to bestow upon her progeny the undesirable traits of some
low-bred drone. This is one reason why it is so difficult to keep an
apiary of pure blood; and these _mésalliances_ of queens are a source
of much tribulation to the bee-keeper. She returns from her wedding
journey with a part of the reproductive organs of her mate in her
possession, often still visible, but soon after withdrawn into her
body. With the sperm cells now under her control, she will fertilise
the eggs of perhaps a million workers, more or less, which she may
mother during her life of three or four years.
Biologists have of late achieved the miraculous in being able to
stimulate the unfertilised eggs of sea-urchins and starfish, so that
they will develop. The queen bee is able to do this with her own eggs.
When the time comes for drones to be developed, she lays unfertilised
eggs, which, unfailingly, produce the drones. If our poor human queens
possessed this power of producing male heirs at will, much trouble
would have been saved to many of them and, to some of them, their
heads. However, the perfect socialists do most things better than we.
As soon as the queen returns from her honeymoon, which is usually taken
from eight to ten days from the time she issues, she acts decidedly
like a business person. She runs about on the comb, pokes her head into
a cell to see if it is all ready, and then, turning about, thrusts her
abdomen in and neatly glues an egg fast to the bottom. When the honey
season is at its height, she works with great rapidity; sometimes she
lays at the rate of six eggs per minute, often laying three thousand
or twice her own weight of eggs per day. She is a wise queen, however,
and has in mind the dangers of overpopulation. When there is much
honey brought in, and the swarming season is at hand, she enlarges her
empire rapidly; but when there is little honey, she keeps the amount of
brood down to what can be cared for. Whether this question of limiting
the population is decided by the queen, or whether she simply acts in
response to the food given her by the workers, is a question not yet
settled. However this may be, it is certain that Malthusian doctrines
are rigorously and successfully practised by the perfect socialists of
the hive.
Sometimes when the honey flow is very great an intoxication of work
seems to possess the colony. The bees, coming in from the field, will
drop the honey anywhere, and the queen, agitated by the general spirit
of the hive, will drop her eggs everywhere; and the poor, overworked,
bee housekeepers have to pick up the honey and store it in the cells,
and pick up the eggs and glue them fast to the cell-bottoms.
THE DRONE (Plates V, VI, VII)
Of all the denizens of the hive the lot of the drones is the least
enviable. That one may surely fulfil the destiny as king father, many
are born, only to be slain when the honey harvest runs low, and
meanwhile they are denied all interests in the business of the colony
except that of pensioners upon its bounty. And he, the fortunate one,
who lives his life to its fullest measure and becomes queen consort
must in the end lose his life for love and die, heartlessly abandoned
by her whom he sought and won.
In appearance the drone differs much from the queen and the worker;
he is broad, and the rear end of his body is so blunt that it looks
almost as if it had been cut off with shears. He is made for a life
of idleness; his hind legs bear no pollen baskets, so he could not
fetch and carry if he would; his tongue is so short that he must needs
eat from honey stored in a cell or be fed by his sisters, since he
could not possibly extract nectar from a deep flower; nor is there any
occasion that he should hang suspended weary hours for the secretion
of wax, since he has no wax glands. His special accomplishment is his
buzz, which is of extraordinary calibre and sonorousness. So fierce and
loud is this, the song he sings when on the wing, that the novice feels
inclined to retreat before him. But this music is undoubtedly meant to
attract a queen to his vicinity, and is by no means a sound of menace;
he is a burly, good-natured fellow, who is obliged to express himself
in this rather coarse song. The term “good natured” is applied to him,
not because we are certain that his temper is sweet, but because he
has no means of expressing ill temper should he experience it, since
niggard nature has given him no sting. He is always a clumsy chap, as
awkward as his queen is graceful; but he can scramble out of the way
with astonishing celerity when a murderously inclined sister attacks
him. The time when he shows his princely qualities is when he is
flying, for his wings are large and strong and carry him easily several
miles if he needs to travel so far to win his lady. In his physical
makeup he is a fine example of a purely feminine product; for the drone
is a very perfect creature, even if he is reared from an unimpregnated
egg. His magnificent compound eyes almost completely encircle his head,
nearly meeting at the top, and thus crowding his simple eyes down into
his “forehead.” And such eyes as these mean something surely, for they
are developed that he may be better able to see his heart’s desire
from afar. He also has marvellous antennæ, the nine distal joints of
which are completely pitted with smelling organs. The reason for this
is that his queen has a fragrance all her own, sweeter to him than the
attar of roses, and thus he is equipped, as Cheshire has proven, with
thirty-seven thousand eight hundred nostrils, in order to detect the
perfume of her royal person at a distance. (Plate VII, _G_.)
