or _incision_, from its habit of cutting sections out of the petals of
the common scarlet poppy with which to line the cells it forms within
the cylinder it excavates, just as _Megachile_ does with the leaves of
various plants. It is noticed as British upon the faith of the specimens
introduced by Leach into the cabinets of the British Museum and
presumptively caught in the west or south-west of England, a region rich
in rarities. Rennie in fact tells us that he has found it at Largs, in
Scotland. One of Leach’s specimens I received in exchange from that
establishment in 1842, and which is now in the possession of Mr.
Desvignes, to whom my collections passed in the following year. This
genus forms a sort of combination between the genera _Megachile_ and
_Osmia_, it having the upholstering habits of the former in the mode
with which it lines its nest, and the general habit of the latter. At a
first glance, before its habits were known or its structure examined,
even an experienced entomologist might have placed it under _Osmia_, as
an unrecognised species, for it very strongly resembles the _Osmia
leucomelana_. This proves how very inconclusive habit is as an index to
habits, the latter of these insects drilling into the pith of brambles,
and the _Anthocopa_ tunnelling cylinders into the hardest trodden roads
or pathways and lining them with its crimson hangings.
From the extreme rarity of the insect, I have been unable to examine the
cibarial apparatus, and thence to ascertain upon what substantial
grounds the generic distinctions are based, which separate it from
_Osmia_. Whether it was these mere habits of the insect which induced Le
Pelletier de St. Fargeau to establish the genus I do not know, but he is
always extremely slovenly, and therefore very unsatisfactory in his
characteristics, which are never framed in a strictly explicit manner.
In consequence of all these difficulties, I have merely been able under
the generic character to introduce such as he has given, which I could
not derive from the personal external inspection of Mr. Desvignes’
female (my own selection of whose bees for the purposes of this work he
has been so kind as to lend me, and whom I thus publicly present with my
best thanks). I have therefore compounded a character as well as I could
from St. Fargeau’s descriptions, inserted in the tenth volume of the
‘_Encyclopédie Méthodique_,’ and from his work on the _Hymenoptera_,
forming one of the ‘_Suites à Buffon_.’
The habits of these bees, as said above, are to excavate vertical
cylinders in hard down-trodden pathways and roads, by the sides of
fields where corn is grown, and where consequently the common red poppy
is abundant. From the petals of the flowers of this plant they cut out
semicircular pieces, precisely as is done by _Megachile_ with the more
rigid leaves of shrubs and trees, and convey them home and line their
nests with them, just as is practised by that genus with those
leaves,—with this difference merely, that a sufficient portion of the
upper edge of the pieces of the petals used is left projecting, for the
purpose of forming a covercle to the nidus, and which, when filled with
provender and the egg deposited, is refolded over it and covered in, and
it is closed up with earth. They then proceed to make another
excavation, which is treated in the same manner, for they deposit only
one larva in a tube. If disturbed in their retreat, they will show
themselves at its mouth, like _Dasypoda_, to see what is the matter.
I would urge our collecting entomologists, especially those who have the
opportunity of hunting up the west of England, to use due diligence and
strive to confirm the native existence of this bee and add specimens to
the cabinets of their fellow-entomologists.
-------
Genus 24. OSMIA, _Latreille_.
(Plate XIV. figs. 1 and 3 ♂♀.)
APIS ** _c_ 2 _δ_, Kirby.
_Gen. Char._: HEAD subglobose, concave, posteriorly fitting the
prothorax and about as wide as the thorax; _ocelli_ placed far forward
on the vertex, which is wide and convex, in a curved line; _antennæ_
filiform, sometimes subclavate, short, and geniculated, the _scape_
robust, as long as the four following joints, the basal joint of the
_flagellum_ globose, its second joint clavate and as long as the
terminal one, the remainder short, subequal, and gradually but slightly
increasing in length; the _face_ flattish; the _clypeus_ a truncated
triangle, convex; _labrum_ longitudinally oblong, a little laterally
distended at the articulation, from whence the sides are parallel;
_mandibles_ broad at the apex, obscurely tridentate, the internal teeth
obtuse and short; _cibarial apparatus_ long; the _tongue_ three times
the length of the labium, clothed with short hair and tapering from the
base to the acute apex; _paraglossæ_ very short, coadunate at the base
and acuminate at the apex; _labial palpi_ more than half the length of
the tongue, the two first joints membranous and long, the basal one the
broadest, seated on a petiole and not so long as the second, which
tapers to an acute point, before the apex of which the remaining two
short subclavate conterminous joints articulate; _labium_ about
one-third the length of the tongue, acutely produced in the centre of
its inosculation; _maxillæ_ as long as the tongue, subhastate and
acuminate; _maxillary palpi_ four-jointed, rather short, the joints
subequal and subclavate, but the second is both the most robust and
slightly the longest. THORAX oval or globose; _prothorax_ inconspicuous;
_scutellum_ lunulate and convex; _post-scutellum_ transverse and linear;
the _metathorax_ abruptly truncated; _wings_ with two submarginal cells,
and a third distinctly commenced, the second the longest, and receiving
both the recurrent nervures, the first towards its centre and the second
near its termination; _legs_ moderate, setose, the plantæ of all with a
dense brush beneath; _claw-joint_ longer than the three preceding;
_claws_ simple. ABDOMEN short, cylindrical, convex, the terminal segment
slightly pointed, the ventral segments densely pilose in parallel lines
from the second.
The MALE differs in having the _antennæ_ longer and always filiform, the
ventral segments very concave, and the terminal dorsal segment variously
mucronated, tuberculated, spinose or serrated, and the claws bifid.
NATIVE SPECIES.
1. _leucomelana_, Kirby, ♂♀. 3-4½ lines. (Plate XIV. fig. 3 ♂♀.)
2. _spinulosa_, Kirby, ♂♀. 3-4 lines.
3. _pilicornis_, Bainbridge, MS., ♂♀. 4-4½ lines.
4. _bicolor_, Schrank, ♂♀. 4-5 lines. (Plate XIV. fig. 1 ♂♀.)
5. _fulviventris_, Panzer, ♂♀. 4-5 lines.
_Leaiana_, Kirby.
6. _ænea_, Linnæus, ♂♀. 3-4½ lines.
_cærulescens_, Linnæus, ♀.
_cærulescens_, Kirby, ♀.
7. _parietina_, Curtis, [V. 222.] ♂♀. 3-4 lines.
8. _xanthomelana_, Kirby, ♂♀. 4-7 lines.
_atricapilla_, Curtis, [V. 222.] ♀.
9. _aurulenta_, Panzer, ♂♀. 4-6 lines.
_tunensis_, Kirby.
10. _rufa_, Linnæus, ♂♀. 3-6 lines.
_bicornis_, Linnæus.
_bicornis_, Kirby.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.
Named from _ὀσμὴ_, _sweet-scent_, from some fancied idea of their
possessing the property of emitting a sweet odour; but this, although it
is the case with many of the bees,—for instance, with the genera
_Prosopis_, _Halictus_, _Nomada_, some of the _Anthophoræ_, _Saropoda_,
and the male _Bombi_ and _Apathi_,—I have not noticed in any of this
subsection, the _Dasygasters_, and therefore not in any of the present
genus. It is possible that when richly laden with pollen, this may emit
some smell, but I am not aware that any of the scent of flowers lies in
the anthers or their pollen, although this in some cases has a spermatic
odour pointing to its express function; but be this as it may, such is
their name. These as a group are what are called the ‘Mason Bees,’ from
the habit they have of agglutinating particles of sand or earth mixed
with minute pebbles, scarcely larger than grains of sand, or raspings of
wood combined in the same manner, with a secretion which they emit, and
of which they form their cells. The instinct of the creature prompts it
to be speedy in the operation, as the material, like plaster of Paris,
dries very rapidly to a hard substance. Whether they have the power of
softening the edges as the manufacture of the cell proceeds is not
known, nor whether, as they add the material, it instantaneously
consolidates itself, but the colour of the structures themselves would
indicate a simultaneous mixture. This could not be the case, if the
mortar or mixture were formed away from the domicile and brought home in
little pellets, each being added upon the insects’ arrival, although
they obtain it all from the same spot, whence arises its uniformity in
colour, and they are speedy in the formation of their nests. These cells
are rather rough externally, according to the nature of the material of
which they are composed, but they are very smooth within. The nature of
the cells varies with the places of their deposit, which is dependent
upon the idiosyncrasy of the species. Thus, those which construct their
cells in wood, form them of moistened particles of wood, and those which
make them in cavities of any kind, in the earth, beneath stones, or
within empty snail-shells, make a mortar of earth and sand and small
pebbles. Some are strictly uniform in the selection of the material
wherein they build, but others are perfectly indifferent to its
locality, and adopt either earth or wood, and sometimes the mortar of
walls, sandbanks or chalk cliffs. According to the nature or the size of
the receptacle which they select, is the adjustment of these cells.
Where the cavity is restricted they place them end to end, but where it
is more roomy they affix them side to side, completely adapting
themselves to the circumstances of the locality as I shall instance
below, in the description of the special habits of the more conspicuous
species. I have elsewhere referred to the metallic colouring of many of
the species of this genus, and amongst them is found the greatest sexual
disparity of personal appearance, the _O. leucomelana_, and one or two
of the neighbouring species being, perhaps, the only ones wherein
uniformity of appearance would unite the partners together. The majority
are very pubescent insects, and the females of the terminal species in
the foregoing list are remarkable for a couple of inwardly curved horns,
springing from the base of the clypeus just below the insertion of the
antennæ, an appendage usually a male attribute.
There is very great dissimilarity in the habits of the various species,
whence no single characteristic will embrace them, nor is there any
distinctive feature whereby the genus might bear subdivision, either
from habits or habit, as will be collected from the following cursory
survey of their special natural history.
Thus the first species, the _O. leucomelana_, named so from the white
decumbent down which edges the black segments of the abdomen, extracts
the pith from bramble sticks, and its cells are formed and closed with a
composition made of triturated wood or leaves. The cylinders it forms
are usually about five inches deep, and within this it constructs about
the same number of cells proportionate to the small size of the insect.
These are midsummer insects, coming forth in June and July; they are
very local, but seem to abound in the vicinity of Bristol, whence Mr.
Thwaites formerly sent me specimens. A very few days serve for the
hatching of the larva, which spins a slight silken cocoon, and in this
dormitory it reposes until its season again comes round. Under the
influence of the following first genial spring weather, the larva is
transmuted into the pupa, and the active little imago comes forth upon
the settlement of our variable spring, in the merry days of June, and
thus is perpetuated the circle of its existence, but which is sometimes
abridged by its special parasite, the pretty little _Stelis
octomaculata_. Many of the species in the males are distinguished by a
peculiar armature of the apex of the abdomen; the second being named by
Kirby from the circumstance. A very remarkable singularity distinguishes
the males of the third species, in the fringe of short hair that runs
along the flagellum of its antennæ. This, I believe, was first noticed
by the late Mr. Bainbridge, a very active practical entomologist, who
took the insect at Darenth or Birchwood, and distributed specimens with
this manuscript name attached, which has since been appropriated by
another entomologist to whom the science was wholly unknown at that
time, but as it is scarcely consistent with scientific courtesy to adopt
such a course, and as the MS. names of Linnæus and Kirby have been
retained, where it was authorized by their being attached to undescribed
species, I have restored to Mr. Bainbridge his just rights, and have
claimed the same for myself, in the case of _Andrena longipes_, and
which many cabinets must still possess with my name attached, in my own
writing, unless their possessors have chosen to adopt the illegitimate
parentage; for the entomologists of my own standing well know that I
always freely distributed specimens to all who desired them of the many
very desirable insects which I have captured in the course of my
entomological career. The fourth and the ninth species, the _O. bicolor_
and _O. aurulenta_, have very much the same habits, both usually
burrowing in sandbanks, sometimes however in wood, in which case the
perforation, contrary to the mode of wood-drilling bees, is made
upwards, a sagacity or instinct which saves it much trouble, for the
particles as they are removed by the mandibles are passed beneath the
insect, and their own gravity carries them downwards, and thus the
insect saves itself the labour of conveying them out as they accumulate
in inconvenient quantities. The cells in this case are placed end to
end. When they burrow in the earth, the latter species often associate
gregariously in large numbers, and if they select a cavity, instead of
tunnelling it themselves, and it be too large to take one cell upon the
others, they form them side by side, and thus fill the space. This is
the case when they adopt snail-shells as the receptacle for their
incunabula, and this is done by both these species, and the shells they
select are the empty ones of _Helix nemoralis_, _hortensis_, and
_adspersa_. The capacity of the latter shell being much greater than
that of the others, and too wide for a single succession, she fills the
interval by placing them side by side, and with the increase of the
whorl of the shell towards its orifice she places them across the space,
and thus completes her task. In the former shells, the cavity at first
admits of the succession of but one upon the other, but with its
enlargement she places them side by side, and this repeated fills the
hollow. Its aperture is then closed with earth and pebbles or sticks
agglutinated together, as described at the commencement. The _O.
