reveal the vast moral direction, the wonderful unity, that are so
apparent in the hive. "Whither do they tend, and what is it they do?"
he would ask, after years and centuries of patient watching. "What
is the aim of their life, or its pivot? Do they obey some God? I can
see nothing that governs their actions. The little things that one
day they appear to collect and build up, the next they destroy and
scatter. They come and they go, they meet and disperse, but one
knows not what it is they seek. In numberless cases the spectacle
they present is altogether inexplicable. There are some, for
instance, who, as it were, seem scarcely to stir from their place.
They are to be distinguished by their glossier coat, and often too
by their more considerable bulk. They occupy buildings ten or twenty
times larger than ordinary dwellings, and richer, and more
ingeniously fashioned. Every day they spend many hours at their
meals, which sometimes indeed are prolonged far into the night. They
appear to be held in extraordinary honour by those who approach
them; men come from the neighbouring houses, bringing provisions,
and even from the depths of the country, laden with presents. One
can only assume that these persons must be indispensable to the
race, to which they render essential service, although our means of
investigation have not yet enabled us to discover what the precise
nature of this service may be. There are others, again, who are
incessantly engaged in the most wearisome labour, whether it be in
great sheds full of wheels that forever turn round and round, or
close by the shipping, or in obscure hovels, or on small plots of
earth that from sunrise to sunset they are constantly delving and
digging. We are led to believe that this labour must be an offence,
and punishable. For the persons guilty of it are housed in filthy,
ruinous, squalid cabins. They are clothed in some colourless hide.
So great does their ardour appear for this noxious, or at any rate
useless activity, that they scarcely allow themselves time to eat or
to sleep. In numbers they are to the others as a thousand to one. It
is remarkable that the species should have been able to survive to
this day under conditions so unfavourable to its development. It
should be mentioned, however, that apart from this characteristic
devotion to their wearisome toil, they appear inoffensive and
docile; and satisfied with the leavings of those who evidently are
the guardians, if not the saviours, of the race."
{18}
Is it not strange that the hive, which we vaguely survey from the
height of another world, should provide our first questioning glance
with so sure and profound a reply? Must we not admire the manner in
which the thought or the god that the bees obey is at once revealed
by their edifices, wrought with such striking conviction, by their
customs and laws, their political and economical organisation, their
virtues, and even their cruelties? Nor is this god, though it be
perhaps the only one to which man has as yet never offered serious
worship, by any means the least reasonable or the least legitimate
that we can conceive. The god of the bees is the future. When we, in
our study of human history, endeavour to gauge the moral force or
greatness of a people or race, we have but one standard of
measurement--the dignity and permanence of their ideal, and the
abnegation wherewith they pursue it. Have we often encountered an
ideal more conformable to the desires of the universe, more widely
manifest, more disinterested or sublime; have we often discovered an
abnegation more complete and heroic?
{19}
Strange little republic, that, for all its logic and gravity, its
matured conviction and prudence, still falls victim to so vast and
precarious a dream! Who shall tell us, O little people that are so
profoundly in earnest, that have fed on the warmth and the light and
on nature's purest, the soul of the flowers, wherein matter for once
seems to smile, and put forth it? most wistful effort towards beauty
and happiness,--who shall tell us what problems you have resolved,
but we not yet, what certitudes you have acquired that we still have
to conquer? And if you have truly resolved these problems, and
acquired these certitudes, by the aid of some blind and primitive
impulse and not through the intellect, then to what enigma, more
insoluble still, are you not urging us on? Little city abounding in
faith and mystery and hope, why do your myriad virgins consent to a
task that no human slave has ever accepted? Another spring might be
theirs, another summer, were they only a little less wasteful of
strength, a little less self-forgetful in their ardour for toil; but
at the magnificent moment when the flowers all cry to them, they
seem to be stricken with the fatal ecstasy of work; and in less than
five weeks they almost all perish, their wings broken, their bodies
shrivelled and covered with wounds.
"Tantus amor florum, et generandi gloria mellis!"
cries Virgil in the fourth book of the Georgics, wherein he devotes
himself to the bees, and hands down to us the charming errors of the
ancients, who looked on nature with eyes still dazzled by the
presence of imaginary gods.
{20}
Why do they thus renounce sleep, the delights of honey and love,
and the exquisite leisure enjoyed, for instance, by their winged
brother, the butterfly? Why will they not live as he lives? It is
not hunger that urges them on. Two or three flowers suffice for
their nourishment, and in one hour they will visit two or three
hundred, to collect a treasure whose sweetness they never will
taste. Why all this toil and distress, and whence comes this mighty
assurance? Is it so certain, then, that the new generation whereunto
you offer your lives will merit the sacrifice; will be more
beautiful, happier, will do something you have not done? Your aim is
clear to us, clearer far than our own; you desire to live, as long
as the world itself, in those that come after; but what can the aim
be of this great aim; what the mission of this existence eternally
renewed?
