never have done. To return to the queen, whose position in the hive,
and the part that she plays therein, we shall most fitly describe by
declaring her to be the captive heart of the city, and the centre
around which its intelligence revolves. Unique sovereign though she
be, she is also the royal servant, the responsible delegate of love,
and its captive custodian. Her people serve her and venerate her;
but they never forget that it is not to her person that their homage
is given, but to the mission that she fulfils, and the destiny she
represents. It would not be easy for us to find a human republic
whose scheme comprised more of the desires of our planet; or a
democracy that offered an independence more perfect and rational,
combined with a submission more logical and more complete. And
nowhere, surely, should we discover more painful and absolute
sacrifice. Let it not be imagined that I admire this sacrifice to
the extent that I admire its results. It were evidently to be
desired that these results might be obtained at the cost of less
renouncement and suffering. But, the principle once accepted,--and
this is needful, perhaps, in the scheme of our globe,--its
organisation compels our wonder. Whatever the human truth on this
point may be, life, in the hive, is not looked on as a series of
more or less pleasant hours, whereof it is wise that those moments
only should be soured and embittered that are essential for
maintaining existence. The bees regard it as a great common duty,
impartially distributed amongst them all, and tending towards a
future that goes further and further back ever since the world
began. And, for the sake of this future, each one renounces more
than half of her rights and her joys. The queen bids farewell to
freedom, the light of day, and the calyx of flowers; the workers
give five or six years of their life, and shall never know love, or
the joys of maternity. The queen's brain turns to pulp, that the
reproductive organs may profit; in the workers these organs atrophy,
to the benefit of their intelligence. Nor would it be fair to allege
that the will plays no part in all these renouncements. We have seen
that each worker's larva can be transformed into a queen if lodged
and fed on the royal plan; and similarly could each royal larva be
turned into worker if her food were changed and her cell reduced.
These mysterious elections take place every day in the golden shade
of the hive. It is not chance that controls them, but a wisdom whose
deep loyalty, gravity, and unsleeping watchfulness man alone can
betray: a wisdom that makes and unmakes, and keeps careful watch
over all that happens within and without the city. If sudden flowers
abound, or the queen grow old, or less fruitful; if population
increase, and be pressed for room, you then shall find that the bees
will proceed to rear royal cells. But these cells may be destroyed
if the harvest fail, or the hive be enlarged. Often they will be
retained so long as the young queen have not accomplished, or
succeeded in, her marriage flight,--to be at once annihilated when
she returns, trailing behind her, trophy-wise, the infallible sign
of her impregnation. Who shall say where the wisdom resides that can
thus balance present and future, and prefer what is not yet visible
to that which already is seen? Where the anonymous prudence that
selects and abandons, raises and lowers; that of so many workers
makes so many queens, and of so many mothers can make a people of
virgins? We have said elsewhere that it lodged in the "Spirit of the
Hive," but where shall this spirit of the hive be looked for if not
in the assembly of workers? To be convinced of its residence there,
we need not perhaps have studied so closely the habits of this royal
republic. It was enough to place under the microscope, as Dujardin,
Brandt, Girard, Vogel, and other entomologists have done, the little
uncouth and careworn head of the virgin worker side by side with the
somewhat empty skull of the queen and the male's magnificent
cranium, glistening with its twenty-six thousand eyes. Within this
tiny head we should find the workings of the vastest and most
magnificent brain of the hive: the most beautiful and complex, the
most perfect, that, in another order and with a different
organisation, is to be found in nature after that of man. Here
again, as in every quarter where the scheme of the world is known to
us, there where the brain is, are authority and victory, veritable
strength and wisdom. And here again it is an almost invisible atom
of this mysterious substance that organises and subjugates matter,
and is able to create its own little triumphant and permanent place
in the midst of the stupendous, inert forces of nothingness and
death.*
*The brain of the bee, according to the calculation of
Dujardin, constitutes the 1-174th part of the insect's
weight, and that of the ant the 1-296th. On the other hand
the peduncular parts, whose development usually keeps pace
with the triumphs the intellect achieves over instinct, are
somewhat less important in the bee than in the ant. It would
seem to result from these estimates--which are of course
hypothetical, and deal with a matter that is exceedingly
obscure--that the intellectual value of the bee and the ant
must be more or less equal.
