Transcriber Note
Text emphasis denoted by _Italics_ and =Bold=.
OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.
_From_ The Journal of Horticulture, February 28, 1865.
Mr. Neighbour says in his preface: "We are so frequently applied to
for advice oil matters connected with bees and bee-hives, that it
seemed likely to prove a great advantage to our correspondents and
ourselves if we could point to a 'handy book' of our own which should
contain full and detailed replies sufficient to meet all ordinary
inquiries." Keeping this object steadily in view, the writer describes
the various hive's and apiarian apparatus manufactured by his firm,
pointing out the various advantages claimed for them, and giving ample
directions for their use. When we add that the author expresses his
acknowledgments to Mr. Woodbury, Mr. Taylor, the illustrious Huber and
Mr. Langstroth, it may readily be imagined that the information derived
from such sources must in the main be correct, and that Mr. Neighbour,
in addition to the strictly business portion of his work, has been
enabled to impart to his readers a very considerable amount of sound
instruction on most points of Apiarian management.
_From_ The Journal of Horticulture, May 29, 1866.
Mr. Neighbour's book, the first edition of which was noticed by us
in February 1865, now makes its appearance in a new guise, being
reduced from demy 8vo. to crown 8vo., whilst the number of its pages
is increased from 134 to 274, with but a slight increase in price. In
addition to a description of the various hives and apiarian apparatus
sold by the well-known firm of which the author is a member, it
contains a considerable amount of generally accurate information
compiled from the best authorities; Mr. Woodbury's contributions to our
pages being in particular heavily drawn upon.
A new feature in this edition is a couple of steel plates illustrative
of the anatomy of the bee, engraved by Mr. E. W. Robinson with his
customary ability; embracing also coloured delineations of the three
sexes of the Ligurian or Italian variety of honey-bee. . . .
Mr. Neighbour possesses a very great advantage over a mere compiler,
in that he himself is a practical bee-keeper, and divers anecdotes of
his experiences are related by him in a light and amusing manner. For
this reason also the information conveyed in his pages is, as we have
already stated, very generally correct.
Athenæum, August 19, 1865.
Emanating from a house so well known and so extensively patronized by
the cultivators of bees, it will readily be concluded that the object
of the present work is primarily commercial. The author, a member
of the firm, in giving the reason for the publication of his book,
speaks in the name of the company. "We are," he says, "so frequently
applied to for advice on matters connected with bees and bee-hives,
that it seemed likely to prove a great advantage, alike to our
correspondents and _ourselves_, if we could point to a 'handy-book' of
our own, which should contain full and detailed replies sufficient to
meet all reasonable inquiries." This is candid and open, and stands
in favourable contrast to the ordinary puffing books which aim to
conceal under the aspect often of a scientific treatise the boasting
advertisement of their own wares. It is but justice to the respectable
house from which the present little treatise issues to say that it
fulfils its public object, presenting one of the most useful practical
treatises on this most interesting pursuit which we have met with. It
does not profess to enter deeply into the physiological marvels of
the habits of bees; it is, in fact, meagre in the scientific phase of
the subject. The various theories concerning the propagation of bees
are nowhere discussed,[1] and the hypothesis of Siebold is not even
alluded to.[1] But for those persons who desire to know how to procure
good honey with certainty, and how to watch in safety the working of
these little untaught but unerring mathematicians, the work of Mr.
Neighbour will be found very useful. It also informs us where the best
hives of every kind and form are to be obtained--of course, of "Messrs.
Neighbour & Sons."
[Footnote 1: Will be found in third edition.]
The Reader, 26 August, 1865.
The Apiary; or, Bees, Beehives, and Bee Culture. By Alfred Neighbour.
(Kent & Co.)
This valuable manual is, what it professes to be, a familiar account
of the habits of bees, and the most improved methods of management,
with full directions adapted for the cottager, farmer, or scientific
apiarian. The writer is a regular enthusiast, but an enthusiast whose
practical knowledge of the subject is made all the more available to
the reader from the very enthusiasm which, as in Virgil, leaves not the
most minute instruction untold. Nobody can write about bees without
quoting poetry, and Mr. Neighbour does this largely, yet most aptly.
THE APIARY.
[Illustration: GEO. NEIGHBOUR & SONS' BEE FARM, WEST END,
HAMPSTEAD.--_See page 330._]
THE APIARY;
OR,
BEES, BEEHIVES. AND BEE
CULTURE.
BEING A FAMILIAR ACCOUNT OF THE HABITS OF BEES AND THE
MOST IMPROVED METHODS OF MANAGEMENT.
BY
ALFRED NEIGHBOUR.
_THIRD EDITION._
GREATLY ENLARGED, REVISED, AND REMODELLED.
"Beaucoup de gens aiment les abeilles; je n'ai vu personne qui les
aima médiocrement: on se passionne pour elles."--Gelieu.
LONDON;
KENT AND CO., PATERNOSTER ROW;
GEO. NEIGHBOUR AND SONS,
149, REGENT STREET, and 127, HIGH HOLBORN,
AND ALL BOOKSELLERS.
1878.
Hazell, Watson, and Viney, Printers, London and Aylesbury.
[Illustration]
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.
THE present issue of our handbook may be fairly said'
to be really a new work. Not that the greater portion of it has
been consecutively rewritten, nor yet that the larger half of the
former matter has wholly disappeared; but the additions of entirely
new sections and half-sections, the transpositions with a view to
facilitating reference, the erasures of what is either out of date or
only repetition--in short, the thorough overhauling of the text from
beginning to end--are such as to render the form in which it is now
presented a new book rather than an ordinary fresh edition.
First as to our own department, the practical appliances. The
descriptions of several hives and apparatus that have gone out of use
have been removed to make room for the much larger number of new and
improved inventions. Of the eighteen hives now described, no less than
a half are new introductions, and the same is the case in greater or
less degree with the supers, the covers, and the bee contrivances of
every kind.
The chapter on "Manipulation" has been equally enlarged, having
throughout been collated with the chapters on that branch in Mr.
Langstroth's "Honey Bee." For very many valuable additions, both large
and small, we are therefore indebted to that source, and we have
also some obligations to acknowledge to Mr. Cheshire's "Practical
Bee-keeping."
It is in reference chiefly to this department that so many
transpositions have been made from the arrangement of the matter in
former editions. Finding that by giving extensive practical directions
under nearly every individual hive we were losing much greatly needed
space by repetition, and at the same time giving less complete
instructions to each, we have endeavoured when possible to comprise all
this in articles of a general character, and to retain under special
hives or appliances such only as was strictly peculiar to themselves.
The system of references now carried out, together with the numbering
of sections and displaying the numbers in the head-lines of every page,
will we trust remove even that small apparent inconvenience which is
the accompaniment of a large and substantial gain.
But perhaps more than all has the earlier part of our work been
enlarged and emended--that which treats on the insect itself, its
natural history, its reproductive economy, its habits, and its
structure. For this course of improvement we are largely indebted to
the very masterly and exhaustive treatise of Baron von Berlepsch, "Die
Biene und ihre Zucht in beweglichen Waben" ("The Bee and its Culture in
Movable Combs"); after this to Dr. Dzierzon's latest work, "Rationelle
Bienenzucht;" to Schmid and Kleine's "Leitfaden;" to Samuelson and
Hicks's "Honey Bee;" to Mr. John Hunter's very comprehensive and
readable "Manual of Bee-keeping;" and to the _British_ and _American
Bee Journals_, the former for letters from correspondents, and the
latter also for the very able articles by which that remarkably
well-conducted periodical is distinguished. To Mr. Frederick Smith,
of the Entomological Department at the British Museum, we have also
to acknowledge our indebtedness for courteous personal communications
rendered more than once.
Reference should also be made to aid in the translations from the
German Treatises before mentioned, as well as to some other literary
assistance which we hope has added to the interest of this work.
149, Regent Street, London,
_August 1877_.
[Illustration]
PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.
OUR apology for preparing a bee-book is a very simple
one. We are so frequently applied to for advice on matters connected
with bees and beehives, that it seemed likely to prove a great
advantage, alike to our correspondents and ourselves, if we could
point to a "handy book" of our own which should contain full and
detailed replies sufficient to meet all ordinary enquiries. Most of the
apiarian manuals possess some special excellence or other, and we have
no wish to disparage any of them; yet in all we have found a want of
explanations relating to several of the more recent improvements.
It has more especially been our aim to give explicit and detailed
directions on most subjects connected with the hiving and removing of
bees, and also to show how, by judicious application of the "depriving"
system, the productive powers of the bees may be enormously increased.
We need say little here as to the interest that attaches to the apiary
as a source of perennial pleasure for the amateur naturalist. Many
of the hives and methods of management are described with a direct
reference to this class of bee-keepers, so that, besides plain and
simple directions suitable for cottagers with their ordinary hives,
this work will be found to include instructions useful for the
scientific apiarian, or at least valuable for those who desire to gain
a much wider acquaintance with the secrets of bee-keeping than is now
usually possessed. We would lay stress on the term "acquaintance,"
for there is nothing in the management of the various bar-and-frame
hives which is at all difficult when frequent practice has rendered
the bee-keeper familiar with them. Such explicit directions are herein
given as to how the right operations may be performed at the right
times, that a novice may at once commence to use the modern hives.
The word "new-fangled" has done good service for the indolent and
prejudiced, but we trust that our readers will be of a very different
class. Let them give a fair trial to the modern appliances for the
humane and depriving system of bee-keeping, and they will find offered
to them an entirely new field of interest and observation. At present
our continental neighbours far surpass us as bee-masters; but we trust
that the following season, if the summer be fine, will prove a turning
point in the course of English bee-keeping. There is little doubt
that a greater number of intelligent and influential persons in this
country will become bee-keepers than has ever been the case before.
Our task would have lost half its interest did we not hope that it
would result in something beyond the encouragement of a refined and
interesting amusement for the leisurely classes. The social importance
of bee-keeping, as a source of pecuniary profit for small farmers and
agricultural labourers, has never been appreciated as it deserves.
Yet these persons will not, of themselves, lay aside the bungling
and wasteful plan of destroying the bees, or learn without being
taught the only proper method, that of deprivation. Their educated
neighbours, when once interested in the pursuit, will be the persons to
introduce the more profitable system of humane bee-keeping. The clergy
especially, as permanent residents in the country, may have great
influence in this respect. There is not a rural or suburban parish
in the kingdom in which bee-keeping might not be largely extended,
and the well-being of all but the very poorest inhabitants would be
greatly promoted. Not only would the general practice of bee-keeping
add largely to the national resources, but that addition would chiefly
fall to the share of those classes to whom it would be of most value.
Moreover, in the course of thus adding to their income, the uneducated
classes would become interested in an elevating and instructive pursuit.
It is curious to observe that honey, whether regarded as a
manufactured article or as an agricultural product, is obtained under
economical conditions of exceptional advantage. If regarded as a
manufactured article, we notice that there is no outlay required for
"labour," nor any expense for "raw material." The industrious labourers
are eager to utilise all their strength; they never "combine" except
for the benefit of their master, they never "strike" for wages, and
they provide their own subsistence. All that the master-manufacturer
of honey has to do financially is, to make a little outlay for "fixed
capital" in the needful "plant" of hives and utensils; no "floating
capital" is needed. Then, on the other hand, if we regard honey as
an agricultural product, it presents as such a still more striking
contrast to the economists' theory of what are the "requisites of
production." Not only is there no outlay needed for wages, and none for
raw material, but there is nothing to be paid for "use of a natural
agent." Every square yard of land in the United Kingdom may come to be
cultivated, as in China, but no proprietor will ever be able to claim
"rent" for those "waste products" of the flowers and leaves which none
but the winged workers of the hive can ever utilise.
The recent domestication in England of the Ligurian or Italian Alp
bee adds a new and additional source of interest to bee-culture. We
have therefore gone pretty fully into this part of the subject; and
believe that what is here published with regard to their introduction
embodies the most recent and reliable information respecting them that
is possessed by English apiarians.[2]
[Footnote 2: Some of our apiarian friends may be inclined to be
discouraged from cultivating the Ligurian bees in consequence of the
liability of their becoming hybridised when located in proximity to
the black bees. We can dispel these fears by stating that we have not
unfrequently found that hybrid queens possess the surprising fecundity
of the genuine Italian ones, whilst the English stocks in course of
time become strengthened by the infusion of foreign blood.]
We are under many obligations for the advice and assistance that we
have on many occasions received from Mr. T. W. Woodbury, of Exeter,
whose apiarian skill is unrivalled in this country. Our acknowledgments
are also due to Mr. Henry Taylor, author of an excellent "Bee-keeper's
Manual," for his help and counsel during the earlier years of our
apiarian experience. Both these gentlemen have frequently communicated
to us their contrivances and suggestions, without thought of fee or
reward for them. In common with most recent writers on bee-culture,
we are necessarily largely indebted to the standard works of Huber
and succeeding apiarians. From the more recent volume of the Rev.
L. L. Langstroth we have also obtained useful information. But
having ourselves, of later years, had considerable experience in the
manipulation and practical management of bees, we are enabled to
confirm or qualify the statements of others, as well as to summarise
information gleaned from various sources.
Let it be understood that we have no patented devices to push; we are
free to choose out of the many apiarian contrivances that have been
offered of late years, and we feel perfectly at liberty to praise
or blame as our experience warrants us in doing. It does not follow
that we necessarily disparage hives which are not described herein;
we have sought as much as possible to indicate the _principles_ on
which _good hives_ must be constructed, whatever their outward size or
shape. All through the work, we have endeavoured to adopt the golden
rule of "submission to Nature" by reference to which all the fancied
difficulties of bee-keeping may be easily overcome. In none of the
attempts of men to hold sway over natural objects is the truth of
Bacon's leading doctrine more beautifully illustrated than in the power
that the apiarian exercises in the little world of bees.
Some persons may consider we have used too many poetical quotations in
a book dealing wholly with matters of fact. We trust, however, that
the examination of the extracts will at once remove that feeling of
objection.
We venture to hope that the following pages contain many valuable hints
and interesting statements which may tend to excite increased and
renewed attention to the most useful and industrious of all insects.
Although bees have neither reason nor religion for their guide, yet
from them man may learn many a lesson of virtue and industry, and may
even draw from them thoughts suggestive of trust and faith in God.
We beg leave to conclude our preface, and introduce the subject, by the
following extract from Shakespeare, who, without doubt, kept bees in
that garden at Stratford wherein he used to meditate:--
"So work the honey-bees;
Creatures that, by a rule in Nature, teach
The art of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king and officers of sorts;
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home;
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad;
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds;
Which pillage they, with merry march, bring home
To the tent royal of their emperor:
Who, busied in his majesty, surveys
The singing masons building roofs of gold;
The civil citizens kneading up the honey;
The poor mechanic porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate;
The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum,
Delivering o'er to executors pale
The lazy, yawning drone."
Shakespeare's _Henry V._, Act i. Scene 2.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS
_INTRODUCTION._
PAGE
Literature of Bee-keeping 1
_CHAPTER I._
The Bee as an Insect.
SEC.
I. Classification 7
II. The Queen 8
III. The Drone 19
IV. The Worker 27
V. The Italian or Ligurian Bee 34
VI. Other Foreign Varieties 45
VII. Faculties and Functions 54
VIII. Eggs and Transformations 59
IX. Reproductive Economy 62
X. Relation of Sex to Cells 67
XI. The Rationale of Swarming 72
XII. Increase of Bees 82
_CHAPTER II._
Anatomy and Physiology.
I. Preliminary Remarks 86
II. The Head and Organs of Sensation 88
III. The Thorax and Organs of Motion 97
IV. The Abdomen and Secretive Organs 102
_CHAPTER III._
_Modern Beehives._
I. Common Cottager's Hive 108
II. Neighbours' Crystal Palace Skep 109
III. The Cottager's Hive 110
IV. An Improved Cottager's Hive 112
V. Neighbours' Improved Cottager's Hive 113
VI. The Ladies' Observatory Hive 120
VII. Nutt's Collateral Hive 123
VIII. Huber's Hive 127
IX. The Woodbury Frame Hive 134
X. Neighbours' New Frame Hive 139
XI. Neighbours' Cottager's Frame Hive 142
XII. The Philadelphia Frame Hive 143
XIII. Cheshire's Frame Hive 145
XIV. Abbott's New Frame Hive 146
XV. The Stewarton Hive 146
XVI. The Lanarkshire Hive 155
XVII. Neighbours' Unicomb Observatory Hive--Outdoor 157
XVIII. Neighbours' Unicomb Observatory Hive--Indoor 162
_CHAPTER IV._
Fittings and Apparatus.
I. Bee-Houses 166
II. Zinc Covers 171
III. Wood Covers 172
IV. Quilts 180
V. Bell Glasses 180
VI. Bar Supers 183
VII. Ekes and Nadirs 186
VIII. Impressed Wax Sheets 187
IX. Comb Foundations 190
X. Cheshire's Guide-Maker 191
XI. Bar-Frame Holder 192
XII. Cheshire's Transferring Board 192
XIII. Honey Cutters 193
XIV. The Honey Extractor 193
XV. Cheshire's Nucleus Hive 197
XVI. Queen-Cages 198
XVII. Queen and Drone Preventer 200
XVIII. Bee-Traps 201
XIX. Drone-Traps 201
XX. Bee-Feeders 202
XXI. Fumigators 206
XXII. Bee-Dress or Protector 208
_CHAPTER V._
Bee Manipulation.
I. Hiving Swarms 212
II. Transferring Swarms 218
III. Transferring Old Stocks 222
IV. Driving 226
V. Uniting Colonies 229
VI. Artificial Swarming 233
VII. Queen-Rearing 243
VIII. Introducing New Queens 247
IX. Italianising 251
X. General Hints on Frame Hives 254
XI. Removing Bees 259
XII. Supplying Natural Comb 261
XIII. Applying Supers 264
XIV. Removing Supers 266
XV. Removing Frames 268
XVI. Extracting Honey 274
XVII. Melting Combs down 275
XVIII. Weighing Hives 276
XIX. Feeding 279
XX. Winter Precautions 283
_CHAPTER VI._
Miscellaneous Information.
I. Stings: their Prevention and Cure 286
II. Position of Hives 292
III. Pasturage for Bees 293
IV. Honey 296
V. Pollen, or Bee-Bread 298
VI. Propolis, or Bees' Cement 300
VII. Secretion of Wax 302
VIII. Robbing 305
IX. Diseases of Bees 306
X. Bee Enemies 315
XI. Bee-keeping in London 322
XII. General Remarks 332
_APPENDIX._
International Exhibition of 1862 347
Cases of Acclimatising Bees 349
Philadelphia Exhibition 350
Caledonian Apiarian Society 351
[Illustration]
DESCRIPTION OF PLATES.
PLATE I. (Page 34).
1. Queen bee.
1_a_. Antenna of ditto.
1_b_. Hind leg of ditto.
1_c_. Front view of head of ditto.
1_d_. Mandible of ditto.
2. Worker, or imperfect female.
2_a_. Antenna of ditto.
2_b_. Hind leg of ditto, inner side showing the pollen-brushes.
2_b_* Ditto, outer side showing the pollen-basket.
