A ROMANCE OF ANATOMY
THE modern commercial bee-keeper—the man who keeps his bees in hives of
the most approved construction, all alike in colour and shape, and all in
straight rows—is too prone to look only on the practical side of his
work, and to regard with a certain ill-concealed contempt anything that
does not directly promote what is, in his view, the one and only object
of apiculture, that of honey-getting.
But with the bee-keeper who is also a bee-lover, the tendency is all the
other way. To live in the very spirit of wonder, as he must who has once
dipped down below the surface of hive-life, is to saddle but a slow,
ambling jade for the race in material prosperity. In a bee-garden the
habit of rumination comes on one like creeping paralysis, gradually but
irresistibly. It is one thing, on a fine June morning, to start away
from the house, pipe in mouth and busily trundling the honey-barrow,
intent on a long day’s work among the hives; it is quite another thing to
keep industriously to the task hour after hour, when the sun has fixed
his slothful golden grip upon you, and the drowsy song of the bees has
worked its will on heart and mind.
Good resolutions have a way of petering out, reasonably enough, under
these inviting circumstances. The honey-barrow makes the most
comfortable seat in the world, and can be pulled up just where the shade
of the linden-trees is thickest. Moreover, the blue smoke of tobacco,
drifting lazily up through the sunshine, adds just that touch of
deliberation needed in a scene where all is unmitigated, almost desperate
toil; while what difference can it make if one alone be idle in the
hundred thousand? And so, as often as not, the creaking wheel comes
permanently to rest under the lindens; the honey is left to the
honey-makers; the thoughts follow the bees into their hives, or may-be
wend away over seas to the great plantations, where the dry weed filling
the pipe-bowl was once a green leaf in an ocean of green, flecked over
with blossom, and sung over by bees, whose ancestors might have come from
this very nook in old England, where it is now all ending in smoke and
quiet thought.
But, especially on rainy days, when there is much to do indoors—preparing
the section-racks, discharging the honey from the full combs that, empty,
they may be returned to the hives for refilling on the morrow, and what
not—the tendency to set aside obvious, humdrum duties in beemanship has a
still more capable ally.
The beeman with a microscope has given the seven-leagued boots to his
conscience; he will never catch up with it again in a whole life’s march.
If the daily work in the hive, as seen with the naked eye, is a
fascinating, duty-dispersing study, a microscopic acquaintance with the
hive-worker herself, and the details of her extraordinary equipment, lets
one into a whole new world of fact and thought.
It is only under a strong glass that the true place of the honey-bee in
the scale of creation can be entirely estimated. Her work is evident to
the most casual eye, but of the worker herself we get only a vague idea
of a dim-hued, crystal-winged atom running a perpetual race with the wind
and sunshine, or forming an all but undistinguishable speck in the
seething, heaving multitudes within the hive.
But here, on the stage of the microscope, the honey-bee is revealed as a
totally new creature; and, by little and little, a story unfolds itself
about her which, in its way, is a perfect epic of life. No one can study
the perplexities of hive-life for long without a conviction that a
creature executing such varied and elaborate works must, of necessity, be
herself highly developed in body and mind. But it seldom happens, even
with the veriest tiro, that the expectation comes anywhere near the
reality in such an examination of the common worker-bee. The unaided eye
sees a creature, fashioned simply enough to all appearances—a brown,
attenuated body, two pairs of wings, the usual six legs common to all
insects, and a couple of bent horns, like threshels, that continuously
waver to and fro. But under the glass this simplicity at once vanishes.
From the tip of her antennæ to the barbed end of her sting, there is
nothing about the honey-bee that is not made on the most bewilderingly,
complicated plan.