{37}
And now to return to our swarming hive, where the bees have already
given the signal for departure, without waiting for these
reflections of ours to come to an end. At the moment this signal is
given, it is as though one sudden mad impulse had simultaneously
flung open wide every single gate in the city; and the black throng
issues, or rather pours forth in a double, or treble, or quadruple
jet, as the number of exits may be; in a tense, direct, vibrating,
uninterrupted stream that at once dissolves and melts into space,
where the myriad transparent, furious wings weave a tissue throbbing
with sound. And this for some moments will quiver right over the
hive, with prodigious rustle of gossamer silks that countless
electrified hands might be ceaselessly rending and stitching; it
floats undulating, it trembles and flutters like a veil of gladness
invisible fingers support in the sky, and wave to and fro, from the
flowers to the blue, expecting sublime advent or departure. And at
last one angle declines another is lifted; the radiant mantle unites
its four sunlit corners; and like the wonderful carpet the
fairy-tale speaks of, that flits across space to obey its master's
command, it steers its straight course, bending forward a little as
though to hide in its folds the sacred presence of the future,
towards the willow, the pear-tree, or lime whereon the queen has
alighted; and round her each rhythmical wave comes to rest, as
though on a nail of gold, and suspends its fabric of pearls and of
luminous wings.
And then there is silence once more; and, in an instant, this mighty
tumult, this awful curtain apparently laden with unspeakable menace
and anger, this bewildering golden hail that streamed upon every
object near--all these become merely a great, inoffensive, peaceful
cluster of bees, composed of thousands of little motionless groups,
that patiently wait, as they hang from the branch of a tree, for the
scouts to return who have gone in search of a place of shelter.
{38}
This is the first stage of what is known as the "primary swarm" at
whose head the old queen is always to be found. They will settle as
a rule on the shrub or the tree that is nearest the hive; for the
queen, besides being weighed down by her eggs, has dwelt in constant
darkness ever since her marriage-flight, or the swarm of the
previous year; and is naturally reluctant to venture far into space,
having indeed almost forgotten the use of her wings.
The bee-keeper waits till the mass be completely gathered together;
then, having covered his head with a large straw hat (for the most
inoffensive bee will conceive itself caught in a trap if entangled
in hair, and will infallibly use its sting), but, if he be
experienced, wearing neither mask nor veil; having taken the
precaution only of plunging his arms in cold water up to the elbow,
he proceeds to gather the swarm by vigorously shaking the bough from
which the bees depend over an inverted hive. Into this hive the
cluster will fall as heavily as an over-ripe fruit. Or, if the
branch be too stout, he can plunge a spoon into the mass; and
deposit where he will the living spoonfuls, as though he were
ladling out corn. He need have no fear of the bees that are buzzing
around him, settling on his face and hands. The air resounds with
their song of ecstasy, which is different far from their chant of
anger. He need have no fear that the swarm will divide, or grow
fierce, will scatter, or try to escape. This is a day, I repeat,
when a spirit of holiday would seem to animate these mysterious
workers, a spirit of confidence, that apparently nothing can
trouble. They have detached themselves from the wealth they had to
defend, and they no longer recognise their enemies. They become
inoffensive because of their happiness, though why they are happy we
know not, except it be because they are obeying their law. A moment
of such blind happiness is accorded by nature at times to every
living thing, when she seeks to accomplish her end. Nor need we feel
any surprise that here the bees are her dupes; we ourselves, who
have studied her movements these centuries past, and with a brain
more perfect than that of the bee, we too are her dupes, and know
not even yet whether she be benevolent or indifferent, or only
basely cruel.
There where the queen has alighted the swarm will remain; and had
she descended alone into the hive, the bees would have followed, in
long black files, as soon as intelligence had reached them of the
maternal retreat. The majority will hasten to her, with utmost
eagerness; but large numbers will pause for an instant on the
threshold of the unknown abode, and there will describe the circles
of solemn rejoicing with which it is their habit to celebrate happy
events. "They are beating to arms," say the French peasants. And
then the strange home will at once be accepted, and its remotest
corners explored; its position in the apiary, its form, its colour,
are grasped and retained in these thousands of prudent and faithful
little memories. Careful note is taken of the neighbouring
landmarks, the new city is founded, and its place established in the
mind and the heart of all its inhabitants; the walls resound with
the love-hymn of the royal presence, and work begins.