fulviventris_ burrows in wood, and upon this species the _Stelis
phæoptera_ is parasitical; and that very pretty but extremely common
species the _O. ænea_, in which the male is of a rich bronzy tint, and
the female of a beautiful blue, verging sometimes to nearly black,
burrows also in wood, although sometimes it capriciously selects old
walls or chalk-cliffs, and is subject to the incursions of the same
parasite. Perhaps the most extraordinary species is the _O. parietina_,
figured and named by Curtis, and which he first found at Ambleside; it
has since been found in the Grampians very considerably above the level
of the sea, and it is thus essentially a northern species both from
altitude and locality. It would appear that this species selects some
flat stone of about a foot in surface, lying upon the ground over a
hollow spot. Such a specimen, sent to the British Museum, had attached
to its under side two hundred and thirty cocoons, indicative of a
considerable colony, or perhaps the accumulation of successive years, as
one-third of these cocoons were empty of tenants. These, in their new
depository, continued developing themselves in the perfect state between
March and June, males appearing first. When the transformations of the
season ceased, five-and-thirty were still left to present themselves
another year, and the following spring these were developed; thus,
including those which had already escaped when the stone and its
treasure was secured, three successive seasons were occupied in their
transmutations. It may be a species that requires three years for its
metamorphosis, and the whole deposit of cocoons may have been the result
of three years’ accumulative structure, the vital activity of their
northern life being perhaps more sluggish than in species frequenting
the south. The last species the _O. rufa_, that in which the female is
remarkable for its inverted horns, which must be for some use in its
economy, is perhaps the most common of all. I have found it in abundance
upon old walls with a sunny aspect at Erith, and throughout the pleasant
Crays of Kent. It is indifferent as to the choice of its domicile,
selecting either walls, where I have chiefly found them, sandbanks, or
the decaying stumps of pollard-willows. Its processes are similar to
those of some of the earlier described, but its larva is longer in full
feeding, which, when it has consumed all its provender spins a tough
cocoon of brown silk, wherein it undergoes its changes; some, depending
much upon locality, pass into pupæ in the autumn, others hibernate as
larvæ which are subject to destruction from the attacks of the
_Chalcideous_ insect, _Monodontomerus dentipes_, previously noticed
under _Anthophora_. Some of the _Chrysididæ_ also infest several of the
species of this genus, and I have no doubt that _Stelis aterrima_ is
parasitical upon one of them, although it has not been recorded. The
various species frequent many flowers, especially those abundant in the
locality they inhabit, but the _O. pilicornis_ chiefly affects the
common Bugle (_Ajuga reptans_), and they much frequent composite
flowers, especially the species of the genus _Hieracium_.
-------
Section 2. _Cenobites_ (_dwellers in community_).
Subsection 1. SPURRED.
† _Parasitical._
Genus 25. APATHUS, _Newman_.
(Plate XIV. figs. 1 and 2.)
APIS ** _e_ 2 partly, Kirby.—PSITHYRUS, St. Fargeau.
_Gen. Char._: BODY subhirsute. HEAD subglobose; _vertex_ broad,
glabrous, with a deeply impressed cross upon its summit, in the centre
of which the ocelli are placed in an almost straight line and
contiguously; _antennæ_ short, filiform, geniculated, the _scape_
slightly curved, the basal joint of the _flagellum_ subglobose, its
second joint as long as the terminal one and subclavate, the rest short,
subequal, but gradually increasing in length to the terminal one, which
is laterally compressed; the _face_ flat; _clypeus_ transversely lunate
but straight in front; _labrum_ lunulate, tuberculated laterally;
_mandibles_ broad and obscurely bidentate; _cibarial apparatus_
moderate; _tongue_ twice the length of the labium, tapering from base to
apex, where it terminates in a small knob, and is clothed with short
hair; _paraglossæ_ obsolete; _labial palpi_ as long as the tongue, the
two first joints long and membranous and tapering to the apex of the
second, which is acute, and about one-fourth the length of the first, it
has the two very short, subclavate, terminal joints, which are
conterminous, and articulated just before its acute apex; _maxillæ_
subhastate and acuminate; _maxillary palpi_ very short, linear, and
equal. THORAX globose, pubescent, concealing its divisions; _metathorax_
truncated; _wings_ with three submarginal cells nearly equal, or the
third the largest, the second receiving the first recurrent nervure at
about one-third its length, and the second is received by the third
submarginal cell near its extremity; _legs_ setose; the _posterior
tibiæ_ convex, very slightly enlarging from base to apex, rounded at the
extremity externally, and unfurnished with means to convey pollen;
_posterior plantæ_ oblong, narrowly equal, and not auriculated; _claws_
bifid. ABDOMEN ovate, convex above, deflecting toward its extremity, and
subglabrous on the disk, the terminal dorsal segment triangular, and its
ventral plate straight at its apex with the lateral angles reflected,
making it concave beneath and subcarinated longitudinally in the centre,
or also triangular and the sides of the prominent angle deflected.
The MALE differs in having the antennæ slightly longer, in being rather
more pubescent, more highly and rather differently coloured, and its
terminal segment merely rounded.
NATIVE SPECIES.
3. _campestris_, Panzer, ♂ ♀. 6-9 lines. (Plate XIV. fig. 2. The
fig. marked ♂ by mistake for ♀.)
_campestris_, Kirby, ♀.
_Rossiella_, Kirby, ♂.
_Leeana_, Kirby.
_Franciscana_, Kirby.
_subterranea_, Kirby.
2. _Barbutellus_, Kirby, ♂ ♀. 6-9 lines.
3. _vestalis_, Fourcroy, ♂ ♀. 6-10 lines. (Plate XIV. fig. 2 ♀.)
_vestalis_, Kirby, ♀.
4. _rupestris_, Fabricius, ♂ ♀. 6-10 lines. (Plate XIV. fig. 1 ♂ ♀.)
_albinella_, Kirby, ♂.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.
Named from _α_, privative, _πάθος_, _affection_; that is to say, without
affection, from their habit of leaving their young to be nurtured by
others, in allusion to their parasitical instincts, for the young of
these bees are brought up in the nests of the _Bombi_. They form the
only instance in bee-parasitism of the parasite closely, or nearly so,
resembling its sitos, if not always in colour, certainly in habit.
Having no labours to undergo they consist of merely males and females,
but the latter, although very like the large female _Bombi_, are much
less pubescent than these, for they have a broad disk, upon the upper
surface of the abdomen, always smooth and shining. Both sexes appear to
have free in- and egress to the nests of those _Bombi_ which they
infest, without any let or hindrance on the part of the latter, with
whom they seem to dwell in perfect amity. In the times of their
appearance they closely resemble the _Halicti_ and the neighbouring
_Bombi_. Thus the females, after impregnation in the autumn, having
hibernated during the winter in selected receptacles, come out with the
first gleams of spring conjunctively with the large maternal _Bombi_, in
whose nests they have taken their long repose in perfect torpidity; and
as soon as these begin to accumulate the masses of conglomerated honey
and pollen whereon to deposit their eggs, the parasite takes advantage
of it, lays her eggs too, and thus secures food for her offspring. There
being two broods of them in the year, many are gradually developed with
the advance of summer, but the great hatching takes place in the autumn,
when the thistles are in blossom. Then both males and females come forth
in abundance, the latter are made fertile, and their partners enjoy the
brief interval of the still blossoming flowers until the usual period is
put to their existence by natural decay, the first frosts, or the
rapacity of insectivorous birds. Connected with this last circumstance I
have a personal experience to record, and which its repetition would
indicate as being one of Nature’s prompting acts. A lofty sandy level,
very near the high-road which leads at the upper part of Hampstead
Heath, to Highgate, from which road it was separated by merely a band of
whins and coarse grass, used to be a very favourite collecting place of
mine, for there, and in its immediate vicinity, I have often caught,
within a very brief period, more than half the genera, and a very large
number of the species of the fossorial _Hymenoptera_. One particular
little spot was inhabited by _Psen equestris_, rare everywhere else, and
our largest _Cerceris_, who carried on their instinctive pursuits during
all the summer months, but at a particular time in the autumn, varying
slightly with the nature of the season, a flock of wagtails
(_Motacilla_) would alight and make brief work of those fossores which
were still aflight; and this was repeated season after season, as if the
wagtails thought it was time that their own rapacity should stop the
course of these predacious insects. But to return, the female _Apathi_
then resort to the nests of the _Bombi_ whence they have issued, and lay
themselves up in their winter dormitory. That this must take place
speedily after impregnation is rendered almost conclusive by the fine
state in which their pubescence appears in the spring, which would be
tarnished did they loiter about visiting flowers previous to their
return home. But the labours of the female and neuter _Bombi_ themselves
are now over, and they would therefore find no store whereon to deposit
their eggs. The parasitical allocation of these insects is as follows.
_Apathus rupestris_ infests _Bombus lapidarius_; _A. vestalis_ the _B.
terrestris_, and this forms an instance in which the parasite is not
clothed in the colours of its sitos. But _A. Barbutellus_ has a wide
range, for it frequents the nests of _B. pratorum_, _B. Derhamellus_,
and _B. Skrimshiranus_.
†† _Not parasitical._ _Collectors of pollen._
‡ _Temporarily social._
Genus 26. BOMBUS, _Latreille_.
(Plate XIV. figs. 3 and 4, and Plate XVI. figs. 1, 2, 3.)
APIS ** _e_ 2, Kirby.
_Gen. Char._: BODY densely hirsute. HEAD small, subglobose, not so wide
as the thorax; the _vertex_ glabrous, with a longitudinal, short, deep
channel, crossed in its centre by a deeper transverse one, wherein the
_ocelli_ are disposed in a very slightly-curved line; _antennæ_ short,
geniculated, and filiform; the _scape_ half as long as the flagellum,
the first joint of which is globose, the second subclavate, the rest
short and subequal, and the terminal one compressed laterally; _face_
flat, densely pubescent; _clypeus_ subtriangular, gibbous, its base
truncated, and apex convexly lobated, or straight and margined; _labrum_
lunulate; _mandibles_ broad at the base, and obscurely tridentate;
_cibarial apparatus_ moderate; _tongue_ twice the length of the labium,
clothed with pubescence to within a brief distance of its apex, and
terminating in a small knob; _paraglossæ_ about one-fourth the length of
the tongue, coadunate at the base, and acuminate; _labial palpi_
three-fourths the length of the tongue, broad at the base, and tapering
to the extremity of the acute apex of the second joint, which is about
one-fifth the length of the first, the two terminal joints very short
and articulated laterally just before the end of the second; _labium_
one-half the length of the tongue, broadest at its base, and acutely
produced in the centre of its inosculation; _maxillæ_ as long as the
tongue, subhastate and acuminate; _maxillary palpi_ two-jointed, short,
sometimes equal, and slightly robust, or with the basal joint very
robust, and its terminal joint twice as long and linear. THORAX globose,
very hirsute, whence its divisions are inconspicuous; _scutellum_
lunate; _metathorax_ truncated; _wings_ with three submarginal cells
subequal, or the third the longest, and a fourth slightly commenced, the
second receiving the first recurrent nervure near its centre, and the
third receiving the second recurrent nervure close to its extremity;
_legs_ robust, pilose, the four anterior plantæ with a dense, short,
setose brush beneath; the _posterior tibiæ_ triangular, very smooth, and
irregularly concave on their external surface, fringed with long pile
along its two external edges, and its extremity tipped with a short
pecten of stiff setæ; the _plantæ_ elongate and broad, nearly equal,
externally shagreened and spinulose, with a longish auriculated process
at the external angle of the superior edge, a dense brush of short,
stiff hair beneath, and a short pecten of stiff setæ edging its
subemarginate extremity; the _claw-joint_ the longest of the four short
subsequent joints, and the _claws_ bifid. ABDOMEN ovate or globose,
deflected towards its extremity, its base retuse, the last segment
triangular, and terminating obtusely.
The MALE differs in always being more intensely coloured; in having the
_antennæ_ distinctly longer, less distinctly geniculated, the _scape_
shorter, the third joint of the _flagellum_ almost as short as its basal
joint, and the fourth as long as the terminal one, which latter two are
the longest of all, and the joints from the fourth to the eleventh
severally more or less slightly curved.
NATIVE SPECIES.
1. _lapidarius_, Linnæus, ♂ ♀ ⚲. 6-10 lines.
_lapidarius_, Kirby.
2. _Harrisellus_, Kirby, ♂ ♀ ⚲. 6-10 lines. (Plate XVI. fig. 1 ♀.)
3. _subterraneus_, Linnæus. ♂ ♀ ⚲. 5-10 lines.
_Soroensis_, Kirby?
4. _Latreillellus_, Kirby, ♂ ♀ ⚲. 5-8 lines.
_Tunstallana_, Kirby.
5. _hortorum_, Linnæus, ♂ ♀ ⚲. 5-10 lines.
_hortorum_, Kirby.
6. _Soroensis_, Fabricius, ♂ ♀ ⚲. 5-8 lines. (Plate XV. fig. 4 ♂.)
_Cullumana_, Kirby, ♂.
7. _lucorum_, Linnæus, ♂ ♀ ⚲. 5-9 lines.
_lucorum_, Kirby.
_virginalis_, Kirby.
8. _terrestris_, Linnæus, ♂ ♀ ⚲. 7-11 lines.
_terrestris_, Kirby.
9. _Skrimshiranus_, Kirby, ♂ ♀ ⚲. 5-8 lines.
_Jonella_, Kirby.
10. _nivalis_, Dahlbom, ♂ ♀. 6-8 lines.
11. _pratorum_, Linnæus, ♂ ♀ ⚲. 4-8 lines.
_pratorum_, Kirby.