Watching a hive at work on a busy day in summer, the attention is first
drawn to the pollen-gatherers, labouring in by the thousand with the big,
oval, brightly-coloured masses fixed to their hindmost legs; and it is
first to the pollen-carrying organism that the glass is now naturally
directed. The six legs, which looked all very much alike to the naked
eye, are seen to be in three pairs, and the construction of each pair
differs very markedly from that of its fellows. So far from their being
simple legs, each has no fewer than nine jointed parts, and nearly every
part carries a special piece of mechanism necessary and vital in the
daily work of the bee. Whole treatises might be written on the functions
of the human hand, yet the hand is a very simple contrivance compared
with the legs of the honey-bee. The pollen-carrying device is on the
thigh of the hind leg. The thigh is broadened out and hollowed, and
round this oblong cavity is a fringe of incurving bristles which look as
if they would hold anything. But before the pollen can be packed in
these baskets it must be collected and kneaded together. Practically the
whole body of the bee is used in pollen-gathering. Under the low power
of the microscope it is seen that hardly any part of the trunk or limb is
without its dense covering of hairs; but with the high objective these
hairs cease to be hairs, and are changed into actual feathers, delicate
herring-bone implements, which sweep up the pollen as the bee dives into
the flower-cup for the nectar that lies below.
Nearly every joint of each leg is furnished with a comb of bristles, with
which this pollen-dust is scraped off and transferred to the
carrying-basket after being moistened by the tongue; while the hind-legs
have each a complete, perfectly-fashioned curry-comb. Here the leg is
widened and flattened, and covered on one side with nine or ten rows of
short, strong spines, with which the bee scrapes her body just as a groom
curry-combs a horse. At ordinary times she will carefully pack her load
of pollen into its proper receptacles before returning to the hive, so
that it shall be all ready for transference to the cells. At the
cell-mouth she pushes each lump off by means of her other legs, leaving
it to be rammed down into the cell by the store-keepers. No distinction
is made here, every kind and colour of pollen being indiscriminately
stored in the same cell; and when the cell is full, a thin layer of honey
is smeared over all, to preserve it from the air. When, however, time
presses, the bee will not stop to knead up the load, but will carry it
home as it is, arriving in the hive smothered completely from head to
foot as with gold-dust. Then the house-bees gather round her, soon
scraping her free of her encumbrance, and she starts off again for
another load.
The fact that insects can walk on both upper and under surfaces
apparently with equal ease, is none the less remarkable because we see it
going on every day of our lives. Yet the fly, crawling up the
window-glass, or running about on the ceiling, owes his power of
topsy-turvy perambulation to a very ingenious device. This is well
illustrated in the foot of a bee. She has a pair of short, strong double
claws, which will take her securely over all but the smoothest and
shiniest surfaces; and it is with these claws that bees form themselves
into dense clusters and knots and cables within the hive, holding
hand-to-hand, as it were, in all directions. But when there is nothing
for the claw to hold by, another part of the foot comes into play. This
is a soft, flexible pad, which is always covered by a thick, oily
exudation. In walking, the bee puts her feet down three at a time, the
pads adhering instantly they come into contact with the smooth surface.
At the next step the other three pads come into play, while the first
three are stripped off. But each foot is capable of attaching and
detaching itself independently of its fellows. In this case the
stripping is accomplished by downward pressure of the claws of the same
foot.
On each of her fore-legs the bee has an appliance which fulfils a very
important office. It is a semicircular notch with a fringe of strong
hairs, and when the leg is bent up, this notch engages with a curious
projection on the next upper joint, forming an eyelet roughly circular in
shape. With this exact and special tool she cleans her antennæ, and this
is done at short intervals throughout the whole active time of her life,
much as, in the operation of winking, the human eye is kept cleansed.
The tongue also is freed from adhering grains of pollen by this device.
The question, How does a bee gather the flower-juices to make her honey?
is met by certain popular naturalists with the assurance that she sucks
them through a tube. This is so easy a generalisation that it amounts
very nearly to positive error. The tongue of the bee is not a tube, as
the word is usually understood. And she laps up the nectar as often as
she sucks it. It depends entirely on the quantity to be dealt with; and
a little careful dissection of the mouth-parts of the bee, by means of
the microscope and a pair of long needles, will soon make the whole
matter clear.