The life-history of the drone after he hatches from his unfertilised
egg is much like that of other bees, except that for him is provided
a cell larger than that of the worker; he hatches from the egg about
three days after it is laid, and during the week following he is
carefully attended by the nurses who feed him on the rich chyle food at
first; after four days they give him some undigested pollen, a food
not granted to the larvæ of the workers. At the end of a week his cell
is sealed over with a cap that looks more like the crown of a derby hat
than a cap, so spherical is it. Cheshire has shown that this cap is an
especially fine example of engineering, being girdered by six struts of
wax, the apex of the dome being not a skylight exactly, but rather a
ventilator for the admission of air. (Plate VIII.)
It has been a question of much dispute whether the workers inspire the
queen to drone-raising through building drone comb, or whether she
takes the initiative in the matter. Certain it is the bees seem to love
to build drone comb, perhaps because it is more easily constructed and
requires less wax. It is also a fact that the queen prefers the worker
cells, and in the spring or fall when there is little honey coming
in, the queen will voluntarily pass drone comb, leaving it empty, and
lay eggs in the worker cells, so she evidently knows her own mind.
Sometimes when reduced to dire extremity the queen will lay worker eggs
in the drone cells, but she does not do this unless the openings of
the cells have been previously constricted by the bees. Sometimes also
when the conditions are abnormal the queen will lay drone eggs in the
worker cells and from these will be developed runty drones, which seem
of little account. However, such conditions as these are very unusual.
When the drone is twenty-four days from the egg he cuts a circular lid
out of the cap of his cell, and crawls out into a hazardous world.
After a fortnight or so of moving about the combs and eating his fill
he goes out of the hive and tries his wings. This he does on some
pleasant day, about noon or a little after. As soon as he is sure of
himself, he makes his flight longer, and the length of his journeys may
only be guessed at. When he meets the queen they unite at once in the
air, and after this they fall to the ground and she frees herself by
tearing off and holding within herself the generative appendages of her
dying consort.
In every hive are developed thousands of these princes royal, who are
maintained at the expense of the colony until the dawn of that fatal
day when the honey crop runs short; and then an unhappy experience lies
before these useless brothers of the reigning house. Then their sisters
chase them out of the hive apparently attempting to sting them, and,
changed to furies, bite off their wings and harry them until they give
up, great helpless creatures that they are, and fulfil their final
destiny, which is to die for the sake of the colony.
Even the drone eggs, larvæ, and pupæ are not exempt on this appointed
day of execution, but are ruthlessly killed, and their remains thrust
forth from the hive. If conditions should change and more honey be
made, a reprieve to the unhappy drone may be granted, for the length
of his life is measured by the food supply. Any time during the summer
when the bee-keeper finds the workers attacking the drones he may be
very sure it means that the honey crop is exhausted.
Our pity is usually much more excited for the fate of the drone than
for that of the busy worker, which dies from overwork at the end of
a few weeks; and this is undoubtedly because the death of the worker
seems voluntary, while the drones are manifestly murdered. Once we
witnessed the slaughter of the drones in an observation hive, the
entrance of which was too contracted to allow the bodies of the drones
to pass. For several days the bloody-minded workers spent their
energies in tearing their wretched victims limb from limb, and carrying
them out in sections. Below a small crevice at the bottom of the hive
we found a row of disjointed legs, wings and antennæ from the mutilated
drones, while the heads and broken bodies were thrown out of the front
of the hive.
