times, with respect to the fertilization of the eggs of the bee. Some
have supposed,--and the number of males seemed to countenance the
supposition,--that this was effected after they were deposited in the
cells. Of this opinion Maraldi seems to have been the author, and
it was adopted by Mr. Debraw of Cambridge, who asserts that he has
seen the smaller males (those that are occasionally produced in cells
usually appropriated to workers) introduce their abdomen into cells
containing eggs, and fertilize them; and that the eggs so treated
proved fertile, while others that were not remained sterile. The
common or large drones, which form the bulk of the male population of
the hive, could not be generally destined to this office, since their
abdomen, on account of its size, could only be introduced into male
and royal cells. Bonnet, however, saw some motions of one of these
drones, which, while it passed by those that were empty, appeared to
strike with its abdomen the mouth of the cells containing eggs[199].
Swammerdam thought that the female was impregnated by effluvia which
issued from the male[200]. Reaumur, from some proceedings that he
witnessed, was convinced that impregnation took place according to
the usual law of nature, and, as he supposed, within the hive[201].
This opinion Huber has confirmed by indubitable proofs; but he
further discovered that these animals pair abroad, in the air, during
the flight of the queen: a fact which renders a large number of males
necessary, to ensure her impregnation in due time to lay eggs that
will produce workers[202]. Huber also observed those appearances
which induced Debraw to adopt the opinion I mentioned just now, and
was at first disposed to think them real; but afterwards, upon a
nearer inspection, he discovered that it was an illusion caused by
the reflection of the rays of light[203].
In fine weather the drones, during the warmest part of the day, take
their flights; and it is then that they pair with the queen in mid air,
the result being invariably the death of the drone. No one has yet
discovered, unless the proceedings observed by Debraw and Bonnet may
be so interpreted, that when in the hive they take any share in the
business of it, their great employment within doors being to eat. Their
life however is of very short duration, the eggs that produce drones
being laid in the course of April and May, and their destruction being
usually accomplished in the months of July and August. The bees then,
as M. Huber observes, chase them about, and pursue them to the bottom
of the hives, where they assemble in crowds. At the same time numerous
carcases of drones may be seen on the ground before the hives. Hence
he conjectured, though he never could detect them engaged in this
work upon the combs, that they were stung to death by the workers.
To ascertain how their death was occasioned, he caused a table to be
glazed, on which he placed six hives, and under this table he employed
the patient and indefatigable Burnens, who was to him instead of
eyes, to watch their proceedings. On the fourth of July this accurate
observer saw the massacre going on in all the hives at the same time,
and attended by the same circumstances. The table was crowded with
workers, who, apparently in great rage, darted upon the drones as
soon as they arrived at the bottom of the hive seizing them by their
antennæ, their legs, and their wings; and killing them by violent
strokes of their sting, which they generally inserted between the
segments of the abdomen. The moment this fearful weapon entered their
body, the poor helpless creatures expanded their wings and expired.
After this, as if fearful that they were not sufficiently dispatched,
the bees repeated their strokes, so that they often found it difficult
to extricate their sting. On the following day they were equally busy
in the work of slaughter; but their fury, their own having perished,
was chiefly vented upon those drones, which, after having escaped from
the neighbouring hives, had sought refuge with them. Not content with
destroying those that were in the perfect state, they attacked also
such male pupæ as were left in their cells; and then dragging them
forth, sucked the fluid from their bodies and cast them out of the
hive[204].
But though in hives containing a queen perfectly fertile (that is,
which lays both worker and male eggs,) this is the unhappy fate of
the drones; yet in those where the queen only lays male eggs, they
are suffered to remain unmolested; and in hives deprived of their
queen, they also find a secure asylum[205].
What it is that, in the former instance, excites the fury of the bees
against the males, is not easy to discover; but some conjecture may
perhaps be formed from the circumstances last related. When only males
are produced by the queen, the bees seem aware that something more is
wanted, and retain the males; the same is the case when they have no
queen; and when one is procured, they appear to know that she would not
profit them without the males. Their fury then is connected with their
utility: when the queen is impregnated, which lasts for her whole life,
as if they knew that the drones could be of no further use, and would
only consume their winter stores of provision, they destroy them; which
surely is more merciful than expelling them, in which case they must
inevitably perish from hunger. But when the queen only produces males,
their numbers are not sufficient to cause alarm; and the same reasoning
applies to the case when there is no queen.