She is no beauty—the honey-bee, seen at such close quarters; unending
toil, and a perverted, baffled nature, do not tend to loveliness in any
of her sex. But her positive and almost terrifying ugliness, when looked
at so disadvantageously, is soon forgotten as one comes to realise her
abounding possession of that other kind of beauty—the beauty of utility.
To the naked eye her tongue is a bright brown, shining piece, protruding
from her mouth, and hanging down with much the same appearance as an
elephant’s trunk. Under the microscope it is soon seen that this is not
a tongue in the proper sense, but a continuation of the under-lip. It
consists of six or seven different parts capable of being fitted together
lengthways. There is a central part, longer than the rest, with a hairy
spatula at its end, and when the other parts are closed about this, the
whole virtually forms a tube within a tube. The spatula does the lapping
when only minute quantities of fluid have to be taken up, and these pass
into the mouth more by capillary attraction than by actual sucking; but
when there is a brimming cup of nectar to be emptied, the whole mechanism
of the tongue is brought into play. The longitudinal strips are placed
together edge to edge, and the liquid is drawn out of the flower-cup by
the action of the tongue-muscles in much the same way as water is lifted
by a pump.
Now that we have the head of the bee under observation, many curious
things about it can be ascertained. The strong, curved jaws, working
sideways, are doubly interesting as the main implements used in the
preparation of the wax, and largely in the comb-building. But the eyes
and the long, flail-like antenna rivet attention first. Whether the bee
was made for her life, or the life—imposed on her by inexorable
conditions—made the bee what she is to-day, the extraordinary adaptation
of her physique to her environment is beyond all question. The great
compound eyes, with their thousands of facets each pointing in a slightly
different direction, are obviously made for wide and distant outlooks.
It is with these eyes that the bee finds her way out and home over miles
of country. In the worker the compound eyes occupy the whole sides of
the head, but in the drone they are much larger, and meet entirely at the
top. Thus, dallying in the sunshine, he is able the while to keep the
whole arc of the sky under scrutiny, ready at an instant’s notice to take
up the love-challenge of the young queens.
But these large multiple eyes of the bee are of little use to her at
close quarters, or in the deep twilight of the hive. For indoor use, and
for near vision, she has three other eyes, containing a single lens each,
and set in her forehead just above her antennæ. The popular belief, that
the honey-bee carries on her busy life, and elaborate enterprises in
complete darkness, is mainly a fallacy. Probably there is always some
light, even in the remotest recesses of the hive—enough, at least, for
the eyes of the bee, if not for our own vision.
The bee, however, would seem to depend very little on sight alone in the
prosecution of her various tasks. There is little doubt that she
possesses all the other four senses in a marked degree. Both the tongue
and the lips have certain highly developed structures upon them which can
be nothing else than organs of taste; while the most superficial
acquaintance with the life of the hive must convince anyone that the bee
possesses the senses of smell and hearing, and that very acutely. Where
the seat of these two faculties lies is at present doubtful, and the
exact functions of the antennæ are still a matter of conjecture. But it
is at least certain that these latter perform vital office in every act
or enterprise of the bee. It is obvious that the antennæ are very
delicate organs of touch, but it is equally obvious that they are much
more than this. It has been ascertained that they carry no less than six
totally different kinds of instruments, each of which must have its
distinct use.
Observation of the ways of the honey-bee has been carried on for
thousands of years. More books have been written about the bee than
perhaps of all other creatures put together. And yet our knowledge of
her powers and organisation must still be reckoned in its infancy. The
microscopists have dissected her antenna and isolated all their various
parts, but of the particular functions of these little or nothing is
known at present. There are certain hairs, evenly distributed over the
whole surface, which are presumably instruments of touch. But there are
other hairs, or fine cones, which are hollow, enclosing a delicate
nerve-fibre; hairs set loosely in a cavity; hairs curved and ringed, and
of different lengths. Then there are mysterious pits and depressions,
either open or covered with incredibly thin membranes, enshrining
nerve-ends only just visible with the highest objectives. And the whole
is linked up in an intricate nervous system that baffles every art and
patience of research; while, when all has been investigated and
described, no one is really any the wiser.