2_c_* Side view of head.
2_c_. Back view of ditto, showing the junction of the gullet with the
thorax, and position of the tongue and its appendages.
2_d_. Mandible.
3. Male, or drone.
3_a_. Antenna of ditto.
3_b_. Hind leg of ditto.
3_c_. Front view of head of ditto.
3_d_. Mandible of ditto.
A. Enlarged view of the wing. B. Hind edge of fore wing,
showing the thickened margin, and fore edge of hind
wing, showing the hooks, which hold on to the thickened
margin of the fore wing, and keep them together during
flight.
PLATE II. (Page 86).
1. Body of a bee divested of antennæ, legs, and wings, showing
the anatomy of the thorax and natural position of the
stomach.
5*. The eyes.
_a_. The stemmata.
_bbb_. The muscles that move the wings.
_c_. The external covering of the thorax.
_ee_. The bases of the wings.
_d_. The honey-bag, or first stomach.
_f_. The ventricle, or true stomach, distended with food.
_g_. The rectum.
_h_. The biliary vessels.
_i_. Portion of the membranous tissue lining the inner
surface of the segments, and enclosing the stomach
and intestines.
2. The stomach emptied of its contents, to show the muscular
contraction of the ventricle.
_d_. The honey-bag.
_f_. The ventricle.
_g_. The rectum.
_h_. The biliary vessels.
3. The ligula, or tongue, and its appendages.
_l_. The base of the ligula.
_m_. The paraglossæ.
_n_. The maxillæ.
_o_. The labial palpi.
_p_. The tongue.
4. The sting and its muscles.
_s_. Curved base of the outer sheath enclosing the sting.
_r_. Muscles that move the sting.
_q_. The attachment of the muscles to the outer covering
of the abdomen.
_t_. Poison-bag.
_u_. Glands connected with the poison-bag.
_V_. Honey-plates covering the muscles _r_, and to which
the sheaths of the sting are attached at _s_.
** Base of sting connecting with the poison-bag _t_.
* Tip of the same
4* Magnified view of point of sting, showing the serrations on
each side.
5. Three hexagonal prisms of a bee's eye (Swammerdam).
6. Abdominal plates of the bee, detached to show the wax cells.
7. Eggs of bee, natural size, and magnified (from Réaumur).
8. Helminthomorphous or apodal larva of a bee (Réaumur).
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATIONS.
Frontispiece.--Coloured view of Geo. Neighbour and Sons'
Apiary.
Plate I.--Italian Alp Queen, Drone and Worker Bees, with
Anatomical Drawings _Facing page_ 34
Plate II.--Dissected Bee, with Illustrations of various
Members _Facing page_ 86
Common Cottager's Hive 108
Neighbours' Crystal Palace Skep 109
The Cottager's Hive 110
Improved Cottager's Hive 112
Improved Cottage Hive (No. 5) 113
Improved Cottage Hive (No. 6), no windows 119
The Ladies' Observatory Hive 120
Nutt's Collateral Hive 123
Woodbury's Bar-frame Hive (wood) 135
Woodbury's Single Bar Frame as taken from hive 135
Woodbury's Bar-frame Hive (straw) 136
Woodbury's Bar-frame Hive (glass) 138
Neighbours' New Frame Hive (wood) 139
Neighbours' New Frame Hive (straw), with Frame Super 142
Neighbours' Cottager's Frame Hive (wood) 143
Neighbours' Philadelphia Frame Hive 144
Stewarton or Ayrshire Hive 147
Neighbours' Outdoor Unicomb Hive 158
Neighbours' Indoor Unicomb Hive 162
Bee House for two Hives--Front view 166
Bee House for two Hives--Back view 167
Bee House for twelve Hives--Front view 169
Bee House for twelve Hives--Back view 170
Ornamented Zinc Cover 171
Zinc Cover for Cottager's Hive 172
Wooden Cover for Frame Hive 174
Neighbours' New Frame Hive, with Cover, Stand, and Pair of
Divisional Supers--Back view 175
Neighbours' New Frame Hive, ditto--Closed front view 176
Neighbours' New Frame Hive and Frame Super (glass), with
large Cover and on Stand--Front view 178
Neighbours' New Frame Hive--Front view, closed 178
Neighbours' New Frame Hive (No. 81). Wood with Straw
Crown, and Large Window in close-fitting Cover and
Stand 179
Bell and Flat-shaped Glasses (5 varieties) 181
Payne's Glasses 182
Flap-topped Glass, with Cover for Table 182
Woodbury Glass-sided Bar Super 183
Bar-frame Super--Glass Sides and Top, with Shutters 184
Neighbours' New Divisional Super 184
Neighbours' New Sectional Super 185
Neighbours' New Bar-frame Holder 192
Honey Cutters 193
Honey Extractor 194
Neighbours' Queen and Drone Preventer 200
Neighbours' Bottle Feeder 203
Neighbours' New Can Feeders 204
Neighbours' Round Feeders 205
New Wood Feeder 206
Fumigators (2 illustrations) 207
Bee Dress or Protector 209
Bee Veil 210
Contrivance for protecting Queen Cell 244
Guide Comb Glasses 263
Weighing Hives 277
Bees at Exhibition of 1862 348
Exterior of an Apiary 352
Interior of an Apiary 353
[Illustration]
INTRODUCTION.
LITERATURE OF BEE-KEEPING.
JUST a few words at starting on the history of the bee
in ancient and modern literature. Our work is not a critical survey,
and still less an exhaustive treatise; but even that popular outline
which it is our aim to produce seems defective without some mention
of the great bee-students of the past. We find the first definitive
description of the insect in Aristotle's "History of Animals," written
about the middle of the fourth century before Christ, and combining
much sound scientific information on our subject with other statements
which better information has had to reject. A little before him
lived Aristomachus, of Cilicia, who wrote works on agriculture and
domestic economy which are lost to us except in a few quotations,
but of whom we are told that he devoted some fifty-eight years to a
continual observance of the habits of bees. One Philiscus, of Thasos,
is mentioned as another of their votaries, who betook himself to a
forest life in order uninterruptedly to pursue their study. Then just
after the Christian era came Pliny the Elder, from whom we learn
these few particulars of the two just named, and whose celebrated
"Natural History," which is the work rather of a student than of a
master, honours the bee with an elaborate and interesting description.
Shortly after him Columella, in his work "On Rustic Matters," gave
copious instructions on bee-keeping, which, though reproducing some
older errors, are greatly in advance of any that had appeared, and
place him, for the accuracy that they display, at the head of the
apiarians of antiquity. Theophrastus, Celsus, and Varro must also be
ranked among the ancient writers whose attention was drawn to this
industrious insect. But perhaps the most renowned of classic works upon
the subject is the fourth book of the "Georgics" of Virgil, in which we
are presented with a minute treatise upon bees and their culture, with
all the sense as well as nonsense that then passed current thereupon,
together with that most beautiful passage in the poet's writings, the
story of the visit of Orpheus to the shades, which is appended by one
of those incidental connecting-links of which ancient poets were wont
to avail themselves.
In more modern times the principal writers have been Swammerdam.
The Dutch naturalist; Maraldi, an Italian mathematician; Schirach,
a Saxon clergyman; Réaumur, well known for his thermometer; Bonnet,
a Swiss entomologist and jurist; the famous Dr. John Hunter; and
above all Francis Huber, of Geneva. The last of these, though totally
blind, contrived, principally by the aid of his very intelligent and
painstaking assistant, Burnens to accumulate a long series of minute
observations which have brought about an entire revolution in the
science. In connection with Huber must be mentioned Mlle. Jurine,
who, by her delicate microscopic examinations, rendered him the most
important services, and gave more than one valuable discovery to the
world. At the same period lived Dr. John Evans, who may be fitly styled
the poet-laureate of the bee. His poem, "The Bees," from which we shall
make numerous quotations, is written with great taste, and combines,
with rare felicity, scientific accuracy of detail with a poetic spirit
which never flags.[3] A little later than these, though in part their
contemporary, came Dr. Bevan, whose name is still cited as among the
highest authorities on the subject, and whose work, "The Honey Bee,"
was regarded as its great text-book in our language, till superseded,
with the progress of discoveries, by one under the same title from
the pen of the Rev. L. L. Langstroth. This last gentleman, who is a
Presbyterian minister in Ohio, stands undoubtedly at the present day
as the foremost apiarian of the English-speaking race. But we are
forced to admit that the Germans bear the palm above us, for _all_ the
great advances in our knowledge of the bee which have been made for a
generation have come from them. To Dr. Dzierzon,[4] therefore, a Roman
Catholic priest of Carlsmarkt in Silesia, to whose acute investigations
the great mass of these are to be ascribed, must be conceded a rank
scarcely second to that of Huber; while Baron von Berlepsch, of Coburg,
who is ever ready to follow up and improve upon the researches of the
"great, master," has beyond question earned for himself a position
inferior to that of the master alone. Of famous Scotch writers we
should allude to Bonner, of Glasgow, who lived in the latter part of
the last century, and the Rev. Dr. Dunbar, who dates at the beginning
of this.
[Footnote 3: Dr. Evans's poem consisted of four parts, of which only
three were ever published. We possess an author's presentation copy
in which is a written memorandum that the manuscript of the remainder
had been prepared for the press, and was still in the keeping of the
family. We have written numerous letters with a view to tracking
it out for publication; but very recently we have learnt that the
only survivor of nine children is unable at present to discover the
whereabouts of the document. Dr. Evans was some time a physician at
Shrewsbury, but removed into and died in Wales.]
[Footnote 4: Pronounced _Dzeert-sohn_. Some of the above names, it may
not be amiss to add, are not always spelt correctly by bee-writers. In
particular, nearly all of them, copying each other, omit the accent in
"Réaumur" (_Ray-oh-mewr_), which we find French biographers unanimous
in inserting. We have also seen "Miraldi" in a recent popular work,
while one author had a fancy to write "Hüber," which is evidently a
pure mistake.]
Of the mass of other names that press in upon us it will be impossible
in such narrow limits to supply any details. The literature of the
subject is truly enormous, and all that we can do is to furnish a list
in rough chronological order of the more noteworthy of those who have
in some way rendered service to our acquaintance with the bee. Besides
the great naturalists Linnæus and Cuvier we therefore select the
following:--
Sixteenth century.--Hill, Nikol Jacob. "De Proprietatibus Apum"
(anon.) published about 1510.
Seventeenth century.--Butler, Purchas, Goedart, Swammerdam, Sir
C. Wren, Hartlib, Gedde. Rusden, Ray (with Willughby and Dr. M.
Lister), Dr. Martin John (of Germany).
Eighteenth century.--Maraldi, Mme. Merian, Dr. Warder, Dr. Derham,
Réaumur, Thorley, Lyonnet, Vanière (poet, of Holland), Dobbs, Rev.
Stephen White, Schirach, Janscha, Bonner, Debraw, Thos. and Danl.
Wildman, Gilb. White, Mme. Vicat, Pösl, Abbé Della Rocca, Hubbard,
Keys, Bonnet, Riem, Dr. Jno. Hunter.
Nineteenth Century.--François Huber (with his son Pierre, and
Burnens), Latreille, Mlle. Jurine, Spitzner, T. A. Knight, Rev.
Dr. Dunbar, Huish, Dr. Evans (poet), Feburier, Kirby and Spence,
Humphrey, Baron von Ehrenfels, Newport, Dr. Bevan, Gundelach, Lord
Brougham, Pastor Oettl, Capt. von Baldenstein, Nutt, Payne, Taylor,
Golding, Maj. Munn, Woodbury, Quinby (of America), Wagner (ditto).
Of contemporary writers in our own language, we may, in addition to
Langstroth, refer to Rev. W. C. Cotton, Samuelson (with Dr. Hicks),
Hunter, Cheshire, and Pettigrew; while to the German names already
given may be added those of Professors Leuckart and Von Siebold, Drs.
Dönhoff and Küchenmeister, Pastors Kleine and Schönfeld, Vogel, Dathe,
Rothe, Count von Stosch, and Schmid, the editor of the _Bienenzeitung_.
It is worth noting how large is the number of apiarians of different
lands to whom the title of "reverend" is prefixed.
But while conceding to Germany an unquestioned first position in
the theoretical department, we do _not_ admit the accuracy of Von
Berlepsch's assertion that "in all other countries bee-keeping is
almost throughout a mere plaything and amusement." If the Baron would
honour our island with a visit, we could show him, from one end of it
to the other, a goodly number of very different cases; and though we
have much to learn, and have not long gone systematically to work to
learn it, there are not wanting clear and increasing signs that the
right course is entered, upon, and must in time secure corresponding
results. In the year 1874 was established the British Bee-keepers'
Association, with one of the first entomologists of the day, Sir John
Lubbock, at its head; and under its auspices there have since been
held annual shows at the Crystal and Alexandra Palaces, at which bees
themselves, their dwellings and paraphernalia, and their products,
have been submitted to the awards of judges as well as to the popular
inspection. Several periodicals are either wholly or in part devoted to
apiculture, and altogether appearances are healthy and hopeful. While
therefore we still do look for amusement from our bees, we claim to
experience a more solid satisfaction as well.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
CHAPTER I.
THE BEE AS AN INSECT.
§ I. CLASSIFICATION.
THERE is a self-complacency in commencing a subject
scientifically, so let us devote our first half-page to defining the
place of the bee in the animal kingdom. The common English honey
bee, sometimes called the black bee, is known by the name of _Apis
mellifica_; while the new favourite, the Italian or Ligurian bee, has
obtained the specific name of _ligustica_, though naturalists are
now satisfied that the two are only varieties of a single species.
The genus Apis belongs to the order Hymenoptera, or membrane-winged
insects, which some entomologists have subdivided into families and
sections: of these, one family will comprise the honey bees, humble
bees, etc.; another the wasps, of which the hornet is one; and others
respectively the ants, the gall insects, the saw-flies, and certain
parasites and other winged creatures of little familiarity. The entire
order belongs to the class Insecta, and that to the grand division
Articulata, or conjointed animals. In England alone there are 250
native species of bee.
Turning now to the particular insect with which we intend to interest
ourselves, we observe that every hive or bee colony comprises in
summer three distinct classes of bees, each class having functions
peculiar to itself, and essential to the maintenance and well-being
of the community. As each bee knows its own proper duties, they
all work harmoniously and zealously together for the common weal.
Certain apparent exceptions to the good-fellowship of the bees will
be hereafter noticed, but these arise out of essential conditions in
the social economy of the bee community. That _honey bees_ should live
in society, as they do in hives, is absolutely needful. A bee in an
isolated condition is a very helpless delicate little creature, soon
susceptible of cold, and paralysed thereby unless able to join her
companions before night comes on. By congregating in large numbers bees
maintain warmth, whatever the external temperature may be.
The three classes of bees are--the queen bee, or perfect female; the
working bees, or undeveloped females; and the drones, or male bees.
§ II. THE QUEEN,
appropriately styled, by German bee-keepers, the mother bee, is the
only perfectly developed female among the whole population of each
separate colony. Thus her majesty indisputably sways her sceptre by
a divine right, because she lives and reigns in the hearts of loving
children and subjects.
The queen may very readily be distinguished from the rest of the bees
by the greater length of her body and the comparative shortness of her
wings; her legs are longer, and are not furnished with either brushes
or baskets as those of the working bee, for, being constantly fed by
the latter, she does not need these implements; the upper surface of
her body is of a brighter black than the other bees', whilst her colour
underneath is a yellowish brown;[5] her wings, which do not extend
more than half the length of her body, are sinewy and strong; her long
abdomen tapers nearly to a point; her head is rounder, her tongue
more slender, and much shorter, than that of the working bee, and her
sting is curved. Her movements in the hive are measured and majestic,
though when out of her proper sphere, as at swarming time, she is
distinguished, on the contrary, by the rapidity of her steps. She has
a peculiar scent, which is so attractive to workers, that Mr. Mahan,
of Philadelphia, states he has several times had them alight upon his
fingers, a mile away from his apiary, after he had been handling the
royal mother.
[Footnote 5: Yellow Italian queens form an exception in point of
colour. See Plate I. Fig. I.]
It is the chief function of the queen to lay the eggs from which all
future bees originate, the multiplication of the species being the
purpose of her existence; and she follows it up with an assiduity
similar to that with which the workers construct combs or collect
honey. A queen will lay in the breeding season from 1,000 to 3,000 eggs
a day. Both Langstroth and Von Berlepsch have seen queens lay at the
rate of six per minute, or more; and the latter observer, on supplying
his queen with some new empty comb, found at the end of twenty-four
hours that she had laid 3,021 eggs, which at her observed speed she
would accomplish in eight hours, and thus have sixteen for rest. She
kept up to nearly this rate for twenty days, in which she filled 57,000
cells; and, what is still more surprising, she went on in like style
for _five years_, during which, at the lowest reckoning, she laid.
1,300,000 eggs, or 300,000 per year. But with ordinary queens, says
the Baron, 1,200 a day is excellently good work, and this rate from
February to September, with allowance for slacker periods, will produce
more than 150,000 bees in a year. "_Most_ queens," says Dzierzon, "in
spacious hives and at a favourable season, lay 60,000 in a month,
... and a specially fertile queen, in the four years which she on an
average lives, lays over a million eggs." This is indeed a vast number;
but when there is taken into consideration the multitudes required for
swarms, the constant lessening of their strength by death in various
ways, and the many casualties attending them in their distant travels
in search of the luscious store, it does not seem that the case is
overstated.
To keep up these heavy productive duties the queen requires to eat in
corresponding proportions, and these she varies, or the bees vary them
for her, in the same ratio with the laying itself. She sucks honey from
the cells direct, or has it supplied to her by the workers; and, as an
important additional fact, the latter regularly nourish her with pollen
already partially digested in their own stomachs.
In a glass unicomb hive--which we shall hereafter describe--all the
movements of the queen bee may be traced. She may be seen thrusting
her head into a cell to discover whether it is occupied with an egg
or honey, and, if empty, she turns round in a dignified manner and
inserts her long body--so long that she is able to deposit the egg at
the bottom of the cell; she then passes on to another, and so continues
industriously multiplying her laborious subjects. It not unfrequently
happens when the queen is prolific, and if it is an early season, that
many eggs are wasted for want of unoccupied cells; for in that case the
queen leaves them exposed at the bottom of the hive, where they are
greedily devoured by the bees.
The queen bee, unlike the great majority of her subjects, is a stayer
at home. On the second or third day of her princess life she usually
sets out on the all-important concern of her marriage, and when once
this is satisfactorily accomplished she never afterwards leaves the
hive, except to lead off an emigrating swarm. Evans, with proper
loyalty, has duly furnished a glowing epithalamium for the queen bee,
thus:--
"But now, when noontide Sirius glares on high,
With him young love ascends the glowing sky,
From vein to vein swift shoots prolific fire,
And thrills each insect fibril with desire.
Thence, Nature, to fulfil thy prime decree,
Wheels round in wanton rings the courtier bee;
Now shyly distant, now with bolder air,
He woos and wins the all-complying fair;
Through fields of ether, veiled in vapoury gloom,
They seek with amorous haste the nuptial room,
As erst the immortal pair on Ida's height
Wreathed round their noon of joy ambrosial night."