THE WORKERS. (Plate V, VI, VII.)
It is interesting to note that in the socialistic bee-community the
work is carried on by unsexed females. It evidently has not been a
part of the true economy of the perfect socialism to unite motherhood
and business life in one individual; therefore, a division of labour
takes place. The queen mother is developed into a highly efficient
egg-laying machine, while all her worker sisters remain undeveloped
sexually, and thus have time and energy to devote themselves to
bringing up the young, keeping the house, getting the food, and
administering the affairs of the body politic. Little wonder is it
that the brain of the worker bee is much larger than that of the queen
or drone, for she needs must exercise her mental powers far more than
either. She is obliged also to pass through certain industrial stages
in her development as a worker before she attains the full height of
citizenship.
The life-history of a worker is usually as follows: The cell in which
she is developed is the smallest of the comb, such as is ordinarily
used for storing honey. She is not merely a fatherless creation, like
the big drone, but hatches from an impregnated egg during the fourth
day after it is laid by the queen mother. She is supplied with royal
jelly, presumably the same as that which nourishes the queen larva,
for about three days; afterward she is fed honey and digested pollen.
This food is placed in the bottom of the cell, and the young larva
floats in it and absorbs it through the body walls as well as through
the mouth, which a little later she opens up pleadingly that it may be
filled by the nurse bees. She grows like other infantile insects by
shedding her skeleton skin as fast as she outgrows it; she does this
with thoroughness, for she sheds the lining of the mouth, the gullet,
the larger intestines and the tracheal tubes as well as the outside,
this being a very thorough change of clothes, indeed; she does this
about six times. Soon after she hatches she querls up in the cell,
floating in her food, and at the end of four days’ feeding she is a
very fat, contented youngster. Six days from the hatching the nurse
bees place over the cell, a cap which is made of wax and pollen, and
admits the air freely. Then the young bee in the solitude of her own
cell eats all the food that has been provided, spins about herself a
cocoon of finest silk, which she weaves from a gland which opens in her
lip; this is a very, very delicate cocoon, which remains in the cell as
a lining, but so delicate is it that not until years have elapsed do
the brood cells become contracted by these many silk wrappings of bees
which have been developed in them. When the worker sheds for the last
time her skeleton, she sheds the lining of the stomach and alimentary
canal and all its contents, and changes to a pupa, which is a state
of utter quiescence and during which wonderful changes take place in
her anatomy. These changes which occur in the pupa are almost like new
creation, for the legs, wings, antennæ, and all of the other organs
of the adult bee are developed from what was within the body of the
footless, white grub.
Twenty-one days from the date of the laying of the egg, twelve days
after the cell is capped, the worker bee sheds her pupa skin, pushes
it behind her to the bottom of the cell, cuts a lid in the cap of her
cell and pushes her way out, very likely after some friendly nurse has
given her a little food to “stay her stomach.” As she crawls out, she
is a silvery-gray bee, as damp as if she had been out in a fog; no
one hastens to greet her, or pays her the slightest attention, which
is quite different from the case with the young ant, which is always
fussed over and patted and petted by the nurses for some time after
it emerges from the pupa skin. But the worker bee has to pat herself,
and so she gives her face a rubbing, stretches and tries to straighten
out her draggled clothing, and walks around trying to get acquainted
as best she can with her sisters, who are too intent upon work to
notice her. The first twenty-four hours of her life as a bee are spent
orienting herself; but on the second day she learns to put her head
down into the cells of unsealed honey and drink her fill. This is not a
selfish and thoughtless act, for almost immediately she enters on her
first duty, that of bee-nurse; and she must eat pollen and honey and
digest them in order to make chyle for the bee brood, which she soon
learns to care for most solicitously. It may be her lot to supply royal
jelly to a queen cell and thus become a lady-in-waiting. In any event
she very soon learns to be useful in many ways; she helps to build
comb, and works very hard at capping the cells of the young bees when
they are ready to pupate. She also helps to clean house if necessary,
carefully removing all of the dirt and refuse at the bottom of the hive
and dumping it out of the front door. During the extreme heat of the
summer she must exert herself tremendously by fanning with her wings so
that a draft may be set up in the hive for the sake of the bees as well
as to ripen the honey in the uncapped cells. During very hot weather,
when the bees hang out, some of these young workers may be seen fanning
“for dear life” on the outside of the hive. Having more zeal than wit,
they dance a little glide back and forth, and fan as if they thought
they were really accomplishing something.