The antenna are certainly touch-organs, and, in all likelihood, it is by
their means that the bee hears and smells. Yet this only exhausts a few
of their manifest possibilities. It is quite clear that we must admit
the honey-bee to possess other senses than the five we know of; and—for a
guess—some of these mysterious implements on her antenna may be
thought-transmitters and -receivers on the wireless plan. The wonderful
unanimity of action among bees may be due to the fact that they can
exchange ideas through the air, as men have now at last come to do. The
faculty of speech, hitherto held up as man’s insignia of lordship over
the rest of creation, may be indeed a crude, archaic thing, compared with
the mind-language of the honey-bees.
There is another conceivable function which the antennæ of bees may
perform—that of unerring and instant estimation of short distances. They
may be delicate measuring instruments, not mechanically applied in the
way of a foot-rule or metric scale, but registering dimensions
inherently, as our ears record intensity of sound. This would go far to
explain how honeycomb is built, how the cells are made all of the same
shape and size, although hundreds of the mason-bees are at work on the
structure, not only at the same moment, but in succession, each bee
coming and going in the murmurous gloom of the hive, and beginning
instantly and unhesitatingly at the point where her predecessor broke
off. As the central division of the comb grew, expanding in all
directions downward, and the cells were built out horizontally at the
same time, the bee would know by her sense of dimension when the limit of
each side in the hexagonal cell-base was reached, and would know the
proper angle to turn off at in the laying of the next foundation-line.
Anyone who has watched the flight of the bee must have been struck by its
sheer facility and freedom no less than by its speed. It is quite
evident that the bee is not only an accomplished aërial navigator, but
that she sustains and propels herself through the air with very little
effort. Obviously her equipment for flight must be a thoroughly
efficient one, and yet at first glance it is not quite clear how she
manages so well. The student of the flight-problem, taking his ideas and
conception of first principles from the flight of birds, is accustomed to
believe that there are at least two vital indispensable elements in the
process—a pair of wings or combination of aëroplane and propellers that
will sustain as well as drive, and some sort of steering-apparatus like
the bird’s tail. Yet, as far as a first general inspection carries us,
the bee appears to have no rudder-mechanism at all, but to depend on her
four wings for every purpose. The wings of the bird have a variable
action. They can be used together or separately, and are as capable of
eccentric adjustment, both in themselves and in relation to one another,
as a pair of human arms. But the bee’s wings have none of this
adaptability. They have but the one motion, up and down; and they work
symmetrically, each wing keeping time with its fellow. Yet the bee
steers herself perfectly well in a hundred different evolutions,
accomplishing all that the bird attains with his more complicated
apparatus for flight.
The whole problem is bound up with another problem; and the two,
difficult of solution apart, easily resolve one another when taken in
conjunction. Insects are so called because their bodies are in two
parts, entirely divided except for an extremely slender connecting joint.
We are so accustomed to accept this arrangement as a common fact in
nature that we seldom stop to consider its real significance. It is not
easy to see how such a construction can be anything else than a drawback
to any living creature. But in the hive-bee the whole arrangement seems
to amount to what must be called an ideal inconvenience, seeing that her
honey-sac and complicated organs for producing the larval food are in her
abdomen, with no way to them but through this fine joint. Clearly there
is some weighty reason for it, out-balancing all other considerations, or
it would not exist; and when we come to study it in connection with the
honey-bee’s peculiar system of flight, we soon arrive at the true
solution.
It has been said that the wings of the bee have a perfectly symmetrical
action, and that they have a single fixed direction, moving up and down,
always at right-angles with the line of the thorax. Under the microscope
each of the four wings is seen as a transparent, impervious membrane,
intersected with fine ribs. The front wing, however, has a much stronger
and stiffer rib running the entire length of its upper edge, and it is on
this main rib that almost the entire force of the flight-muscles is
concentrated. If you look farther, you will see that the under wing has
a row of fine hooks along its top edge, while the lower edge of the upper
wing is flanged or folded back. In flight the hooks on one wing engage
with the flange on the other, and thus the wings on each side are
automatically locked together, forming one continuous air-resisting
surface. This combined wing is very flexible throughout, except at its
upper edge, where it is stiffened by the main rib. In action,
therefore,—the force being applied practically to the edge alone, which
resists the air while the rest of the wing bends to it—the result is that
the whole wing becomes an oscillating, inclined plane, whose inclination,
forward on the down-stroke, is still forward on the up-stroke, because
the plane-inclination reverses itself automatically.