_subinterrupta_, Kirby.
_Donovanella_, Kirby.
_Burrellana_, Kirby.
12. _Derhamellus_, Kirby, ♂ ♀ ⚲. 4-8 lines.
_Raiella_, Kirby, ♀.
13. _Lapponicus_, Fabricius, ♂ ♀ ⚲. 5-9 lines.
_regelationis_, Newman.
14. _fragrans_, Pallas, ♂ ♀ ⚲. 5-10 lines. (Plate XIV. fig. 3 ♀.)
_fragrans_, Kirby.
15. _sylvarum_, Linnæus, ♂ ♀ ⚲. 6-8 lines. (Plate XVI. fig. 3 ♀.)
_sylvarum_, Kirby.
16. _Smithianus_, White, ♂♀⚲. 4-10 line
17. _senilis_, Fabricius, ♂♀⚲. 6-9 lines.
_muscorum_, Kirby.
18. _muscorum_, Linnæus, ♂♀⚲. 4-9 lines.
_Francillonana_, Kirby.
_floralis_, Kirby.
_Sowerbiana_, Kirby.
_Beckwithella_, Kirby.
_Curtisella_, Kirby.
_Forsterella_, Kirby.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.
These, perhaps the most conspicuous of our native bees, certainly the
largest, and probably the most generally known after the domestic bee,
have their scientific generic name from _βόμβος_, an imitative word,
made to indicate the sound of the hum of the insects themselves. They
have many popular names such as bumble bees, dumbledors, humble-bees,
and in Scotland they are called foggie bees. They consist of three
sexes, males, females, and neuters, which differ considerably in size,
the females being very much the largest, and the neuters the smallest.
Of course, individually, like all other insects, there is much variation
among them in the intensity or diversity of the colouring of their
pubescence, from which it is chiefly that they derive their specific
distinctions; in the relative sizes of individuals also there are great
differences. It is the males, as is usual among the bees, which are the
gayest in their attire, and take the widest range of variation, and
sometimes so much exceed the typical specific character in their
markings as to require experience to identify them, and to place them
correctly with their true species, which can only be ascertained with
certainty by the examination of the male organs of generation, which
differ in the various species, but are undeviating in their specific
uniformity. Of this character, which I was the first to discover as
being of specific value for critical determination in the separation of
the species of very difficult insects, I was enabled to make important
use in the genus _Dorylus_, in a monograph on the _Dorylidæ_, an exotic
family proximate to the ants, and which was published in Taylor’s
‘Annals of Natural History’ for May, June, and July, 1840. The females
and neuters of _Bombus_ are less subject to such extensive
dissimilarity, and may be usually associated, by their pubescence, in
their legitimate groups. Form also frequently lends its aid as
subsidiary to their specific identification.
These and _Apis mellifica_ are our only social bees, which live in
numerous communities under a kind of municipal government which is
considerably less perfectly organized in the present genus than in the
domestic bee, and thence they are called “villagers,” in
contradistinction to the citizenship of the hive bee, earned by its
comparatively metropolitan institutions, and the centralization of its
government, which wholly emanates from the pervading influence of the
queen upon the labours, and, indeed, upon the existence of her subjects.
But the _Bombi_ are under much less social restraint, and admit of
several co-regents in the same community, without its being productive
of any disturbance of social harmony. In the account of the genus
_Apathus_, the last described, we have seen that the _Bombi_ are subject
to bee-parasites, which in some closely resemble the species they
infest, and we have also shown there how these are distributed. The hive
bee is not exposed to such intrusion, although, like these, they have
many enemies. In the very earliest spring months these _Bombi_ are
abroad; for as soon as the catkins of the sallow are ripe for
impregnation, they are on the wing. But it is now that the large females
only are at work, for they have to create their companions before they
can be surrounded by them. Their fruition is the result of the previous
autumn’s amours, at a period too late to form sufficient stores for the
numerous brood they will produce, and accordingly, after revelling in a
brief honeymoon, they resort, like staid matrons, to a temporary
domicile, some cavity just large enough for themselves. In this
retirement they pass the cheerless wintry months, requiring perhaps the
incubation of time thoroughly to mature their fruit. Whether this be the
case or not, as soon as the earth begins to feel the warmth of the sun
upon its return from its far southern journey, and to respond to the
renewed vitality it gives to vegetation, these bees feel its active
influence and come forth. With the progress of the spring and summer
most flowers are exposed to their rifling, but they revel upon the
elegant flowers of the Horse-chestnut, and their hum is the music of the
lime when it is in blossom. According to the species, they select a
cavity for their nest, or construct it upon the surface of the ground,
this being the case with the CARDER-BEES, which gather moss to construct
their residence. In those which inhabit beneath the surface, the
selection of an already formed cavity greatly abridges their labour, and
their instinct prompts them to choose one sufficiently large for the
prospective community, but the nest itself is gradually extended in size
suitable to their progressive increase in numbers. All that the parent
female does at first is to form a receptacle sufficiently large for her
first gatherings of pollen and honey, whereon to deposit her first eggs,
and to form a waxen cruse or two to contain the honey requisite for the
nest operations of keeping these masses moist enough for the nurture of
the larvæ. The material of these pots although called wax is not
properly so, but is an agglutination of collected vegetable matter, for
it is not plastic to the fingers like wax, and it burns, leaving a
carbonaceous residuum very attractive to moisture. The larvæ hatched
from the eggs now deposited produce the first neuters, which spin a
cocoon wherein they rapidly undergo their transformations. They are, in
the first instance, aided to emerge from their silken cot by the parent
gnawing off its top, but subsequently this duty is performed, as the
family increases, by the neuters then developed. The young bee, on
emerging from its cocoon, is not thoroughly hardened in its integument,
and its pubescence also acquires by degrees only its proper colouring;
all this is not long in being effected, but, until they are thoroughly
able to fly forth, they continue to be fed by their elder sisterhood,
for the neuters are properly abortive females. Males, and further
productive females are produced later in the spring, and are smaller
than the normal sizes of those sexes; the autumnal brood, consisting
also of males and females, again resume the full size of the complete
insect, and it is these females which, after impregnation, hibernate and
reappear in the following early spring to be each the parent of a new
progeny. The population of these nests varies considerably in the
several species: in some, as in that of _Bombus terrestris_, there are
more than two hundred, and in that of _B. senilis_ there are about a
hundred and forty; but it is in those that construct their nests above
the ground that the fewest are found. As with the general population, so
with the relative proportions of the sexes, the several species vary. Of
course all these numbers are approximative only, as under certain
conditions they will necessarily differ, nor are the general or relative
numbers identical, even in the same species, in the same season, and in
the same locality. The proportions are usually somewhat like this, about
double the number of neuters to females, and nearly the same number of
males as of females. In some of the communities there are even as few as
twenty neuters, and these, of course, comprise those species which are
most rarely found by collectors. The most pugnacious of all, and the
fiercest in their attacks and most painful in their stings, are those
which live underground or in cavities formed of accumulations of stones,
and it is these which are the least constructive in their habitations,
as if their truculent nature rejected the concomitants of incipient
civilization; for it is those which build moss-nests, requiring a
certain amount of skill, that are the most gentle in their habits. With
the increase of numbers in the habitation, the rapidity of the labours
progresses, and the accumulations quickly increase; but there is always
opportunity for the entire community to find employment, either in
enlarging their nests, when they build them, or in securing them from
the intrusion of water, or repelling enemies, or feeding the young, and
accumulating stores. In collecting pollen they are often covered as if
they had rolled themselves in it, and this they brush from their hairy
bodies chiefly with their posterior legs; sometimes they return in this
disguised condition, and free themselves from it only at home; in other
cases they bring it home collected in little masses upon the corbiculum,
or basket, of the posterior shanks. They may be often caught thus laden,
and I once captured a large female of _B. terrestris_, with the shanks
and plantæ of both intermediate and posterior legs covered with masses
of thick clay, required doubtless at home for some domestic repairs. The
instinct of these bees teaches them that where the tube of the flower is
too narrow for the introduction of their body, and too long for even
their long proboscis to reach the nectarium at the bottom, they may get
at the honey by piercing a hole near that organ, which they know where
to find, and thus they readily get at the treasure that they seek,
lapping it through the aperture and carrying it off. If, in their
collecting excursions, they are intercepted by heavy rains, or loiter
far away too long until the twilight closes, they will pass the night
away from home, and return laden with their gatherings as soon as the
warmth of the sun reanimates them to activity; thus they will often
sleep in flowers, and a nest therefore taken at night is not always a
sure indication in those found within it, of its complete population. In
their amours, the autumnal females evince considerable coquetry to
attract their partners: they place themselves upon some branch in the
most fervid sunshine, and here they practise their cajoleries in the
vibrations of their wings, and allure them by their attractive postures.
The males are simultaneously abroad, and soon perceive them. The
seduction is complete, and they pounce down upon them with impetuosity,
but their brief indulgence terminates in death, for with his abating
vigour the female repulses him, and he falls to the ground never to take
wing again. Amongst their insect enemies the _Dipterous_ genera,
_Volucella_ and _Conops_, are very destructive to their larvæ,—the first
of these genera in its colouring greatly resembling the species upon
which it preys. Foxes, weasels, field-mice, all prey upon them, and,
like schoolboys, often destroy the bee for the sake of its honey-bag, an
instance of which I have before recorded as illustrative of their
endurance of the loss of a considerable portion of the body without its
being fatal.
The most interesting part of their history is perhaps that upon which I
have not yet enlarged, namely, the structure of their nests. This is
particularly the case with the carder-bees, which felt and plait the
filaments of moss to form its whole enclosure. Such species select a
spot close to an abundant supply of the material; this they bite off and
form pellets of. To these nests a moderately long arched passage is
formed of the same material, of sufficient size to permit the free
passage of the bees to and fro. This necessarily is shorter at first and
leads to a smaller receptacle when the parent bee works alone. But as
her offspring of workers increases, the passage is lengthened and the
nest enlarged. To construct it, when in full activity, the bees form a
chain, one behind the other, extending from the growing material to the
entrance of their passage to the nest, all their heads being turned
towards the moss and their backs to the nest. The first bites off the
raw material, rolls it and twists it, and passes it to the second, by
whom and the succeeding ones it undergoes further manipulation, and
where the chain terminates at the commencement of the passage another
bee receives it and conveys it along this into the interior, and then
applies it itself or passes it to others thus employed where it is
required. A vaulted covering and sides is thus formed or extended within
the cavity by the plaiting or wreathing together of these sprigs of
moss, and the inside of which is further strengthened by being plastered
with a coating of the pseudo-wax, which, however, smells much like true
wax, and with which the lower loose filaments of the moss are
intermingled, that one cannot be separated from the other without
tearing the whole to pieces. Thus ingeniously do these insects enclose
their home. These nests are not always on the surface, but often
cavities of the necessary size are thus lined, and then they are doubly
secure. Within these nests, with the increase of the population the
number of the cocoons of course increases, as they are never used twice
over, excepting that when they are conveniently situated for the purpose
they are converted into honey pots. Thus sometimes several layers are
formed of these irregularly-placed cocoons, of which the longest
diameter is, however, always perpendicular to the horizon. In this way
_B. muscorum_, _senilis_, _fragrans_, and others build. Some use a naked
cavity, and merely secure it in its crevices from the filtering
intrusion of rain or other water, the closing patches being formed of
the usual waxy material. This is the practice of _B. terrestris_, which
associates the largest communities of all; and _B. lapidarius_ seeks
cavities among stones or in the earth, and forms a nest of a regular
oval, but merely clothes the sides, which is done by bits of moss and
grass carried carefully home. The domestic arrangements within are much
the same in all, the prolific females and the neuters being the
labourers, which perform all the duties of building, the collecting and
caring for the young, the function of the males being limited to the
perpetuation of the species.
Subsection 2. WITHOUT SPURS TO THE POSTERIOR TIBIÆ.
‡‡ _Permanently social._
Genus 27. APIS, _Linnæus_.
(Plate XVI. fig. 4 ♂ ♀ ⚲.)
APIS ** _e_ 1, Kirby.
