And now, as soon as a rough lump of wax is ready, another set of
bees come to do their work. These are called the nursing bees,
because they prepare the cells and feed the young ones. One of
these bees, standing on the roof of the hive, begins to force
her head into the wax, biting with her jaws and moving her head
to and fro. Soon she has made the beginning of a round hollow,
and then she passes on to make another, while a second bee takes
her place and enlarges the first one. As many as twenty bees
will be employed in this way, one after another, upon each hole
before it is large enough for the base of a cell.
Meanwhile another set of nursing bees have been working just in
the same way on the other side of the wax, and so a series of
hollows are made back to back all over the comb. Then the bees
form the walls of the cells and soon a number of six-sided
tubes, about half an inch deep, stand all along each side of the
comb ready to receive honey or bee-eggs.
You can see the shape of these cells in c,d, Fig. 56, and notice
how closely they fit into each other. Even the ends are so
shaped that, as they lie back to back, the bottom of one cell
(B, Fig. 56) fits into the space between the ends of
three cells meeting it from the opposite side (A, Fig. 56),
while they fit into the spaces around it. Upon this plan the
clever little bees fill every atom of space, use the least
possible quantity of wax, and make the cells lie so closely
together that the whole comb is kept warm when the young bees
are in it.
There are some kinds of bees who do not live in hives, but each
one builds a home of its own. These bees - such as the
upholsterer bee, which digs a hole in the earth and lines it
with flowers and leaves, and the mason bee, which builds in
walls - do not make six-sided cells, but round ones, for room is
no object to them. But nature has gradually taught the little
hive-bee to build its cells more and more closely, till they fit
perfectly within each other. If you make a number of round holes
close together in a soft substance, and then squeeze the
substance evenly from all sides, the rounds will gradually take
a six-sided form, showing that this is the closest shape into
which they can be compressed. Although the bee does not know
this, yet as gnaws away every bit of wax that can be
spared she brings the holes into this shape.
As soon as one comb is finished, the bees begin another by the
side of it, leaving a narrow lane between, just broad enough for
two bees to pass back to back as they crawl along, and so the
work goes on till the hive is full of combs.
As soon, however, as a length of about five or six inches of the
first comb has been made into cells, the bees which are bringing
home honey no longer hang to make it into wax, but begin to
store it in the cells. We all know where the bees go to fetch
their honey, and how, when a bee settles on a flower, she
thrusts into it her small tongue-like proboscis, which is really
a lengthened under-lip, and sucks out the drop of honey. This she
swallows, passing it down her throat into a honey-bag or first
stomach, which lies between her throat and her real stomach, and
when she gets back to the hive she can empty this bag and pass
honey back through her mouth again into the honey-cells.
But if you watch bees carefully, especially in the spring-time,
you will find that they carry off something else besides honey.
Early in the morning, when the dew is on the ground, or later in
the day, in moist shady places, you may see a bee rubbing itself
against a flower, or biting those bags of yellow dust or pollen
which we mentioned in Lecture VII. When she has covered herself
with pollen, she will brush it off with her feet, and, bringing
it to her mouth, she will moisten and roll it into a little ball,
and then pass it back from the first pair of legs to the second
and so to the third or hinder pair. Here she will pack it into a
little hairy groove called a "basket" in the joint of one of the
hind legs, where you may see it, looking like a swelled joint, as
she hovers among the flowers. She often fills both hind legs in
this way, and when she arrives back at the hive the nursing bees
take the lumps form her, and eat it themselves, or mix it with
honey to feed the young bees; or, when they have any to spare,
store it away in old honey-cells to be used by-and-by. This is the
dark, bitter stuff called "bee- bread" which you often find in a
honeycomb, especially in a comb which has been filled late in the
summer.