The loyalty and attachment of bees to their queen is one of their
most remarkable characteristics; they constantly supply her with
food, and fawn upon and caress her, softly touching her with their
antennæ--a favour which she occasionally returns. When she moves about
the hive all the bees through whom she successively passes pay her
the same homage; she experiences no inconvenience from overcrowding,
for though the part of the hive to which she is journeying may be the
most populous, way is immediately made, the common bees tumbling over
each other to get out of her path, so great is their anxiety not to
interfere with the royal progress. A number of them often form a circle
round her, none venturing to turn their backs upon her, but all anxious
to show that respect and attention due to her rank and station.
The majestic deportment of the queen bee, and the homage paid to her,
are, with a little poetic licence, thus described by Evans:--
"But mark, of regal port and awful mien,
Where moves with measured pace the insect queen!
Twelve chosen guards, with slow and solemn gait,
Bend at her nod, and round her person wait.
Not eastern despots, of their splendour vain,
Can boast, in all their pomp, a brighter train
Of fear-bound satraps; not in bonds of love
Can loyal Britons more obedient move."
Some modification has to be made, however, in the old ideas on this
head, though, so long as it is understood that the reverence of the
bees for their queen is an official and not a personal reverence, it
may be allowed, except as to the existence of a regular guard, to be
for the most part true enough. But the government is a limited and not
an absolute monarchy, for the workers often impose their own will upon
the sovereign. This homage, moreover, is paid only to matron queens,
as Dr. Dunbar noted whilst experimenting on the combative qualities of
the queen bee. "So long," says he, "as the queen which survived the
rencontre with her rival remained a virgin, not the slightest degree
of respect or attention was paid her; not a single bee gave her food;
she was obliged, as often as she required it, to help herself; and, in
crossing the honey cells for that purpose, she had to scramble, often
with difficulty, over the crowd, not an individual of which got out of
her way, or seemed to care whether she fed or starved. But no sooner
did she become a mother than the scene was changed," and all treated
her with due attention.
The sting of the queen bee is utilised in depositing her eggs, and
she does not use it for hostile purposes except in combat with her
sister queens. Mr. Langstroth remarks that this forbearance apparently
arises from the knowledge that the use of the sting might prove fatal
to herself, and thus seriously jeopardise the whole hive. He adds that
she will carry it to the extent of allowing herself to be torn limb
from limb without an attempt at stinging, though if closely held in the
hand she will sometimes use her jaws, which, being more powerful than
those of other bees, may occasion some discomfort. But she admits of
no rival to her throne; almost her first act, on coming forth from the
cell, is an attempt to tear open and destroy the cells containing the
pupæ of princesses likely to become competitors. Should it so happen
that another queen of similar age does exist in the hive at the same
time, then, if one be not promptly destroyed by the workers, as is now
considered to be the rule, the two are usually brought into contact
with each other, in order to fight it out, and decide by a struggle,
mortal to one of them, which is to be the ruler; the stronger of course
is victorious, and remains supreme, while her rival either falls dead
or is left to die.[6] Either of these, it must be admitted, is a wiser
method of settling the affair than it would be to range the whole
hive under two distinct banners, and so create a civil war, in which
the members of the rival bands would kill and destroy each other for
matters they individually had little or no concern about. The bees
care not which queen it is, so long as they are certain of having one
to rule over them and perpetuate the community; indeed, they have been
known in some cases to form rings round the respective combatants, and
even to force them to the conflict if unaware of each other's presence.
But Dr. Bevan tells us that there do exist queens which _will not_
fight. The workers do not always decide: the matter in such case; it
is, indeed, nothing uncommon, says Vogel, for two fruitful queens to be
allowed to live together; and we have had instances of the same kind
ourselves, without being able to give a reason other than that "the
exceptions prove the rule." An Italian queen, it is said, is _usually_
assisted in her third year by a younger mother born in her own hive.
[Footnote 6: Dr. Bevan mentions examples both of instant fatality and
of survival for twenty-four hours. The sting of the queen is evidently
less powerful than that of workers, as her poison-bag is smaller; and
we learn from Von Gindly that he once succeeded in inducing a queen
to sting him, when the effect was like little more than the prick of
a needle. Kleine also, after persevering attempts, was once stung by
a queen, and so was Hoffnann of Vienna--the queen in this last case
losing thereby the faculty of laying.]
These royal duels, though no longer regarded as the invariable routine,
have been abundantly testified to by undoubted witnesses, and some of
these have deduced a singular law as governing the combatants. Neither
queen, it is said, will sting her rival unless she has her at an
advantage, and can thrust her body beneath the other's, and inflict the
fatal thrust without fear either of receiving another simultaneously,
or of being unable to withdraw her own sting. If on the contrary each
has grappled the other in readiness for mutual slaughter, they will at
once separate and commence the battle anew.
After perusing the description given above of the attachment of bees
to their queen, it may be easy to imagine the consternation a hive
is thrown into when deprived of her presence. The bees first make a
diligent search for their monarch in the hive, and then afterwards
rush forth in immense numbers to seek her. If the search is unavailing
they will return to the hive and commence what Langstroth calls
"a succession of wailings in the minor key," which no experienced
bee-master can mistake. When such a commotion is observed in an apiary
the competent apiarian will repair the loss by giving a queen. The bees
have generally their own remedy for such a calamity, in their power
of raising a new queen from amongst their larvæ; but if neither this
nor the former means is available, the whole colony gradually dwindles
and in time dies off. The following is the method by which working
bees provide a successor to the throne when deprived of their queen by
accident, or in anticipation of the first swarm, which is always led by
the old queen:--
They select, when not more than three days old, an egg previously
intended for a worker bee--but a larva will serve, so it be not grown
to its full size--and then they enlarge the cell so selected by
destroying the surrounding partitions; they thus form a royal cradle,
in shape very much like an acorn-cup inverted. The chosen embryo is
then fed liberally with a peculiar description of nurture, called
by naturalists "royal jelly"--a pungent food composed of honey and
digested pollen, and prepared by the worker bees exclusively for those
of the larvæ that are destined to become candidates for the honour
of royalty. The effect of this is both to perfect and to hasten the
development of the future insect, so that instead of a worker being
produced at the end of twenty-one days, a queen emerges in the reduced
term of sixteen.
But should the deprivation happen at a time when, either from the
season or from abnormal circumstances, there is no worker brood in the
hive, the bees will then often exhibit a series of curious and even
ludicrous struggles, which Von Berlepsch has aptly compared to the
clutchings at straws made by a drowning man. Themselves individually
are no sufferers; but bees look beyond themselves, and posterity they
must have. Their sole preoccupation, therefore, is to raise drones and
a queen. Some of them often develop a capacity to lay drone eggs (as
explained under § ix.), and most of these they will carefully cherish
for their natural purpose, but others they will surround with royal
cells and feed with royal jelly, so that the poor things on hatching
are soon dosed to death in a frantic effort to change their sex! And if
drone eggs are not to hand they will even try to hatch a queen out of a
lump of pollen! In more senses than one then we see that when bees have
lost their queen they have lost their head.
As curiously dissimilar, though not discordant, instances of the effect
of removing the queen from a hive, we may mention that Mr. Langstroth
once tried the experiment for only two or three minutes, when he had
all in confusion immediately, and found two days after that royal cells
had been prepared; while Dr. Bevan once effected the removal so quietly
that for eighteen hours all went on as usual, and then on a sudden
the fact became known, and everything was changed into agitation and
distraction. Should a queen so separated be detained from her subjects,
she resents the interference, refuses food, pines, and dies.
The observations upon the queen bee needful to verify the
above-mentioned facts can only be made in hives constructed for the
purpose, of which the "Unicomb Observatory Hive" is the best. In
ordinary hives the queen is scarcely ever to be seen; where there
are several rows of comb she invariably keeps between them, both for
warmth and for greater security from danger. The writer has frequently
observed in stocks which have unfortunately died, that the queen was
one of the last to expire; and she is always more difficult to gain
possession of than other bees, being by instinct taught that she is
indispensable to the welfare of the colony.
The queen enjoys a far longer life than any of her subjects, her age
very often extending to four or even five years; her fertility will,
however, except in rare cases, have left her long before that term, or
she will lay only drone eggs, so that as a general rule a substitute
is better found for her when she has entered her third year. Under the
next section, and those on "Reproductive Economy" and "Relation of Sex
to Cells," as well as in Chapter IV. under "Queen Cages," will be found
other information connected with the queen.
§ III. THE DRONE.
The drones are the male bees; they possess no sting, are larger and
more hairy than the workers, and may be easily distinguished by their
heavy motion, thick-set form, and louder humming. They have a strong
odour, which becomes very noticeable if several of them are confined in
a box. Evans thus describes the drones:--
"But now, when April smiles through many a tear,
And the bright Bull receives the rolling year,
Another tribe, to different fates assigned,
In ampler cells their giant limbs confined,
Burst through the yielding wax, and wheel around
On heavier wing, and hum a deeper sound.
No sharpened sting they boast; yet, buzzing loud,
Before the hive, in threatening circles, crowd
The unwieldy drones. Their short proboscis sips
No luscious nectar from the wild thyme's lips;
From the lime's leaf no amber drops they steal,
Nor bear their grooveless thighs the foodful meal;
On others' toils, in pampered leisure, thrive
The lazy fathers of the industrious hive.
Yet oft, we're told, these seeming idlers share
The pleasing duties of parental care,
With fond attention guard each genial cell,
And watch the embryo, bursting from its shell."
But Dr. Evans had been "told" what was not correct when
he sought to dignify drones with the office of "nursing fathers"
("brood bees" as the Germans used to call them), for that task is
undertaken by the younger of the working bees. Nor are they even
utilised in maintaining warmth, for they are expelled just at a time
when warmth is most required. No occupation falls to the lot of the
drones in gathering honey, nor have they the means provided them
by Nature for assisting in the labours of the hive. They are the
progenitors of working bees, and nothing more; so far as is known, that
is the only purpose of their short existence.
In a well-populated hive the number of drones is computed at from
one to two thousand. "Naturalists," says Huber, "have been extremely
embarrassed to account for the number of males in most hives, which
seem only a burden to the community, since they appear to fulfil
no function. But we now begin to discern the object of Nature
in multiplying them to such an extent. As fecundation cannot be
accomplished within the hive, and as the queen is obliged to traverse
the expanse of the atmosphere, it is requisite that the males should
be numerous, that she may have the chance of meeting some one of them
in her flight. Were only two or three in each hive there would be
little probability of their departure at the same instant with the
queen, or that they would meet her in their excursions; and most of the
females might thus remain sterile." It is important for the safety of
the queen bee that her stay in the air should be as brief as possible,
as her large size and slowness of flight render her an easy prey to
birds. It is not now thought that the queen always pairs with a drone
of the _same_ hive, as Huber seems to have supposed. On the contrary,
it would appear that with bees, as with so many other animals, there is
a provision against such interbreeding. Mr. John Hunter, in his "Manual
of Bee-keeping," speaks of this as amounting to a _law_, and thus
represents the fact as diametrically opposite to Huber's conclusion.
But we believe the question to be complicated by another--whether the
drones that inhabit a particular hive at any given time are regularly
born of the same family with that hive, or whether they are not very
often to be viewed as "strangers within the gates." At all events, it
appears established that the queen and drones within a hive do watch
each other's movements when the former is about taking her nuptial
flight, and that the union is sometimes consummated close at hand,
though certainly never attempted within the precincts of the hive
itself. This last circumstance, which by all accounts is absolutely
invariable, would seem to be the extent of the provision, and it is
one that in ordinary circumstances would preclude the recurrence of
in-and-in breeding. A confirmation of these views is afforded from the
interesting experience of Captain von Baldenstein with his one Italian
stock maintained by itself for seven years, who found that all this
time, _with one exception_, the young queens produced bastard workers,
clearly proving that all but that one were impregnated by the drones of
other colonies.
The drone that happens to be the selected husband is by no means so
favoured as at first sight might appear, for it is a law of Nature
that the bridegroom does not survive the wedding-day. His death,
however, is doubtless generally instantaneous, whereas in other case
it would probably have been one of torture or starvation. In 1867
the German apiarian Von Klipstein was witness of an instance of the
wedding ceremony, when a young queen, who was leading a swarm, became
detached from it and settled upon a currant bush, where she was joined
by a drone; after a few seconds the two flew away together for three
yards and then fell to the ground, when the queen disengaged herself,
and the drone was found to be dead. But we learn from the _American
Bee Journal_, of March 1861, that two similar cases were observed in
the United States some years earlier than this. The latter of these
two agreed with the above in showing the immediate death of the male
bee, the rule as to which is also confirmed by a fact noticed by Mr.
Langstroth, that if a drone is taken between the fingers and squeezed,
as one would squeeze a wasp to cause protrusion of the sting, it
will give a crack and shrivel up dead as if struck by lightning. The
instance in point was also communicated to the _Bee Journal_ through
this gentleman, it having been noticed, on a July afternoon in 1860,
by his friend Mr. W. W. Gary, of Coleraine, Massachusetts. The queen
was returning from a presumably unsuccessful flight, when a drone met
her at about three feet from the hive entrance; a sharp snap was heard
almost directly, and the male fell to the ground perfectly dead. The
other case was witnessed by the Rev. Mr. Millette, of Whitemarsh,
Pennsylvania, and occurred in June 1859, during the process of hiving.
A young queen--there were four in the swarm--"was observed on the wing,
and in a moment after was seized by a drone. After flying about a rod
they both came to the ground in close contact; ... the drone was about
departing (having broken loose) ... but after crawling about ... in a
very few minutes it expired"--the circumstance being probably quite
exceptional in this lapse of minutes, and it is unfortunate that we
have no information as to the immediate or subsequent effect upon the
queen.
As a general rule the royal lady, not meeting drones straightway upon
her issue from the hive, spends a little time in reconnoitring her
home, and then, often not till her second day's exit, sails away high
into the air, and sometimes to a considerable distance horizontally as
well. "A Renfrewshire Bee-keeper" states in the _British Bee Journal_,
of May 1877, that an undoubted instance had come to his knowledge in
which a common queen, located five miles distant in a bee-line measured
upon the Ordnance map, had become impregnated by one of his own Italian
drones--these being positively the only Italians in the entire district.
On the queen's return--that is, supposing her object to have been
achieved--she will exhibit the male organ adhering to her extremity,
and sometimes she is unable to free herself of it, nor can the
bee-keeper give her any assistance without the risk of effects as fatal
to herself as they were to her spouse. The explanation of this series
of phenomena lies in the structure of the organ itself. It is simply
the expanded prolongation of the seminal duct, and is attached to
the orifice like the sleeve of a coat to the shoulder, but is wholly
internal. To be protruded it must therefore be turned literally inside
out, and to effect this a powerful inflation is required, in which act
the forces of the system are in some way fatally ruptured; while, as
Professor Leuckart very rationally deduces--thus clearing up another
mystery--it is only when the breathing vessels are filled by motion
in the air that the drone is able to accomplish it at all. Then the
singular scales and protuberances with which the organ is beset render
it when once inserted very difficult of withdrawal, even if its owner
were not already dead. Mr. Langstroth remarks as to the design of
this seemingly harsh provision that in default of it the queen would
be compelled to remain with the drone much longer in the air, thus
incurring far greater danger of falling a prey to some passing bird.
After all it is undoubtedly one of those instances as to which it may
be said of Nature, in Tennyson's words:--
"So careful of the type she seems, So careless of the single life."
Her majesty, although thus left a widowed, is by no means a sorrowful
bride, for in from two to three days she becomes the happy mother of a
large family. Such at least is the normal rule, but should the season
be late in the autumn she may not commence laying till the following
spring. It cannot be said that she pays no respect to the memory of her
departed lord, for she never marries again. Once impregnated--as is the
case with most insects--the queen bee continues productive during the
remainder of her existence.
The swarming season being over--that is about the end of July, when
the gathering has materially slackened--a general massacre of the
"lazy fathers" shortly follows. Dr. Bevan observes that now their work
is completed, "they are regarded as useless consumers of the fruits
of others' labour: love is at once converted into hate, and a general
proscription takes place." For it _was_ love, the drones having
previously been petted and fed with prepared pollen in the same way
as the queen herself. Von Berlepsch describes the work of destruction
as commencing with the casting forth of the drone brood just issuing
from the cells, after which the larvæ and nymphs are similarly treated.
Then the drones themselves are chased from the honey stores, and a
watch is kept to prevent their access thereto. On finding it hopeless
they crouch away together in corners, till, when thoroughly exhausted
by hunger, the workers drive them out one by one, and they die with
cold and hunger: very few of them are stung. This work goes on night
and day, and occasionally they collect to die in such a heap before
the flight-hole that there is a danger of their suffocating the hive.
Disabled or useless workers are dealt with in an equally summary
fashion; but in the case of a super-annuated queen, the best opinions
are that she is allowed to take her own quietus.
Supposing the drones come forth in April or May, which is the usual
period, then, as their destruction takes place somewhere about the
commencement of August, three or four months will be the ordinary
extent of their existence; but should it so happen that the development
of the queen has been retarded, or that the hive has by chance been
deprived of her, the massacre of the drones is deferred. On the other
hand, in case of the cutting short of the gathering season by bad
weather, it occasionally happens at an earlier date--even so soon
as May. Now and then a drone or two escape, and prolong their lives
through the winter.
§ IV. THE WORKER.
The working bees form by far the most numerous of the three classes
contained in the hive. They are the smallest of the bees; in colour
they are dark brown or nearly black (except the Italians and other
foreign varieties), and they are distinguished by their activity upon
the wing. As to their numbers in a colony, "an ordinary first swarm
from a straw hive," says Von Berlepsch, "contains from twelve to twenty
thousand, but I have had large wood hives in which, at a moderate
computation, there were living at the end of June about a hundred
thousand bees:" from thirty to fifty thousand, however, will better
represent the strength of an average stock in an English hive. The
worker, though formerly spoken of under the term "neuter," is of the
same sex as the queen, but is only partially developed, and thus, with
some exceptions (see § ix.), it is incapable of laying eggs. But any
egg which would ordinarily produce a worker bee may, by the cell being
enlarged and the "royal jelly" supplied to the larva, be hatched into
a mature and perfect queen. This most curious fact may be verified in
any apiary by most interesting experiments, which are capable of being
turned to important use.
The lives of the worker bees vary very greatly, and are much more
prolonged during the repose of winter than in the wear and tear of
the gathering season. Von Berlepsch describes three careful sets of
experiments which he carried out for the purpose of attaining more
exact knowledge on this point. In one of these he introduced an Italian
queen into an ordinary stock at the beginning of October when all the
old brood was hatched; he then found as a result that the last of the
common bees had disappeared at the end of May, so that some of them for
a certainty lived eight months, and possibly more, though it seems most
probable that the last to die were also the latest born. In another
case, the queen having died at the commencement of winter, he strictly
isolated the hive, and, the season being exceptionally mild, he found
that some of the bees continued alive for _ten and a half months_. His
remaining experiment bore upon the summer term of existence, and it
resulted in exhibiting _six weeks_ as the _average_, and three months
as the outside possible period of lifetime. Dzierzon points out the
difference produced by the character of a bee's employment. To have
to fly a long distance to its pasturage will soon wear it out, and so
will knocking its wings against sharp leaves, as is the case with the
bluebottle, the thick corn amid which this plant grows rendering the
effect very much worse. But if, he adds, they pass the summer in entire
repose, as a hive without a queen may do, then, if well fed, their
lives may be prolonged for _a year or even more_.