_Gen. Char._:—THE NEUTER.—BODY nearly cylindrical and subpubescent. HEAD
transverse, about as wide as the thorax; _vertex_ and _face_ deeply
longitudinally channelled in the centre, the latter to the apex of a
small triangular elevated space between the insertion of the antennæ,
and extending to the base of the clypeus, the sides of the face flat;
the _ocelli_ rather large, seated far back upon the vertex in a
triangle, the anterior one in the depth of the longitudinal channel, the
two lateral ones placed further back towards the occiput in a transverse
indentation crossing the longitudinal one; _compound eyes_ very
pubescent; the _hexagonal facets_ very minute; _antennæ_ short,
filiform, geniculated; the _scape_ nearly half the length of the
flagellum and subfusiform, the basal joint of the flagellum globose, the
second subclavate and subequal with the remainder, very slightly
lengthening to the apical joint, which is compressed and as short as the
second; _clypeus_ quadrate, convex; _labrum_ transverse, linear,
slightly waved in front; _mandibles_ broad at the apex, edentate,
obliquely truncated and concavo-convex; _cibarial apparatus_ shortish;
_tongue_ nearly twice the length of the labium, linear, pubescent, and
terminating in a small knob; _paraglossæ_ obsolete, coadunate with the
base of the tongue; _labial palpi_ not quite so long as the tongue, the
first joint four times as long as the remainder, and tapering from the
base to the apex of the second joint, which is about one-fourth the
length of the preceding, and has the two very short terminal joints
articulated just before its acute apex; _maxillæ_ broad, hastate;
_labium_ half the length of the tongue, its inosculation straightly
transverse, not so long as the tongue and acuminate; the _maxillary
palpi_ extremely short, the basal one the shortest. THORAX subglobose;
_prothorax_ inconspicuous; _scutellum_ lunulate and impending over the
post-scutellum, which is transverse and linear; _metathorax_ truncated;
_wings_ with a long marginal cell extending nearly to the end of the
wing, and obtuse at its extremity, three submarginal cells which
terminate at less than half the length of the marginal, the second the
largest and receiving the first recurrent nervure towards its
commencement, the third oblique and narrow and receiving the second
recurrent nervure just beyond its centre; _legs_ slender, subpilose; the
anterior and intermediate _tibiæ_ with a spur, their _plantæ_ with a
dense short close brush all round, the _posterior tibiæ_ triangular,
glabrous within, externally smooth, shining, and irregularly concave,
the edges fringed longitudinally with long hair curving inwards, and
forming the sides of the corbiculum, or basket, which conveys the
_matériel_ of the nest, the apex transverse and pectinated with short
rigid setæ, but wholly without spurs; the _plantæ_ oblong, not quite so
long as the tibiæ, the sides nearly parallel, the upper edge fringed
with long loose hair, subglabrous externally, but furnished internally
with ten transverse, parallel rows of short stiff golden hair, with an
auricle at the outer angle, forming collectively a dense brush, and its
oblique apex pectinated with short stiff setæ, the remainder of the
tarsal joints short, the fourth the shortest, and the claw-joint the
longest; the _claws_ short, robust, and bifid. ABDOMEN retuse at the
base, subcylindrical, convex above, and terminating conically, the first
segment very short, the second the longest, the ventral segments ridged
longitudinally in the centre.
The FEMALE, or QUEEN differs in the head not being quite so wide as the
thorax, in having the _cibarial apparatus_ very much shorter; the
_mandibles_ distinctly bidentate, the inner edge of the inner tooth
stretching obliquely to the acute inner extremity of the broad apex of
the organ; the _labial palpi_ as long as the tongue, with all the joints
conterminous, the basal one slightly acuminate, the second linear, the
two terminal ones more slender and shorter, the pubescence of the eyes
very much longer than in the neuter; the _legs_ more robust and less
pilose; the _posterior tibiæ_ convex externally, without the lateral
fringes of hair, and their plantæ merely oblong, without the external
basal auricle. The ABDOMEN is also considerably relatively longer; and
has not the central ventral ridge.
The MALE or DRONE differs from both in being considerably more robust
and more completely cylindrical, and very much more densely pubescent;
the _compound eyes_ contiguous at the summit, occupying the whole of the
vertex, and nearly all the lateral portions of the face, extending below
to the articulation of the mandibles, their pubescence much shorter but
denser than in the other sex; the _ocelli_ large, and seated at the top
of the central portion of the face in a close triangle, a little above
the insertion of the antennæ, and in front of the conjunction of the
compound eyes, the lateral ones of the triangle being closely contiguous
to the upper inner edge of those eyes; the _antennæ_ are more robust and
rather longer; the _cibarial apparatus_ very short; the _labial palpi_
about three-fourths the length of the tongue, and the joints
conterminous, the _tongue_ robust; the _thorax_ is nearly quadrate; the
_legs_ are nearly naked, the four anterior very slender; the _posterior
tibiæ_ slightly curved, convex externally; the _posterior plantæ_ more
robust, and more convex externally than their tibiæ, they are regularly
oblong, and without the basal auricle, the rest of the joints of the
tarsi are very short. The ABDOMEN robust, and obtuse at its extremity,
but its seventh segment is concealed beneath; the _ventral segments_
concave longitudinally.
NATIVE SPECIES.
1. _mellifica_, Linnæus. (Plate XVI. fig. 4 ♂♀⚲.)
_mellifica_, Kirby.
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.
The name of this genus, _Apis_, adopted by Linnæus as the classical
generic name of the bee, although with him it comprised the whole modern
family of these insects, but which, as now restricted, in accordance
with its limitation exclusively to the congeners of his adopted type, is
the ancient Latin vernacular name of the honey-bee, and to which it has
been ever since uniformly attached. This name, as shown by its
derivative meaning, was originally imposed with direct reference to the
insect’s constructive habits, as was the case with the names given to it
in the more primitive languages before referred to, and which is also
the origin of its Teutonic and Scandinavian appellations—_Biene_, _Bie_,
and _Bi_, whence our own common name for it is obtained through the
Saxon _Beo_, and we have beside Bye or bee, signifying _a dwelling_.
From this circumstance it would seem that a very early and universal
discernment existed of its ingenuity and skill, its significant name
being everywhere analogous.
The habits and economy of these industrious little creatures have been a
source of greater wonder and admiration the more closely and accurately
they have been observed. They have attracted the thoughtful speculation
of minds of the largest compass throughout all ages, which, reasoning
upon the _modus operandi_ of these insects, have endeavoured to define,
and determine the differences between instinct and reason, with their
precise limitations. But baffled in their attempt to settle whether
these be affinities or analogies, it should rather have persuaded them
to adopt the motto of Montaigne, and exclaim, _Que sais-je?_ Into these
metaphysical discussions it is not necessary to enter, and I confine
myself to the natural history of the insect.
Although the description of the three sexes which comprise the
population of the hive are technically given above with scientific
precision, it will be as well, perhaps, to recapitulate them briefly,
with their distinctive attributes, in a more popular form.
They consist of a queen, or productive female, whose function is thought
to be exclusively to lay eggs, but who may perhaps have some hitherto
undiscovered control over the executive of the hive, to be implied by
the confusion invariably following her death or her removal from the
community, and which becomes totally destructive to its organic
constituency unless stayed by another monarch being improvised, or by
one extraneously supplied; one monarch alone rules without a coadjutor,
and without any equal being tolerated, for the presence of a second
queen, or the immature larva of one, even of her own progeny, maddens
her to murderous aggression, or to the impulse of emigration accompanied
with a host of adherents. She never leaves the hive when once her duties
have fully commenced, for by distinction of structure she is rendered
incompetent to execute any of the labours that devolve upon the workers;
her tongue is formed only to lap nutriment; she has no cysts for the
secretion of wax, she is without the honey-bag for conveying that liquid
home, and her posterior shanks are convex externally, and thus deficient
in the concave basket for carrying home the stores of pollen or
propolis, whilst their plantæ are without the little earlet at the top
externally, or the close dense brush arranged in rows within, which aid
these workers in their many manipulations. Her wings are too short to
convey her ponderous body through the air, and her sting becomes
stronger by being curved. Thus she is exonerated from labour by the
incapacity of her structure to execute it, although her duties are quite
as incessant and as arduous, being indispensable to the perpetuation of
the species.
Her consort, the DRONE, is the male of the hive, and although the queen
is monandrous or single-spoused, and although the hive during the season
rarely throws off more than three swarms, usually restricted to the
accompaniment of a single queen, and thus but three males are absolutely
required, nature is so provident of the great design of perpetuation,
that to provide against the possibility of its frustration, the hive
usually produces about a thousand drones. A peculiarity in the structure
of the drone which facilitates his discovery of the virgin queen when
she issues from the hive on the bridal excursion, which she makes
preliminary to her heading a swarm of emigrants, or assuming monarchy at
home, consists in the vertical enlargement of his compound eyes, which
meet over the brow, and in the posterior expansion of the inferior
wings, which take a broad backward sweep, giving the insect larger
powers of flight, but perhaps required as much by its own bulkiness and
weight as for the purpose of ascending above his bride in the upper
regions of the air; but that its weight cannot be the sole reason is
testified by the analogous structure in the male of the genus _Astata_,
one of the fossorial _Hymenoptera_, where a similar expansion of the
inferior wing is concomitant with a similar development of the compound
eyes, yet in which the abdomen is very small, and this power is
therefore evidently given to these merely to increase the velocity or
the duration of their flight. The rest of the structure of these drones
disables them, like all other male bees, for any labour; and as they
must be sustained as long as they may be of service, the possibility of
which terminates with the last issue of a swarm from the hive, a period
appreciated by the instinct of the workers, they are then driven forth,
but it is in dispute whether the workers destroy them, or whether their
destruction is effected by exposure and hunger, or by the natural
limitation of their lives, for although their tongues are formed upon
the same type as that of the worker, it is considerably less developed,
and appears to be adapted only to obtain nutriment from the honey
already collected in the cells, as they seem even deficient in the
instinct to gather it for themselves from flowers, never being observed
to visit them.
The last inhabitant of the hive is the WORKER, or abortive female, whose
labour has several phases. A difference of size amongst them has been
supposed to have been noticed by observers as varying with their
occupation and duties, but as they are all constructed in the same
manner, with precisely the same organs, which are of the same form and
in the same situation, this must be a mere imaginative surmise. Their
similarity of structure permits them, collectively, to apply themselves
to the same occupations which the needs of the community may at any
moment demand. Taking them separately with their distinctive occupations
at any given time, without implying by it a permanent separation of
classes, we find them to consist of wax secreters, builders or
cell-sculpturers, honey collectors, pollen collectors, propolis
collectors, nurses of the young, ventilators, undertakers to carry off
the dead, who are perhaps also the scavengers which cleanse away any
occasional dirt, sentinels to guard the hive outside and inside, and
attendants upon the queen, or as the “‘Times’ Bee Master” very aptly
designates them “ladies in waiting,” and at all times many slumberers
are reposing from their toils. That all these duties are transferable,
and consequently are transferred indifferently from one to the other, is
implied by their general capacity for fulfilling them resulting from
this identity of structure, which will be understood as not at all
infringed by the separate capacities I unfold as devolving from their
temporarily limited functions, all being simultaneously in action, but
distributed amongst the several individuals.
The first important occupation of the worker is the secretion of wax for
the structure of the cells, and, to effect this, honey must be
collected, for it is solely from the digestion of honey that the wax is
produced. This in due course passes from the first stomach or
honey-pouch wherein it is collected, thence to the second stomach, and
then on to the cysts or little bags which run along on each side from
the second to the fifth ventral segments, and correspond and communicate
with eight trapezoidal depressions placed externally upon the plates of
the ventral segments—four on each side, through the concavity of which
the secreted wax exudes in a liquid, transparent, hot state, forming a
thin scale within each, which the air hardens into a white substance, as
the pulp of paper is hardened upon the form into which it is introduced,
or like salt crystallizing into flakes from sea-water in shallow
salines. This, however, is not yet wax, although its essential
constituent, but to become so these scales are removed by the scopulæ of
the posterior plantæ and their auricle, to the intermediate feet and by
these transferred to the anterior pair, which pass them to the
mandibles, where they are masticated and mixed with a saliva issuing
from the mouth, and thus intermingled they consolidate into a white
opaque mass, which issues from the mouth like a thin strip of riband,
and constitutes true wax, plastic to their manipulation. To form this
secretion, the bees having collected the honey themselves in the first
instance, or having consumed sufficient before leaving the hive with the
swarm, but which they subsequently obtain from the supplies stored in
the present hive, hang themselves in festoons in all directions about
its cavity, each festoon being formed by two parallel chains of bees
clinging together; the top bee on each side hangs by its anterior claws
to the top of the hive, and the next in succession grasps with its fore
claws the hind claws of that and so on, until the depth of the festoon
they find to be sufficient, when the bottom bees of each chain swing
themselves together, and cling to each other in the same manner by their
hind claws only. These festoons are speedily suspended, and with a fresh
swarm are in immediate active operation. The secretion requires about
twenty-four hours to complete, and as this is accomplished the festoons
break up, and these secreters convey it to where the sculpturer bees or
builders are moulding the cells, to whom it is successively supplied by
the secreters themselves as wanted, for none is stored, although the wax
of old or dilapidated parts of the hive, or of the vacated cells of the
new-born queens are reconverted to use. These builders are very rapid in
their construction of the hexagonal cells, which, as they are
progressively completed, are stored with honey, this being during the
time assiduously gathered by the honey collectors, and these cells are
interspersed occasionally with those wherein pollen or propolis is
stored, each of which, as the bees collecting them successively return,
is cast into the selected cell by the bee collecting it, who returns at
once to the same employment, whilst the store thus deposited is
immediately compactly pressed in and warehoused by other bees who fulfil
that duty, or who cover it in when the cells are filled, with a waxen
covercle formed of concentric circles; or, in the case of the
honey-cells, to keep the thickened operculum deposited upon it in due
position and repair, after the retiring of the bee which brought home
the fresh store of honey, and which had displaced it to regurgitate her
addition into the cell. This operculum or cover is of a thicker
consistency than the honey itself, and prevents its oozing from the
cells, which would often take place from their uniformly horizontal
position, were it not for the sagacity which prompts them to introduce
this preventive, and which is not removed until the cell is filled; it
is then covered hermetically with its waxen top.
A sufficient number of cells being ready, and sufficient stores of
honey, pollen, and propolis for the progressive labours of the hive, and
a great number of empty cells all finished for the use of the queen, she
begins to lay her eggs. As these are hatched the duty of the
nursing-bees commences, which is to feed the young, who crave for food
like young birds, and are as diligently supplied by these nurses with a
material called bee-bread, which consists of masticated pollen, the
pollen being exclusively stored and used for the purpose. This is mixed
with some secretion from the mouth, which converts it into a sort of
frothy jelly. These bees are never negligent of their duties, and with
their feeding the larvæ rapidly grow.