From this it will be understood how the flexible wings of the bee are
used in straightforward flight; but, seeing that the wings themselves are
incapable of independent or irregular action, it is not yet clear how the
bee contrives to steer herself, rising or descending, or turning
sideways, just as the mood seizes her. It is here that the reason for
the peculiar construction of her body becomes plain. The fine link which
unites her abdomen to her thorax is really an universal joint, actuated
by a series of powerful cross-muscles, and the bee steers herself through
the air by using the weight of the lower half of her body as a
counterpoise. By swinging her heavy abdomen forward or backward, or from
side to side, she changes her centre of gravity, and the line of force of
her aëroplanes, at one and the same time. Actually her body keeps its
vertical position, being her heaviest part, and it is the lighter
wing-supporting thorax which is deflected. But the result is the same,
and every variety and direction of flight is accomplished by the bee on
what seems a far more simple plan than that evidenced in the flight of
birds.
One of the most difficult things to account for in the life of the
honey-bee is the fact that the temperature of the hive can be varied at
the will of its occupants. The system of mechanical ventilation will, of
course, explain how the hive is kept cool in the greatest heats of
summer, but it does not explain the sudden accessions of heat to which it
is liable from time to time. These occur principally when the wax is
being generated. Under the bronze armour-plates of her body the
worker-bee has six shallow, but broad depressions, beneath which the
wax-glands are placed. Perfect rest and a high temperature seem to be
necessary for the stimulation of these glands, and the wax-makers consume
a large quantity of sweet-food during the process. It is generally
stated that bees fill themselves from the stores of mature honey before
uniting in the cluster; but it is more probable that the food consumed
during wax-making is principally the nectar, almost as gathered from the
flowers. This view is confirmed by certain experiments which were
undertaken to decide the amount of food assimilated during the production
of a given weight of wax. When the bees had access only to honey, it was
found that five or six pounds were needed during the time that one pound
of wax was produced. But if the bees were fed on a plain syrup of
cane-sugar, more wax was generated. The chemical composition of fresh
nectar is almost identical with that of sugar from the sugar-cane, but
mature honey contains practically no cane-sugar at all. It is very
doubtful, therefore, if the economic bee would deplete her hard-won
stores of honey for a purpose that could be better accomplished in
another and cheaper way. And it should also be borne in mind that the
natural time for comb-building coincides with the season when nectar is
in greatest plenty.
These sudden variations in temperature appear to be brought about by a
wholesale increase in the rate of respiration among the bees; and there
is nothing that excites the wonder of the student of hive-life more than
the breathing-apparatus of the bee, as seen under the microscope.
Practically her whole physical system is directly supplied with air,
drawn in through her many spiracles. As far as scientists have been able
to determine, there is not a fibre or nerve in her entire body that is
not reached by the minute ramifications of the air-ducts, in direct
communication with the great main breathing-vessels in the bee’s abdomen.
Respiration appears to be largely voluntary with the honey-bee. She
breathes only when the necessity for it arises, and will sometimes arrest
the action entirely for three or four minutes together. But when the
wax-making is going forward, or swarming-time is near at hand, the quick,
vibratory movement of respiration is visible everywhere in the throng of
bees, and the temperature of the hive climbs up often to a dozen degrees
above its normal point.