The population of a hive is very small during the winter in comparison
with the vast numbers gathering produce in the summer--produce which
they themselves live to enjoy but for a short period. So that not only,
as of old, may lessons of industry be learned from bees, but they also
teach self-denial to mankind, since they labour for the community
rather than for themselves. Dr. Bevan, in describing the age of bees,
thus adapts the well-known lines of Homer in allusion to the fleeting
generations of men:--
"Like leaves on trees the race of bees is found,
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;
Another race the spring or fall supplies,
They droop successive, and successive rise."
With regard to the functions of worker bees, Huber supposed that
there were two distinct classes, one acting as gatherers of store
and the other as nurses of brood. This however has been demonstrated
to be a mistake, for the distinction is not one of class, but simply
of age, the younger workers, for the first two or three weeks
of their existence,[7] assuming the whole of the inner or home
occupations--viz., those of feeding the larvæ, the queen, and the
drones, and of making wax, building comb, and closing the cells, as
well as keeping the hive in a state of cleanliness--and these duties
they retain until themselves sufficiently vigorous to range the
fields in quest of supplies. After this term of apprenticeship they
enter upon the labours of adult bees, and collect honey, pollen, and
propolis--particulars as to which functions, and that of wax secretion,
will be found in the third and fourth sections of our next chapter, and
in the sections devoted to these four items in Chapter VI. Water and
salt are also brought in to aid in the sustenance of the young brood.
The older bees perform the duties of the younger when there are none
or insufficient of the latter in the hive; but they will hang about
perfectly idle if kept at home by weather when there is a full staff
of their younger sisters. These last, on the contrary, cannot possibly
supply the places of the older until at the very least they have
attained their eleventh or twelfth day.
[Footnote 7: German observations cited by Von Berlepsch give from ten
to nineteen days. The Baron gives provisionally the sixteenth day as
the rule. The first sporting before the hive is given at from the
fourth to the tenth day.]
Another of the varied duties performed by the younger worker bees is
that of ventilating the hive by fanning with their wings. On a warm day
a number of them may be seen located outside on the alighting-board
working these appendages at the utmost velocity so as to drive a
current of pure air within; while inside, but not exactly opposite to
their comrades, are another troop, who by the same process are engaged
in driving the foul air out. Other detachments are in the hottest
weather posted in different parts of the interior, and the whole
relieve each other in pickets. Huber ascertained that the inside air
of a hive is thus preserved nearly as pure as that without.
In older works on the subject we are told of the sentinels of bees,
but this idea is now abandoned as a fiction. It arose naturally enough
out of the above office of fanners, as well as from the fact that if
a rap be given upon the alighting-board a bee will immediately appear
without. So too if danger appears, and if any bees are outside either
as fanners or for their own relief from the heat, these will promptly
perform the _duties_ of sentinels. But as to any of them being posted
specially for that purpose, it is sufficient to say that at the season
when enemies are most to be feared there are no guards at the gates to
be found.
It has been much queried whether bees ever go to sleep during the
working season, as it is known that at night, when not gathering
abroad, they are engaged in ceaseless activity at home. Huber, however,
observed frequent instances of bees placing their heads' in empty cells
and remaining perfectly motionless in that position for from fifteen
to twenty-five minutes, in his opinion evidently asleep. Von Berlepsch
has repeatedly observed similar occurrences both with workers and
queens--not with drones, but then, says he, what is the whole life of
these but sleep?--and he considers that there can exist upon the point
no doubt whatever. "The more active the bees are," he remarks, "the
more will they sleep, like every creature."
The following passage from Dzierzon describes in a popular way the
round of the bees' concerns as they vary with the seasons: "In spring,
when all Nature has awakened to a new life, the activity of the hive
is especially directed to the increasing of the stock, the laying of
eggs; at first, indeed, none but worker eggs are laid, and at the
outset only a few hundred cells in a day, but afterwards thousands,
as every hive seeks in the first place to make its own continuance
secure. When gradually the number of bees has through the daily
augmentation become perceptibly increased, when the pastures have more
fully unfolded themselves, and the warmth in the hive has reached a
higher degree, then, in the confidence of strength and of a sort of
maturity, and having regard to the remoter object of increase through
connubial relations, drone brood is also laid. Finally, although not
in every case, in greater or less number queen cells are prepared. As
soon as one or other of these is sealed over, the old queen feels no
longer safe in the hive, and leaves it on a fine day at noon with the
so-called 'fore-swarm.'... In most years and most districts the bee
store has passed its climax and entered upon its decline after the
swarming period. The activity of the bees now takes another direction.
In order to leave over as much honey as possible for the provisionless
season that stands before them, a system of saving is now pursued. To
compensate for the unavoidable loss of population from the journeys
abroad, a certain quantity of worker brood is still continually set
on, but to a limited extent, while the breeding of drones is not only
given up, but the already deposited drone brood is usually thrown out,
and the drones themselves, as no longer of any use, are expelled from
the hive. Comb-building too, which the bees so eagerly carried on in
the spring, now rests entirely, as it would consume honey, and at the
first autumn gathering the bees in fact fill all cells to hand with
honey, though previously these may for the most part have served for
brood-rearing. Their activity is now bent to securing their future
position by accumulating the largest possible store of honey, and
preserving themselves against draughts and cold by stopping up the
holes in their dwelling with propolis, and narrowing the too wide
flight-holes; and these cares generally occupy them so long as the
temperature is of such a degree that they can still make their flights,
which is up to about 13 degrees Réaumur [say 60 Fahr.].... When there
is nothing more to gather, the bees, in order to save strength as well
as honey, fly out no longer, even on the finest days, but preserve
themselves in complete repose, and only undertake, after several days,
an occasional sport before the hive on some warm noonday, so as to
cleanse themselves once more before the winter."
Dr. Evans addresses and describes the worker bee in two passages of
such real beauty that we cannot refrain from giving them a place
here:--
"Ye light-winged labourers! hail the auspicious sign,
When the twin stars in rival splendour shine!
Cheered by their beams, your quickening numbers swell,
And pant your nations in the crowded cell.
Blithe Maia calls, and bids her jocund train
Breathe the warm gale, or softly falling rain;
Inhaled at every pore, the dewy flood
Spreads the young leaf, and wakes the sleeping bud.
* * * * *
Yes, light-winged labourers! still unwearied range
From flower to flower, your only love of change!
Still be your envied lot, communion rare,
To wreathe contentment round the brow of care!
No nice distinctions, or of rich or great,
Shade the clear sunshine of your peaceful state;
Nor Avarice there unfolds her dragon wing,
Nor racked Ambition feels the scorpion sting;
Your tempered wants an easy wealth dispense,
The public store your only affluence:
For all alike the busy fervour glows.
Alike ye labour, and alike repose;[8]
Free as the air, yet in strict order joined,
Unnumbered bodies with a single mind.
One royal head, with ever-watchful eye,
Reins and directs your restless industry.
Builds on your love her firm-cemented throne,
And with her people's safety seals her own."
[Footnote 8:
"Omnibus una quies operum, labor omnibus unus."
Virgil, G. iv. 184.
]
[Illustration: Plate I.
E. W. Robinson, Delt. et Scp. 1865.]
§ V. THE ITALIAN OR LIGURIAN BEE.
A new, or rather a re-discovered, variety of bee has recently been
brought into practical use amongst apiarians in Germany and America,
as well as in this country. It has been called "the Yellow Italian Alp
Bee," and was also named "the Ligurian Bee" by the Marquis de Spinola,
who found it in Piedmont in 1805; and he considered it to be the
principal species known to the Greeks. "There can exist no doubt," says
Kleine, in his handbook, "The Italian Bee and its Culture," "that both
kinds were known side by side from the earliest times. Even mythology
relates that Jupiter, out of gratitude for their having fed him with
honey when a new-born god, afterwards made the bee 'brass-coloured' or
'golden-coloured.' Aristotle also noticed the coloured as different
from the black bee, and Virgil adduces the same distinction." The
latter speaks of the "best kind" of bee as being of a golden colour
with ruddy scales. It is stated that it is found also in Spain. Leading
apiarians are all but unanimous in pronouncing these bees justly
entitled to the high character given them. The special advantages
claimed for them are--greater fecundity of the queens, more industry
and productiveness, less irascibility, and a more handsome appearance;
for, being of a golden colour, they are prettier than our black bees.
(See coloured engraving, Plate I. Figs. 1, 2, 3.)
The Italian varies but little from the common bee in its physical
characteristics. The difference in appearance consists in the first
three rings of the abdomen being of an orange colour instead of a deep
brown, except the posterior edge and under portion of the third, which
are black: some individuals, however, have less colour about them than
others--the younger bees far the most. These orange-coloured parts are
transparent when closely examined with the sun shining on them. The
drones are more darkly ringed than the workers, and are light-yellow
beneath, which is an infallible mark of distinction from the English
drones, which are nearly white in that part; many are also a fourth
part smaller than the English. The queens vary greatly: "The finest
and rarest," says Von Berlepsch, "are bright yellow _varying into a
bluish_. Others rather resemble the workers, exhibiting only yellow
rings; and a few are very difficult or impossible to distinguish from
our own. From this we see that the Italian is not a _constant_ race,
like, _e.g._, our own or the Egyptian."
It is now over thirty years since attention was recalled to this
variety by Captain von Baldenstein, who, when stationed in Italy during
a part of the Napoleonic wars, had observed that the bees about Lake
Como were of a different colour from ordinary ones. In later years,
after his retirement from military life, he became a student of natural
history, and, remembering these bees, he procured a colony of them
in 1843. This he preserved, through constant disappointments, for
seven years, and in 1848 he communicated to the _Bienenzeitung_ the
deductions of his experience. From this Dr. Dzierzon was induced to
pursue the experiment, and from him the variety became introduced in
Germany.
The introduction of this new variety of bee into England was through
our agency. M. Hermann, a bee-cultivator at Tamins-by-Chur, Canton
Grison, Switzerland, wrote to us on the 5th of July, 1859, offering to
supply us with Italian queen bees. The date should be specially noted,
because this was the commencement of a new era in bee-keeping in this
country. We were always in friendly intercourse with the late Mr. H.
Taylor, author of "The Bee-keeper's Manual," and then correspondent on
Bee Culture to the _Cottage Gardener_ (since called the _Journal of
Horticulture_); and, being in the practice of frequently discussing
apiarian subjects with him, we told him of the offer made us of a
new kind of bee. He said he knew nothing about it himself, but asked
permission to publish the intelligence in the journal he was connected
with, and we assented, entirely for public interest and to gratify him.
The letter, or an extract from it, appeared accordingly in the current
number of the journal referred to. Prior to this the Italian, or, as
many have called it, the "Ligurian" bee, was UNKNOWN IN THIS COUNTRY,
except to a few naturalists. The same letter attracted the attention
of that intelligent apiarian, the late T. W. Woodbury, Esq., so well
known as the "Devonshire Bee-keeper." On the 19th of July, that is,
a fortnight after M. Hermann's offer, we received a consignment of
Italian bees--the first imported into England. With these Mr. Woodbury
also received one queen bee and a few workers, which he introduced
into a hive of English bees from which the queen had been removed.
His efforts were very successful, and "the spring of 1860 found him in
possession of four Ligurianised stocks." His subsequent experience with
this new variety he fully described in a communication to the _Bath and
West of England Agricultural Journal_.
Subsequently M. Hermann sent us a copy of his pamphlet entitled "The
Italian Alp Bee; or, the Gold-Mine of Husbandry," with the request that
we should have it translated from the German, and that copies of it
should be printed in the English language. It was speedily published by
us accordingly, and, although singular as a literary production, it may
be useful for the advanced apiarian.
Certainly the bees are partially of an orange or golden colour, and if
one could believe the golden anticipations indulged in by M. Hermann
respecting them, these would be sufficient to identify the Italian bee
as the species described by Hood in "Miss Kilmansegg"--those which
dwelt in
"A golden hive, on a golden bank,
Where golden bees, by alchemical prank,
Gather gold instead of honey."
In the pamphlet referred to, M. Hermann gives the following description
of what he insists on designating as _Apis helvetica_: "The Yellow
Italian Alp bee is a mountain insect; it is found between two mountain
chains to the right and left of Lombardy and the Rhetian Alps, and
comprises the whole territory of Ticino, Val Tellina, and the
southern Grisons.[9] It thrives up to the height of 4,500 feet above
the level of the sea, and appears to prefer the northern clime to the
warmer, for in the south of Italy it is not found. The Alps are their
native country, therefore they are called Yellow Alp or tame house
bees, in contradistinction to the black European bees, which we might
call common forest bees, and which, on the slightest touch, fly like
lightning into your face.[?]
[Footnote 9: Otherwise _Tessin_, _Veltlin_ (French _Valteline_), and
the southern _Graubünden_. Von Berlepsch names the localities they
inhabit as Genoa, Venetia, Lombardy, and the southern valleys of the
Grisons bordering upon Italy.]
"As all good and noble things in the world are more scarce than common
ones, so there are more common black bees than of the noble yellow
race, which latter inhabit only a very small piece of country, while
the black ones are at home everywhere in Europe, and even in America."
Our own experience with the Italian bee enables us to corroborate the
statements which have been made in its favour. We find the queens more
prolific than those of the common kind, and the quantity of honey
produced is greater. These two facts stand as cause and effect: the
bees being multiplied more quickly, the store of honey is accumulated
more rapidly, and the Italian bees consume, if anything, less food
than the common kind. When of pure Italian blood these bees are, by
some apiarians, thought to be hardier than our own. That they forage
for stores with greater eagerness, and have little hesitation in
paying visits to other hives, we can testify from our own observation.
The following anecdote will illustrate their intrusive propensities;
Another bee-keeper, who lived in the same neighbourhood, was once
inspecting our hives, when, on observing the yellow bees, he exclaimed,
"Now I have found out where those strange-looking bees come from; for,"
said he, "these yellow-jackets are incessant visitors to my hives. I
thought they were a species of wasp that had come to rob, and until
now I have been unable to account for their appearance at the entrance
of my hive, so that I have killed them by hundreds." This was not at
all pleasing intelligence for us, and we trust that our neighbour
has been more lenient to "the yellow-jackets" since his visit, for
such summary capital punishment was wholly unmerited, because when a
bee is peaceably received (see page 169) it becomes naturalised, and
works side by side with the others in its fresh abode. We are inclined
to believe that more visiting takes place amongst bees of different
hives than bee-keepers have been accustomed to suppose; but where
the Italian and black bees are kept near each other, the foreigners
being conspicuous by their lighter colour, there is less difficulty in
identifying them when at the entrance of other hives. Von Berlepsch, we
find, remarks that there exists during the gathering season a species
of "communism of dwellings" between the bees of neighbouring hives.
The Italian bees are more active than common bees when on the wing.
They are also observed to work longer hours than other bees both early
and late, as well as in seasons when the latter will not stir abroad.
Thus altogether they are much more productive. In many seasons we have
had more honey from an Italian stock than from any one of our colonies
of black bees. From this hive we have taken a glass super containing
forty pounds nett of honey, besides having drawn from it an artificial
swarm; and after all it remained the strongest hive in our apiary.
In a private letter received from Mr. Langstroth he informed us that
in the season of 1865 he bred over 300 Italian queens; these he
disseminated to various' bee-masters on the American continent, and the
united opinion of apiarians in that country was increasingly in favour
of the decided advantage of the cultivation of the Italian bee. At the
present date it is literally "all the rage" with bee-keepers there.
With ourselves there is a quieter but not less genuine welcome accorded
to it. In the _British Bee Journal_ for May 1877, the distinguished
apiarian "A Renfrewshire Bee-keeper" writes: "After careful study
and comparison of both I found the Italian superior for beauty,
prolificness, power, and activity, and (to my view the greatest value
of all) for _fresh blood_."
To the testimonies already cited we will now add that of the late Mr.
Woodbury. The following is extracted from the paper contributed by
him to the _Bath and West of England Agricultural Journal_: "From my
strongest Ligurian stock I took eight artificial swarms in the spring,
besides depriving it of numerous brood-combs. Finding, in June, that
the bees were collecting honey so fast that the queen could not find an
empty cell in which to lay an egg, I was reluctantly compelled to put
on a super. When this had been filled with thirty-eight pounds of the
finest honeycomb,[10] I removed it, and as the stock hive (a very large
one) could not contain the multitude of bees which issued from it, I
formed them into another very large artificial swarm. The foregoing
facts speak for themselves; but as information on this point has been
very generally asked, I have no hesitation in saying that I believe the
Ligurian honey bee infinitely superior in every respect to the only
species that we have hitherto been acquainted with."
[Footnote 10: This super was exhibited at our stand in the
International Exhibition of 1862.]
The chorus of praise is not however universal. Most noticeable is
the broad divergence of views between the two greatest apiarians of
Germany--Dr. Dzierzon and Baron von Berlepsch. The former pronounces
this bee less given to stinging, less sensitive of cold, more
prolific, earlier in brood-raising and swarming, forwarder also in
comb-building, more industrious and honey-yielding, more courageous
in defence of its stores, and prompter in expelling the drones. The
Baron examines these and other assertions one by one, and declares
emphatically that, after a long course of experience, he has not
found them true in a single particular. He calls the bee "the Italian
humbug," and sums up as follows: "While it may perhaps be distinguished
from our own by a somewhat slighter disposition to sting, but, on the
other hand, it begins building drone comb and raising numbers of drones
in the first year, and its queens grow unfertile so early, and that
mostly at so inopportune a time, it stands manifestly _inferior to our
own_ in a relation of economic utility, and has therefore for us no
practical value at all."[11]
[Footnote 11: In our previous editions Von Berlepsch's views were cited
as strongly _favourable_ to the Italian bee. The change is his own, and
he now makes full recantation of his "error."]
Though we are unshaken in our adhesion to the Italian bee by
these opposite views, it is impossible to treat them as beneath
consideration. They are not a mere prejudice, for the Baron was at
first as much prepossessed in the strangers' favour as any one. But
it would be still less possible to set aside on their account the
united testimony of Dzierzon, Langstroth, and a host of others who are
above delusion on such a point. How then can we account for this one
notable divergence? In the first place, much of Von Berlepsch's data
are negative only, and negative evidence can never set aside positive;
thus when he tells us that he "has not observed" earlier activity or
greater courage or less sensitiveness, while others of unquestioned
judgment _have_ observed these points, we cannot hesitate to decide
in the favour of the latter. As to less disposition to sting, the
positive evidence should be on the Baron's side when he says that they
_do_ sting; but in this case, as we have seen, he partly concedes the
point. As to productiveness and fecundity, there may be some undetected
peculiarity about this bee to which something in the Seebach apiary or
neighbourhood is not so congenial as in other parts. At all events. Dr.