And yet may it not be that these questions are idle, and we who are
putting them to you mere childish dreamers, hedged round with error
and doubt? And, indeed, had successive evolutions installed you
all-powerful and supremely happy; had you gained the last heights,
whence at length you ruled over nature's laws; nay, were you
immortal goddesses, we still should be asking you what your desires
might be, your ideas of progress; still wondering where you imagined
that at last you would rest and declare your wishes fulfilled. We
are so made that nothing contents us; that we can regard no single
thing as having its aim self-contained, as simply existing, with no
thought beyond existence. Has there been, to this day, one god out
of all the multitude man has conceived, from the vulgarest to the
most thoughtful, of whom it has not been required that he shall be
active and stirring, that he shall create countless beings and
things, and have myriad aims outside himself? And will the time ever
come when we shall be resigned for a few hours tranquilly to
represent in this world an interesting form of material activity;
and then, our few hours over, to assume, without surprise and
without regret, that other form which is the unconscious, the
unknown, the slumbering, and the eternal?
{21}
But we are forgetting the hive wherein the swarming bees have begun
to lose patience, the hive whose black and vibrating waves are
bubbling and overflowing, like a brazen cup beneath an ardent sun.
It is noon; and the heat so great that the assembled trees would
seem almost to hold back their leaves, as a man holds his breath
before something very tender but very grave. The bees give their
honey and sweet-smelling wax to the man who attends them; but more
precious gift still is their summoning him to the gladness of June,
to the joy of the beautiful months; for events in which bees take
part happen only when skies are pure, at the winsome hours of the
year when flowers keep holiday. They are the soul of the summer, the
clock whose dial records the moments of plenty; they are the
untiring wing on which delicate perfumes float; the guide of the
quivering light-ray, the song of the slumberous, languid air; and
their flight is the token, the sure and melodious note, of all the
myriad fragile joys that are born in the heat and dwell in the
sunshine. They teach us to tune our ear to the softest, most
intimate whisper of these good, natural hours. To him who has known
them and loved them, a summer where there are no bees becomes as sad
and as empty as one without flowers or birds.
{22}
The man who never before has beheld the swarm of a populous hive
must regard this riotous, bewildering spectacle with some
apprehension and diffidence. He will be almost afraid to draw near;
he will wonder can these be the earnest, the peace-loving,
hard-working bees whose movements he has hitherto followed? It was
but a few moments before he had seen them troop in from all parts of
the country, as pre-occupied, seemingly, as little housewives might
be, with no thoughts beyond household cares. He had watched them
stream into the hive, imperceptibly almost, out of breath, eager,
exhausted, full of discreet agitation; and had seen the young
amazons stationed at the gate salute them, as they passed by, with
the slightest wave of antennae. And then, the inner court reached,
they had hurriedly given their harvest of honey to the adolescent
portresses always stationed within, exchanging with these at most
the three or four probably indispensable words; or perhaps they
would hasten themselves to the vast magazines that encircle the
brood-cells, and deposit the two heavy baskets of pollen that depend
from their thighs, thereupon at once going forth once more, without
giving a thought to what might be passing in the royal palace, the
work-rooms, or the dormitory where the nymphs lie asleep; without
for one instant joining in the babel of the public place in front of
the gate, where it is the wont of the cleaners, at time of great
heat, to congregate and to gossip.
{23}
To-day this is all changed. A certain number of workers, it is true,
will peacefully go to the fields, as though nothing were happening;
will come back, clean the hive, attend to the brood-cells, and hold
altogether aloof from the general ecstasy. These are the ones that
will not accompany the queen; they will remain to guard the old
home, feed the nine or ten thousand eggs, the eighteen thousand
larvae, the thirty-six thousand nymphs and seven or eight royal
princesses, that to-day shall all be abandoned. Why they have been
singled out for this austere duty, by what law, or by whom, it is
not in our power to divine. To this mission of theirs they remain
inflexibly, tranquilly faithful; and though I have many times tried
the experiment of sprinkling a colouring matter over one of these
resigned Cinderellas, that are moreover easily to be distinguished
in the midst of the rejoicing crowds by their serious and somewhat
ponderous gait, it is rarely indeed that I have found one of them in
the delirious throng of the swarm.
