EARLY WORK IN THE BEE-CITY
THE “turn of the days,” when the winter sun has passed its nadir of
feebleness and just made its earliest wan recovery in the skies, marks
the true beginning of the honey-bee’s year. Then the first few eggs are
laid in the heart of the brood-nest; the drowsy cluster begins to show an
interest in life; the water-carriers bestir themselves, watching for a
bright warm morning that they may sally forth to ply their trade.
Dangerous work it is at this season, yet most necessary. Without water
the rearing of the young bees is impossible on any but the smallest
scale. Water is needed at every stage of their development, and, lacking
it, the progress of the colony must be fatally checked. Even the mature
bees will starve and die in the midst of plenty, if their honey-stores
are candied, and no water is available to dissolve the inassimilable
sweets. The hive that shows honey crystals thrown down on the floor, and
littering the entrance, is sure to be in desperate case. The bees are
tearing open every store-cell, casting away the solidified honey as
refuse, to get at the moister portion below. If the cold spell does not
break, or the bee-master is unready with his artificial supplies, the
colony must perish. So the water-bearers watch for the sunshine, and its
first warm glance brings them out to rifle the nearest dewdrops, or track
down by its bubbling music the hidden woodland stream. Many die at this
work in the early months of the year, chilled by their load on the
homeward journey, or snapped up by hungry birds. But at every cost the
future life of the colony must be assured, though, of all the
hive-people, none but the queen-mother will be alive to see it in its
summer fulness.
We are accustomed to think of a hive of bees as a permanent institution,
Death playing his old, unceasing, busy part, but young Life more than
outplaying him, just as the way is in a city-hive of men. The analogy
holds good, but in bee-life the changes are infinitely more rapid. The
life of the worker-bee extends, at most, to six months or so; and in the
busy season she may die, worn out by labour, in as many weeks. The
reapers of last year’s honey-harvest were dead by the autumn. The
late-born bees, that went into winter quarters with polished thorax and
ragged wings, survived only long enough to nurture their immediate
successors; and these, again, will live but to bring to maturity the
young spring-broods. Not a bee among them will ever again go
honey-gathering. Except for the long-lived queen-mother, and the old
hive and its furniture, each colony with every year becomes a totally new
thing.
Hibernation, in the true sense of the word, has no part in bee-life. The
queen-wasp and countless other creatures hibernate, passing the cold
months in a torpor of sleep until the enduring warmth of another year
lures them back to active existence. But the honey-bees have a better
way: they gather together in a dense, all but motionless cluster in the
heart of the hive, with their precious queen in their midst and their
food-stores above them. At this time honey is their only necessary food,
and very little of this suffices to keep up the needful temperature of
the colony. When they are out and about at their work, or busy within
the hive, the nitrogenous pollen must be added to their daily ration of
nectar to build up wasted tissues; but now honey, the nectar
concentrated, the heat-producer, is all they want. The bees of the
cluster nearest to the combs broach the full cells beneath them, and the
honey is passed through the crowd, each bee getting its scanty dole.
[Picture: Winter in the Bee-Garden]
Economy is now reduced to a fine art. None knows when a fresh supply may
be available, although no chance will be lost to replenish the larder at
the first sign of returning warmth. But now the barest minimum of food
is taken, and as the nearest cells become emptied of their contents, the
cluster moves a step upward. Thus there is a system of slow browsing
over the combs, until the dense flock of bees has reached the highest
limit of the hive, when new grazing-ground must be taken. But the
movement of the cluster is exceedingly slow, perhaps the slowest thing in
the animate world. All recognise that existence depends on the stores
being eked out to their uttermost. It is a scientific damping-down of
the fires of life—a carefully thought-out and perfected plan for
preserving the greatest possible number of worker-bees alive on the
smallest practicable amount of food, so that the largest possible army of
nurse-bees and foragers may be at hand in the springtime to raise the
young bees that are to represent the future colony.
But there is no hibernation. It is doubtful even if bees ever sleep,
either in their season of greatest activity or in the coldest depths of
winter. At all times a slight rap on the hive will awaken an immediate
timorous outcry within. Sturdy knocking will soon bring the guard-bees
to the entrance to find out the cause of the disturbance, and many bees
lose their lives from this vigilant habit alone. On frosty days the tits
may often be seen perched on the entrance-board of a hive, beating out a
noisy tattoo, and snapping up every bee that emerges; and many other
small birds have discovered the same never-failing source of a meal.
The fact that, with a healthy stock of bees, the interior of a hive
always preserves its clean condition, is usually a great puzzle to the
novice. In the summer, when the bees are passing continually in and out,
this is not so vast a matter for wonder. But in winter-time, when the
colony is confined to the hive often for weeks together, it is remarkable
that neither the combs nor floor of the hive are ever soiled by excreta.