Dzierzon is unmoved from his faith, for we find him in the present year
giving as the result of twenty-five years experience that this bee is
"as gentle, diligent, and prolific as it is beautiful;" that it "bears
our German climate well, and that its preservation in purity is with
some care quite possible."
Still some persons are sure to be disappointed with a foreign bee,
just as some will be with a foreign country. Some have had their
expectations raised too highly, and expect wonderful results to follow
without effort; others, on the contrary, are so wrapt up in the new
treasure that they cherish it with vastly greater pains than their
other bees, and thus attribute to the bee itself what is partly to be
credited to their own superior care. In particular, with regard to
the greater fecundity of the queens, we think some allowance ought to
be made for the circumstance that in order to meet the demand for
Italian queens they are being continuously bred, so that when united to
English stocks they are always young and in the prime as to fertility;
whilst the common black queens are allowed to exist in the hives their
appointed time, as there is nothing to call for encouraging their
special propagation. In making comparisons we think this fact has been
a little overlooked; but though too much may have been thus credited to
the Italians, we think there is a clear balance on this point in their
favour, and they retain altogether our most decided preference.
§ VI. OTHER FOREIGN VARIETIES.
1. _Carniolan Bees._--In appearance this variety is very much like
our English bee. The difference is that the rings on the abdomen are
whiter; otherwise (except by a close observer) one would not be known
from the other.
Eight years ago the Rev. W. C. Cotton (brother of Lord Justice Cotton
and author of "My Bee Book") had a stock of these bees from Austria,
where they are largely cultivated, and he left them under our charge.
We placed them in our own apiary at Hampstead, where they did very
well, working a capital super in the first year, as well as parting
with a fine swarm. The second year Mr. Cotton had the swarm sent to
his own apiary, near Chester, because he wanted the original queen,
which of course this had with it. This swarm had rather a remarkable
adventure, and was nearly lost, as related at page 78. The Carniolans
have been praised as possessing similar good qualities with the
Italians, and though Von Berlepsch laughs at them and calls them "a new
grand swindle," yet, as he declares them to be "closely allied, if not
altogether identical," with the following variety, for which he has
only good reports, his denunciations of these seem reasonably open to
qualification.
2. Lower Austrian Bees.--Baron von Berlepsch mentions these as a
variety which he found, to his surprise, in the neighbourhood of
Vienna, but which must have been the same that Von Ehrenfels had
cultivated and described. They scarcely differ from the Carniolan, but
about one in fifty is rather strongly marked with red upon the first
ring of the back. The Baron speaks of their habitat as "the El Dorado
of the Bee," and he declares them wholly free from the vices of the
next sort, and thinks they raise fewer drones than ordinary bees. He
recommends, as likely to be a profitable breed, a cross of these with
our own variety.
3. Heath Bees.--This is a race of a very different character, deriving
its name from the district known as Luneburg Heath, and found also
about Oldenburg, Schleswig, and Holstein. In form and appearance Heath
bees are wholly identical with our own, but they seem like bees in a
lower state of civilisation, perpetually swarming without occasion and
with unmanageable impulse, and producing principally drones and drone
comb even with a queen of the first year. "Undoubtedly," says Von
Berlepsch, "this is by far the worst kind of bee existing in Germany."
4. Greek or Cecropian Bees.--In some particulars these are like a
cross between the Italian and common bees. The queen is dark bronze on
the abdomen as far as the second scale, but the common colour above.
Most of the workers have a ring and a half of bronze or a reddish
rust-colour; some have two entire rings of this hue. They are stated to
be more industrious and productive than common bees, and the drones to
be smaller.
This and the two previous varieties we thus briefly notice on the
basis of the remarks of Von Berlepsch. We are not aware that either
of them has been introduced into this country, nor do they appear to
have attained much success in Germany. Thus humorously does our author
dismiss this last: "Since 1864, when Deumer sounded his trumpet with
distended cheeks, we have heard not so much as a last dying speech from
the Cecropian bee, and she seems already in Germany to have gone the
way of all flesh. May the earth lie lightly on her!"
5 and 6. Cyprian and Smyrnæan Bees.--"A Country Doctor" writes in the
_British Bee Journal_ that he had prepared a translation from the
_Bienenzeitung_ of an article by Herr Corri, in which he speaks most
highly of the good qualities of the Cyprian bees, and considers them
in advance of any other bee that he has cultivated. In this opinion he
is borne out by Count Rudolph Kolowrat of Tabor.
"It so frequently happens," proceeds the correspondent, "that the
last pet receives the highest honours, and we are so apt to believe
that that must have special value which has cost considerable pains
to obtain, that a certain amount of caution is advisable in receiving
these enthusiastic statements. Herr Corri's opinion, however, is
deserving of the highest respect; for both he and the Count have
been most perseveringly engaged for many years past in importing
various races of bees from their native lands, and making comparative
observations as to their merits, and this without being biased by the
expectation of commercial gain.
"The bees got from Smyrna (1864) seem to stand next in their
estimation. Both the originally imported stocks, and those subsequently
raised from them, presented, however, a certain number of black bees,
and after the most painstaking attempts to breed them pure the results
remained the same. The conclusion come to was that they were of a mixed
race."
Our own experience tallies very much with this opinion. We imported
from Germany stocks of both the Cyprian and Smyrnæan bees, and
exhibited them at the bee shows of the British Bee Association.
Previous to doing so we submitted specimens to Mr. F. Smith of the
British Museum, and he reported favourably of them--that although
resembling the Italian (_Apis ligustica_), the Cyprian were clearly
of a different species, but more nearly approaching the Egyptian
(_A. fasciata_): they certainly possessed the irascible qualities so
distinctive of the Egyptians, and used their stilettoes unmercifully
on some of the gentlemen connected with the show. We have not been
sufficiently enamoured of them to pursue their cultivation further. The
resemblance is so close to those bees already domiciled here that we
see no special advantage to be gained by doing so.
7. Asiatic Bees.--This bee (_Apis dorsata_) is a distinct species;
it is larger than our own, and exists in a wild state in the woods
of India. Mr. Woodbury made considerable exertions to have a colony
brought to England, but without success. The stings of these bees,
are more formidable than those of the varieties possessed here, and
except as a matter of curiosity we can see nothing to recommend their
introduction.
8. Egyptian Bees.--These bees, though called _Apis fasciata_, are
considered by many as a variety of the same species as ordinary bees.
They are rather smaller and slenderer than our own and the Italian,
though closely resembling the latter in appearance. They have white
hairs all about them, and the first two and a half rings of the abdomen
are of a reddish yellow. The drones are also well marked with similar
rings, and the queen is even more beautiful than the Italian. Baron
von Berlepsch recommends crossing the handsomest Italian queens with
Egyptian drones, with a view solely to the æsthetic purpose of raising
the most beautiful breed of bees to be obtained.
The German apiarian Herr Vogel has given special attention to this
variety, and has discovered in it some interesting peculiarities. It
never gathers propolis, but uses wax in its place; and it seems almost
proof against the cold. But the most singular fact that has come to
his knowledge is that there exist regularly in an Egyptian colony some
twelve or so small drone-laying queens, which would be called fertile
workers but that they have a distinctive appearance, consisting in the
waxen yellow of their breasts--a feature which is possessed also by
the drones of their progeny. This is assuredly one of the most curious
discoveries that have ever been made in relation even to this most
curious of insects.
The late Mr. Woodbury imported some of these bees, but found them
exceedingly vicious, and really to possess no superiority over our
English bees. Some years since Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins, the naturalist,
bought a stock of Mr. Woodbury, and brought them with him in order
to place in the Horticultural Gardens at South Kensington. Being
unacquainted with the placing of bees, he asked our aid in doing so.
From the experience of them thereby acquired our own idea would be that
no one could ever desire such bees; they came out with a rush, and
stung everybody within reach, right and left, who was not provided
with a veil.[12] This is the kind of bee found in Palestine, and
therefore the one which Samson found in the carcase of the lion.
[Footnote 12: Vogel says, that this bee never stings unless incensed,
"but then quite maliciously;" also that it is only more irritated
by tobacco smoke, but is effectually subdued by that from willow
touchwood.]
In connection with this species, the Rev. H. B. Tristram, in his
valuable book, "The Land of Israel," has an interesting account of the
bees in that country. In Palestine bee-keeping is an important item of
industry, and every house has a pile of beehives in its yard. Their
bee, he says, "is amazingly abundant, both in hives, in rocks, and in
old hollow trees. It is smaller than our ordinary bees, with brighter
yellow bands on the thorax and abdomen, which is rather wasp like in
shape, and with very long antennæ. In its habits, and especially in
the immense population of neuters in each community, and in the drones
cast forth in autumn, it resembles the other species. Its sting also is
quite as sharp. The hives are very simple, consisting of large tubes
of sun-dried mud, like gas-pipes, about four feet long, and closed
with mud at each end, leaving only an aperture in the centre large
enough for two or three bees to pass at a time. The insects appear to
frequent both doors equally. The tubes are laid in rows horizontally,
and piled in a pyramid. I counted one of these colonies, consisting of
seventy-eight tubes, each a distinct hive. Coolness being the great
object, the whole is thickly plastered over with mud and covered with
boughs, white a branch is stuck in the ground at each end to assist the
bees in alighting. At first we took these singular structures for ovens
or hen-houses. _The barbarous practice of destroying the swarms for
their honey is unknown._ When the hives are full the clay is removed
from the ends of the pipes, and the honey extracted with an iron hook;
those pieces of comb which contain young bees being carefully replaced,
and the hives then closed up again. Everywhere during our journey we
found honey was always to be purchased; and it is used by the natives
for many culinary purposes, and especially for the preparation of sweet
cakes. It has the delicate aromatic flavour of the thyme-scented honey
of Hybla or Hymettus.
"But, however extensive are the bee colonies of the villages, the
number of wild bees of the same species is far greater. The innumerable
fissures and clefts of the limestone rocks, which everywhere flank
the valleys, afford in their recesses secure shelter for any number
of swarms; and many of the Bedouin, particularly in the wilderness
of Judæa, obtain their subsistence by bee-hunting, bringing into
Jerusalem jars of that wild honey on which John the Baptist fed in the
wilderness, and which Jonathan had long before unwittingly tasted,
when the comb had dropped on the ground from the hollow tree in which
it was suspended. The visitor to the Wady Kurn, when he sees the busy
multitudes of bees about its cliffs, cannot but recall to mind the
promise, 'With honey out of the stony rock would I have satisfied
thee.' There is no epithet of the Land of Promise more true to the
letter, even to the present day, than this, that it was 'a land flowing
with milk and honey.'"
* * * * *
The question as to the worth or worthlessness of the above respective
varieties is not yet so decided a matter as it is with the Italians.
Those interested in the sale of a particular race will praise it up,
while those who have had a single disappointment with it will run it
down--and that is nearly the sum of the experience to be gathered from
current literature. Thus we find Dathe announcing, "I have discontinued
the rearing of Cyprian, Egyptian, and Carniolan bees." That is
intelligible; but in the same paper we read, "Between the German and
_Heath_ bees there is no particular difference"--which so staggers us
after Von Berlepsch's vituperations of the latter that we do not know
how much confidence we ought to place in the rest of the sentence,
which is given as the summing up of a discussion in that famous bee
country, Silesia: "The Egyptian bee ranks after the German and Italian;
the Carniolan, at the expense of honey, produces many bees; the
Cyprians are diligent, but quite inclined to sting. The Herzegovinian
bee is praised. Bees obtained by judicious crossing have the preference
over the pure races."
Numbers of other varieties may be expected to crop up from time to
time, as for instance the one last named. Della Rocca in the last
century spoke of a "dawn-coloured" bee that was brought from Holland
and Belgium, and which is probably one of the races included with
the Italian. Dr. Gerstäcker thus classifies the varieties: The North
European (now spread all over the world), the Italian with black
breasts, the Italian with yellow breasts, the Egyptian, the African,
and the Madagascar. Three South Asiatic bees he regards as specifically
distinct--_Apis dorsata_, _indica_, and _florea_. Mr. F. Smith
adds _zonata_ and _nigrocincta_, and inclines to make a species of
_fasciata_ (the Egyptians).
§ VII. FACULTIES AND FUNCTIONS.
It would be trenching too much upon our limits if we were to venture
into the inviting field to which this heading might introduce us. Still
the extreme interest of the subject renders it perhaps desirable that
some succinct allusion should be made to it, even if it be for little
more than to remark that the information we have to give is scattered
through other sections and chapters. Especially as some might be
disposed to skip the unattractive portion on "Anatomy and Physiology,"
it may be well to state here that in the second section of that chapter
will be found a brief account of the sight and other senses of bees,
and of the uses of their antennæ, by which they seem to feel, hear,
smell, and communicate. A remark upon their power of distinguishing
colours, and its practical value, will be found in connection with our
description of bee-houses for twelve hives (Chap. IV. § i.). On the
senses of taste and smell we have some further observations in the
sections of Chapter VI. upon "Stings," "Robbing," and "Bee-keeping in
London."
For the functions and habits of bees we must also refer to the passages
already instanced, as well as to the sections above on the "The Queen,"
etc., that on "The Rationale of Swarming" (page 72), and to those in
Chapter VI. on the four substances which bees collect or secrete, as
well as (though in a less degree) to those headed "Pasturage" and
"General Remarks." Those who will favour our book with a consecutive
reading will, we trust, find at the conclusion that all the more
important and interesting facts of this class are in one or other of
these places tolerably though briefly described.
The service that bees perform to flowers is a subject that has
attracted much attention of late years. As every one knows, or should
know, a flower has its stamens and pistils, which are respectively
its male and female organs, and the pollen contained in the anthers,
or little knobs on the summits of the stamens, must be conveyed to
the pistils, or no seed will be produced. When the anthers burst; the
pollen might happen to fall partly on the pistils, or it might not;
but the visits of bees (though they do not roll about in the flower,
in the manner that some have stated) are found by experience to be
efficacious in conveying this dust to the right spot. Owners of fruit
trees have noticed, in a season generally unfavourable to the orchard,
that if during only one fine forenoon the bees had spread freely
amongst the blossoms of a particular tree, that tree would prove more
fruitful than its fellows. On this account the orchard is a good place
for the apiary, for it seems that the more abundant the honey the
better will be the crop of fruit. The whole subject is scientifically
treated in Mr. Darwin's remarkable book, "The Fertilisation of
Orchids," but we must add to the foregoing how much more urgent are the
services of bees in the case of what are termed monœcious and diœcious
plants, the former of which have the stamens and pistils _in different
flowers_, and the latter have these flowers _upon different roots_. A
familiar example of the former is found in the nut tree, whose long
catkins, hanging like caterpillars in the early spring, are assemblages
of male flowers; while the females, from which the nuts develop, may be
detected by their crimson pistil-tips (stigmas), and grow in stalkless
clusters of two or three in the openings of remote scaly buds. But for
the visits or bees, our autumn nutting rambles would thus have but
little prospect of success. In the second case, often very considerable
distances intervene between the two flowers; for instance, with the
common dog mercury (_Mercurialis perennis_), a botanist may find
plantation after plantation containing male flowers by thousands, but
not a single female; and at length in some far-off spot he may succeed
in finding the females, equally by themselves, yet in full seed. In
these cases there is nothing but the visits of pollen-gathering insects
which can convey the fertilising dust to the flower for which it is
designed. And according to Mr. Darwin _all_ plants are practically
diœcious, for he states that the pollen, to have a fertilising effect,
must be brought to the pistils of one flower from the stamens of one
on another root. Whether this be considered established or not, there
remains the fact of the existence of diœcious plants as explaining
the admirable design of the provision that a bee in the course of
one flight shall gather pollen solely from _one species_. As far as
honey-gathering is concerned the bee is not governed by this rule;
but for this other important function it becomes absolutely essential
that the right pollen, and that only, should be conveyed to the right
flower. The careful observer may note how the dust on the bodies of
bees varies from yellow to red and brown according to the kind of
flowers from which it has been gathered, and the "socks," as the
Germans call them, on the two hind legs will be found always of the
same colour.
To no scientific man are we probably more indebted for observations
and deductions upon this branch than to Sir John Lubbock. Whilst this
edition was in course of preparation it was the writer's privilege to
listen to a lecture upon "Relations of Plants and Insects" delivered
by this able investigator before the Society of Arts; and the lecture
has since been published as a paper in the _Fortnightly Review_
of April 1877. In the course of his remarks Sir John cited many
interesting particulars of the ways in which flowers are protected
from the incursions of ants, whose visits would be harmful, both from
their rifling the stores from the bees, by whom alone they are likely
to be fertilised, and from the liability of the latter to desert
any species in which their tender probosces were in danger of being
seized by ants--it being the nature of an ant to grapple any pointed
thing directed towards her. Kerner was referred to as having observed
some of the modes by which such results are obviated. In some cases
there are _chevaux de frise_ around the flower, in the form of hairs
pointing downwards, or other barriers which the ant cannot penetrate
or surmount: notably in the corn bluebottle, which is smooth all over
except just beneath the flower, and in the thicket heads of some
thistles. In others there are glutinous parts which the ant cannot
traverse, as was noticed in the _Polygonum amphibium_, which, when it
grows on land, has sticky glands at the extremities of certain hairs,
while when in the water, where it is safe already, it is perfectly
smooth. Again, there are pendulous flowers, like the snowdrop, which
are so slippery on the surface that an ant would immediately slide
off, as was humorously illustrated by a sketch prepared with several
others by the lecturer's daughter. Facts were also stated showing how
the pollen is sometimes preserved by the closing of certain flowers
at times when winged insects were not on the move, and the exclusion
thereby of such as would not aid in the work of fructification. "It is
not too much to say," as Sir John elsewhere expresses himself ("British
Wild Flowers in Relation to Insects "), "that if on the one hand
flowers are in many cases necessary to insects, insects on the other
hand are still more necessary to the very existence of flowers; that
if insects have been in many cases modified and adapted with a view to
obtain honey and pollen from flowers, flowers in their turn owe their
scent and colour, their honey, and even their distinctive forms, to the
action of insects."
"And plains sad Chloris how these spoilers steal
From her ripe crests the vivifying meal,
Pare the thin films that shield her anthered reign,
And all her nectared cells insatiate drain?
No! kind intruders; all reserved for you
She pours through honeyed horn her luscious dew,
While, grateful for the rich repast, ye shed
Fresh showers prolific round her genial bed."
Evans.
§ VIII. EGGS AND TRANSFORMATIONS.
It is necessary that some explanation should be given, as to the
existence of the bee before it emerges from the cell.
The eggs (Plate II. Fig. 7) of all the three kinds of bees, when
first deposited, are of an oval shape, slightly curved, and of a
bluish-white colour. They are glutinous on the surface when laid,
which causes them to adhere to the bases of the cells where the queen
deposits them. In three or four days the egg changes to a small white
worm, and in this stage is known by the names of larva or grub (Plate
II. Fig. 8), in which state it remains four to six days more--a drone
six and a half; its dimensions enlarge during this period till it
appears as a ring at the base of the cell. While in this stage it is
fed by the nurse bees with a mixture of farina and honey, a transparent
white fluid in which the larva floats, and the supply of which is
so exactly apportioned that not a drop remains on its ceasing to be
required.