The breathing system of the honey-bee is closely connected with her
sound-organs. Anyone asked to describe the note made by a bee would
probably say that she hums or buzzes, and there would be an end to most
ideas on the matter. But to the beeman this is a pitifully inadequate
statement of the truth. The bee comprises in herself not one, but a
whole choir of voices, and she has a compass of at least an octave and a
half. Every one of her fourteen spiracles, and each of her wings, is
capable of producing sound; and these sounds can be endlessly varied in
quality, intensity, and pitch. It is no exaggeration to say that the
honey-bee is as accomplished a musician as any bird; but as each
individual voice is for the most part lost in the general symphony of the
hive, it is difficult to get a complete idea of her capabilities as a
soloist.
The voice-apparatus in the spiracles is one of the most intricate things
in the whole anatomy of the bee. It has a multiplicity of parts, and is
obviously designed to convey a great variety of sounds. The wings also
produce tones that run up or down in the scale, according to their rate
of oscillation; and from them comes the sibilant note usually called
buzzing. Listening to the hive-music at any season of the year, it is
impossible to resist the thought that bees not only hold individual
communication by means of these infinitely varied sounds, but that the
general note given out by the multitude unerringly expresses the state of
affairs within the hive for the time being. A prosperous stock voices
its busy contentment in a way impossible to misunderstand. It is a deep,
blithe, resonant sound, like the steady running of well-oiled machinery,
each wheel adding its own whirring melody to the general theme. Weak or
famishing colonies give out a wavering, intermittent note, the very voice
of complaint and fear for the future. When a hive has lost its queen, a
capable bee-master should have no difficulty in divining the trouble by
listening at the hive-entrance. A queenless stock is all clamour and the
hubbub of divided counsels. The ordinary rich reverberation of labour
stops, and a sound of panic goes to and fro in the hive unceasingly. If
a hive be quietly opened, and its queen removed with little disturbance,
it may be some time before the bees discover their loss. Some colonies
experimented with in this way realise their deprivation immediately, and
the hue-and-cry begins at once. But one of the most curious facts in
bee-life is the variation in intelligence, and alertness of perception,
between the different hives. A steady-going, dull race may be a
considerable time before it perceives the absence of its queen. The
common note of work goes on unchanged until the fact dawns on it. And
then the peculiar shrill outcry commences, overpowering all other sounds
until reason again asserts itself in the colony, and the bees set about
the work of raising another queen.
The voice of the drone is deeper and hoarser than that of the worker-bee,
by reason of his larger body; and his noisier buzzing is explained by his
greater length and breadth of wing. The queen also has a deeper, more
husky voice during flight; but she has, in addition, a peculiar cry of
her own, an old familiar sound to bee-keepers all the world over. It is
heard principally just before the swarming of the hive. Certain old
skeppists profess to be able to foretell the date on which a swarm will
issue by studying the cry of the queen. On quiet nights, just before the
swarming-season commences, it may frequently be heard above the general
murmur of the hive by bending the ear down to the entrance. It is a
shrill piping sound, repeated over and over again, and often answered by
other and fainter notes. How it is produced is not certainly known, but
probably it is caused by the wings or legs being sharply rubbed together,
much as a cricket or grasshopper utters its cry. The louder note is made
by the old queen, and there is no doubt of its import. Jealousy and the
lust of battle are on her, and she is trying to get at the young
princesses in their cells. The cry is one of baffled fury as she strives
with the guards about the cells, and the answering notes come from the
imprisoned queens who are just as eager for the fray. The old skeppists
are never far out in their reckoning. When this state of affairs has
begun, the crisis is imminent; and the morrow is sure to see the
emigrating party setting off for its new home, carrying the old queen
irresistibly with it.
It has been said that the nurse-bees, who have the entire charge and care
of the young brood, feed the larvæ from their mouths with a thick white
fluid, which is aptly called bee-milk. All the time the nurses are
engaged on this work, they are themselves hearty eaters of both honey and
pollen; so that at first sight it appears as if the bee had the power of
instantaneous digestion, feeding herself at one moment, and, at the next,
regurgitating this food, changed into a totally different substance, to
feed the young grubs. Moreover, there is another wonderful thing
regarding this bee-milk. It has been proved by careful analysis that its
composition varies considerably. The male, female, and queen-larvæ are
all fed with it, but its constitution differs, not only with each kind of
larva, but according to the age the larva has reached. The bee must
therefore have her whole system of digestion under full voluntary
control. How she manages this critical part of her work can only be
understood by the aid of a good microscope.