{39}
But if the swarm be not gathered by man, its history will not end
here. It will remain suspended on the branch until the return of the
workers, who, acting as scouts, winged quartermasters, as it were,
have at the very first moment of swarming sallied forth in all
directions in search of a lodging. They return one by one, and
render account of their mission; and as it is manifestly impossible
for us to fathom the thought of the bees, we can only interpret in
human fashion the spectacle that they present. We may regard it as
probable, therefore, that most careful attention is given to the
reports of the various scouts. One of them it may be, dwells on the
advantage of some hollow tree it has seen; another is in favour of a
crevice in a ruinous wall, of a cavity in a grotto, or an abandoned
burrow. The assembly often will pause and deliberate until the
following morning. Then at last the choice is made, and approved by
all. At a given moment the entire mass stirs, disunites, sets in
motion, and then, in one sustained and impetuous flight, that this
time knows no obstacle, it will steer its straight course, over
hedges and cornfields, over haystack and lake, over river and
village, to its determined and always distant goal. It is rarely
indeed that this second stage can be followed by man. The swarm
returns to nature; and we lose the track of its destiny.
III -- THE FOUNDATION OF THE CITY
{40}
LET us rather consider the proceedings of the swarm the apiarist
shall have gathered into his hive. And first of all let us not be
forgetful of the sacrifice these fifty thousand virgins have made,
who, as Ronsard sings,--
"In a little body bear so true a heart,--"
and let us, yet once again, admire the courage with which they begin
life anew in the desert whereon they have fallen. They have
forgotten the splendour and wealth of their native city, where
existence had been so admirably organised and certain, where the
essence of every flower reminiscent of sunshine had enabled them to
smile at the menace of winter. There, asleep in the depths of their
cradles, they have left thousands and thousands of daughters, whom
they never again will see. They have abandoned, not only the
enormous treasure of pollen and propolis they had gathered together,
but also more than 120 pounds of honey; a quantity representing more
than twelve times the entire weight of the population, and close on
600,000 times that of the individual bee. To man this would mean
42,000 tons of provisions, a vast fleet of mighty ships laden with
nourishment more precious than any known to us; for to the bee honey
is a kind of liquid life, a species of chyle that is at once
assimilated, with almost no waste whatever.
Here, in the new abode, there is nothing; not a drop of honey, not a
morsel of wax; neither guiding-mark nor point of support. There is
only the dreary emptiness of an enormous monument that has nothing
but sides and roof. Within the smooth and rounded walls there only
is darkness; and the enormous arch above rears itself over
nothingness. But useless regrets are unknown to the bee; or in any
event it does not allow them to hinder its action. Far from being
cast down by an ordeal before which every other courage would
succumb, it displays greater ardour than ever. Scarcely has the hive
been set in its place, or the disorder allayed that ensued on the
bees' tumultuous fall, when we behold the clearest, most unexpected
division in that entangled mass. The greater portion, forming in
solid columns, like an army obeying a definite order, will proceed
to climb the vertical walls of the hive. The cupola reached, the
first to arrive will cling with the claws of their anterior legs,
those that follow hang on to the first, and so in succession, until
long chains have been formed that serve as a bridge to the crowd
that rises and rises. And, by slow degrees, these chains, as their
number increases, supporting each other and incessantly
interweaving, become garlands which, in their turn, the
uninterrupted and constant ascension transforms into a thick,
triangular curtain, or rather a kind of compact and inverted cone,
whose apex attains the summit of the cupola, while its widening base
descends to a half, or two-thirds, of the entire height of the hive.
And then, the last bee that an inward voice has impelled to form
part of this group having added itself to the curtain suspended in
darkness, the ascension ceases; all movement slowly dies away in the
dome; and, for long hours, this strange inverted cone will wait, in
a silence that almost seems awful, in a stillness one might regard
as religious, for the mystery of wax to appear.
In the meantime the rest of the bees--those, that is, that remained
down below in the hive--have shown not the slightest desire to join
the others aloft, and pay no heed to the formation of the marvellous
curtain on whose folds a magical gift is soon to descend. They are
satisfied to examine the edifice and undertake the necessary
labours. They carefully sweep the floor, and remove, one by one,
twigs, grains of sand, and dead leaves; for the bees are almost
fanatically cleanly, and when, in the depths of winter, severe
frosts retard too long what apiarists term their "flight of
cleanliness," rather than sully the hive they will perish by
thousands of a terrible bowel-disease. The males alone are incurably
careless, and will impudently bestrew the surface of the comb with
their droppings, which the workers are obliged to sweep as they
hasten behind them.
The cleaning over, the bees of the profane group that form no part
of the cone suspended in a sort of ecstasy, set to work minutely to
survey the lower circumference of the common dwelling. Every crevice
is passed in review, and filled, covered over with propolis; and the
varnishing of the walls is begun, from top to bottom. Guards are
appointed to take their stand at the gate; and very soon a certain
number of workers will go to the fields and return with their burden
of pollen.