To keep up a necessary supply of air in the hive, and to prevent
suffocation from heat, a certain number of the community are employed in
fanning the passages between the cakes of comb and the whole interior of
the hive, by the vibration of their wings, which thoroughly ventilates
it, and the accumulation of deleterious air is prevented; some, for this
purpose, being posted at the aperture to the hive, where, this vibration
causing a temporary vacuum, the external air rushes in, and the chain of
succession of bees within becoming thus vibrating air-valves completes
the ventilating arrangement. While all these operations are progressing,
a certain number are acting as a militia of citizens, who have
substitutes only in the succession and change of duties. These act as
sentinels, who guard the entrance and patrol the interior and
courageously intercept all inimical intrusion, for the bees have many
enemies, but who are merely so to benefit themselves, and are not
parasites of the nature of the bee-parasites of the solitary kinds; and
where they cannot individually avert it, they obtain collateral aid from
others of their staff. The next class is the attendants upon the queen:
these vary in number from twelve to twenty; they invariably accompany
her wherever she proceeds throughout the hive, for the purpose of laying
her eggs; and whether their custom gave rise to the etiquette which
attends human royalty, that a subject may never turn the back upon the
sovereign, these attendant bees surround her with the head always turned
towards her, and seem to caress her with their antennæ and pay her every
kind of deferential homage, those in front moving backwards as she
advances, and those on each side, laterally, so that they ever face her;
and as they tire others succeed them in their duties. Another set fulfil
the office of keeping the hive thoroughly clean, for the transit of such
large numbers will inevitably collect occasional dirt, as will the drift
of the wind at the entrance of the hive and the action of the
ventilators themselves. Their duty it is also to remove any extraneous
organic body that has forcibly entered and which may have succumbed to
the vindictiveness of the bees. Where they are not strong enough, even
collectively, to effect the removal, as in the case of a mouse or
anything else as large or larger, they then call to their aid the wax
workers and the repairers; these enclose the obnoxious body, which they
have the judgment to know will become dangerous from putrefaction, to
aid in its prevention, by a cerement of wax or propolis, which prevents
any offensive exhalation, and thus secures the wholesomeness of the
hive.
Here is completed, with the enumeration of those which successively
repose from their toil, the several labours of the community which
inhabits the hive.
The structure of the workers, which enables them to carry on all these
operations with the requisite facility, is very different from that of
the two sexes we have just described. As before said, they are abortive
females, but, as I shall have occasion to explain lower down, capable of
having this special incapacity removed, if the necessary process
requisite to be adopted for the purpose be applied within three days of
their being hatched into the larva state. The acquisition of the faculty
of fertility entails, however, the loss of all power of pursuing any of
the other occupations of the hive practised exclusively by the workers
in general. The nurture that gives it them converts them into queens,
and moulds them to the structure of this sex described above. As a
remarkable and rare exception, some one or other of these workers will
occasionally have power of laying a few eggs, but which are always those
of drones. The other peculiarities of their structure are its adaptation
to the secretion of wax above described; and their power of throwing up
the honey they have collected in the first stomach or honey-bag, before
it passes on by digestion, somewhat in the way the ruminant quadrupeds
bring up the cud, of course by muscular action, without the convulsion
of vomiting. Their next distinction is that their mandibles are edentate
and more like spoons, and are often so used, or as the plastering-trowel
of masons is for smoothing surfaces. Their legs remarkably differ from
those of the other sexes, all of their limbs being somewhat adapted to
the collection and conveyance of pollen and its manipulation, as well as
that of propolis; but it is the posterior shanks which are specially
constructed for the conveyance of these materials, by being framed
externally like a little basket; being hollowed longitudinally and their
lateral edges fringed with recurved hair, which retains whatever may be
placed within the smooth and hollow surface, and the apical extreme edge
has a pecten or comb of short stiff bristles. The first joint of the
posterior feet have also their distinctive form, adapted to special
branches of their economy. These are oblong, wider than the shank, and
about two-thirds its length, and consequently powerful limbs; at the
outer angle of the edge, nearest the shank, is a little projection
called the auricle or earlet, the inner surface is clothed with ten
parallel transverse rows of close dense hair, and its apical edge has
along its whole width a pecten similar to that of the apex of the shank.
This shank being without spurs, which only the domestic bee is deficient
in, gives the pecten a freedom of action it would not otherwise have,
and enables it to be used together with the earlet opposite to it on the
foot, as an instrument for laying hold of the thin flakes of wax upon
the venter, and to bring them forward to the intermediate legs to be
passed on to the mouth, and there to be converted into wax. The pecten
of the foot and also its brush aid in their removal in case of need, and
help as well both in the manipulation and the storing the materials
collected. Thus, this whole structure, exclusively possessed by the
worker, is pre-eminently designed for the manifold operations of the
hive; and the bee itself and its works are but one closely linked chain
of wonderful contrivances.
The entire economy of the hive seems to emanate exclusively from the two
most prominent attributes of instinct, that of self-preservation, and
that other more important axis of the vast wheel of creation, the
secured perpetuation of the kind by the conservative _στοργὴ_, or
absorbing love of the offspring. The latter is more eminently developed
in the social bees than in any other group of the family of these
insects. In the solitary bees it presents itself as a blind impulse,
unconscious of its object; for did we admit the consciousness of the
purpose of their labours, we should evidently endow them with reason.
How could they know, without reflection, that the food they store in the
receptacle they form for the egg they will deposit, and which receptacle
is exactly adapted to the size that the larva which will be hatched from
it will take, is to nurture a creature they will never see, and whose
wonderful transformations they will not therefore witness? In the hive
bee the maternal instinct exhibits itself as an energy diffused through
a multitude of individuals, but these witness the results of their
solicitude, and exclusively promote its successful issue; and in these
also the instinct of self-preservation is a diffused impulse, which
likewise includes the preservation of the society.
As male and female conjunctively make up the species, thus do the
queen-bee and the neuters collectively make up one sex,—the mother,—for
the functions performed by the female alone in the case of the solitary
kinds of bees are, in the genus _Apis_, separately executed. The cares
and labours of maternity devolve upon these neuters, while the
queen-bee’s maternal function is limited to merely laying the eggs with
which she is replete, with the instinctive power of selecting for them
their proper depository,—each of which is adapted in size to that of the
sex which will be produced. Her maternal instinct stops abruptly here,
without the development of an afterthought or care for their future
thriving. The instinct of the neuters, like the anticipative promptings
of the human mother, to prepare the clothing and other necessaries for
her expected infant, has forecast the queen’s needs in its intermittent
urgency, by progressively constructing cells fitted severally in size
for the growth and nurture of neuters, the first developed; of drones,
the next produced; and lastly, of queens, which soon afterwards appear;
she instinctively knowing the proper time and the suitable use of them,
having the faculty of distinguishing them with a view to the deposit of
the particular kind of eggs of which she is for the moment parturient.
The drones, or male bees, appear to receive life for one substantial
purpose only, which is soon accomplished, but during the short space of
time its successive performance requires, it is incidentally accompanied
with assistance to the general community whilst they remain permitted
occupants of the hive, by aiding in heating and ventilating it,—a labour
repaid by the food, which they obtain from the stores kept open for
daily consumption. Although uncontributive to the acquisition of the
riches of the hive, yet are they indispensable to the perpetuation of
the species, and their murder as supposed by some apiarians, or their
expulsion as thought by others, in either case equally terminating in
their destruction, seems an unworthy return for the important service
performed, although this is restricted to the number of individuals
required by the equal number of queens that may be produced. To this
number their production might be limited, but for the chance of either
or all of these queens failing by some casualty to obtain a prince
consort. To baffle the possibility of this mischance, a very superfluous
number of these drones is hatched, as above stated, which are on the
alert, when each queen successively issues forth upon her bridal morn,
to catch her favouring glances, and be the accepted groom. That they are
not further conducive to the well-being of the hive is the fault of
their structure and of their instinct, which are correlative, they being
as little fitted either in their tongue or their legs for the uses of
the hive as the queen herself. The physiology of their intercourse is a
mystery of mysteries, and would seem to partake of the principle,
modified, of that developed in the aphides, where the vital power passes
on through successive generations by the efficiency of the energy of one
ancestral intercourse. In the hive bee this is not the case, but in
these the one espousal fertilizes eggs to the number of often a hundred
thousand, yet undeveloped and even indiscernible by the aid of the
microscope in the ovaries of the queen, and which become bees
progressively in the course of a couple of years, the supposed duration
of her existence, during the whole of which time she is laying. The
accepted male is destroyed by the effects of the amour, and when all the
queens which are to be the heads of independent communities are
successively fertilized, and have led forth their colonies, the
remaining drones issue compulsively from the hive and are lost in the
wideness of nature, and die by the natural limitation of their
existence, or become the prey of their numerous enemies.
The neuters or workers are, as it were, emanations of the queen, or the
organs whereby her several functions as a mother are performed,
considering the species as restricted to two sexes, and thus they
comprise with her, collectively, one organic whole. That this is a
consistent view of their condition is further proved by the circumstance
that from their larvæ, upon the failure of a queen, a new queen is
produced upon one being supplied with a certain nutriment that developes
the capacity that would remain inert and abortive, were it not thus
promoted from its primary state. It may be questioned whether the eggs
deposited by the queen in the royal cells are other than neuter eggs,
their subsequent nature being changed by the different quality of the
sustenance they are fed with when hatched, as is the case in the above
noticed defection of a queen. This then would limit the queen’s eggs to
the eggs of neuters and of drones, thus further corroborating the idea
of the existence of but two sexes.
I have stated above the supposition that the queen’s office may be
restricted to the laying of eggs, but it must be inferred that it has a
wider compass, and possibly comprises some administrative function in
the regulation of the hive, from the circumstance that with her loss the
entire community loses its self-possession and self-control. Labour then
ceases and the hive becomes the scene of turmoil and confusion, and
unless the loss be repaired in the way named above, which their instinct
teaches them to adopt, if any eggs have been already deposited, or if
supplied by the surreptitious introduction of another queen which they
immediately raise to their superintendency, paying her the same
deference they had done to their lost monarch, or would do to a
legitimately native birth, it disperses and destroys the community. Such
a loss in its natural course must necessarily, to be effectively
repaired, take place in the interval after the laying of the drones’
eggs, and before those of the queens are deposited, for otherwise she
would remain unimpregnated. Having thus shown reasons for supposing that
the hive actually contains but two sexes, and having also shown that the
first phase exhibited of this distributed maternal instinct by which the
neuters form conjunctively with the queen a many-headed and many-hearted
mother, is their preparation of the cells for all the purposes
required,—the next and most important, and the one perhaps which
elevates them vastly higher in the scale of social intelligence and
affection, is the absolute development in them only of maternal
solicitude for the well-being of the offspring. This certainly proves
the existence of the diffused maternity urged, for they feed the hatched
young as the bird does its callow, from hour to hour, and which, when
full grown, they enclose in its formative cell, to undergo its changes
and become one amongst themselves. It is not absolutely determined
whether the functions performed within the hive are restricted to
distinct sets of the workers, but it may be presumed that the duties are
transferable, for the most plausible supposition is, that all the
offices are interchangeably performed by the entire population, possibly
merely limited to daily alternation of individuals taled off each
morning for the day’s duties. That an administrative regulation must
exist under some executive authority, emanating doubtless from the
centralization of all in the queen, and communicated to the rest by her
relays of attendants, may be conclusively inferred, otherwise all might
similarly employ themselves from day to day, and thus overwhelm with one
work the multiplicity of labours required for the well-being of the
hive. For whilst some are secreting the wax from the honey they have
consumed, others are moulding it into shape, others are harvesting the
bee-bread to feed the voracious larvæ, others are gleaning the propolis
for the security of the domicile, others are collecting honey to store
as needful supplies, others are either ventilating or heating the
interior, others act as sentinels and guard the approaches or patrol the
passages within, and will die in that defence like genuine patriots, and
others are in attendance upon the queen in her progresses through her
dominions, and who may individually act as _aides-de-camp_ to convey her
commands to the rest. All these are not fanciful embellishments of the
narrative, but substantial and well-authenticated facts, supported by
the repetition on many sides of careful observations, but perplexing to
human intelligence, for not the least wonder of this conventicle of
wonders—the hive—is that it confounds the astute reason of man to
comprehend it in all its significancies.
The first necessity of a new colony is the selection of a locality for
habitation, which is usually effected by preliminary trustworthy
intelligencers determining upon a site suitable from its concurrent
conveniences. A sufficient supply of sustenance must be conveyed by the
emigrants to accompany the preparatory construction of the settlement,
until land can be cleared, grain grown, etc., and a year at least will
pass, even under the most favourable circumstances of the exertion of
the greatest industry, concurrently with the most propitious succession
of the seasons, before it can become self-sustaining. But when once the
wheel is fairly on the move, round it spins without interruption or
relaxation. The colony thrives, increasing rapidly in its population;
and where all have put the shoulder to the wheel it climbs the steep and
rugged hill of prosperity, whilst those who are carried onward by its
evolutions, from each of the many successive terraces of this noble
height, survey a broad, cheerful, and fertile landscape, extending
itself with their elevation, spread out to a distant horizon, which many
of the more venturous spirits amongst them, urged by the teeming
increase of their compatriots, have already traversed, and who
themselves are now rejoicing in the establishment of offshoots, which
speedily rival, in successful fruitfulness, the wide-branched
productiveness of the parent stock.