* * * * *
Having brought the males from their cradle to their untimely grave,
and amused you with the little that is known of their uneventful
history, I shall now, at last, call you to attend to the proceedings
of the _workers_ themselves; and here I am afraid, long as I have
detained you, I must still press you to expatiate with me in a more
ample field; but the spectacles you will behold during our excursion
will repay, I promise you, any delay or trouble it may occasion.
When I consider the proceedings of these little creatures, both in
the hive and out of it, they are so numerous and multifarious, that
I scarcely know where to begin. You have already, however, heard
much of their internal labours, in the care and nurture of the
young; the construction of their combs[206]; and their proceedings
with respect to their queens and their paramours. It will therefore
change the scene a little, if we accompany them in their excursions
to collect the various substances of which they have need[207].
On these occasions the principal object of the bees is to furnish
themselves with three different materials:--the nectar of flowers,
from which they elaborate honey and wax; the pollen or fertilizing
dust of the anthers, of which they make what is called bee-bread,
serving as food both to old and young; and the resinous substance
called by the ancients _Propolis_, _Pissoceros_, &c. used in various
ways in rendering the hive secure and giving the finish to the combs.
The first of these substances is the pure fluid secreted in the
nectaries of flowers, which the length of their tongue enables them
to reach in most blossoms. The tongue of a bee, you are to observe,
though so long and sometimes so inflated[208], is not a tube through
which the honey passes, nor a pump acting by suction, but a real
tongue which laps or licks the honey, and passes it down on its upper
surface, as we do, to the mouth, which is at its base concealed
by the mandibles[209]. It is conveyed by this orifice through the
œsophagus into the first stomach, which we call the honey-bag,
and which, from being very small, is swelled when full of it to a
considerable size. Honey is never found in the second stomach, (which
is surrounded with muscular rings, and resembles a cask covered with
hoops from one end to the other,) but only in the first: in the
latter and the intestines the bee-bread only is discovered. How the
wax is secreted, or what vessels are appropriated to that purpose,
is not yet ascertained. Huber suspects that a cellular substance,
consisting of hexagons, which lines the membrane of the wax-pockets,
may be concerned in this operation. This substance he also discovered
in humble-bees (which though they make wax have no wax-pockets),
occupying all the anterior part or base of the segments[210]. If
you wish to see the wax-pockets in the hive-bee, you must press the
abdomen so as to cause it to extend itself; you will then find on
each of the four intermediate ventral segments, separated by the
carina or elevated central part, two trapeziform whitish pockets, of
a soft membranaceous texture: on these the laminæ of wax are formed,
and they are found upon them in different states, so as to be more
or less perceptible. I must here observe that, besides Thorley, who
seems to have been the first apiarist that observed these laminæ,
Wildman was not ignorant of them, nor of the wax being formed from
honey[211]: we must not therefore permit foreigners to appropriate to
themselves the whole credit of discoveries that have been made, or at
least partially made, by our own countrymen.
Long before Linné had discovered the nectary of flowers, our
industrious creatures had made themselves intimate with every form
and variety of them; and no botanist, even in this enlightened era
of botanical science, can compare with a bee in this respect. The
station of these reservoirs, even where the armed sight of science
cannot discover it, is in a moment detected by the microscopic eye of
this animal.
She has to attend to a double task--to collect materials for
bee-bread as well as for honey and wax. Observe a bee that has
alighted upon an open flower. The hum produced by the motion of her
wings ceases, and her employment begins. In an instant she unfolds
her tongue, which before was rolled up under her head. With what
rapidity does she dart this organ between the petals and the stamina!
At one time she extends it to its full length, then she contracts it;
she moves it about in all directions, so that it may be applied both
to the concave and convex surface of a petal, and wipe them both; and
thus by a virtuous theft robs it of all its nectar. All the while
this is going on, she keeps herself in a constant vibratory motion.