And yet, the attraction must seem irresistible. It is the ecstasy of
the perhaps unconscious sacrifice the god has ordained; it is the
festival of honey, the triumph of the race, the victory of the
future: the one day of joy, of forgetfulness and folly; the only
Sunday known to the bees. It would appear to be also the solitary
day upon which all eat their fill, and revel, to heart's content, in
the delights of the treasure themselves have amassed. It is as
though they were prisoners to whom freedom at last had been given,
who had suddenly been led to a land of refreshment and plenty. They
exult, they cannot contain the joy that is in them. They come and go
aimlessly,--they whose every movement has always its precise and
useful purpose--they depart and return, sally forth once again to
see if the queen be ready, to excite their sisters, to beguile the
tedium of waiting. They fly much higher than is their wont, and the
leaves of the mighty trees round about all quiver responsive. They
have left trouble behind, and care. They no longer are meddling and
fierce, aggressive, suspicious, untamable, angry. Man--the unknown
master whose sway they never acknowledge, who can subdue them only
by conforming to their every law, to their habits of labour, and
following step by step the path that is traced in their life by an
intellect nothing can thwart or turn from its purpose, by a spirit
whose aim is always the good of the morrow--on this day man can
approach them, can divide the glittering curtain they form as they
fly round and round in songful circles; he can take them up in his
hand, and gather them as he would a bunch of grapes; for to-day, in
their gladness, possessing nothing, but full of faith in the future,
they will submit to everything and injure no one, provided only they
be not separated from the queen who bears that future within her.
{25}
But the veritable signal has not yet been given. In the hive there
is indescribable confusion; and a disorder whose meaning escapes us.
At ordinary times each bee, once returned to her home, would appear
to forget her possession of wings; and will pursue her active
labours, making scarcely a movement, on that particular spot in the
hive that her special duties assign. But to-day they all seem
bewitched; they fly in dense circles round and round the polished
walls like a living jelly stirred by an invisible hand. The
temperature within rises rapidly,--to such a degree, at times, that
the wax of the buildings will soften, and twist out of shape. The
queen, who ordinarily never will stir from the centre of the comb,
now rushes wildly, in breathless excitement, over the surface of the
vehement crowd that turn and turn on themselves. Is she hastening
their departure, or trying to delay it? Does she command, or haply
implore? Does this prodigious emotion issue from her, or is she its
victim? Such knowledge as we possess of the general psychology of
the bee warrants the belief that the swarming always takes place
against the old sovereign's will. For indeed the ascetic workers,
her daughters, regard the queen above all as the organ of love,
indispensable, certainly, and sacred, but in herself somewhat
unconscious, and often of feeble mind. They treat her like a mother
in her dotage. Their respect for her, their tenderness, is heroic
and boundless. The purest honey, specially distilled and almost
entirely assimilable, is reserved for her use alone. She has an
escort that watches over her by day and by night, that facilitates
her maternal duties and gets ready the cells wherein the eggs shall
be laid; she has loving attendants who pet and caress her, feed her
and clean her, and even absorb her excrement. Should the least
accident befall her the news will spread quickly from group to
group, and the whole population will rush to and fro in loud
lamentation. Seize her, imprison her, take her away from the hive at
a time when the bees shall have no hope of filling her place, owing,
it may be, to her having left no predestined descendants, or to
there being no larvae less than three days old (for a special
nourishment is capable of transforming these into royal nymphs, such
being the grand democratic principle of the hive, and a counterpoise
to the prerogatives of maternal predestination), and then, her loss
once known, after two or three hours, perhaps, for the city is vast;
work will cease in almost every direction. The young will no longer
be cared for; part of the inhabitants will wander in every
direction, seeking their mother, in quest of whom others will sally
forth from the hive; the workers engaged in constructing the comb
will fall asunder and scatter, the foragers no longer will visit the
flowers, the guard at the entrance will abandon their post; and
foreign marauders, all the parasites of honey, forever on the watch
for opportunities of plunder, will freely enter and leave without
any one giving a thought to the defence of the treasure that has
been so laboriously gathered. And poverty, little by little, will
steal into the city; the population will dwindle; and the wretched
inhabitants soon will perish of distress and despair, though every
flower of summer burst into bloom before them.
But let the queen be restored before her loss has become an
accomplished, irremediable fact, before the bees have grown too
profoundly demoralised,--for in this they resemble men: a prolonged
regret, or misfortune, will impair their intellect and degrade their
character,--let her be restored but a few hours later, and they will
receive her with extraordinary, pathetic welcome. They will flock
eagerly round her; excited groups will climb over each other in
their anxiety to draw near; as she passes among them they will
caress her with the long antennae that contain so many organs as yet
unexplained; they will present her with honey, and escort her
tumultuously back to the royal chamber. And order at once is
restored, work resumed, from the central comb of the brood-cells to
the furthest annex where the surplus honey is stored; the foragers
go forth, in long black files, to return, in less than three minutes
sometimes, laden with nectar and pollen; streets are swept,
parasites and marauders killed or expelled; and the hive soon
resounds with the gentle, monotonous cadence of the strange hymn of
rejoicing, which is, it would seem, the hymn of the royal presence.