{41}
Before raising the folds of the mysterious curtain beneath whose
shelter are laid the veritable foundations of the home, let us
endeavour to form some conception of the sureness of vision, the
accurate calculation and industry our little people of emigrants
will be called to display in order to adapt this new dwelling to
their requirements. In the void round about them they must lay the
plans for their city, and logically mark out the site of the
edifices that must be erected as economically and quickly as
possible, for the queen, eager to lay, already is scattering her
eggs on the ground. And in this labyrinth of complicated buildings,
so far existing only in imagination, laws of ventilation must be
considered, of stability, solidity; resistance of the wax must not
be lost sight of, or the nature of the food to be stored, or the
habits of the queen; ready access must be contrived to all parts,
and careful attention be given to the distribution of stores and
houses, passages and streets,--this however is in some measure
pre-established, the plan already arrived at being organically the
best,--and there are countless problems besides, whose enumeration
would take too long.
Now, the form of the hive that man offers to the bee knows infinite
variety, from the hollow tree or earthenware vessel still obtaining
in Asia and Africa, and the familiar bell-shaped constructions of
straw which we find in our farmers' kitchen-gardens or beneath their
windows, lost beneath masses of sunflowers, phlox, and hollyhock, to
what may really be termed the factory of the model apiarist of
today. An edifice, this, that can contain more than three hundred
pounds of honey, in three or four stories of superposed combs
enclosed in a frame which permits of their being removed and
handled, of the harvest being extracted through centrifugal force by
means of a turbine, and of their being then restored to their place
like a book in a well-ordered library.
And one fine day the industry or caprice of man will install a
docile swarm in one of these disconcerting abodes. And there the
little insect is expected to learn its bearings, to find its way, to
establish its home; to modify the seemingly unchangeable plans
dictated by the nature of things. In this unfamiliar place it is
required to determine the site of the winter storehouses, that must
not extend beyond the zone of heat that issues from the half-numbed
inhabitants; it must divine the exact point where the brood-cells
shall concentrate, under penalty of disaster should these be too
high or too low, too near to or far from the door. The swarm, it may
be, has just left the trunk of a fallen tree, containing one long,
narrow, depressed, horizontal gallery; and it finds itself now in a
tower-shaped edifice, whose roof is lost in gloom. Or, to take a
case that is more usual, perhaps, and one that will give some idea
of the surprise habitually in store for the bees: after having lived
for centuries past beneath the straw dome of our village hives, they
are suddenly transplanted to a species of mighty cupboard, or chest,
three or four times as large as the place of their birth; and
installed in the midst of a confused scaffolding of superposed
frames, some running parallel to the entrance and some
perpendicular; the whole forming a bewildering network that obscures
the surfaces of their dwelling.
And yet, for all this, there exists not a single instance of a swarm
refusing its duty, or allowing itself to be baffled or discouraged
by the strangeness of its surroundings, except only in the case of
the new dwelling being absolutely uninhabitable, or impregnated with
evil odours. And even then the bees will not be disheartened or
bewildered; even then they will not abandon their mission. The swarm
will simply forsake the inhospitable abode, to seek better fortune
some little distance away. And similarly it can never be said of
them that they can be induced to undertake any illogical or foolish
task. Their common-sense has never been known to fail them; they
have never, at a loss for definite decision, erected at haphazard
structures of a wild or heterogeneous nature. Though you place the
swarm in a sphere, a cube, or a pyramid, in an oval or polygonal
basket, you will find, on visiting the bees a few days later, that
if this strange assembly of little independent intellects has
accepted the new abode, they will at once, and unhesitatingly and
unanimously have known how to select the most favourable, often
humanly speaking the only possible spot in this absurd habitation,
in pursuance of a method whose principles may appear inflexible, but
whose results are strikingly vivid.
When installed in one of the huge factories, bristling with frames,
that we mentioned just now, these frames will interest them only to
the extent in which they provide them with a basis or point of
departure for their combs; and they very naturally pay not the
slightest heed to the desires or intentions of man. But if the
apiarist have taken the precaution of surrounding the upper lath of
some of these frames with a narrow fillet of wax, they will be quick
to perceive the advantage this tempting offer presents, and will
carefully extract the fillet, using their own wax as solder, and
will prolong the comb in accordance with the indicated plan.