The object of the industrious animal is not, like the more selfish
butterfly, to appropriate this treasure to herself. It goes into the
honey-bag as into a laboratory, where it is transformed into pure
honey; and when she returns to the hive, she regurgitates it in this
form into one of the cells appropriated to that purpose; in order
that, after tribute is paid from it to the queen, it may constitute a
supply of food for the rest of the community.
In collecting honey, bees do not solely confine themselves to flowers,
they will sometimes very greedily absorb the sweet juices of fruits:
this I have frequently observed with respect to the raspberries in
my garden, and have noticed it, as you may recollect, in a former
letter[212]. They will also eat sugar, and produce wax from it; but
from Huber's observations, it appears not calculated to supply the
place of honey in the jelly with which the larvæ are fed[213]. Though
the great mass of the food of bees is collected from flowers, they
do not wholly confine themselves to a vegetable diet; for, besides
the honeyed secretion of the Aphides, the possession of which they
will sometimes dispute with the ants[214], upon particular occasions
they will eat the eggs of the queen. They are very fond also of the
fluid that oozes from the cells of the pupæ, and will suck eagerly
all that is fluid in their abdomen after they are destroyed by their
rivals[215].--Several flowers that produce much honey they pass by;
in some instances, from inability to get at it. Thus, for this reason
probably, they do not attempt those of the trumpet-honey-suckle,
(_Lonicera sempervirens_,) which, if separated from the germen after
they are open, will yield two or three drops of the purest nectar.
So that were this shrub cultivated with that view, much honey in its
original state might be obtained from a small number of plants. In
other cases, it appears to be the poisonous quality of their honey that
induces bees to neglect certain flowers. You have doubtless observed
the conspicuous white nectaries of the crown imperial, (_Fritillaria
imperialis_,) and that they secrete abundance of this fluid. It tempts
in vain the passing bee, probably aware of some noxious quality that
it possesses. The oleander (_Nerium Oleander_,) yields a honey that
proves fatal to thousands of imprudent flies; but our bees, more wise
and cautious, avoid it. Occasionally, perhaps, in particular seasons,
when flowers are less numerous than common, this instinct of the bees
appears to fail them, or to be overpowered by their desire to collect
a sufficient store of honey for their purposes, and they suffer for
their want of self-denial. Sometimes whole swarms have been destroyed
by merely alighting upon poisonous trees. This happened to one in
the county of West Chester in the province of New York, which settled
upon the branches of the poison-ash (_Rhus Vernix_). In the following
morning the imprudent animals were all found dead, and swelled to more
than double their usual size[216]. Whether the honey extracted from
the species of the genus _Kalmia_, _Andromeda_, _Rhododendrum_, &c. be
hurtful to the bees themselves, is not ascertained; but, as has been
before observed, it is often poisonous to man[217]. The Greeks, as you
probably recollect, in their celebrated retreat after the death of
the younger Cyrus, found a kind of honey at Trebisond on the Euxine
coast, which, though it produced no fatal effects upon them, rendered
those who ate but little, like men very drunk, and those who ate much,
like mad men or dying persons; and numbers lay upon the ground as if
there had been a defeat. Pliny, who mentions this honey, calls it
_Mænomenon_, and observes that it is said to be collected from a kind
of _Rhododendrum_, of which Tournefort noticed two species there[218].
When the stomach of a bee is filled with nectar, it next, by means
of the feathered hairs[219] with which its body is covered, pilfers
from the flowers the fertilizing dust of the anthers, the _pollen_;
which is equally necessary to the society with the honey, and may be
named the ambrosia of the hive, since from it the bee-bread is made.
Sometimes a bee is so discoloured with this powder as to look like
a different insect, becoming white, yellow, or orange, according to
the flowers in which it has been busy. Reaumur was urged to visit
the hives of a gentleman, who on this account thought his bees were
different from the common kind[220]. He suspected, and it proved,
that the circumstance just mentioned occasioned the mistaken notion.