The young worker usually takes her first flight when she has had her
wings for about a week; she runs out on the threshold of the hive
on some pleasant afternoon, and may be easily recognised, as she is
callowness incarnate. She runs around a little, giving the impression
of holding on with all her six feet as if scared, and then she lifts
herself gingerly to see whether she truly can use her wings; then she
circles around in great joy and learns to know well the place where
her hive stands. About a week later she goes out into the wide world
to seek her fortune and is likely to come back with a little load of
pollen on her legs. When she comes back thus laden she buzzes around
before alighting, and then rushes into the hive excited and delighted
with her achievement, and as Mr. Root says so graphically, “tries her
best to show off.” Soon after, she becomes a staid worker and plays
her part in the economy of the hive by bringing in honey, pollen, and
propolis, secreting wax if need be, ready to defend her colony at the
cost of her life, and so courageous that she as readily attacks a man
as a mouse. Later it may fall to her lot to become executioner of her
brother drones, or to devote herself to the queen and help lead out the
swarm; or, by some mysterious election of the hive, she may be sent
as a scout to find a proper home for her queen and her colony after
they have swarmed. She is at the height of her powers and usefulness
when about a month old, and at that time she will do any of the duties
of the hive which she deems necessary, even to helping the young bees
in the housework. She still has all her fur and her wings are as yet
whole; but if there is much to do she is untiring and unremitting in
her labours and, with never a thought of self, wears herself out. Her
old age is evident by the loss of the fuzz, which was the pride of
her youth, and the segments of her body become bald and shiny. Then
her hard-worked wings begin to fray at the edges until there comes a
day when, out on her quest for food for the colony, the broken wings
and tired muscles refuse to support her, and she falls into the grass
and dies; even then her last thought is not for self, but for the
precious load which she struggles to carry home. Better thus for her to
die in the field than to faint in the hive, for then do her vigorous
sisters seize her and thrust her forth, and she falls into the refuse
heap in front of the home, which she has so eagerly wasted her life
to sustain. There is no gratitude and no pensioning in the bee-world;
death and oblivion are meted mercilessly to the most ardent workers
when they fail, for thus, and thus only, can the colony be kept strong.
The individual is nothing in the perfect socialism, and the colony
is everything; the treatment is Spartan, with none of the weakness
which makes us keep alive the hopelessly insane, the idiotic, and the
criminal.
THE LAYING WORKER
When the colony is queenless, worker bees may develop the ability to
lay eggs. As they have never mated, they lay unfertilised eggs, which
develop into drones, and thus stock the hive with these royal cumberers
of the commune. It is interesting to note the difference in prejudices
that obtain in the hive and in human society. In the latter we regard
it as scandalous when the female, avoiding the duties of motherhood,
goes abroad gathering honey and pollen at her own sweet will; but
in bee society it is not merely a scandal, but a misfortune, when
the worker bee has ambitions to be a mother. The laying worker is a
bee gone wrong and a menace to the colony. At the same time she is a
nuisance to the bee-keeper and great may be his tribulation before he
is rid of her. As might be expected, she does not do her work well; she
usually does not lay her eggs in regular order, as does the queen, but
scatters them here and there and everywhere, and is quite likely to
fasten them to the sides of the cells, instead of to the bottom. She
lays her eggs sometimes several together in worker as well as in drone
cells.