This is a difficulty that the sanitary department in the hive has
successfully coped with long ago. It must have been one of the earliest
problems that presented itself when the honey-bee first evolved the
communal habit. The Ancients believed that all the excreta of the hive
were deposited by the bees in certain privy-cells, and thence removed at
intervals by the scavenging authorities. There is nothing in this
notion, absurd as it is, outside the scope of bee-ingenuity; on the
contrary, such a crude device would be little likely to commend itself to
the hive-people, as it would be ridiculously inadequate to the case. How
great must be the problem of the preservation of cleanliness in a hive,
can only be understood when the whole conditions are considered together,
and that from a human standpoint. Putting the figures unwarrantably low,
what measure of success could the greatest genius that ever lived among
sanitary scientists ever hope to achieve, if he were given the task of
keeping in cleanly condition, perfect ventilation, and even temperature,
a building where 10,000 individuals were crowded together storey above
storey—a building hermetically sealed throughout except for one small
opening at the lowest level, which must serve for all purposes of
entrance and exit to its denizens, as well as sole conduit for the
removal of the foul air and introduction of the pure? The task would be
gigantic enough in the summer-time, when a large proportion of the
inhabitants were away at work during a greater part of the day; but in
winter, when all were continuously at home for weeks together, what
conceivable device, or combination of devices, could prevent the building
soon developing into first a quagmire and then a charnel-house, to which
the Black Hole of Calcutta would be a model sanitary retreat?
Yet the difference between such a building and a beehive is only one of
degree. The same conditions are involved, and the same evils must be
combated. Relatively, the problem is the same in each. In the case of
the beehive, the necessity for this close system of life has been very
gradually imposed on its inhabitants; and age-long custom, working on the
individual, has at length produced a race marvellously adapted to its
special needs. Probably the habit of retention of fæces while in the
hive was at first a voluntary one. This, carried on from generation to
generation, would react on the physical organism until use became second
nature, and finally the present condition was reached. It is a fact that
the bee is now incapable of voiding its excreta within the hive, or when
at rest. The muscles involved can come into action only during, or
immediately after, vigorous flight. In the winter, when long spells of
cold occur, not a bee leaves the hive perhaps for weeks together; but an
hour’s warm sunshine will infallibly bring the whole company out in a
little eddying crowd about the hive, and then the necessary action of
nature can readily be seen. These cleansing flights occur on all
practicable occasions, and fulfil a double purpose; for when the cluster
forms again, it will be between combs where the stores are unexploited,
and the old, steady, upward feeding-march begins again in a new place.
In extraordinary seasons, when the cold weather is much prolonged, the
population of a hive may die of starvation within reach of plenty, no
opportunity for these flights having presented itself, and the cluster
therefore not having left its original station. And here the bee is
plainly the victim of her own advanced acumen. Instinct would never have
led her into such a foolish plight; but reason, being liable to err, errs
here egregiously.
The comparison of a modern beehive with a building similar in
construction, and as densely crowded with human beings, brings the whole
problem to a sharp definition. In such a building, unless a
through-current of air could be established, the preservation of life
must soon become impossible. Yet the bees have triumphantly overcome all
difficulties. Whether in winter or summer, the air within the hive is
almost as pure as that in the open, while the temperature can be
regulated at will. For the ordinary purposes of the hive—honey-brewing,
and the hatching of the young brood—it is kept uniformly at 80° to 85°.
When the wax-makers are at work, it rises suddenly to 95° or so, while at
the time of the swarming-fever it is often allowed to go even higher. In
the hottest days of summer, however, unless the emigration-furore
possesses the colony, the interior of a well-made hive seldom shows a
temperature of more than 80°. And all this is brought about in a very
simple fashion.
The sanitary expert, of merely human stock, could attack the problem in
only one way. He must have a through-current of air, impelled either
mechanically or automatically; and he must have heating-apparatus acting
within the building itself, or warming the incoming draught of air. But
the bees work on totally different principles. They will have nothing to
do with the through-current system of ventilation. If the ingenious
bee-master pierce air-holes in the walls of a hive, the bees will spend
the night in carefully stopping them up again. In the old bee-garden we
saw the fanning-army drawing out the impure air. These bees had their
heads pointing towards the entrance; but, inside the hive, there was
another army of fanners, facing the opposite way, and thus helping to
drive the same sidelong current. Throughout nearly the whole interior of
the hive on hot days fanning-bees can be seen, all helping to keep up
this movement. The result is that the pure air, being sucked in at one
side of the entrance, flows round the hive and travels out at the other
side, much as a rope goes over a pulley-block. The swiftest current of
air keeps to the walls and roof of the hive, the air in the centre being
changed more slowly. Thus the honeycombs, which are always in the upper
stories, lie in the full stream, and the moisture, which the maturing
honey is continually giving off, is carried rapidly away; while the
brood-combs, lying in the lower, central part, are ventilated more
slowly, the air being thoroughly warmed before it reaches them. The
larger the fanning-army is, the more swiftly flows the air, and the
faster the heat of the hive is carried off. In this way the bees can
regulate the hive-temperature to the requirements of the moment, putting
more numerous gangs to work in the hottest season, or stopping the
fanners altogether in mid-winter, when the natural, buoyant
heat-exhalation from the cluster is sufficient to keep up the gentle
circulation which then is alone needed.
Sometimes, when the colony is unusually large, the fanning-party will be
divided into two detachments, one at each side of the entrance, leaving
the centre for the inflow of air. In this case a double-loop system of
ventilation appears to be formed.