THE CITY GATE
The door of the hive, or the city gate as it may be called, always
presents a busy spectacle, and Plate XVIII. is a photograph of one.
Bees are constantly alighting on the board, coming so quickly that they
appear to spring from nowhere. Other bees come out of the gates, and
fly away quite as rapidly. Some even are in such a hurry that they do
not wait to crawl on to the board, before taking to flight, but fly
straight out of the door and away into the blue. Then, again, others
do not seem to be in such a hurry, for they come out of the gates, and
stand on the board brushing down their wings, seeming almost as though
they were blinking in the bright light of the morning sun. These are
the young bees, who are on their first expedition to gather honey;
probably they have never been outside the dark hive before, and so they
are unaccustomed to the strong light. They must take careful survey of
the position and surroundings of the hive, so that they will be able
to find it again when returning laden with honey. The bees which dart
straight off from the hive door are the older workers, who have made
many a journey to and fro, and so know very accurately the position of
the hive.
[Illustration: PLATE XVIII
From a photograph by] [E. Hawks
The City Gate]
All these are the foragers, or honey gatherers, and it is their
business to visit hundreds of flowers over the country side, and to
extract from them, by the aid of their wonderful tongues, the tiny
drops of nectar. When their honey-sac is full, they return to the hive
with all speed, and rushing inside, hand over the fruits of their
labours to the house bees. You will be surprised to hear that a bee has
to visit over 100 flowers before her honey-sac is filled, and we must
not forget that this tiny sac when full holds only one-third of a drop.
Now you will understand what a great number of bees are required, and
how hard they have to work, in order to make 1 lb. of honey. Yet some
hives give more than 200 lbs. of honey in a season! Just think of the
vast amount of labour and the incessant toil required for this result.
But the bees are always busy, and the proverb, “Go to the ant, thou
sluggard,” might be quite well changed to “bee,” for I question whether
the ant really works harder than the bee. From the time that the first
ray of the morning sun strikes the dewy fields, until the sunset merges
into misty twilight, all is bustle and hurry in the bee-city. So hard
do the foragers work that instead of living three or four years like
the queen, they often live only two or three weeks in the summer. In
this short time their wings become quite worn away, and their poor
little bodies are covered with wounds.
If we look carefully at the door of a hive on a warm summer’s day, we
shall no doubt see some of these poor worn-out creatures. They can no
longer take part in the great work of the hive, and so for a short time
they come out into the sunshine and dodder about the alighting-board.
Their mission in life being over, no doubt they will summon up all
their remaining strength to fly away to some quiet spot where they will
die, unheeded and unknown. Their last thought is to die somewhere away
from the hive, so that their bodies may not interfere with the work of
the city, and will not need others to carry them to a burial-place.
How sad it is to think of these noble little workers, thousands upon
thousands of which out of each hive willingly give up their lives for
the great work of their race.
Besides the ever-busy foragers, there are other bees coming and going
who do not appear to be in such a hurry. Each has two bright-coloured
spots on her hind legs. These bees are the pollen gatherers, who
collect the “bee-flour”; we might rightly call them the millers of the
hive, and a picture of them is shown in Plate XIX.
Some of the bees at the city gates are employed in quite a different
manner; they do not fly afar in search of honey or pollen, but stand
still, with heads pointing to the hive door. They are using their
wings so vigorously that we cannot see them, just as the propeller of
an aeroplane is invisible, because it is turning so quickly. These
are the ventilating bees, whose duty it is to keep the hive cool on
hot days. The quick fanning of their wings draws out the heated air
from the hive, and if we were able to peep inside the door we should
see other bees also engaged in the same occupation. These, too, stand
with their heads towards the hive door, but instead of fanning out the
hot air, as the outside bees do, they draw a stream of pure, cool air
into the hive. By this simple and wonderful arrangement the bees are
able to regulate the temperature to a nicety, for if it grows too
warm, they have only to set more fanners to work, to expel the hot air.
The temperature of the hive is a very important matter, for should
it become too high the young ones would be suffocated, whilst if it
dropped too low they would be starved to death.
[Illustration: PLATE XIX
Pollen gathers at Hive Door]
The fanning is very hard work, and so, if we watch, we see that as
a bee grows tired her place is taken by a fresh worker, and so the
ventilating is constantly kept up.
During the hot nights of summer, in the busiest time, the hive is
thronged with workers who have come home from the fields to shelter
from the dew and cold of the night. The city then becomes very crowded
and hot, and a large army of bees must be kept at work ventilating.
If, on such a night, we were to steal down to the hive with a lighted
candle and place it a few inches from the door, the draught caused by
the fanners would be quite strong enough to blow out the flame!