As a laying worker looks like any other worker, it is useless to try
to find her. However, her presence may be detected by the irregular
appearance of the brood, and especially by the high drone caps on the
worker cells and, finally, by a superabundance of drones. To meet this
difficulty, an ounce of prevention is worth several pounds of cure,
and great care should be taken to prevent colonies from becoming
queenless. In case, through carelessness, a colony is thus victimised
it will usually refuse to accept a queen, though sometimes it may be
induced to accept a capped queen cell. If this is not successful, the
combs, with the bees adhering, should be removed to an empty hive
nearby, placing a frame of brood containing a queen cell, if possible,
and a frame or two of foundation in the old hive. The workers, coming
back from the field, will enter their hive and the moved comb will
soon be deserted by all except the laying worker; she, with her
characteristic fatuity, will remain on the deserted combs, laying eggs
until she dies of exhaustion. A surer remedy than this, but a more
troublesome one, is to unite this colony with another, or to scatter
the combs from the victimised hive, bees and all, among other colonies
of the apiary; meanwhile giving the depleted hive a frame or two of
good brood, with a queen cell, if possible, so that the bees that
return to it will find normal conditions. What happens to the laying
worker when she finds herself in a colony with a queen, we do not know.
Probably, if she persists in laying eggs, she is killed; possibly she
forsakes her evil ways, and returns to the straight and narrow path of
respectable citizenship.
We do not understand why laying workers are developed. Some have
claimed that too much royal jelly was given them when larvæ; and some,
that after a colony is queenless, the jelly is fed to workers and thus
develops them so they are able to lay eggs. They appear among the
Cyprian and Syrian bees more frequently than among the Italians.
RACES OF DOMESTIC BEES
Several races of the honey-bee have been developed in different
countries. Some of these have been imported into the United States, and
many experiments have been made to determine their relative values.
There were no native honey bees in North America north of Mexico, and
the black or German bees were the first to be brought to this country
by the pioneers. The wild bees which stock the woods of our country
to-day are chiefly black bees, the descendants of swarms which have
escaped from apiaries. For many years the black or German race was the
only kind in general use here. Within recent years the eastern races
of bees, Cyprians, Holy-Lands, or Syrians, and also the Egyptians and
Carniolans and Italians have been introduced. Of all these, only the
Italians have come into universal favour.
The Italians are the classic bees which were discussed by Aristotle,
and sung about by Virgil, who describes their bodies as “shining like
drops of sparkling gold.” The Italian worker has five yellow bands that
mark the front portions of the five segments of the abdomen which lie
next to the thorax; the two posterior bands are made by yellow hairs
and are therefore likely to disappear as the bee gets old and bald. But
the three front ones are made not only by yellow hairs, but also by the
yellowish transparency of the front part of each of the three anterior
segments, or body-rings. As the segments of the abdomen telescope, more
or less, these three yellow rings may not always be visible. Mr. Root’s
test is to feed the bee with honey until the abdomen is distended and
place her on a window pane. If three distinct translucent bands can be
seen, the insect is a pure Italian. If only two bands are evident, she
is a hybrid.
In comparison with the Italians the black bees are inferior in many
particulars. Their only superiority is that their honey in the comb is
a trifle whiter, and they are more easily shaken from the frames than
are the Italians, and thus are sometimes preferred by the man who works
for extracted honey. Their points of inferiority are their nervousness
and irritability, their tendency to rob, their inability to cope with
the bee-moth, and the difficulty with which the queen may be found.
The Italians are far more “civilised” than are the black bees, and seem
willing to credit the operator with good intentions; they can defend
themselves better from pests, their queens are more prolific and, on
the whole, they are more industrious than the blacks, and having longer
tongues than the blacks, they can get nectar from a wider range of
flowers.
The hybrids are the result of crossing the Italians and the blacks.
They are likely to be excellent honey-gatherers, but unfortunately they
usually inherit the irritability of the blacks, which they express with
the strength and energy inherited from the Italians. Therefore, they
are not looked upon with favour. These unwelcome hybrids are likely
to appear in any apiary, for, however pure the Italian queen, she is
likely to mate with a black drone in almost any locality.