{26}
There are numberless instances of the absolute attachment and
devotion that the workers display towards their queen. Should
disaster befall the little republic; should the hive or the comb
collapse, should man prove ignorant, or brutal; should they suffer
from famine, from cold or disease, and perish by thousands, it will
still be almost invariably found that the queen will be safe and
alive, beneath the corpses of her faithful daughters. For they will
protect her, help her to escape; their bodies will provide both
rampart and shelter; for her will be the last drop of honey, the
wholesomest food. And be the disaster never so great, the city of
virgins will not lose heart so long as the queen be alive. Break
their comb twenty times in succession, take twenty times from them
their young and their food, you still shall never succeed in making
them doubt of the future; and though they be starving, and their
number so small that it scarcely suffices to shield their mother
from the enemy's gaze, they will set about to reorganize the laws of
the colony, and to provide for what is most pressing; they will
distribute the work in accordance with the new necessities of this
disastrous moment, and thereupon will immediately re-assume their
labours with an ardour, a patience, a tenacity and intelligence not
often to be found existing to such a degree in nature, true though
it be that most of its creatures display more confidence and courage
than man.
But the presence of the queen is not even essential for their
discouragement to vanish and their love to endure. It is enough that
she should have left, at the moment of her death or departure, the
very slenderest hope of descendants. "We have seen a colony," says
Langstroth, one of the fathers of modern apiculture, "that had not
bees sufficient to cover a comb of three inches square, and yet
endeavoured to rear a queen. For two whole weeks did they cherish
this hope; finally, when their number was reduced by one-half, their
queen was born, but her wings were imperfect, and she was unable to
fly. Impotent as she was, her bees did not treat her with the less
respect. A week more, and there remained hardly a dozen bees; yet a
few days, and the queen had vanished, leaving a few wretched,
inconsolable insects upon the combs."
There is another instance, and one that reveals most palpably the
ultimate gesture of filial love and devotion. It arises from one of
the extraordinary ordeals that our recent and tyrannical
intervention inflicts on these hapless, unflinching heroines. I, in
common with all amateur bee-keepers, have more than once had
impregnated queens sent me from Italy; for the Italian species is
more prolific, stronger, more active, and gentler than our own. It
is the custom to forward them in small, perforated boxes. In these
some food is placed, and the queen enclosed, together with a certain
number of workers, selected as far as possible from among the oldest
bees in the hive. (The age of the bee can be readily told by its
body, which gradually becomes more polished, thinner, and almost
bald; and more particularly by the wings, which hard work uses and
tears.) It is their mission to feed the queen during the journey, to
tend her and guard her. I would frequently find, when the box
arrived, that nearly every one of the workers was dead. On one
occasion, indeed, they had all perished of hunger; but in this
instance as in all others the queen was alive, unharmed, and full of
vigour; and the last of her companions had probably passed away in
the act of presenting the last drop of honey she held in her sac to
the queen, who was symbol of a life more precious, more vast than
her own.
{28}
This unwavering affection having come under the notice of man, he
was able to turn to his own advantage the qualities to which it
gives rise, or that it perhaps contains: the admirable political
sense, the passion for work, the perseverance, magnanimity, and
devotion to the future. It has allowed him, in the course of the
last few years, to a certain extent to domesticate these intractable
insects, though without their knowledge; for they yield to no
foreign strength, and in their unconscious servitude obey only the
laws of their own adoption. Man may believe, if he choose, that,
possessing the queen, he holds in his hand the destiny and soul of
the hive. In accordance with the manner in which he deals with
her--as it were, plays with her--he can increase and hasten the
swarm or restrict and retard it; he can unite or divide colonies,
and direct the emigration of kingdoms. And yet it is none the less
true that the queen is essentially merely a sort of living symbol,
standing, as all symbols must, for a vaster although less
perceptible principle; and this principle the apiarist will do well
to take into account, if he would not expose himself to more than
one unexpected reverse. For the bees are by no means deluded. The
presence of the queen does not blind them to the existence of their
veritable sovereign, immaterial and everlasting, which is no other
than their fixed idea. Why inquire as to whether this idea be
conscious or not? Such speculation can have value only if our
anxiety be to determine whether we should more rightly admire the
bees that have the idea, or nature that has planted it in them.
Wherever it lodge, in the vast unknowable body or in the tiny ones
that we see, it merits our deepest attention; nor may it be out of
place here to observe that it is the habit we have of subordinating
our wonder to accidents of origin or place, that so often causes us
to lose the chance of deep admiration; which of all things in the
world is the most helpful to us.
{29}