The next transformation is to the nymph or pupa form. The nurse bees
now seal up the cells with a preparation similar to wax, leaving them
with coverings which, by their greater convexity and darker colour,
distinguish them readily from honey cells. The pupa then spins round
itself a film or cocoon, just as a silkworm does in its chrysalis
state: workers and drones occupy thirty-six hours with this process;
princesses, which spin only half-cocoons, finish them in twenty-four.
The microscope shows that this cradle-curtain is perforated with very
minute holes, through which the baby bee is duly supplied with air. No
farther attention on the part of the bees is now requisite, except a
proper degree of heat, which they take care to keep up--a position for
the breeding cells being selected in the centre of the hive, where
the temperature is likely to be most congenial. The cells destined
for the rearing of drones are larger than those from which workers
will proceed, the former standing nineteen to the square inch against
twenty-seven of the latter: the former are also one-third as deep again
as the latter, and are made slightly more convex when sealed over. But
between the eggs themselves there is externally no difference whatever.
In from nineteen to twenty-one days after the egg is first laid (unless
cold weather should have retarded it) the bee quits the pupa state,
and, nibbling its way through the waxen covering that has enclosed it,
comes forth a winged insect. The eggs of drones require twenty-four
or twenty-five days, and those of queens sixteen or seventeen, to
arrive at maturity. In the unicomb observatory hives the young bees
may distinctly be seen as they literally fight their way into the
world, for the other bees do not take the slightest notice, nor afford
them any assistance. We have frequently been amused in watching the
eager little new comer, now obtruding its head, and anon compelled to
withdraw into the cell to escape being trampled on by the apparently
unfeeling throng, until at last it has succeeded in making its exit.
The little grey creature, after brushing and shaking itself, enters
upon its duties in the hive, and after a while issues forth to the
more laborious occupation of gathering honey in the fields--thus early
illustrating that character for industry which has been proverbial
at least since the days of Aristotle, and which has in our day been
rendered familiar even to infant minds through the nursery rhymes of
Dr. Watts.
§ IX. REPRODUCTIVE ECONOMY.
The fertilisation of the queen and the determination of the sexes of
her progeny are two subjects of so much interest that we must make room
for some exposition of the discoveries of the past thirty years in
relation thereto. What has been already stated on the former of these
under the section on "The Drone" consists of facts which were mainly
established by Huber; but within the present generation the great
German apiarians have returned to the question, and Dzierzon has set
forth some most marvellous deductions, which Baron von Berlepsch has
followed up with amplification and further proof. It was found that
the queen while in a virgin condition was often capable of depositing
eggs, and that these eggs, unlike those of poultry laid under somewhat
similar conditions, would hatch equally with others, but they _all
produced drones_. From this arose the question. Whence come the
drones _after_ the queen has been fertilised? A fact known from the
days of Huber and Riem was by some supposed to settle the difficulty.
In many hives there exist what are called "fertile workers"--bees
having the female organs sufficiently developed to deposit eggs, but
not sufficiently so to receive fecundation; and as it was found that
the eggs of these fulfilled the conditions required, and invariably
produced drone bees, the theory was erected that these fertile workers
were the regular producers of that sex. But this plausible solution
of the problem did not stand examination. Every fertile queen does
habitually lay eggs in drone cells, and from those eggs drones are
uniformly developed. Dissection and microscopic analysis had therefore
to be resorted to, and the course of investigation commenced by
Swammerdam and pursued by Mlle. Jurine was now pushed to a much further
extent.
Proceeding from the two ovaries of the queen there are two canals,
called oviducts, which presently unite, and immediately beyond their
point of juncture is a small globular receptacle which is called the
spermatheca. With fertile queens it was found that this appendage is
permanently occupied by a fluid identical with that in the reproductive
organs of the drones, and that as such it abounds in spermatozoa; while
with a virgin queen the fluid is totally destitute of these, and is
wholly different in appearance, being thin and transparent. From this
discovery the conclusion followed that each egg, as it passes down
the oviduct and over the mouth of the spermatheca, may either receive
fecundation or not, according as the queen's own will or some other
circumstance shall determine. Dzierzon accordingly propounded as the
apparent, though still only hypothetical, solution of the enigma, what
is known as the doctrine of parthenogenesis or virgin breeding--the
law that life is imparted by the mother independently, and that every
egg as originally developed in her ovaries is of the male sex, but that
whenever fertilised with the male fluid it becomes transformed into a
female!
To convert this hypothesis into a demonstration, Von Berlepsch invited
to his apiary in succession the two great comparative anatomists
Professors Leuckart and Von Siebold, and furnished each with a number
of both drone and worker eggs for microscopic examination. Leuckart
examined the surfaces of the eggs; Von Siebold, who followed him,
tried the interiors, and the latter by this means was triumphantly
successful, for, after the most careful preparation of his subjects,
he detected in thirty out of forty worker eggs from one to four
spermatozoa apiece, while in his twenty-four drone eggs he found not a
single one. The exceptions were insufficient to invalidate the results,
for the ten worker eggs in which no signs of impregnation were found
were only the failures of observation to be naturally expected in so
delicate a scrutiny. Thus the fact was established that eggs which
produce male bees are descended from the female only--in other words,
that _drones have no fathers!_
Most strikingly has this law been corroborated by a discovery which we
owe to the introduction of the Italian bee--a discovery, too, which any
bee-keeper can make for himself. If an Italian queen is crossed with
an English drone, or _vice versa_, the _workers only_ of her progeny
will be mongrels--the drones will invariably retain the pure blood of
the queen, thus proving to demonstration that they owe their origin to
her alone. Should a mongrel drone be then observed, it will be a sure
sign that a fertile worker is in the hive: the queen will not be its
mother. Dr. Dönhoff, we are told, confirmed the same law by a converse
method, having in 1855 obtained a worker bee from a drone egg which he
had artificially impregnated with the male fluid.
The queen, as we have observed, is capable before fertilisation of
becoming the mother of drones, but it is believed by some that if she
has once commenced drone-laying it is impossible for her to become
subsequently fertilised. Mr. Langstroth, however, mentions an instance
to the contrary, where a queen of his, after persistently laying
drone eggs for a week or two, became after that the happy mother of a
thriving colony of workers. Von Berlepsch alludes to this case (with
others like it), but is unconvinced, being suspicious that here again
it was a fertile worker and not the queen who laid the drone eggs. But
looking to the fact that many _permanently_ unfertile queens lay drone
eggs, while others lay no eggs at all, does it not seem reasonable that
a similar difference may subsist _previous_ to fecundation? Thus, while
the Baron is on firm ground as to the general rule, we incline to a
belief that as to the exception the American observer is quite correct.
Dzierzon thus writes: "In general, so long as the young queen
continues her wedding flights--which in the warm summer she does at
the very most for four weeks, but in the cool spring or autumn, when
life and development are slower in the hive, she still pursues for
even five or six weeks--she is capable of becoming properly fertile."
But some queens continue to fly long after it is hopeless, cases
being recorded in which they have gone on for ten or twelve weeks.
The same observer speaks of having had several young queens which
were either lame in their wings or born in a continued cold season,
so that they were prevented from leaving the hive, and thus developed
into confirmed drone-breeders. The queen leaves the hive _every_ fine
day till her purpose is accomplished, and this led Bevan and others
to surmise that she met successively with several drones till one
Of them lost his life in consequence; but we do not find in later
authorities any confirmation nor even mention of this conjecture, and
it may be set down as entirely improbable. In the case observed by
Von Klipstein, and referred to above (page 22), as the queen met with
her death shortly after, he sent her to Leuckart, who found that from
this obviously first impregnation her organs were so completely filled
as to imply no need for a second. Leuckart has elsewhere stated that
a queen's spermatheca is capable of containing twenty-five millions
of spermatozoa, so that there need be no wonder at the fact of a
single fecundation being sufficient to answer for her entire term of
existence.
The fertile workers, which by their course of adding to the drone stock
may prove a terrible nuisance in a hive, were ascertained by Huber to
be always hatched in close proximity to the queen cells, whence he
conjectured that they obtained by accident a portion of the royal jelly
designed for the rearing of princesses. Von Berlepsch and Langstroth
prefer the theory that such jelly was purposely given them, and the
conversion of their own cells into royal ones commenced, but that the
intention was afterwards abandoned, as it is known that bees often,
start more of such cells than they ultimately proceed with. They are of
only exceptional occurrence in hives in a normal condition, but in a
queenless stock they very often appear, sometimes even in considerable
numbers, having been probably fostered with the jelly, but at too late
a period to convert them into queens. They usually deposit their eggs
correctly in drone cells, though drone-breeding queens lay in those of
workers and even in royal cells--thus evincing a presence of the will
though an absence of the power. To get rid of a fertile worker it has
been recommended by Mr. Rorl to "drive" the bees (Chap. V. § iv.) to an
empty hive, and place this in a near spot; all will return to their old
home except the one to be got rid of, she having probably never flown
before, and therefore not knowing her way.
§ X. RELATION OF SEX TO CELLS.
There remains the very interesting question of the connection between
sex and cells, which, if it be not paradoxical to say so, is as a
general rule invariable; that is to say, when both the queen and the
hive are in a normal condition, the eggs laid in each class of cells
produce respectively workers and drones without failure or exception.
But in abnormal circumstances, as with a drone-breeding queen, the law
does not hold, and drones of a diminished size are hatched from worker
cells, though the bees, on discovering the state of things, do their
best by subsequent elongation to adapt the cradles to their unexpected
occupants. Such is the explanation of the existence of "small drones;"
but workers hatched in drone cells do not appear to be in any way
peculiar. In regard then to the main fact we are confronted with the
question, Has the queen a knowledge, at the moment of laying, of the
gender of each particular egg? Rather, it would seem, she has the power
of making it what gender she pleases by compressing her spermatheca or
not at the instant of its passing down her oviduct. We must however
refer to an ingenious theory to the contrary, quoted by Langstroth as
started by his friend the late Mr. Wagner of Philadelphia, and which
has been approved by many in this country and Germany also. It is to
the effect that not the queen's own will, but the narrow limits of
the worker cells, administer the above compression, while the more
spacious drone cells allow her body to be inserted without such effect.
Von Berlepsch however, it is safe to say, has absolutely demolished
this mechanical explanation; and as some recent writers have quoted
the "Wagner theory" with approval, it may be best to give the German
observer's principal objections in his own words:--
"This explanation is thoroughly untenable; for--(_a_) perfectly new
worker cells are fully as wide as very old drone cells in which
breeding has taken place many times, and yet, as found by experience,
female bees come from the former and males from the latter, (_b_) Many
queens are of a strikingly slender form, some of them occasionally so
small that they can scarcely be distinguished from workers, and yet
they have no proclivity to drone-laying--which must however have been
the case if the narrow cell effected the fertilisation of the egg by
pressure.... (_c_) A queen lays even in cells that are scarcely begun,
with which, therefore, the proportion of the diameter to the thickness
of her body can exercise no influence at all, and yet drones come
forth from the drone cells and workers from the worker cells. (_d_)
If there are no drone cells at her command, and the stock is in want
of drones, the queen lays male eggs in worker cells, and drones hatch
from them.... (_i_) A fertile queen, if introduced with her colony
into a hive containing nothing but drone comb, would naturally [on
such hypothesis] furnish the drone cells with eggs as she would worker
cells, and make no difficulty about it. But she does make a very great
difficulty--for a long time she lays no eggs in the cells at all, but
lets them drop, or tries to escape abroad with her entire colony. But
at last she does lay in the drone cells, and what ensues? _Ordinary
worker bees come forth._" Instances follow of experiments decisively
proving this. It is only fair, however, to add that Mr. Wagner's
theory does not necessarily degrade the monarch of the hive into "a
mere egg-laying machine," as Von Berlepsch regards it in some of his
arguments, for she might still exhibit intelligence in deciding which
cells to lay in, even if the determination of the sex of the egg rested
finally with the cell which she had chosen.
The queen then exercises a personal control over each egg as she
deposits it, but, unless interfered with by irregular circumstances,
she _adapts_ her will to the cells and _chooses_ the cells according to
the requirements of the hive. But when both drones and workers are in
requisition she lays her eggs in each class of cells just as she comes
to them, as to which fact the Baron gives abundant evidence, having in
one instance observed a queen make no fewer than five changes in a day
from worker to drone cells or _vice versa_ without any intermission.
Inconsistent as it may appear, she also herself deposits in royal cells
the eggs which are to hatch into her rivals--that is, when these cells
have been prepared with a view to swarming;--for the preponderance of
argument goes against the belief that eggs are ever removed into these
by the workers.[13] In addition to determining the sex she is further
capable of regulating to a large extent the total number of eggs she
lays, and thus of modifying the growth of the population with the
character of the season and the condition of the colony; thus a queen
that has been transferred from a weak to a strong hive has been know to
vary in two or three days from no eggs at all to two thousand a day.
She lays during some ten months of the year, suspending the process in
November and December. For her first season she lays almost exclusively
worker eggs.
[Footnote 13: The eggs when once deposited adhere to the cells and
could not be removed without ruining them; but occasionally when
fresh laid they stick to the body of the queen, or even of a worker.
Queenless stocks sometimes in their temporary insanity start new queen
cells without thinking where the eggs are to come from; but these will
remain empty unless some fertile worker' tries her skill.]
We are told of the occasional occurrence of hermaphrodite bees, half
workers and half drones, and the explanation of their existence is
given by Von Berlepsch as an incomplete penetration of the shell of the
egg, in the act of fertilising, by the spermatozoa. Yet another order
of individuals has been supposed to exist by some, and they have termed
them "black bees,"[14] also "drone mothers;" they are not, however,
the veritable "fertile workers" named above, but owe their distinction
solely to misconception. They are blacker than the rest, and often
with fewer and shorter hairs: but the above author, after ascertaining
from Leuckart that there was no anatomical difference, proved by
experiments that their colour was caused simply by smearing with
honey, or else was the effect of stifling or of fright, and that the
loss of hairs was owing to nothing more than having crept repeatedly
through confined entrance-holes! Similarly Dzierzon: "The black colour
is one purely accidental, produced through heating, rubbing against
sides, biting, smearing, licking, and the like. As a rule, the glossy
black bees are _robbers_ which have been pursuing their trade for some
considerable time."
[Footnote 14: This term is also sometimes applied to English bees
generally in distinction from the Italians.]
§ XI. THE RATIONALE OF SWARMING.
Under this heading we purpose to describe such matters as belong
chiefly to the natural history of the bee, thus reserving for its
proper position at the beginning of our fifth chapter all which
strictly belongs to the subject of "Manipulation," and which it is to
the convenience of the inexperienced bee-keeper to find brief and ready
to his hand at any moment of emergency. A leisurely digesting of the
interesting facts stated in the present section will, however, greatly
assist him in the intelligent following of his pursuit.
In May, when the preceding part of the spring has been fine, the queen
bee is very active in the deposition of eggs, and the increase in a
strong healthy hive is so prodigious that emigration is necessary, or
work would soon cease. The bees, on arriving at a conviction of this
fact, commence preparations by the building of royal cells, thus
putting matters straight for the after government and progress of the
hive. The queen, _nolens volens_, falls in with the general resolution,
and makes off with the swarm on the first pleasant day after one of
these cells has been sealed over, that is to say, some six or seven
days before her first rival is likely to emerge. If delayed by the
weather till within two days of the hatching of this, the bees usually
destroy all the princesses, and either start fresh cells or give up
swarming altogether for the season. It is now a well-established fact
that the old queen goes forth with the first swarm, and thus the
sovereignty of the old hive devolves upon a young queen. Dzierzon,
however, once met with a case in which the old queen refused to stir,
and three strong swarms were led forth by young princesses in the
course of five days. By the bye, it should be added that swarms are
never "led" forth except by young queens, in the sense of having these
at their head; fruitful mothers usually follow in the midst.
As soon as the swarm builds combs in its new abode, the emigrant queen
begins laying eggs in the cells, and thereby speedily multiplies the
labourers of the new colony. Although there is now amongst apiarians
no doubt that the old queen quits her home, there is no rule as to
the composition of the swarm: old and young alike depart. Some show
unmistakable signs of age by their ragged wings, others their extreme
youth by their lighter colour. We do not, however, use the term
"young" in reference to those youngest inhabitants of the hive whose
engagements are solely within doors, for these cannot go till their
proper time for flying has arrived. Von Berlepsch says that all the
adult bees which are at home at the time of starting go with the swarm;
and sometimes this results in none but the brood bees being left--or
only one-fourth of the population. In preparation for flight, bees
commence filling their honey-bags, taking sufficient, it is said, for
three days' sustenance. This store is needful, not only for food, but
to enable them to commence the secretion of wax and the building of
combs in their new domicile.
On the day of emigration the weather must be fine, warm, and clear,
with but little wind stirring; for the old queen, like a prudent
matron, will not venture out unless the day is in every way favourable.
Whilst her majesty hesitates, either for the reasons we have mentioned
or because the internal arrangements are not sufficiently matured, the
bees will often fly about or hang in clusters at the entrance of the
hive for two or three days and nights together, all labour meanwhile
being apparently suspended. When this cluster is formed in the morning
hours, and grows constantly larger in spite of the sun, it may be taken
as the sign of a very speedy start. The busy flitting of other bees
around this cluster, or their sporting in numbers before the hive, are
also reliable signs, and some have included the appearance of drones
at ten in the morning. At the last, when the time is quite fixed, the
bees in the cluster suddenly return to the hive to fill themselves
with honey for the flight. The agitation of the little folk is well
described by Evans:--
"See where, with hurried step, the impassioned throng
Pace o'er the hive, and seem, with plaintive song,
To invite their loitering queen; now range the floor,
And hang in clustered columns from the door;
Or now in restless rings around they fly,
Nor spoil they sip, nor load the hollowed thigh;
E'en the dull drone his wonted ease gives o'er,
Flaps the unwieldy wing, and longs to soar."
But when all is ready, a scene of the most violent agitation takes
place; the bees rush out in vast numbers, forming quite a dark cloud as
they traverse the air.
The time selected for the departure of the emigrants is generally
between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m.; most swarms come off within an hour of
noon. In very sultry weather they have been known to be as early as
7 a.m., and on the other hand as late as 5 p.m., though this last
probably only occurs when a _young_ queen leads the detachment. As
a rule, says Von Berlepsch, first swarms start in the morning and
after-swarms in the afternoon. It is a very general remark that bees
choose a Sunday for swarming, and probably this is because then greater
stillness reigns around. It will not be difficult to imagine that the
careful bee-keeper is anxious to keep a strict watch, lest he should
lose such a treasure when once it takes wing. The exciting scene at a
bee-swarming has been well described by the apiarian laureate:--
"Mounts the glad chief! and, to the cheated eye,
Ten thousand shuttles dart along the sky,
As swift through ether rise the rushing swarms,
Gay dancing to the beam their sun-bright forms,
And each thin form, still lingering on the sight,
Trails, as it shoots, a line of silver light.
* * * * *
High poised on buoyant wing, the thoughtful queen
In gaze attentive views the varied scene,
And soon her far-stretched ken discerns below
The light laburnum lift her polished brow,
Wave her green leafy ringlets o'er the glade,
And seem to beckon to her friendly shade.