This is strictly the history of the hive, and the parallelism is
complete, even to the conveyance with them of the preliminary needful
stores. Before a swarm issues from the hive, some fly forth to select a
dwelling-place, and return, it is presumed, to make their report.
The population of the hive becoming so dense that there is no longer
room for the free and unrestrained circulation of the ordinary
processes of the community, and so hot from the inconvenient
accumulation of such numbers,—for they extend sometimes to as many as
fifty thousand,—instinct prompts a portion of the community to
migrate. This disposition is further promoted by the progressive, or
completed development of some of the young queens. The inveterate and
internecine animosity of these—anticipated rivalry, suggesting, it is
surmised, the murderous desire, but being prevented from its
indulgence by the defensive guardianship of several of the
workers—urges the old queen to abandon at this conjuncture her royal
metropolis. The inclination to do so, it would appear, is already
foreseen by a very large body of her subjects, for if her departure be
delayed by her successor’s protracted incapacity for undertaking the
sovereign rule, the intending emigrants, having already abandoned all
the labours of their old domicile preparatory to their issuing forth,
will cluster in groups about the bee board until she is ready to
emerge. This condition will sometimes last a day or two, and thence of
course all is confusion both within and without the hive, for her
subjects have suspended their labours and she has suspended her
egg-laying, and roams wildly about within, striving, whenever she
approaches a royal cell, or a fully developed young queen, to attack
the latter, and destroy her by stinging her to death, or, to tear the
former to pieces to get at the imago within, which indicates its
apprehension by a shrill piping sound. But she is forcibly dragged
back from this apicidal purpose by the working bees which surround
each, and who now intermit their usual deference to prevent this
destruction, and bite her and drag her back. The future queen of the
abdicated throne having, during this turmoil, returned from her
wedding tour, and being still protected from slaughterous aggression,
the old queen indignantly issues forth. This exodus takes place
usually on a brilliant and warm day, between twelve and
three,—accordingly during the hottest hours. This is the first swarm
of the year, and if the season be very genial it will take place in
May. In this migration she is accompanied by all her most faithful
lieges, which comprise, to the honour of beehood, by very much the
largest majority of the inhabitants, to the number usually, in a
well-stocked hive, of several thousands,—say from ten to twenty,
depending on the population of the hive.
Having thus issued forth in a body, they shortly alight upon and about
the branch of some adjacent tree, clustering, in as close proximity as
they can, to their royal leader. In a natural state, when duly organized
to proceed, they would thence start for the domicile that had previously
been selected by the emissaries above noted; but, as their natural
habits are not at all perverted by their subjugation to man, we will
pursue their history under his dominion. This will be the more
convenient, for in the comfortable hive to which they have been
transferred by his agency, we shall have every opportunity of exactly
watching their manœuvres by the facilities yielded in its being glazed
for the purpose. We shall thus be enabled to see and follow the
wonderful economy of the hive and its many mysteries, which it would not
have been possible to accomplish in an abode of their own choice,—some
cavity presented by Nature herself, the hollow of a tree, or an
excavated rock. They are, therefore, now housed, and after the survey of
the capacity of their abode, which is a short affair, with all the
prompt energy peculiar to them they at once commence their labours. The
queen is already matured, and ready to lay eggs. In a natural abode the
gathering of propolis would perhaps be a first necessity to make their
home water-and-wind-tight, for they abhor the inconveniences of the
intrusion of wet or cold. It is with this material that they make
repairs, fill crevices, and strengthen the suspension of their combs,
which are hung vertically; and they apply it also to other purposes,
which we shall see hereafter. This material is of a resinous nature, it
has a balsamic odour, and is of a reddish-brown or darker colour, and is
supposed to be collected from fir or pine trees, or from the envelopes
of the buds of many plants, or their resinous exudations, especially
that of the blossoms of the hollyhock. It is exceedingly clammy, and
they have been observed ten minutes moulding it into the lenticular
pellets in which they carry it home in the corbicula, or little basket,
of the posterior tibiæ. They gather it like pollen with the fore feet,
and pass it to the intermediate ones, whence it is taken by the
posterior plantæ, kneaded into shape, and deposited upon the hind
shanks. It dries so rapidly that often, upon arriving home, the bees
which store it have much difficulty in tearing it from the legs of these
collectors. The hottest days only are propitious to its gathering, for
all moisture is injurious to it, and the hottest period of the day,
also, is alone occupied in its collection. It is said that they have
been known to fly as many as from three to five miles for it, from the
circumstance that suitable plants were not to be found within a lesser
radius; but this may be a mistake, for their ordinary excursions are not
supposed to range wider than a single mile or something more, and bees
may be able to find it where we may suppose it not to occur. In the
abode with which we have provided them it is not so urgent a necessity,
this being already wind-and-water-tight, although in the progress of
their labours they find it indispensable, and use it to fasten the
crevices that intervene between the bottom of the hive and the bee
board, and, as before noticed, to strengthen the support of the cakes of
comb which hang from the roof. The name it still retains is that which
was applied to it by the ancients, and signifies _before the city_, as
indicative of its use in strengthening the outworks.
Conjoined herewith is the imperative need for the construction of cells
for every purpose of the hive, namely, for the storing of the propolis,
and that of the pollen, as also the collected honey, as well as for the
reception of the young brood, for the mature queen is waiting
impatiently to deposit her eggs. Simultaneously, therefore, is the wax
being secreted and elaborated by the processes previously noticed. The
community is already late, and all are at once in active operation, but
four-and-twenty hours must elapse before the cells can he commenced, for
it takes that time to secrete the first batch of wax. Festoons, as
before described, of these wax secreters are hanging in every direction
within the cavity of the hive, and as soon as the process is completed
by the first festoon, this dissolves itself by the several bees
unlinking their feet, and a leading bee proceeds to the top of the
centre of the hive, where she makes herself room from the lateral
pressure of other bees, by turning herself sharply about and agitating
her wings, and there she collects the scales from the surface of her
ventral segments, manipulates them as before noticed, and thus converts
them into wax. The rest follow her, and she collects it from them into a
little oblong mass of about half an inch; whilst other bees from other
festoons are continually arriving to deposit their produce; and as soon
as the mass is sufficiently large, which is speedily the case, a
sculpturer bee succeeds, and the first cell is laterally commenced. On
the opposite side to where this is being framed, two other bees are at
work, moulding the bottoms of two cells in apposition to the basis of
the first one. The wax keeps constantly increasing by fresh deposits,
and the rudiments of more cells are as rapidly formed. These all emanate
laterally, in a horizontal direction or with a very slight incline
towards their base. They gradually form the vertical cake of comb, for
the bottom of one entire range of cells suffices for both sides and
inevitably they are so adjusted that the bottoms of those on either side
are each covered by one-third of the bottoms of each cell on the
opposite side, and so conversely, receiving and communicating strength
by three thus supporting one. Here comes the great wonder of the hive;
here in this fragile structure abides a mystery that has perplexed man’s
keenest sagacity. Is it accident or is it intelligence that instructs
the bee, or is it the impulse of the instinct implanted by that Supreme
Intelligence which gives man his reason and moulds all things to their
most fitting use?
Ray’s view is precisely this; he says:—“The bee, a creature of the
lowest forms of animals, so that no man can suspect it to have any
considerable measure of understanding, or to have knowledge of, much
less to aim at, any end, yet makes her combs and cells with that
geometrical accuracy, that she must needs be acted by an instinct
implanted in her by the wise Author of Nature.” To support this idea of
the geometrical skill of the bee, he cites “the famous mathematician
Pappus,” the Alexandrian, of the time of Theodosius the Great, who
“demonstrates it in the preface to his third book of _Mathematical
Collections_.” “First of all (saith he, speaking of the cells), it is
convenient that they be of such figures as may cohere one to another,
and have common sides, else there would be empty spaces left between
them to no use but to the weakening and spoiling of the work, if
anything should get in there, and therefore though a round figure be
most capacious for the honey, and most convenient for the bee to creep
into, yet did she not make choice of that, because then there must have
been triangular spaces left void. Now, there are only three rectilineous
and ordinate figures, which can serve to this purpose, and inordinate,
or unlike ones, must have been, not only less elegant and beautiful, but
unequal. [Ordinate figures are such as have all their sides and all
their angles equal.] The three ordinate figures are triangles, squares,
and hexagons; for the space about any point may be filled up either by
six equilateral triangles, or four squares, or three hexagons; whereas
three pentagons are too little, and three heptagons too much. Of these
three, the bee makes use of the hexagon, both because it is more
capacious than either of the others provided they be of equal compass,
and so equal matter spent in the construction of each. And, secondly,
because it is most commodious for the bee to creep into. And, lastly,
because in the other figures more angles and sides must have met
together at the same point, and so the work could not have been so firm
and strong. Moreover, the combs being double, the cells on each side the
partition are so ordered that the angles on one side insist upon the
centres of the bottoms of the cells on the other side, and not angle
upon or against angle; which also must needs contribute to the strength
and firmness of the work.”
Each cell therefore is in shape a hexagon, that is to say, a figure with
six equal sides, to each of which six other hexagons attach, for each
wall forms also one wall of another hexagon. The basis of each hexagonal
cavity is of an obtuse three-sided pyramidal shape inverted, and
consisting of three rhomboidal plates, each forming one-third of the
basis of the three opposite cells; thus the edges of these three basal
plates of one side support three lateral walls of three hexagons on the
other side. The inverted triangular pyramid thus made by these three
equal rhomboidal plates, form, at one extremity and at each pair of
their posterior edges a re-entering angle, and at the other extremity a
salient angle. From these edges spring the lateral walls of the
hexagonal cell, this shape being superinduced by the form of the edges
of the basal cavity. That the bees should have been thus guided to elect
a form which combines conjunctively the advantages of strength and
capacity evidently proves that it is their instinct which guides them,
which, being an afflation from the highest source, ensures the most
complete perfection in its result. That it cannot be the effect of
simultaneous lateral pressure is proved incontestably by the whole
superstructure resulting from the design of the base; and this is
further corroborated by the base of one cell on one side forming
invariably equal portions of the base of three cells on the opposite
side,—all clearly the result of preconceived design impressed upon their
sensorium. From this combination of forms results the security procured
to the fragile tenement, which consists of the very smallest quantity of
material that will cohere substantially, for the bees are exceedingly
parsimonious of their wax, as if the production of it were attended with
pain or inconvenience, and it is only upon the construction of the royal
cells that a profusion of this choice material is squandered. As soon as
these cohorts of bees are in active operation, it is astonishing with
what pertinacity and rapidity they labour, for within the space of
four-and-twenty hours they will construct a cake a foot deep and six
inches wide, containing within its double area some four thousand cells.
Other cakes parallel to each side of the original are being at the same
time carried forward with an interval between each sufficient for two
bees to pass each other _dos à dos_, and further to promote the
convenience of traffic within the hive, and ready communication to its
several parts, passages are left through these cakes from one to the
other, so that the means of transit are opened, which of course saves
much time. The queen is already making her progresses from one side of
each comb to the other, and depositing her eggs as rapidly as she can,
and is constantly attended by her _aides-de-camp_, as I have suggested,
which act, as they evidently sometimes are, as the emissaries of her
commands. They consist of ten or twelve or sometimes more, and have been
previously described. They are replaced by others as they quit to obey
orders, or as they retire fatigued, so that she is always surrounded.
The number of eggs she will lay in a day is about two hundred. In doing
this she first thrusts her head into a cell to ascertain its fitness,
which having done, she withdraws it, and then curving her body she
thrusts the apex of her abdomen, which tapers to the extremity for the
purpose, into the cell, wherein by means of the sheaths of her curved
sting, which act as an ovipositor, she places the egg at the bottom of
the cell. It is possibly from some taction of this instrument that she
discerns the sizes of the eggs, and thence their respective sex. This
process she continues repeating, passing from one side of the comb to
the other by means of the passages perforated through it, making the
numbers as nearly as possible tally on each side and as opposite to each
other as may be, and she will then go forward to further cakes of comb.
In this way she lays about ten or twelve thousand in six weeks,
depending much upon the propitiousness of the season, but the rapidity
of this laying intermits according to the months; the above estimate is
based upon what April and May produce, as it slackens during the summer
heats and again revives in the autumn, but totally terminates with the
first cold weather. She thus will lay from thirty to forty thousand or
more in a year.