Similarly--and the case is frequent in modern apiculture--if all the
frames of the hive into which the bees have been gathered be covered
from top to bottom with leaves of foundation-wax, they will not
waste time in erecting buildings across or beside these, or in
producing useless wax, but, finding that the work is already half
finished, they will be satisfied to deepen and lengthen each of the
cells designed in the leaf, carefully rectifying these where there
is the slightest deviation from the strictest vertical. Proceeding
in this fashion, therefore, they will possess in a week a city as
luxurious and well-constructed as the one they have quitted;
whereas, had they been thrown on their own resources, it would have
taken them two or three months to construct so great a profusion of
dwellings and storehouses of shining wax.
{43}
This power of appropriation may well be considered to overstep the
limit of instinct; and indeed there can be nothing more arbitrary
than the distinction we draw between instinct and intelligence
properly so-called. Sir John Lubbock, whose observations on ants,
bees, and wasps are so interesting and so personal, is reluctant to
credit the bee, from the moment it forsakes the routine of its
habitual labour, with any power of discernment or reasoning. This
attitude of his may be due in some measure to an unconscious bias in
favour of the ants, whose ways he has more specially noted; for the
entomologist is always inclined to regard that insect as the more
intelligent to which he has more particularly devoted himself, and
we have to be on our guard against this little personal
predilection. As a proof of his theory, Sir John cites as an
instance an experiment within the reach of all. If you place in a
bottle half a dozen bees and the same number of flies, and lay the
bottle down horizontally, with its base to the window, you will find
that the bees will persist, till they die of exhaustion or hunger,
in their endeavour to discover an issue through the glass; while the
flies, in less than two minutes, will all have sallied forth through
the neck on the opposite side. From this Sir John Lubbock concludes
that the intelligence of the bee is exceedingly limited, and that
the fly shows far greater skill in extricating itself from a
difficulty, and finding its way. This conclusion, however, would not
seem altogether flawless. Turn the transparent sphere twenty times,
if you will, holding now the base, now the neck, to the window, and
you will find that the bees will turn twenty times with it, so as
always to face the light. It is their love of the light, it is their
very intelligence, that is their undoing in this experiment of the
English savant. They evidently imagine that the issue from every
prison must be there where the light shines clearest; and they act
in accordance, and persist in too logical action. To them glass is a
supernatural mystery they never have met with in nature; they have
had no experience of this suddenly impenetrable atmosphere; and, the
greater their intelligence, the more inadmissible, more
incomprehensible, will the strange obstacle appear. Whereas the
featherbrained flies, careless of logic as of the enigma of crystal,
disregarding the call of the light, flutter wildly hither and
thither, and, meeting here the good fortune that often waits on the
simple, who find salvation there where the wiser will perish,
necessarily end by discovering the friendly opening that restores
their liberty to them.
The same naturalist cites yet another proof of the bees' lack of
intelligence, and discovers it in the following quotation from the
great American apiarist, the venerable and paternal Langstroth:--
"As the fly was not intended to banquet on blossoms, but on
substances in which it might easily be drowned, it cautiously
alights on the edge of any vessel containing liquid food, and warily
helps itself; while the poor bee, plunging in headlong, speedily
perishes. The sad fate of their unfortunate companions does not in
the least deter others who approach the tempting lure from madly
alighting on the bodies of the dying and the dead, to share the same
miserable end. No one can understand the extent of their infatuation
until he has seen a confectioner's shop assailed by myriads of
hungry bees. I have seen thousands strained out from the syrups in
which they had perished; thousands more alighting even on the
boiling sweets; the floors covered and windows darkened with bees,
some crawling, others flying, and others still so completely
besmeared as to be able neither to crawl nor to fly--not one in ten
able to carry home its ill-gotten spoils, and yet the air filled
with new hosts of thoughtless comers."
This, however, seems to me no more conclusive than might be the
spectacle of a battlefield, or of the ravages of alcoholism, to a
superhuman observer bent on establishing the limits of human
understanding. Indeed, less so, perhaps; for the situation of the
bee, when compared with our own, is strange in this world. It was
intended to live in the midst of an indifferent and unconscious
nature, and not by the side of an extraordinary being who is forever
disturbing the most constant laws, and producing grandiose,
inexplicable phenomena. In the natural order of things, in the
monotonous life of the forest, the madness Langstroth describes
would be possible only were some accident suddenly to destroy a hive
full of honey. But in this case, even, there would be no fatal
glass, no boiling sugar or cloying syrup; no death or danger,
therefore, other than that to which every animal is exposed while
seeking its prey.