When the bee has been relieved of the bee-bread she goes off to
one of the clean cells in the new comb, and, standing on the
edge, throws up the honey from the honey-bag into the cell. One
cell will hold the contents of many honey-bags, and so the busy
little workers have to work all day filling cell after cell, in
which the honey lies uncovered, being too thick and sticky to
flow out, and is used for daily food - unless there is any to
spare, and then they close up the cells with wax to keep for the
winter.
Meanwhile, a day or two after the bees have settled in the hive,
the queen-bee begins to get very restless. She goes outside the
hive and hovers about a little while, and then comes in again,
and though generally the bees all look very closely after her to
keep her indoors, yet now they let her do as she likes. Again
she goes out, and again back, and then, at last, she soars up
into the air and flies away. But she is not allowed to go alone.
All the drones of the hive rise up after her, forming
a guard of honour to follow her wherever she goes.
In about half-an-hour she comes back again, and then the working
bees all gather round her, knowing that now she will remain
quietly in the hive and spend all her time in laying eggs; for
it is the queen-bee who lays all the eggs in the hive. This she
begins to do about two days after her flight. There are now many
cells ready besides those filled with honey; and, escorted by
several bees, the queen-bee goes to one of these, and, putting
her head into it remains there a second as if she were examining
whether it would make a good home for the young bee. Then,
coming out, she turns round and lays a small, oval, bluish-white
egg in the cell. After this she takes no more notice of it, but
goes on to the next cell and the next, doing the same thing, and
laying eggs in all the empty cells equally on both sides of the
comb. She goes on so quickly that she sometimes lays as many as
200 eggs in one day.
Then the work of the nursing bees begins. In two or three days
each egg has become a tiny maggot or larva, and the nursing bees
put into its cell a mixture of pollen and honey which they have
prepared in their own mouths, thus making a kind of sweet bath
in which the larva lies. In five or six days the larva grows so
fat upon this that it nearly fills the cell, and then the bees
seal up the mouth of the cell with a thin cover of wax, made of
little rings and with a tiny hole in the centre.
As soon as the larva is covered in, it begins to give out from
its under-lip a whitish, silken film, made of two threads of silk
glued together, and with this it spins a covering or cocoon all
round itself, and so it remains for about ten days more. At last,
just twenty-one days after the egg was laid, the young bee is
quite perfect, lying in the cell as in Fig. 57, and she begins to
eat her way through the cocoon and through the waxen lid, and
scrambles out of her cell. Then the nurses come again to her,
stroke her wings and feed her for twenty-four hours, and after
that she is quite ready to begin work, and flies out to gather
honey and pollen like the rest of the workers.
By this time the number of working bees in the hive is becoming
very great, and the storing of honey and pollen-dust goes on
very quickly. Even the empty cells which the young bees have
left are cleaned out by the nurses and filled with honey; and
this honey is darker than that stored in clean cells, and which
we always call "virgin honey" because it is so pure and clear.
At last, after six weeks, the queen leaves off laying worker-
eggs, and begins to lay, in some rather larger cells, eggs from
which drones, or male bees, will grow up in about twenty days.
Meanwhile the worker-bees have been building on the edge of the
cones some very curious cells (q, Fig. 57) which look like
thimbles hanging with the open side upwards, and about every three
days the queen stops in laying drone-eggs and goes to put an egg
in one of these cells. Notice that she waits three days between
each of these peculiar layings, because we shall see presently
that there is a good reason for her doing so.
The nursing bees take great care of these eggs, and instead of
putting ordinary food into the cell, they fill it with a sweet,
pungent jelly, for this larva is to become a princess and a
future queen bee. Curiously enough, it seems to be the peculiar
food and the size of the cell which makes the larva grow into a
mother-bee which can lay eggs, for if a hive has the misfortune
to lose its queen, they take one of the ordinary worker-larvae
and put it into a royal cell and feed it with jelly, and it
becomes a queen-bee. As soon as the princess is shut in like the
others, she begins to spin her cocoon, but she does not quite
close it as the other bees do, but leaves a hole at the top.