Apiarians do not state whether the same queen heads another swarm on the
following year, which perhaps she does in those cases of excessive
fertility where her abundance is estimated at one hundred thousand, when
by her sole individual capacity she populates three hives. In the more
usual and ordinary case of her teeming with about seventy thousand, or
fewer, she evidently heads but one swarm. With the described rapidity of
the production of the cells, although the majority are store cells and
not brood cells, conjunctively with her prolific laying, the population
of the hive rapidly increases, which, added to the large original
colony, will enable it in a propitious year to throw off a swarm of its
own; but ordinarily she does not again lay drone eggs and royal eggs
until the following season. The period at which to do this is taught her
by the condition of the hive, as urgent for relief to its oppressive
population by an exodus. The drone eggs are then laid, and are speedily
succeeded by the laying of the royal eggs, so that the males of the
season and the new queens may be hatched almost simultaneously, the
drones slightly preceding the development of the queens. As soon as the
egg of a worker is hatched, which, by means of the high temperature, is
effected in four days after the laying, it, from its birth, is
sedulously attended by the bees called nurse-bees. The little vermicle
is very voracious and is heedfully supplied by these careful attendants,
when it has consumed the quantity of bee bread already deposited in the
cell by some of these nurses as soon as the egg was laid. This bee bread
consists of pollen, taken from the cells by the nurses, where it is
garnered for the purpose, being therein mixed with a slight quantity of
honey. This, in masticating, the nurses intermingle with some secretion
of their own, which gives it a sort of gelatinous frothy appearance, and
upon this the young thrives so rapidly, greedily opening its jaws to
receive it, that in four more days it is full grown, and fills the whole
cell. The nursing-bees then cover this in with a light brown top, convex
externally, and within it the larva spins for itself a cocoon to undergo
its subsequent transformations. This cocoon is spun of a fine silk,
which issues from the organ of the larva called the spinner, in two
delicate threads, which, as they pass out, cohere together. It works at
this labour for thirty-six hours, and then changes into the pupa or
grub; thus it lies quiescent for three days, when it gradually undergoes
its transformation into the imago, and it issues as a perfect insect
about the twenty-first day after being deposited as an egg. The cocoon
it has formed exactly fills the cell it has left, which still continues
to serve as a brood cell until the succession of cocoons with which it
is thus lined renders it too small for the purpose, it is then cleaned
out by the scavengers of the hive and changed into a honey depository,
but the honey stored in such a cell is never so pure as that which comes
from the exclusively waxen cell. Thus is effected the transformation of
the working bee, which, upon the very day of its emancipation from its
nursery, commences its duties as an active member of the community, in
the successive and several labours undertaken for the benefit of the
commonwealth, and these it assiduously follows for the period of its
natural life, which extends to about six or eight months.
The hive is now in the liveliest activity. The swarm which entered with
the queen, and the large addition to the population which has already
been produced from her incessant laying, are all at their several
avocations. The whole hive, its entrance and the immediate vicinity, and
far around is jocund with the bustle and the buzz of the busy little
creatures going and coming; those returning are all laden, although some
do not appear so, but these are conveying riches home within them, as
they are returning from their excursions with their honey-bag well
filled. There is welcoming recognition at the entrance to the hive,
where, on its broad platform, they all alight, and there many are to be
seen touching each other with their antennæ, or refreshing themselves by
the vibrations of their wings, and in doing this they often raise
themselves on the hind legs, or they are resting for a few seconds
before they enter. Others are to be seen arriving unrecognizable from a
coloured envelope of pollen which mantles them. The incessant hum that
accompanies these proceedings is like the mildest tones of the surge of
the distant sea, or the inarticulate buzz of the voice of large crowds.
In this seeming confusion all obey the strictest order, for each attends
to his own business only; there is no collision or loss of time or
labour, each one fulfilling precisely its own mission. At this period
the hive is a perfect model of order, neatness, and beauty. The combs we
have seen so rapidly growing are to be filled, and fresh cells are being
constantly constructed. The honey there stored from the gradual
gatherings of these active harvesters is partly to be reserved for the
winter’s needs, and is carefully husbanded, for each of these cells is,
when filled, closed by a covercle of wax moulded as it is supplied to
the operator in concentric circles, commencing at the edge, and each
circle being completed before another is begun, and not in a spiral
twist towards the centre. To prevent the trampling of the discharging
bees from injuring the delicate structure of the walls of the cell, each
edge is furnished with a strengthening rim of wax. The bulk of these
stores is never broken, except in bad wet seasons, in times of great
dearth, or upon any suspension of torpidity during their hibernation.
For the ordinary and daily consumption of those of the community whose
labours confine them to the hive, open stores are left. As of course it
occupies the excursions of several bees for some time to fill one of
these vases, and to prevent the liquid flowing out, as it might do from
its exceeding tenuity through the influence of the summer heat, and the
then increased temperature of the hive, as well as from its inclined
horizontal position,—this is guarded against by the precautional
sagacity of the little creatures placing upon it from the deposit of the
very first supply a sort of operculum, as before described, of a thicker
consistency, which lies upon the top of its progressive increase, and
thus prevents its oozing. It lies upon the honey across the transverse
diameter of the cell, and consequently in a vertical position. Its
purpose, like that of the flat pieces of wood which are placed upon the
water of full pails when carried by the yoke, is to prevent its spilling
or overflowing. This small cover has to be partially removed upon the
arrival of a bee with fresh store, which she herself does by tearing
aside a portion of it to enable her to regurgitate into the cavity the
portion she has brought home; upon freeing herself from this she does
not wait to restore the dilapidation she has caused, but proceeds on a
fresh harvesting. Another bee, whose duty it is, then readapts this
cover to its purpose, and repairs it. Their excursions to collect are
variously estimated at from one to three miles, and they make about ten
a day. The bees, in their temporary distribution of labour, are
something like the Indians which have caste, among whom each service has
its special servitor, who never undertakes or interferes with the duties
of another. The collection of pollen is almost as needful to the
well-being of a hive as honey, this being used exclusively as the basis
of the sustenance of the new brood in their larva state, in all their
conditions of worker, drone, and queen, the perfect bee itself never
partaking of it. It is variously commingled upon its application to use
with secretions of their own, which convert it into bee bread or royal
jelly, as the case may be, to fit it for its special employment, which
is done by the nurse-bees, who diligently attend to the nurture of all
the young. The cells for storing this material are not so numerous as
the honey-cells, and they are jotted about without any distinct order,
amongst them. When a bee arrives with her store of pollen on the edge of
one of these cells, she turns round with her back to it and thrusts it
in as fast as she can free it from her legs, both by their aid and the
twisting about of her abdomen, and then, like the honey-gatherer,
commences another journey. As soon as she is gone, another bee
manipulates it with a small stock of honey, and packs it closely in.
Whilst all this is doing, the set which watch the condition of the hive,
like surveyors, to apply repairs where necessary, or to add strength and
further support to the suspended cakes of comb, impatiently await the
return of the collectors of propolis; this they tear from their shanks
as fast as they arrive and as quickly as they can, for it rapidly
hardens, especially in fine hot weather, and they convey it away for
their requirements, whilst those which collected it fly off for fresh
supplies, should more be needed. Concurrently with the execution of all
these things, wax is still being secreted by festoons of bees suspended
wherever there is space, the sculpturer bees are still moulding cells,
the queen is still laying eggs, deferentially attended, as usual, by her
maids of honour; the young brood is still being fed; other bees are
ventilating the hive at its entrance and within its streets and lanes by
the rapid vibration of their wings; the sentinels are diligently keeping
guard to repel the inimical intrusion of wasps or snails or woodlice, or
the moth which is so destructive to the interior in her larva state,
from the covered moveable silken retreat which she constructs impervious
to the sting, and thence with impunity gets at the silk of the cocoons
and consumes the wax, making, when once fairly domiciled, such fearful
havoc in the hive that the bees are fain to desert it,—and the many
other numerous enemies which lust for the luscious honey, or whose
voracity is attracted by the poor little diligent bees themselves, but
who in such contingencies exhibit invincible courage, which, if not
always successful in its efforts, is always meritorious. Where
self-preservation is not the prompter, or the rivalry of love the
instigator, but the duration of which is limited to a season, the feuds
of the animal world all seem to proceed from the urgency of their
gastronomic suggestions, the acrimony of which urges craft and strength
to their most powerful exhibition. To allay hunger, destruction is
perpetrated and order despoiled, and thus our bees become the victims of
the imperativeness of this universal law. But sometimes they are
triumphant over a very large enemy; for instance, an intrusive mouse, or
a slug that has slimed its way through the arched portal. They have been
known to kill these enemies within the hive as they could not make them
withdraw, but perplexity results from their success; they are, however,
gifted with the sagacity to know that the putridity of these masses will
poison with its effluvia the atmosphere of their city which no
ventilation can purify, and they convert that part of their metropolis
into a mausoleum, covering the carcases with a coating of propolis,
alone or mixed with wax, as before noticed. Those which execute this
summary martial law are the sentinels—the armed police of the hive—which
guard its entrance and avenues, and patrol its streets and lanes and
passages. Concurrently with all these doings, scavengers are heedfully
conveying away any particles of dirt or other undesirable superfluity
which may have accidentally found its way in. That all these labours
produce fatigue and exact rest is proved by the circumstance that many
bees are always observed in a state of repose,—perhaps only forty winks
during the day just to restore exhausted energy,—for they are soon seen
again to resume their toil, this inactivity never being idleness.
Whether they proceed with the same kind of employment upon the renewal
of their work is not known, nor how long lasts a particular kind of
labour, but the change of occupation may be one of frequent occurrence,
and it may be presumed that each bee severally and successively
undertakes each task, that the faculty for exercising it may not be
extinguished. It is very possibly a daily change, which circulates
through the entire civic population of workers.
Although the labours of the bees are divided, we do not find that even
the most successful observers, who have had every opportunity, by the
nature of the hives they possessed, and the sagacity they applied to the
detection of the most minute particulars, have been enabled to discover
that these workers were permanently separated into distinct
classes,—indeed, although surmising from this distribution of labour
that such might be the case, and thus made alert to the discovery of its
positive confirmation by direct observation, they have never been able
to do so; and they strongly deny it, maintaining that these duties are
individually transferable, and that they are not restricted to certain
classes, already sufficiently implied by the organization of the
workers. Huber, it is true, states that the wax-sculpturers—those which
finish the cells to their nicety of perfection—are smaller than any of
the rest of the community, to facilitate their operations within the
cells, which may perhaps be a foregone conclusion.
The idea of administrative vigilance in the distribution of the labour
of the community is strongly corroborated by the fact that all the
labours proceed _pari passu_ and in equable order, no excessive
preponderance of any particular work having been observed, which would
certainly sometimes be the case were there no limiting control over
their individual action, and thus the harmonious concurrence of all to
one effect seriously disturbed. The supposition is also strengthened by
the unfailing attendance of the queen’s numerous and deferential
retinue, some one or other of whom, every now and then, quits that
service—perhaps as an envoy on business of government—and is replaced by
another. All these many circumstances lead to the presumption that the
queen is the heart of the whole body, the organ which forces forward the
circulation through its diverse channels, giving to all the temperate
pulsation of vigorous health.
The hive is, of course, quite dark within, and to carry on the numerous
operations which we have noticed are done there, either sight of a
peculiar nature must lend its aid, or some faculty residing in a
sensation analogous to touch, but which it may be cannot be known, nor
where it may lie, but if it exist its organ is most probably the
antennæ. We can, it is true, compute their eyes, which comprise more
than sixteen thousand, namely, about eight thousand in each of the
compound organs placed laterally upon the head, each separate eye being
an hexagonal facet furnished with its separate lens and capillary branch
of the optic nerve, and also edged with short hair; in this hair,
therefore, may lie the particular sensation which guides them, for we
cannot be sure that this large congeries of hexagonal facets facilitate
sight in the dark, as in number and position they do not exceed or
differ from the analogous structure and number of the same organs in
many other insects which we know to be only seers by day, and which
repose at night; but the hairy addition to the eyes of these bees is a
structure not observed in them.
This constitution of the hive and its various operations continues
during the remainder of the season until the approach of winter cautions
them from venturing abroad, when, if the temperature of the hive is much
lowered, they hibernate and remain in a torpid condition until the
sunshine of the following spring, and with it the flowering of plants,
rouses them again to resume their suspended labours. The population of
the hive having continued to increase, although not so vigorously as at
first, up to the very intrusion of winter, and the renewed year giving
renewed energy to the queen, the population thence rapidly further
increasing, it becomes inconveniently thronged, especially as spring
advances and hot weather sets in. These promptings then urge her to lay
drone eggs, for which preparations have already been made by the
workers, who have already framed for their reception—they being much
larger insects—larger cells moulded precisely in the same manner, and
which are also used occasionally as receptacles for honey, and always
skirt the bottom of the several combs. This task she has completed in
about five days, and it is carried on precisely in the same way as is
practised in the case of the neuters; and they are nurtured by
nursing-workers just like them. Of these eggs she lays, as before said,
about a thousand, and the workers by some instinctive faculty have
framed about such a number of the needful cells. The transformations of
the drone occupy about twenty-four or twenty-five days, of which three
are passed in the maturing of the egg which then hatches into the larva.
This occupies nearly seven days in attaining its full growth, and the
remaining portion of the time is spent in its spinning its cocoon, in
the same way as the larva of the worker does, and it changes into the
imago. To effect all these changes in the transformations of all the
sexes, a heat of about seventy degrees is indispensable, but that of the
hive in summer is considerably higher. They as well as the workers are
assisted to emerge from the cocoon by some of the older workers, who use
their mandibles to bite through the enclosure, and who also help to
cleanse them from their exuviæ.