[Picture: The bee nursery; tending the young brood]
Perhaps there is nothing more wonderful, in the whole wonderful anatomy
of the bee, than her digestive organism and its contributory system of
glands, each of which has its special and important use. When she draws
up the nectar from the flowers, it passes at once into the first of her
two stomachs, which is simply and solely a reservoir. Here it can remain
indefinitely at the will of the bee; or it can be thrown up and poured
into the comb-cells, to be brewed into honey; or it can be allowed to
pass through a valve at the base of the reservoir into the bee’s second
and lower stomach, where digestion takes place and the honey and pollen
are formed into chyle. But, by one of the most ingenious devices in
nature, this second stomach is also capable of returning its contents to
the mouth, and the chyle is there changed into bee-milk for the
nourishment of the larvæ.
The worker-bee has, in all, four distinct glands, each secreting a fluid
with properties different from the other three. These glands are all
situated in the mouth. Two of them have a common opening in the upper
side of the root of the tongue; and as the bee sucks, their combined
secretions mingle with the flower juices automatically, and the first
step in the change of the nectar into honey takes place. The third gland
is in the roof of the mouth, and it is the secretion from this gland
which acts on the regurgitated chyle, and changes it into brood-food.
The fourth gland is double. These twin-glands have their openings at the
base of the jaws, and the action of chewing is necessary to excite their
secretion.
The valve between the upper, or honey-stomach, and the lower, or
chyle-stomach, has an extensible neck, and the bee can, at will, raise
this telescopic piece through the interior of the honey-sac until the
valve is pressed against the opening into the gullet. Thus the contents
of the lower stomach can be driven into the mouth without coming into
contact with the stored sweets in the reservoir, and this pre-digested
matter is always ready at an instant’s notice for the use of the larva,
or for the nourishment of drones or queen.
It has been said that the nursery-work of the hive is undertaken
exclusively by the young bees during the first fortnight or so of their
lives. After this time they make their first foraging expedition,
beginning with pollen-gathering, and relinquishing this in turn for the
collection of nectar when they have arrived at full maturity. The mature
workers take no part in the feeding of the larvæ, except on very rare
emergencies. In relation to this, it is a curious fact that the gland in
the roof of the mouth, which acts on the chyle, forming it into
brood-food, is in full development only during the first weeks of the
worker-bee’s career. After that its activity swiftly declines, until, in
old workers, it becomes largely atrophied.
The digestive gland-system of the honey-bee, although it has been fairly
well explored by the scientific naturalists, is still much of a mystery,
and this especially with regard to the glands attached to the jaws. The
secretion from these glands—obviously a very powerful acid—is mainly used
to convert the raw wax from its hard, brittle character into the soft,
ductile material of which the combs are made. It is probably used to
some extent, also, in the preparation of the brood-food, in conjunction
with the gland in the roof of the mouth. It mingles with the pollen when
this is masticated, and no doubt it has various other uses; but no one
seems as yet to have discovered why these two glands should be so
enormously developed in the queen, who takes no part in the nursery-work
or comb-building. The whole question will naturally have little more
than a passing interest for the general reader; but, to the bee-keeper
with a microscope, it takes a prominent place among the debatable things
in hive-life. If the difference between the queen-bee and the
worker-bee—a difference of organic structure as well as mere
development—is really brought about by variation in the quality and
quantity of the food supplied to the larva, then the action of these
glands cannot be over-estimated in importance, and cannot be studied too
deeply: they form the very spring and fount of life. Yet is it certain
that the influence brought to bear on the young grubs by the nurse-bees
is wholly restricted to the matter of food? The worker-bee has several
curious organs and gland-systems in various parts of her body, in
addition to those already enumerated, to which no rational use has yet
been assigned. The more we study her extraordinary equipment, the less
justification there appears to be for dogmatising about her, limiting or
particularising the function of any one gland or implement in the whole
unending array. The old adage, that there is nothing invariable about
the honey-bee, is like to be as true with regard to her physiology as it
is with her habits of life; and, for all we can tell, to-morrow’s
knowledge may render obsolete much of the carefully garnered knowledge of
to-day.