Swift as the falcon's sweep, the monarch bends
Her flight abrupt: the following host descends;
Round the fine twig, like clustered grapes, they close
In thickening wreaths, and court a short repose."
As it often happens with after-swarms that more than one young queen
is hatched before the start is made, the presence of these may cause
irregular and puzzling behaviour in the bees. Langstroth mentions
a case in which no less than eight queens must have started thus
together, and Von Berlepsch once met with the same number; while
Spitzner found a swarm with so many as twenty-one, but this happened
fourteen days after the return to the hive of the first swarm, which
had lost its queen. As mentioned in the section on "The Queen," it is
not altogether a rare occurrence, though certainly the exception, for
more than one monarch to settle down together. In one American case no
fewer than five colonies once took up their quarters in a single large
box, and remained there through a season "united yet divided."
If, on the contrary, the queen is not in the swarm at all, the bees
sometimes return at once to the hive, and sometimes they first
institute a search for her majesty. In the famous but cruel experiment
of Dr. Warder a whole swarm was starved to death by alternate
deprivations and restorations of their queen repeated at intervals
during five days. Of course in his day this devotion was attributed to
personal regard.
Exceptional cases of another kind are also not uncommon, in which
a colony has made no preparation for swarming (by the formation
of royal cells), but on the sudden arrival of warm weather it is
enticed--Dzierzon says by the heat itself. Von Berlepsch by the
contagious example of neighbouring hives--to carry out in a hurry that
which ought to have received some ten days' preliminary care. "An
internal revolution is made," says the Baron, "and they rush forth for
the swarm. The queen, as becomes the pseudo-sovereign of a democratic
monarchy, hastens to prove to her people their most obedient servant,
and there the swarm is, hanging on the first convenient tree." On the
following morning it will in such case be found that worker cells have
been transformed into royal ones.
An instance illustrating the way in which bees sometimes make provision
beforehand of a place to fly to when about to swarm came under our own
notice a few years since. A lady who lived about a quarter of a mile
from our apiary sent to us to say that a swarm had gone in at a hole
over her stable, and to ask us to come and hive them. On our going to
do so her gardener told us that he had seen three days previous two or
three bees as if reconnoitring; next day several came, and about eleven
o'clock on the third day the whole swarm went in and took up their
position between the rafters under the flooring. The difficulty was now
to get at them. A carpenter was sent for, the boards were taken up, a
hive was set over, with a brood comb placed in it to attract them, and
by dint of smoke and brushing with a feather, the queen and her retinue
were coaxed to ascend into the hive. Some of the bees had already gone
out to forage, and there were many flying about that had not settled;
so to secure these and make it easy for them, we brought the hive out,
and erected a sort of platform on a pair of steps close to the hole,
which we stopped. By nighttime all the out-flying bees had joined the
swarm and were easily removed.
We ought to mention that we recognised this swarm from the appearance
of the bees as those from the Carniolan hive left under our care by the
Rev. W. C. Cotton (page 45), and as the queen with the swarm was the
original, we had to ask that we might be allowed to take the bees back
if we provided a swarm of the ordinary English bees, which offer was
accepted. Mr. Cotton eventually took this colony to his residence at
Frodsham near Chester, and we kept the stock, which of course had a new
queen. The bees did not long retain their distinctive features.
A swarm of bees, in a natural state, contains from 10,000 to 20,000
insects. "On an average," says Dzierzon, "we may call 20,000 a strong
swarm, 12,000 to 15,000 a moderate one, and 6,000 to 8,000 a weak one."
Von Berlepsch by a very careful experiment estimated that there were
5,600 unloaded bees in a pound, so that when loaded for swarming there
would certainly not be more than 4,000. A good swarm will therefore
weigh from three to five pounds. We have known swarms not heavier
than two pounds and a half that were in very excellent condition in
August as regards store for the winter; though the Baron's experiments
showed with remarkable conformity that for a new swarm _six_ pounds
was proportionally more profitable than any other weight, larger or
smaller. For a fully furnished hive, he states, there seems really no
limit but that of space--the more bees the better.
Hitherto our remarks have had reference to first or "prime" swarms;
these are the best, and when a swarm is purchased, such should be
bargained for. But there are also second swarms, known amongst cottage
bee-keepers as "casts," one of which is often found to issue from the
hive nine or ten days after the first has departed; in very rare cases
such has been known as early as the third or as late as the seventeenth
day. It is not always that a second swarm issues, as so much depends
on the strength of the stock, the weather, and other causes; but should
the bees determine to throw out another, the first hatched queen in the
stock hive is prevented by her subjects from destroying the other royal
princesses, as she would do if left to her own will. She in consequence
becomes highly indignant; and, when thwarted in her purpose, utters,
in quick succession, shrill angry sounds, much resembling _Peep,
peep_,[15] commonly called "piping," but which more courtly apiarians
have styled the _vox regalis_. The princesses answer her in a somewhat
different note--these being, it must be understood, by this time
perfectly developed queens, but afraid to quit their cells, where
accordingly the brood bees feed them.
[Footnote 15: So all English writers. Bees in Germany evidently speak
a different language, for there the reigning queen cries, _Tüh, tüh_,
while her imprisoned rival answers, _Quah, quah_.]
This royal wailing continues during the evening, and is sometimes so
loud as to be distinctly audible many yards from the hive. When this
is the case, a swarm may usually be expected either on the next day
or at latest within three days, unless the weather causes a longer
postponement. This sound, when persevered in, is a sure sign of the
issuing of an after-swarm, but it is in such case almost the _only_
sign, and it must be noted that even when the bees do not intend to
swarm it may sometimes be heard a day or two after a second swarm has
left. If not heard it may be concluded that swarming is at an end. The
second swarm is not quite so chary of weather as the first; it was
the _old_ lady who exercised so much caution, disliking to leave home
except in the best of summer weather.
In some instances, owing to favourable breeding sea sons and prolific
queens, a third swarm issues from the hive (usually after intervals
of two or three days), which is termed a "colt;" and in remarkable
instances even a fourth (after another day's interval), which in rustic
phrase is designated a "filly." Mr. Langstroth says that he once had a
fifth, and all five in the course of a fortnight. A swarm from a swarm
is called a "maiden" swarm, and, according to bee theory, will again
have the old queen for its leader: if such does occur it will probably
be at about a month after the hiving. The original colony, of one or
more years' duration, is known as a "stock."
When swarming is over for the season any princesses remaining in cells
are torn out and destroyed as before stated, or else left to the tender
mercies of the reigning sovereign. But now and then one of them slips
past her assailants, "and then," says Von Berlepsch, "there ensues a
regular hunt, which I have several times observed through the hive
window. The queen, well knowing the fate that is in store for her,
rushes away, and the bees pursue; when seized by the feet or the wings
she cries out pitiably, and one queen so moved my compassion that I
liberated her, put her in a queen cage, supplied her with workers and
comb on a following day, and, as she became successfully fertilised,
brought her through the winter."
§ XII. INCREASE OF BEES.
In the section upon "The Queen" we have given (page 10) some
particulars as to the rate of breeding with bees. The needful expansion
for this rapid development is found in the above process of "swarming,"
by which they provide themselves with fresh space, and plant new
colonies. But the object of the bee-master is to train and educate his
bees, and in so doing he avoids much of the risk and trouble which is
incurred by allowing the busy folk to follow their own devices. The
various methods for this end adopted by apiarians all come under the
term of the "depriving" system, and they form part of the great object
of humane and economical bee-keeping, which is to save the bees alive
instead of slaughtering them as under the old clumsy _régime_. A very
natural question is often asked: How is it that, upon the depriving
system, where our object is to prevent swarming, the increase of
numbers is not so great as upon the old plan? It will be seen that
the laying of eggs is performed by the queen only, and that there is
but one queen to each hive; so that where swarming is prevented there
remains only one hive or stock, as the superfluous princesses are not
allowed to come to maturity. If all those princesses were to become
monarchs, or mother bees, and to emigrate with a proportionate number
of workers, increase would be going on more rapidly; but the old stock
would be so impoverished thereby as possibly to yield no surplus
honey, whilst the swarms might come off too late for them to collect
sufficient store whereon to grow populous enough to withstand the
winter.
With bees, as with men, "union is strength;" and it is often better
to induce them to remain as one family, rather than to part numbers
at a late period of the honey-gathering season, without a prospect
of supporting themselves, and so perish from cold and hunger during
the ordeal of the winter season. This is one of the great secrets of
successful bee-keeping. Mr. Langstroth's recommendation is that none
"but the most experienced apiarians" should attempt "at the furthest to
do more than treble their stocks in one year." Even doubling them, he
says, is often too rapid an increase for obtaining spare honey.
Our plan of giving additional storage-room will, generally speaking,
prevent swarming. This stay-at-home policy, we contend, is an
advantage; for instead of the loss of time consequent upon a swarm
hanging out preparatory to flight, all the bees are engaged in
collecting honey, and that at a time when the weather is most
favourable and the food most abundant. Upon the old system the swarm
leaves the hive simply because the dwelling has not been enlarged at
the time when the bees are increasing. Upon the antiquated and inhuman
plan where so great a destruction takes place by the brimstone match,
breeding must, of course, be allowed to go on to its full extent to
make up for such sacrifices. Our chief object under the new system is
to obtain honey free from all extraneous matter. _No one can depend
upon gathering pure honey from combs where storing and breeding are
performed in the same compartment._ For fuller explanations on this
point we refer to the various descriptions of our improved hives in a
subsequent chapter of this work.
We often receive from Scotland magnificent boxes of honey; and
though the fine quality is no doubt to be in part attributed to good
pasturage, it is largely owing to keeping the stocks strong, and thus
having hives well stored and well populated early in the season. A
weakly hive will take some weeks, if not months, to grow populous; and
as soon as the strength of the hive has recovered, the honey season
will have advanced, if not ended, whilst the strong stocks have been
able to take full advantage of the supplies, having an abundance of
labourers to collect the honey and store it in supers for their master.
There can now be scarcely two opinions as to the uselessness of the
rustic plan of immolating the poor bees after they have striven through
the summer so to "improve each shining hour." The ancients in Greece
and Italy took the surplus honey and spared the bees, and now for
every intelligent bee-keeper there are ample appliances wherewith to
attain the same results. Mr. Langstroth quotes from the German the
following epitaph, which, he says, "might be properly placed over every
pit of brimstoned bees:"--
Here Rests,
CUT OFF FROM USEFUL LABOUR,
A COLONY OF
INDUSTRIOUS BEES,
BASELY MURDERED
BY ITS
=UNGRATEFUL AND IGNORANT OWNER=.
And Thomson, the poet of "The Seasons," has recorded an
eloquent poetic protest against the barbarous practice, for which,
however, in his day there was no alternative:--
"Ah! see, where, robbed and murdered, in that pit
Lies the still-heaving hive! at evening snatched,
Beneath the cloud of guilt-concealing night,
And fixed o'er sulphur; while, not dreaming ill,
The happy people, in their waxen cells,
Sat tending public cares, and planning schemes
Of temperance, for winter poor; rejoiced
To mark, full flowing round, their copious stores.
Sudden, the dark, oppressive steam ascends;
And, used to milder scents, the tender race
By thousands tumble from their honeyed domes,
Convolved and agonising in the dust."
It will be our pleasing task, in subsequent chapters; to show "a more
excellent way."
[Illustration]
CHAPTER II.
ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY.
§ I. PRELIMINARY REMARKS.
ALTHOUGH the principal object in compiling the present
work has been to induct our readers into the way of keeping bees
according to the most recent and approved methods, it requires little
apology for thus apparently deviating from such prescribed course by
devoting a small portion of our space to a description of the anatomy
of the wonderful little creatures whose labours all our contrivances
are intended to assist, especially since a knowledge of their habits is
not only interesting to the bee-keeper, but enables him to conduct his
apiary in accordance therewith.
In a treatise of this kind, intended to be of a popular character, we
shall endeavour to place these details before our readers in a concise
and simple manner, avoiding as much as may be technical terms, and
referring those who wish to go more deeply into this branch of the
subject to the works of Kirby and Spence, Samuelson, etc. In the
course of our descriptions we shall frequently refer to the steel
engravings, Plates I. and II., drawn by Mr. E. W. Robinson, artist to
the Entomological Society of London, who has most carefully dissected
bees we sent him for the purpose, subjected these dissections to the
microscope, and skilfully produced the accompanying illustrations,
which will so much assist the purpose we have in view. These
delineations are so clear that a little explanation will suffice to
impart a full understanding of the various parts of the bee.
Because the bee is so small an insect we are not to neglect
investigating its organisation. "The bee is little among such as
fly, but her fruit is the chief of sweet things." The enlightened
Boyle, when contemplating the wonders of Nature, declared that his
astonishment had been more excited by the mite than by the elephant;
and that his admiration dwelt "not so much on the docks as on the
_watches_ of creation."[16]
[Footnote 16: Dr. Bevan.]
The Figures i, 2, and 3, in Plate L, respectively represent the
exterior forms of the queen, the worker, and the drone. They are
thus coloured for the purpose of illustrating the Yellow Italian
Alp, or Ligurian bee, now deservedly held in such high estimation by
bee-keepers, and of whose good qualities we have already remarked. All
the bees constituting a stock may not be of quite so bright a colour
as those represented: the old bees differ in appearance from the
younger ones--darkened bodies and ragged wings, not grey hairs and
wrinkled faces, are the signs of old age--so that with bees (especially
Italians), as with the gentler sex of the human race, there is
appointed a period both of youth and beauty.
The anatomical structure of our English bee is the same in kind as that
of the Italian;[17] a description of the one will therefore serve for
the other. The most apparent difference consists in the colour. The
English bee is of a blackish brown; both varieties have their bodies
wholly covered with close-set hairs. These hairs deserve particular
attention, because, although so small, each hair is _feather-shaped_,
consisting of a stem and branches somewhat analogous to the feathers of
birds. This form is extremely serviceable to the insect, when revelling
in the corolla of flowers, to collect the farina, and, besides being
thus useful, is peculiarly adapted for retaining animal heat.[18]
[Footnote 17: Naturalists consider the Italian bee a Very superior
race, and that the various organs are stronger and of greater capacity;
it is however not easy to define the precise anatomical superiority.]
[Footnote 18: "Naturalist's Library."]
The insect is divided into three parts--the _head_, the _thorax_ or
_chest_, and the _abdomen_.
[Illustration: Plate II.
E. W. Robinson, Delt. et Scp. 1865.]
§ II. THE HEAD AND ORGANS OF SENSATION.
The head of the queen (Plate I. Fig. 1 _c_), as also that of the drone
(Fig. 3 _c_), is rounder than that of the worker bee. This last (Fig. 2
_c_) is of a triangular shape, and much flattened, as in Fig. 2 _c*_,
which shows the side view. In common with other creatures, the head
contains the inlet for nutrition, and is the seat of the principal
organs of sensation.
In the figures before alluded to may be seen the double visual
apparatus with which bees are provided. The oval lobes on each side
of the head represent the two eyes, the secondary organs of vision
being the three small eyes on the top of the head, called "stemmata."
We shall first describe the two larger eyes, which, as seems to be
the case with all insects, are immovable, and have neither irides nor
pupils, nor yet eyelids to cover them, but are protected from the dust
or pollen of flowers by a number of small hairs, as well as by a horny
tunicle, which defends and secures them from injury. The multitude of
hexagonal lenses, called "ocelli," which make up the eye of a bee, give
it, when viewed through a microscope, the appearance of honeycomb; or
we might compare it to a multiplying-glass with hexahedral facets, each
facet representing the surface of one ocellus. But when we look also to
the inner structure, it resembles rather some thousands of telescopes
all converging towards one point. It has been computed that in each
eye there are 3,500 of these collateral lenses. Fig. 5 in Plate II.
represents three of these prisms or lenses magnified. Each of them is
wonderfully intricate in structure, comprising, first two plano-convex
lenses of different densities, fitted together on the flat sides on
the principle of an achromatic object-glass; next an empty space
surrounded with dark pigment, which is convex within like the neck of
a vase, so as to narrow the passage for the rays to about one-half the
diameter, or one-fourth the superficial space; and lastly a longer
conical lens, convex at each end and communicating with the optic
nerve. The simple eyes, or stemmata, on the contrary, are as strictly
simple as their name implies, consisting of one nearly globular lens
apiece.
The construction of the eye for seeing objects best at a moderate
distance will account for the fact that bees mount high up into the air
after collecting their store of food, and then, having determined the
point, no matter how far off, they fly homewards with the directness
of a cannon-ball, and alight at the door of their own habitation,
though the country around may be crowded with hives; but on reaching
the entrance their vision appears defective, for they then feel their
way with the antennæ as if totally blind, and should the hive have
been moved a little they will rise again into the air to obtain a more
distant view, suited to the lengthened focus of their sight. When a
stock or swarm is brought from a distance the bees do not take their
departure at once, but reconnoitre awhile, visiting surrounding objects
so as to well know the spot again in order to return thereto.
The distinct purposes of the two different kinds of eyes may not
perhaps be yet determined with certainty, but Pastor Schönfeld (whom
Von Berlepsch employs to write those sections of his own work that
relate to the senses of bees, as being "beyond doubt the best-informed
of apiarians on these subjects") gives a decided opinion that the
stemmata serve only for the most distant objects, while the compound
eyes, which are much more highly refractive, become available when
closer at hand. Thus these eyes, which we compared to telescopes, are
credited with the _least_ of telescopic power, and serve for nearer
observation after all. How much nearer, however, we are not yet in a
position to say, and nothing need be withdrawn of what is stated above
as to the far-sightedness of bees. The compound eyes are assumed to be
also serviceable in the twilight, and thus to afford some vision in
the interior of a hive. It is worth mentioning, as a rare compliment
from a German to an English apiarian, that Schönfeld declares the
best anatomical description of the eyes of our insect to be given by
Samuelson in his work, "The Honey Bee."[19]
[Footnote 19: The compliment belongs doubtless to Dr. Hicks, to whom
the anatomical portion of that work is presumably due.]
The mouth of the bee is a most complex structure, marvellously adapted
for its duties, and consists of the labrum, or upper lip, with the
mandibles, or upper gills, and of the labium, or lower lip, which
is made up of the ligula or tongue, also called the proboscis, the
labial palpi, and the paraglossæ, together with the maxillæ, or lower
gills--we adopt this word "gills" from the German for want of a better.
The jaws open vertically, but the mandibles, maxillæ, and palpi work
horizontally, and serve as pincers or scissors. The mandibles are the
two side pieces which constitute the working portion of the upper jaw.
Fig. 1 _d_ in Plate I. shows the mandible of the queen, which, like
that of the drone (Fig. 3 _d_), is provided with two teeth, whilst the
mandible of the worker (Fig. 2 _d_) is without teeth. This last having
to manipulate the wax with smoothness, the teeth would doubtless be
objectionable. These mandibles are strong, horny, and sharp-pointed,
to assist in breaking down food, and in other respects constitute
serviceable tools for seizing their enemies, ejecting the drones, etc.
The tongue (Plate II. Fig. 3), or proboscis, is a long slender
projection, flattish in form, and about the thickness of a bristle.