Concurrently with the formation of the brood cells of the drones, some
of the workers are constructing cells to receive the royal eggs. These
cells are totally unlike the other cells of the hive, and are of a sort
of pear-shape five times as large as the drone cells, and are attached
laterally to the edges of the comb in a vertical position, with the
narrowest part, which is the orifice, hanging downwards. In the forming
of these cells the workers are very lavish of their wax, making the
coats of them thick and opaque, and they are irregularly rough outside,
but within very smoothly polished. Just as the construction of these
cells intervenes irregularly with the formation of the cells of the
drones, so does the queen intermit at intervals the laying of the drone
eggs to deposit occasionally an egg in one of the royal cells, which are
not usually completed at the time she commences laying them, but are
finished afterwards, even during the time the larva is growing. This
provision seems to be made for the earliest development of the young
queens after the drones come forth, with the possible prevision that the
sooner all of these young queens are fertilized that are needful for the
requirements of the swarms that the hive may throw off, the sooner will
the hive be rid of the incumbrance and the consumption of stores caused
by the drones. The transformations of the queens take place more rapidly
than the others, for in sixteen days they are completed, of which three
are occupied in hatching the egg, and for five they are feeding as
larvæ, and in that time attain their full growth; the cell is then
closed in with a waxen cover by the workers, and the full-fed larva
within is occupied in spinning its cocoon, which it takes twenty-four
hours to accomplish. This cocoon is unlike that of the drones and
workers, both of which completely enclose the pupa, but the royal larva
only forms so much of a cocoon as will cover the head and thorax, and by
which imperfection she unconsciously facilitates her destruction by her
rivals in case they are permitted to attempt it before she emerges,—this
being supposed to be the object of it, as the close texture of the silk
of the cocoon would intercept the action of the rival queen’s sting. In
this state she remains in complete repose up to a part of the twelfth
day, and it takes about four days more to change into the imago, which
is ready to emerge on the sixteenth. In her larva state she has been
very carefully and profusely supplied by her nurses with the royal
jelly, made in the manner before described. This royal jelly is very
stimulating, it is pungent, rather acescent, and is very different from
the food supplied to the drone- and worker-larvæ. A great many of the
drones being now perfect insects, some young queen, that is ready to go
forth, is at length permitted to do so by her guardian protectors, for
the old queen is already aware of her existence, and has more than once
attempted her destruction, but from which she has been prevented. At a
suitable opportunity this young queen issues, attended by a bevy of
drones; she immediately ascends in a spiral direction high into the air,
far out of sight, and is followed by her suitors. Their larger capacity
of flight speedily permits them to overtake her, and they ascend above
her; one being favoured, the rest descend again, and either at once
return to the hive or frolic about in its vicinity. It is not long
before this young queen returns, matured into an incipient mother. Now
comes renewed hostility from her own parent, who is still prevented from
the murderous assault, but who succeeds in ejecting her young rival.
During this contest the hive has become a scene of confusion, and the
preliminaries and accompaniments of fresh swarming take place, and in
going forth she is accompanied by a large body of the present
population, and thus the first swarm of the fresh season is thrown off.
Other queens become gradually developed, and other swarms similarly
accompany them, but each swarm successively diminishes in the number of
its participating emigrants, the last consisting perhaps of not more
than two thousand. The order of the hive is speedily restored after each
swarming convulsion has subsided, until the population being
sufficiently reduced, the motive to leave is destroyed, and the queen is
then permitted to execute her murderous onslaught on the hapless young
queens, which are either still embryonic, or, if developed, have not
been allowed to leave their cells; but, where they have done so, and are
still within the hive, her attendants and the old queen’s attendants
open their ranks, and the furious rivals attack each other. The contest
is sharp but short, the young queen is stung to death, the body is
conveyed away, and the old queen reigns paramount. Her next effort is to
destroy the royal brood in their cells; the cells she tears to pieces,
the young ones within, where developed, may be heard uttering a
plaintive cry, whilst she sounds a triumphant note as loud as the
highest note of a flute. Her throne is now free from pretenders, and
after the expulsion of the drones, which then takes place, the entire
harmony of the hive is restored for another season. The queen meanwhile
is growing old, a new spring has set in, her stock of eggs is being
exhausted, and mortality, which afflicts even royalty itself, lays her
low. Now comes into operation that extraordinary faculty possessed by
these insects. Her death has taken place after she had laid new spring
eggs, which are to produce a further addition of neuters and a supply of
drones. The loss of their queen is soon communicated to the inhabitants
of the hive, confusion ensues, and labour is suspended. They group about
in clusters of a dozen or more, and after about a day’s intermission of
the ordinary routine of labour they appear to have come to a resolution.
Bustle is again renewed, and several, as the delegates of the general
body, pass into the midst of the neuter brood cells, tear down the
separating walls of three, kill two of the very young larvæ, convert
these three cells into one by fitting alterations, and transfer the care
of this vermicle to the nursing-bees. Under their care, they heedfully
feeding her with the royal jelly, her transformations speedily are
completed, and whilst this is being done, drones are coming forth. As
soon as she is ready she is aided to quit her cell. She now leaves the
hive, and the drones which are already perfected accompany her; she
makes her wedding tour in the air, and quickly returns as the
queen-regnant of the rejoicing monarchy, whose vacant throne is again
royally occupied, and the entire harmony of the hive renewed.
The quantity of pollen that is collected in the course of a season, by
the diligence of the bees, has been estimated at from sixty to seventy
pounds; and the weight of the honey, so affluent a hive will produce by
abstraction from the bees, is calculated at as much as sometimes fifty
pounds. This, however, must be vastly exceeded by the quantity
collected, as it is being constantly consumed for sustenance, and for
the secretion of the raw material of wax, as well as for the production
of the liquid which converts this into its mouldable consistency. It is
possible to estimate pretty nearly the quantity of honey required for
each secretion of the raw material, by finding what the honey-bag will
contain when gorged, as it is this quantity which seems to make the
eight scales of it upon the ventral plates, for they cannot convey more
up when they hang themselves in the festoons to secern it. But it is
impossible to know what addition this liquid from their mouths makes to
it when they manipulate it into its plastic state, other bees often
undertaking this task, which may apply themselves to it with a larger
stock than the wax secreters possess, they being perhaps already
exhausted by their labours. It is a singular fact that wax is more
rapidly and largely made by feeding the bees with dissolved sugar than
from the honey they collect themselves, the sugar thus evidently
containing more of its productive elements.
Some of the labours within the hive are apparently continued at night,
or the bees may be then revelling, after the day’s toils, in social
enjoyment, or otherwise more worthily employed; for, to use the words of
the benevolent apiarian, the Rev. Wm. Chas. Cotton, “If you listen by a
hive about nine o’clock, you will hear an oratorio sweeter than any at
Exeter Hall. Treble, tenor, and bass are blended in the richest harmony.
Sometimes the sound is like the distant hum of a great city, and
sometimes it is like a peal of hallelujahs.”
This is the history of the hive and its inhabitants. Modifications may
occasionally occur, but nothing of sufficient consequence seriously to
affect or neutralize this ordinary routine. It would occupy space
already too largely encroached upon to go into these minute particulars,
which, although parts of their general history, where treated of in
special detail, are not necessarily the province of a work which speaks
of them as but one member of the family of which it collectively
discourses. As the space occupied by what was really essential to be
known about them, has exceeded the due dimensions of their share to it,
although of paramount interest, infinitely greater than that which
attaches to the economy of the whole of the rest of the group combined,
it will not, I trust, be considered that I terminate abruptly, in
drawing here to a close.
--------------
The close of the work concurs with the termination of the history of its
crowning marvel; and I take leave of my readers, with a reiteration of
the hope that it may stimulate them to undertake a study, wherein, each
step of their progress, expands the delightful contemplation of the
manifestations of the predominance of a vast design, emanating from the
paternal benevolence of an august, supreme, and wisely superintending
Providence.
“To-morrow to fresh woods and pastures new.”—_Milton._
[Illustration: Decoration]
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GENERAL AND GLOSSARIAL INDEX.
Abdomen, 25.
and its differences of form, 47.
causes of differences of clothing and form lie in its use, 48.
colour and marking and clothing of, characteristic, 47.
elliptical, or lanceolate and truncated, 48.
Acari infest bees, 110.
Activity of a hive at work, 348.
Acuminate, terminating gradually in a sharp point.
Affinity, doctrine of, 136.
Agassiz’ ‘Nomenclator Zoologicus,’ 130.
Analogies between the stages of bees and flowers, 15.
Analogy, doctrine of, 138.
Andrena, general observations upon, 264
geography of, 67.
infested by Stylops and Nomada, 208.
list of native species, 201.
natural history of, 205.
scientific description of, 200.
Andrenidæ, abnormal bees, 160.
diagram of mode of folding the tongue in repose, 39.
Animals, domestication of, 5.
Antennæ, 26, 28.
apparatus for cleaning, 42.
form and structure in Eucera, 29.
possible complex function of, 57.
Antennæ, sexual differences in length, 233.
their probable use, 55, 57.
used as means of communication, 58.
Anthidium, general observations on, 281.
geography of, 75.
native species, 279.
natural history of, 282.
scientific description of, 279.
Anthocopa, general observations on, 292.
geography of, 76.
native species of, 292.
natural history of, 293.
scientific description of, 290.
Anthophora, general observations on, 238.
geography of, 70.
infested by Melecta, 240.
list of native species, 238.
natural history of, 238.
scientific description of, 236.
trophi of, 29.
Apathus, general observations on, 304.
geography of, 77.
list of native species, 304.
scientific description of, 302.
the Bombi they infest, 306.
Apidæ, diagram of the mode of folding the tongue in repose, 39.
= normal bees, 160, 227.
Apis, general observations on, 321.
geography of, 79.
native species, 321.
natural history of, 322.
origin of names, 321.
scientific description of, 318.
see “Bee” and “Bees.”
Appearance of bees intermittent, 54.
Appendiculated, when there is a small appendage, as in the lip of
Halictus, and at the end of the marginal cell of the wings, etc.
Arrangement and description of British bees, 184.
Artesian well, peculiar results from its soil, 223.
Articulate, where jointed, or the point of attachment.
Artisan bees = Dasygasters, 272.
Aryans, one of the primitive divisions of the human race, 4.
Atmosphere, its conditions affect bees, 50.
Aulacus, 287.
Auriculated, with a small ear-like appendage.
Bee, constructive habits of the, early noticed, 93.
general history of the, 17.
parasites, 115.
parasitism limited, 264.
probably earlier known to man than the silkworm, 6.
Queen, description of, 322.
see “Apis.”
several species of, 87.
symbol of royalty with the Egyptians, 5.
The, one of the Suras of the Koran, 90.
why attractive, 1.
Bee-bread, 347.
Bees, amount of their susceptibility of pain, 57.
construction of cells, 327.
duties performed in the hive, 325.
duties transferable, 336.
early cultivated, 3, 90, 91.
economy, early known, 92.
emit an odour, 52.
enemies, 51.
extent of flight, 340.
flight, modes of, varies, 49.
found in the Orkneys, 7.
genera of, determined by an artificial mode, 170.
habits of, in America, 7.
hairiness of, reason of, 14.
intimately connected with flowers, 3.
largely contribute to the impregnation of plants, 11.
make about ten journeys a day, 351.
many disclosed in autumn for the following year’s spring flight, 53.
not early risers, 51.
number of eyes, 355.
other than social, also known, 8.
rarely walk, 50.
sagacity in finding the honey of flowers, 13.
scientific arrangement and description of the genera of, 184.
secretion of wax, 325.
stages of life of,—
egg, 18.
larva, 19.
pupa, 22.
imago, 23.
swarming, 337.
their relative perfection, 56.
voice, a scale of music, 49.
Beehive represented on a tomb at Thebes, 6.
Beehives moved on rafts, 84.
Bifid, divided into two parts.
Binomial system invented by Linnæus, 129.
Body of the bee, its structure, 25.
Bombus, difficulty in determining the species of the males, 311.
general observations on, 310.
geography of, 78.
infested by _Apathus_, 311.
list of native species, 308.
natural history of, 312.
peculiarities in times of appearance, 312.
scientific description of, 307.
Boss of mesothorax, 45.
Bougie, derivation of, 84.
British bees, new arrangement of, 153, 158.
Carder-bees, 316.
Carelessness of describers of new species, 125.
Carinated, having a longitudinal elevated line.
Carpenter bees, 286.
Cells of hive, geometrical form of, 343.
results from instinct, 343.
how constructed, 342.
of wings characteristic, 44.
Cenobites = social bees, 167, 302.
Ceratina, disputed parasitism of, 247.
general observations on, 246.
geography of, 71.
list of native species, 246.
natural history of, 247.
scientific description of, 245.
Cereal plants early cultivated, 4.
Chelostoma, general observations on, 286.
geography of, 76.
infested by Fœnus, 287.
native species of, 285.
natural history of, 286.
scientific description of, 283.
Chrysis infests Chelostoma, 287.
infests Halictus, 219.
infests Osmia, 302.
Cibarial apparatus = trophi = collective organs of the mouth, 163.
Cilissa, general observations on, 213.
geography of, 67.
list of native species, 213.
scientific description of, 211.
Clavate, club-shaped.
antennæ, 28.
Claws, 42.
reflected, 285.
Climate inoperative on low forms of life, 24.
Clothing of bees, 60.
Clypeus, 26, 28.
Coadunate, closely united without perceptible articulation.
Cœlioxys, difficulty of their specific separation, 267.
general observations on, 267.
geography of, 74.
list of native species, 267.
parasitical on Megachile and Saropoda, 267.
scientific description of, 265.
Collar, 41.