When the body of the bee is covered with farina, with the brushes of
its legs, especially of the hind ones, it wipes it off: not, as we
do with our dusty clothes, to dissipate and disperse it in the air,
but to collect every particle of it, and then to knead it and form it
into two little masses, which she places, one in each, in the baskets
formed by hairs[221] on her hind legs.
Aristotle says that in each journey from the hive, bees attend
only one species of flower[222]; Reaumur, however, seems to think
that they fly indiscriminately from one to another: but Mr. Dobbs
in the _Philosophical Transactions_[223], and Butler before him,
asserts that he has frequently followed a bee engaged in collecting
pollen, &c. and invariably observed that it continued collecting
from the same kind of flowers with which it first began: passing
over other species, however numerous, even though the flower it
first selected was scarcer than others. His observations, he thinks,
are confirmed--and the idea seems not unreasonable--by the uniform
colour of the pellets of pollen, and their different size. Reaumur
himself tells us that the bees enter the hive, some with yellow
pellets, others with red ones, others again with whitish ones, and
that sometimes they are even green: upon which he observes, that
this arises from their being collected from particular flowers, the
pollen of whose anthers is of those colours[224]. Sprengel, as
before intimated[225], has made an observation similar to that of
Dobbs. It seems not improbable that the reason why the bee visits
the same species of plants during one excursion may be this:--Her
instinct teaches her that the grains of pollen which enter into the
same mass should be homogeneous, in order perhaps for their more
effectual cohesion; and thus Providence also secures two important
ends,--the impregnation of those flowers that require such aid, by
the bees passing from one to another; and the avoiding the production
of hybrid plants, from the application of the pollen of one kind of
plant to the stigma of another. When the anthers are not yet burst,
the bee opens them with her mandibles, takes a parcel of pollen,
which one of the first pair of legs receives and delivers to the
middle pair, from which it passes to one of the hind legs.
If the contents of one of the little pellets be examined under a
lens, it will be found that the grains have all retained their
original shape. A botanist practised in the figure of the pollen of
the different species of common plants might easily ascertain, by
such an examination, whether a bee had collected its ambrosia from
one or more, and also from what species of flowers.
In the months of April and May, as Reaumur tells us, the bees collect
pollen from morning to evening; but in the warmer months the great
gathering of it is from the time of their first leaving the hive
(which is sometimes so early as four in the morning) to about 10
o'clock A.M. About that hour all that enter the hive may be seen
with their pellets in their baskets; but during the rest of the day
the number of those so furnished is small in comparison of those
that are not. In a hive, however, in which a swarm is recently
established, it is generally brought in at all parts of the day.
He supposes, in order for its being formed into pellets, that it
requires some moisture, which the heat evaporates after the above
hour; but in the case of recently colonized hives, that the bees go a
great way to seek it in moist and shady places[226].
When a bee has completed her lading, she returns to the hive to
dispose of it. The honey is disgorged into the honey-pots or cells
destined to receive it, and is discharged from the honey-bag by
its alternate contraction and dilatation. A cell will contain the
contents of many honey-bags. When a bee comes to disgorge the honey,
with its fore legs it breaks the thick cream that is always on the
top, and the honey which it yields passes under it. This cream is
honey of a thicker consistence than the rest, which rises to the
top in the cells like cream on milk: it is not level, but forms an
oblique surface over the honey. The cells, as you know, are usually
horizontal, yet the honey does not run out. The cream, aided probably
by the general thickness of the honey and the attraction of the sides
of the cell, prevents this. Bees, when they bring home the honey,
do not always disgorge it; they sometimes give it to such of their
companions as have been at work within the hive[227]. Some of the
cells are filled with honey for daily use, and some with what is
intended for a reserve, and stored up against bad weather or a bad
season: these are covered with a waxen lid[228].