If the story of the honey-bee’s anatomy has everywhere some of the
elements of romance about it—in its unexpected incidents, its adventurous
colour, its shadow of a great design—this spirit suffers no abatement
when we come, in a last view of it, to consider her as one carrying arms,
one bearing such a weapon of offence as never came into human mind to
fashion. The long curved scimitar of the queen, which she cherishes so
carefully that nothing will induce her to strike with it except when it
is to be turned against a royal foe, is otherwise little else than a
harmless piece of domestic furniture. But the sting of the valorous
worker-bee, seen under a microscope, is a positively terrifying engine of
destruction. Popular science generally describes it as a sheath
containing a barbed and poisonous dart; and the trite comparison is
always made of the bee’s sting with the finest sewing-needle, the latter
being likened to a rough bar of iron. The idea of a sheath is pure
fiction, as a little painstaking examination will soon reveal.
The bee’s sting is made up of three separate lances, each with a barbed
edge, and each capable of being thrust forward independently of the
others. The central and broader lance has a hollow face, furnished at
each side with a rail, or beading, which runs its whole length. On the
back of each of the other two lances there is a longitudinal groove, and
into these grooves fit the raised beadings of the central lancet. Thus
the sting is like a sword with three blades—united, but sliding upon one
another—the barbed points of which continue to advance alternately into
the wound, going ever deeper and deeper of their own malice aforethought
after the initial thrust is made. It is a device of war, compared to
which the explosive bullet is but a clumsy brutality. Yet this is not
all. To make its death-dealing powers doubly sure, this thorough-minded
amazon must fill the haft of her triple blade with a subtle poison, and
so contrive its sliding mechanism that the same impulse, which drives the
points successively forward, drenches the whole weapon with a fatal
juice.
The tendency to be unduly scientific, to meet these things with exact and
unimaginative interest, receives its final quietus here. For he who
realises the whole deadly efficacy of the honey-bee’s sting cannot
logically pass it by as a mere remarkable provision of nature, praising
God for it complacently, but must concede it a much wider significance.
This complicated weapon of the stunted, sex-perverted worker-bee owes its
existence as much to deliberate art as to nature, or those who watch the
Omnipotent in hive-life are strangely and perversely led astray. In the
queen-mother, whose physical organism may be said to be comparatively
unchanged from its aboriginal type, we see the part corresponding to the
worker’s sting, essentially another creation. The queen’s ovipositor is
longer; it is curved; the barbs upon it are small and insignificant; the
fluid in the secreting-gland is no poison at all, but a thick opaque
substance, whose true use is probably to glue the eggs safely to the
bottoms of the cells. She is also provided with a pair of blunt
instruments covered with sensitive hairs, which serve, with the
ovipositor, to guide the egg securely to its destination. The worker-bee
has these feelers on either side of her sting, but she has perverted them
to a very different office, that of seeking out the vulnerable parts of
her enemy. And what a drastic change her will, or that of her
foster-mothers, has wrought in the whole contrivance! She has bartered
the privilege of motherhood and years of life for a few short months and
a share in the communal sovereignty. She must be ready to further the
well-being of the hive by the art of war as well as by the arts of peace.
Therefore she has deliberately helped in fashioning the ploughshares into
cannon. A little change in her food as a nursling, an infinitesimal
leaking from a gland that takes the full power of the strongest glass to
see,—and, with all the other multitudinous changes of form and character,
this last miracle comes quietly into being. The egg-depositing shaft
grows short and straight; its moderate indentations become cruel jagged
barbs designed to hold as well as to kill; the harmless, egg-fastening
gluten is quickened into a virulent poison; and the death-dealing thing
is ready and ripe for service against all honey-lovers, the hereditary
foes of the hive.