It has about forty cartilaginous rings, each of which is fringed with
minute hairs, having also a small tuft of hair at its extremity,
where it is somewhat serrated. In movement it is like the trunk of an
elephant, and is susceptible of extension and contraction, bending
and twisting in all directions; and by rolling about, it sweeps or
laps up, by means of the fringes around it, everything to which it is
applied. Thus, when a bee alights upon a flower, it pierces the petals
and stamens, where the nectar is secreted, and deposits its collection
on the tongue, from whence it passes into the gullet (Plate I. Fig. 2
_c_) at its base. At times, in building combs, the tongue is used as
a trowel, with which the minute scales of wax are deposited in their
appropriate places, and the desired finish is given to the cells. This
organ has been denied by some to be a hollow tube, but this is not the
view generally held, and it certainly does not act wholly by _handing_
up the food, for there is a furrow or gutter running along the whole
length of its under side. Thus, when a bee is imbibing honey the rings
of the abdomen have a vibratory motion similar to pumping, showing to
the casual observer that suction is rapidly going on. Dr. Bevan tells
us that the true tongue is an extremely minute object at the base of
the maxillæ; but this appears to have been a mistake of his own.
The labial palpi (Plate II. Fig. 3 _o_) rise from the base of each
side of this lapping instrument, and are also ciliated exteriorly.
They appear to serve as feelers to the mouth. Between these and the
tongue are the two small sheaths or membranes called the paraglossæ;
and outside of the same are the working portions of the lower jaw, or
the maxillæ (Fig. 3 _n_), which are also provided with hairs and with
two feelers midway known as maxillary palpi. When the jaws close on the
tongue they form a sheath or defence thereto.
With the mandibles of the upper jaw opening right and left, and the
maxillæ of the lower, which serve to hold the object laboured upon, the
insect prepares its work for the sweeping-up apparatus of the lower
parts. Thus, when combs become mouldy, or in any way unfit receptacles
for brood or honey, these tools provided by Nature serve the place of
hands, and the bees are able to chop up in small pieces, and remove
from their dwelling, whatever lumber of this kind may be offensive to
them. They are applied also for opening the anthers of flowers. The
whole of this apparatus, while perfect in action in an expanded state,
can be folded or coiled together when not in use, so as to form one
strong and well-protected instrument.
The antennæ (Plate I. Figs. 1 _a_, 2 _a_, 3 _a_) are most important
instruments, and are planted between or below the eyes and a little
below the stemmata, one on each side; they consist of a number of
tubular joints, each having a separate motion, and, being thus jointed
throughout their whole length, they are capable of every variety of
flexure, and their extremities are exquisitely sensitive. With the
antennæ these insects recognise their queen, and appear to communicate
to each other their joys and sorrows. For instance, if a colony be
deprived of its queen, bees may be seen rushing about the hive, and,
with a nervous twinge, crossing their antennæ or violently striking
them together, and conveying the intelligence of their forlorn state.
The sense of touch is here most acute. Huber performed an interesting
experiment which definitely proved that it was by means of these organs
that they communicated with each other. Dividing a hive by a grating
which kept the two portions too widely apart for the antennæ to meet,
he soon had the queenless half in a state of commotion and upset; but
when he allowed these feelers the means of access, though nothing
else could be passed through, he saw them by hundreds making their
enquiries, and receiving answers, which resulted in the whole remaining
tranquil. The same observer tried the experiment of depriving two
queens of their antennæ and introducing both to the same hive, when the
bees did not appear to know their own from the stranger; but the moment
he added a third, still in possession of these organs, they fell upon
her with murderous intent. Huber further points out that a moonlight
night is the best time for observing the use of the antennæ as feelers.
The bees, if it is warm, circumambulate their doors, to all appearance
as vigilant sentinels, with these appendages stretched right before
them; and woe to the moth that comes within reach--the instant it is
felt its death follows.
The sense of hearing has been denied bees by some, but against
all evidence; others contend that the seat of this power is also
situate in their antennæ. The sounds which bees emit, particularly
at swarming time, are conclusive that they possess this faculty; the
only reasons for arriving at an opposite conclusion seem to be, that
they are indifferent to most sounds, even the loudest, not emitted by
themselves--but even to this there is the notable exception of the
fright they evince at drumming on their hives--and that no precise
organ of hearing can be found. Naturalists are now more united in the
opinion that the seat of hearing is here located. The antennæ are said
to have also another office, viz., that they act as a barometer, by
which bees know the stale of the weather and are premonished of storms;
the darkening of the sky seems, however, to be frequently the cause of
their trooping homeward, though they care not for the loudest thunder,
so long as the sun continues to shine. In the dark recesses of the hive
the feelers are exceedingly serviceable, and may truly be denominated
"eyes to the blind."
Bees possess acutely the sense of smell, and, attracted by the
fragrance of flowers, they may be seen winging their way a considerable
distance in an undeviating course, even sometimes in the face of
weather which one might have thought they would not have braved. The
precise seat of this sense, however, is another doubtful point. Dr.
Dönhoff ascribes this also to the antennæ, stating that if these
are cut off the bees lose the faculty, but regain it after a time.
Schönfeld takes this as proving the case the other way; but are we not
familiar with analogies in which on the loss of some organ its function
has been developed elsewhere--especially when as here the rudiments of
the lost part must have remained? Schönfeld's own surmise is that the
faculty resides in the surfaces of the inner respiratory organs; Dr.
Hicks (the assistant author of Samuelson's "Honey Bee") places it in a
number of vesicles at the roots of the wings; others again attribute
it to two depressions in the lower portion of the face. But Dönhoff's
reference to the antennæ has experiment, to our view, in its favour,
though of course not decisively so. But whether this is correct or not,
this pair of horns play an important part with the useful faculties
which they combine.
With their extraordinary devotion to sweets, bees can hardly but be
possessed of a strong sense of taste, though in consequence of their
being detected occasionally lapping the impure liquids from stable or
other fœtid drains, Huber considered it the least perfect of their
senses. But it is now ascertained that bees, like most animals, are
fond of salt, and they therefore resort to dunghills and stagnant
marshes, from which they are doubtless able to extract saline draughts.
It cannot be denied, however, that, according to our ideas, their taste
is otherwise at fault; thus it sometimes happens that, where onions
and leeks abound and are allowed to run to seed, bees are so anxious
to complete their winter stores, that, from feeding on these plants,
a disagreeable flavour is communicated to the honey (see Chap. VI. §
iii.).
§ III. THE THORAX AND ORGANS OF MOTION.
The thorax or chest approaches in figure to a sphere, and is united to
the head by a thread-like ligament. This is the centre of the organs
of motion. Here are attached both the muscles that move the legs and
wings, and the legs and wings themselves.
In Fig. 1 of Plate II., _b, b, b_ show the muscles that move the wings;
_e, e_, the bases of the wings. These appendages consist of two pairs
of unequal size, which are arranged to hook together. In Plate I. Fig.
A will be seen the margins of the two wings. In Fig. B are the eighteen
or twenty hooks placed on the anterior margin of the hinder wing,
whilst the posterior margin of the fore wing is beautifully folded over
to receive them, so that, when employed in fanning for ventilation, the
two wings on each side act as one, and present an unbroken surface to
the air. The wings of workers are larger than those of the queen, but
those of drones are much larger still.
The bee has six legs, three on each side. Each leg is composed of
several joints, having articulations like a man's arm, for the thigh,
the leg, and the foot. The foremost pair of these are the shortest;
the middle pair are somewhat longer, and with them the bee unloads
the little pellets from the baskets on her thighs; the hindmost are
the longest of all. On the outside of the middle joint of these last
there is, in each leg, a small cavity, in the form of a marrow-spoon,
called the "pollen basket." The pollen is conveyed from the front to
the second pair of legs, and from these to the receptacles in the hind
ones. Fig. 2 _b_ in Plate I. shows the inner side of the hind leg and
pollen brush; 2 _b*_, the outer side and pollen basket. On entering a
flower a bee often covers itself with pollen, and hence the need for
the brash apparatus on reaching home.
The legs are covered with hairs, more particularly the edges of the
cavity mentioned, in which the kneaded pollen requires to be maintained
securely. In this they convey those coloured loads which are so
constantly seen carried into a hive. This basket, or pollen groove,
in the thigh is peculiar to the worker; neither queen nor drone has
anything of the kind.
Another provision of the bee's limbs consists in a pair of hook's
attached to each foot, with their points opposite to each other, by
means of which the bees suspend themselves from the roof or sides of
hives, and cling to each other as they do at swarming time or prior to
and during the formation of new comb, thus forming a living curtain.
In these circumstances each bee, with its two fore claws, takes hold
of the two hinder legs of the one next above. This mode of suspension
seems agreeable to them, although the uppermost in the festoon appear
to be dragged by the weight below. Wildman supposed that bees had a
power of distending themselves with air to acquire buoyancy, and thus
lessen the burden of those at the top. They find no difficulty in
extricating themselves from the mass; the most central of the group
can make its way without endangering the stability of the grape-like
cluster.
Bees are able to walk freely in an inverted position, either on
glass or other slippery substances. The peculiar mechanism of their
feet, which enables them to do so, consists in their having in the
middle of each hook a thin membranous little cup or sucker that is
alternately exhausted and filled with air. Flies have the same
beautiful apparatus--hence a fly commonly selects the ceiling for a
resting-place. These little air-cups, or exhausted receivers, may be
seen by applying a strong magnifying-glass to a window that has a
bee traversing the reverse side. The edges of these little suckers
are serrated, so as to close against any kind of surface to which
their legs may be applied. This apparatus may be also serviceable for
gathering the pollen before transmitting it to the baskets on the hind
legs. Besides these appendages and apparatus of the thorax, that region
is traversed by the œsophagus or gullet (the opening to which will be
found in Plate I. Fig. 2 _c_), on its way to the digestive and other
organs, situate in the third part of the insect--viz., the abdomen.
The covering of the thorax, with the external covering of the gullet,
may be seen in the drawing of the magnified dissected body of the bee
(Plate II. Fig. 1).
The breathing apparatus of bees is a very remarkable feature: they have
no lungs, but, instead, air-vessels, or tubes and bladders ramifying
through every part of the frame. The external openings of these, which
are called "spiracles," are found in the sides of their bodies behind
the wings. Two pairs of them are located in the thorax, and one pair on
each side of the scales of the abdomen. They would be difficult to show
in a drawing, as the multitude of hairs which protect them are in the
way of getting at a very distinct delineation. The writer has traced
their oval form by the aid of Messrs. R. and J. Beck's "Binocular
Microscope," and exceedingly interesting objects they appeared. From
the circumstance of bees breathing through these orifices in their
bodies, it will not be difficult to understand how sadly the little
creatures must be inconvenienced when by accident they fall on loose
mould, and thus have their breathing pores choked with dust; it also
shows how needful it is to prevent bees being besmeared with honey
(by using bad appliances for feeding), which is still more injurious
to them. The air-vessels are all that they possess of a circulating
system, as bees have neither lungs, heart, liver, nor blood. It
appears, however, that a white fluid matter, called "chyle," which in
degree answers the purpose of blood, is produced in the intestines,
nourishes the body, receives the oxygen from the air-vessels,
and generates that animal warmth so necessary for the insect's
well-being--warmth which, as a matter of course, say Schmid and Kleine
in their "Leading Threads," settles that it is incorrect to call the
insect a cold-blooded animal. Bees have the power of counteracting
superabundant heat by perspiration. Not unfrequently, on a hot summer's
morning, a good deal of moisture may be noticed at the entrance of a
crowded hive, which the inmates have been enabled to throw off. This is
a healthy sign, because a sign of great numerical strength. The humming
sound always to be heard in a beehive is produced by breathing.
§ IV. THE ABDOMEN AND SECRETIVE ORGANS.
The abdomen, attached to the posterior part of the thorax by a slender
ligament, has, for an outer covering; six folds or scales of unequal
breadth, overlapping each other, and contains the honey-bag, or first
stomach, the ventricle, or true stomach (Plate II. Figs. 1 and 2 _f_),
with other intestines, to be hereafter referred to.
The honey-bag (Figs. 1 and 2 _d_) is an enlargement of the gullet, and,
although called the first stomach, no digestion takes place here. In
shape it is like a taper oil-flask; when full it is about the size of
a small pea, and so transparent that the colour of the honey may be
seen through it. This sac, as it is sometimes called, is susceptible of
contraction, and so organised as to enable the bee to disgorge a part
of its contents at will, to fill the honey-cells of the hive. It has
been much controverted whether any or what change takes place in the
nectar of flowers whilst in the bee's stomach (Chap. VI. § iii.).
A short passage leads to the ventricle or true stomach (Figs. 1 and
2 _f_), which is somewhat larger. This receives the food from the
honey-bag, for the nourishment of the bee and the secretion of wax.
The stomach, like the honey-bag, has a considerable number of muscles,
which are brought into play to help the digestive and other organs.
The biliary vessels (Figs. 1 and 2 _h, h_) receive the chyle from the
digested food in the stomach, which from thence is conveyed to all
parts of the body for its support. "A bee," says Dzierzon, "with
the honey which she can take into her stomach, is able to subsist
abundantly under some circumstances for longer than a week, while under
others she will die of hunger within twenty-four hours. If we regard
life as a process of combustion, then with the bee it resembles at one
time the spark just glimmering in the ashes, at another the bright
up-bursting flame that in a few minutes consumes the fuel, which to the
barely glimmering fire would have ensured nutrition for a much longer
time."
Wax is the animal fat of the bees, and to produce it requires a
considerable consumption of honey to supply the drain upon the system.
To be capable of passing through the pores of the abdomen, the wax
must no doubt be a liquid oily matter, which, on making its appearance
outside the abdominal rings, thickens, and exudes from under the four
medial ones, in flakes like fish-scales, one on each side; so that
there are eight of these secreting cavities, which are peculiar to the
worker, not being found either in the queen or drone. The shape of
these cavities is that of an irregular pentagon, and the plates of wax,
being moulded in them, exhibit accordingly the same form (see Plate II.
Fig. 6 _w_). No direct channel of communication between the stomach
and these receptacles, or wax-pockets, has as yet been discovered;
but Huber conjectures that the secreting vessels are contained in the
membrane which lines them, and which is covered with a reticulation of
hexagonal meshes, analogous to the inner coat of the second stomach of
ruminant quadrupeds.
The last important organ of the abdomen is the sting. This small but
effective weapon is situate close to the stomach, and is found in the
queen and worker, but is absent in the drone. Our engraving (Plate
II. Fig. 4) exhibits the sting of the worker bee with its muscles and
attachments: _r_ shows the muscles that move the sting, and _q_ the
curved base of the outer sheath by which it is enclosed. Much beautiful
mechanism is observed on a microscopic examination of this weapon, so
wonderfully powerful in comparison with its bulk. The sting is composed
of three separate portions, each of which is double--the dart, and the
inner and outer sheaths. Very confusing accounts are given of this
organ in different works, owing probably to the term "sheath" being
applied by some to the outer and by others to the inner covering. The
outer one consists of two fleshy curved claspers (_q_ in the figure),
inside of which is the linear sheath, which forms an essential portion
of the sting, and consists of two horny scales closely adherent to
the darts. These last are composed of stiff filaments, which at the
outer end are each barbed with from five to ten teeth on one side; and
they slide within the inner sheath, and that within the outer, on the
principle of the tubes of a telescope. As represented in our engraving,
the inner sheath clasps the darts to a level with the tips of the outer
one.
The darts are first protruded in the act of stinging, and, by aid of
the powerful muscles on each side at _s_, are buried in the flesh to
the depth of one-twelfth of an inch; the inner sheath then follows,
and at the same time, by a muscular contraction, the poison is forced
along the groove in which the darts work, causing the well-known
painful effects which arise from the sting of a bee. These darts are
of slightly unequal length, so that the teeth on each side are not
opposite to each other. From this arrangement it is easier for them
to penetrate the flesh, and alternately deepen the wound, while the
teeth successively hold each firm as it makes its way, until the poison
has been ejected. If the sufferer could only command himself so as
to remain perfectly passive, the bee might be able to draw in these
darts which protrude beyond the sheath, and would then have a chance
of withdrawing the sting; the little insect would consequently inflict
less pain, and might perhaps escape paying the penalty of her life. It
generally happens, however, that the excitement of both parties is so
great, that the poor bee leaves behind the whole apparatus, and even
part of her intestines, so that her death is the result, and the wound
is more severe. The sting is about the sixth part of an inch long, and
is largest at the base. Here are situated the glands or ducts (Fig. 4
_u_). By these the poison is secreted and passed into the poison-bag
(Fig. 4 _t_), which acts as a reservoir for retaining it till required.
On the subject of the sting Paley remarks: "The action of the sting
affords a beautiful example of the union of chemistry and mechanism:
of chemistry, in respect to the venom, which in so small a quantity
can produce such powerful effects; of mechanism, as the sting is not
a simple but a compound instrument. The machinery would have been
comparatively useless had it not been for the chemical process, by
which, in the insect's body, honey is converted into poison; and, on
the other hand, the poison would have been ineffectual without an
instrument to wound and a syringe to inject the fluid." As before
stated the drone has no sting, but, in place thereof, the organs of
reproduction, on which, as on the corresponding organs of the queen,
sufficient has been remarked above (pages 24 and 63).
And now, in concluding this section, we would remark the wonderful
contrivance and finish which all the works of the Great Master
Artificer unfold. In the works of man we see, perhaps, a piece of
mechanism of unquestioned beauty and excellence, yet there is a bolt
here or a screw there that might have been dispensed with, and does
not possess any definite use. But in the works of Nature everything
has a place; we may not at once comprehend the exact purpose of some
intricate parts, but that only implies that we have not made a thorough
investigation. The most minute hair serves its required end. Some
reflections of Dr. Evans, though chiefly referring to the cells of
bees, may not inappropriately finish this chapter:--
"On books deep poring, ye pale sons of toil,
Who waste in studious trance the midnight oil,
Say, can ye emulate, with all your rules,
Drawn or from Grecian or from Gothic schools.
This artless frame? Instinct her simple guide,
A heaven-taught insect baffles all your pride.
Or ye on theory's wild wave that roam,
And skim from science but its froth and foam,
Who wield 'gainst Truth the sharp yet shivery lance,
Devoted bending to your idol, Chance;
Oh! say, could Chance her lawless atoms bind,
And weave the tissued woof of sense and mind,
Or her blind impulse in yon mansions trace
The firmest fabric with the amplest space?
No! while ye boast to bow at Reason's shrine,
That Reason bids you hail the Power Divine.
Not huge Behemoth, not the whale's vast form,
That spouts a torrent and that breathes a storm,
Transcends in organs apt the puny fly,
Her fine-strung feelers, and her glanceful eye
Set with ten thousand lenses. Not the pile
By fabled giant raised in Erin's isle,
Not Staffa's crystalled shore, where now, Fingal,
Roar the hoarse surges through thy columned hall,
Nor all yon marshalled orbs that ride so high,
Proclaim more loud a present Deity,
Than the nice symmetry of these small cells,
Where on each angle genuine Science dwells,
And joys to mark through wide creation's reign
How close the lessening links of her continued chain."
[Illustration]
[Illustration]