The pollen is employed as circumstances direct. When the bee laden with
it arrives at the hive, she sometimes stops at the entrance, and very
leisurely detaching it by piecemeal, devours one or both the pellets on
her legs, chewing them with her jaws, and passing them then down the
little orifice before noticed. Sometimes she enters the hive, and walks
upon the combs; and whether she walks or stands, still keeps beating
her wings. By the noise thus produced, which seems a call to some of
her fellow-citizens, three or four go to her, and placing themselves
around her, begin to lighten her of her load, each taking and devouring
a small portion of her ambrosia: this they repeat, if more do not
arrive to assist them, three or four times, till the whole is disposed
of[229]. Wildman observed them on this occasion supporting themselves
upon their two fore feet; and making several motions with their wings
and body to the right and left, which produced the sound that summoned
their assistants[230]. This bee-bread, as I said before, is generally
found in the second stomach and intestines, but the honey never; which
induced Reaumur to think (but he was mistaken) that the bees elaborated
wax from it: and he observes, that the bees devour this when they
are busily engaged in constructing combs[231]. When more pollen is
collected than the bees have immediate occasion for, they store it up
in some of the empty cells. The laden bee puts her two hind legs into
the cell, and with the intermediate pair pushes off the pellets. When
this is done, she, or another bee if she is too much fatigued with
her day's labour, enters the cell with her head first, and remains
there some time: she is engaged in diluting the pellets, kneading
them, and packing them close; and so they proceed till the cell is
filled[232]. A large portion of the cells of some combs are filled with
this bread, which one while is found in insulated cells, at another in
cells amongst those that are filled with honey or brood.--Thus it is
everywhere at hand for use.
You have seen how the bees collect and employ two of the materials that
I mentioned; I must now advert to the third--the _Propolis_. Huber was
a long time uncertain from whence the bees procured this gummy resin;
but it at last occurred to him to plant some cuttings of a species of
poplar (before their leaves were developed, when their leaf-buds were
swelling, and besmeared and filled with a viscid juice,) in some pots,
which he placed in the way of the bees that went from his hives. Almost
immediately a bee alighted upon a twig, and soon with its mandibles
opened a bud, and drew from it a thread of the viscid matter which it
contained; with one of its second pair of legs it took it from the
mouth, and placed it in the basket: thus it proceeded till it had given
them both their load[233]. I have myself seen bees very busy collecting
it from the Tacamahaca (_Populus balsamifera_). But this is an old
discovery, confirmed by recent observation; for Mouffet tells us from
Cordus, that it is collected from the gems of trees, instancing the
poplar and the birch[234]. Riem observes that it is also collected from
the pine and fir. The propolis is soft, red, will pull out in a thread,
is aromatic, and imparts a gold colour to white polished metals. It
is employed in the hive not only in finishing the combs, as I related
in my letter on Habitations[235]; but also in stopping every chink
or orifice by which cold, wet, or any enemy, can enter. They cover
likewise with it the sticks which support the combs, and often spread
it over a considerable portion of the interior of the hive. Like the
pellets of pollen, it is carried on the posterior tibiæ, but the masses
are lenticular[236].
Mr. Knight mentions an instance of bees using an artificial kind of
propolis. He had caused the decorticated part of some tree to be
covered with a cement composed of bees-wax and turpentine: finding
this to their purpose, they attacked it, detaching it from the tree
by their mandibles, and then, as usual, passing it from the first leg
to the second, and so to the third. When one bee had thus collected
its load, another often came behind and despoiled it of all it had
collected; a second and third load were frequently lost in the same
manner; and yet the patient animal pursued its labours without
showing any signs of anger[237].
Bees in their excursions do not confine themselves to the spot
immediately contiguous to their dwelling, but, when led by the scent
of honey, will go a mile from it. Huber even assigns to them a radius
of half a league round their hive for their ordinary excursions; yet
from this distance they will discover honey with as much certainty as
if it was within their sight. To prove that it is by their scent that
bees find it out, he put some behind a window-shutter, in a place
where it could not be seen, leaving the shutter just open enough for
insects, if they liked, to get at it. In less than a quarter of an
hour four bees, a butterfly, and some house-flies had discovered it.
At another time he put some into boxes, with little apertures in the
lid, into which pieces of card were fitted, which he placed about
two hundred paces from his hives. In about half an hour the bees
discovered them, and traversing them very industriously, soon found
the apertures, when, pushing in the pieces of card, they got to the
honey. That contained in the blossom of many plants is quite as much
concealed, yet the acuteness of their scent enables them to detect it.