At the end of sixteen days after the first royal egg was laid,
the eldest princess begins to try to eat her way out of her
cell, and about this time the old queen becomes very uneasy, and
wanders about distractedly. The reason of this is that there can
never be two queen-bees in one hive, and the queen knows that
her daughter will soon be coming out of her cradle and will try
to turn her off her throne. So, not wishing to have to fight for
her kingdom, she makes up her mind to seek a new home and take a
number of her subjects with her. If you watch the hive about this
time you will notice many of the bees clustering together after
they have brought in their honey, and hanging patiently, in order
to have plenty of wax ready to use when they start, while the
queen keeps a sharp look-out for a bright, sunny day, on which
they can swarm: for bees will never swarm on a wet or doubtful day
if they can possibly help it, and we can easily understand why,
when we consider how the rain would clog their wings and spoil the
wax under their bodies.
Meanwhile the young princess grows very impatient, and tries to
get out of her cell, but the worker-bees drive her back, for
they know there would be a terrible fight if the two queens met.
So they close up the hole she has made with fresh wax after
having put in some food for her to live upon till she is
released.
At last a suitable day arrives, and about ten or eleven o'clock
in the morning the old queen leaves the hive, taking with her
about 2000 drones and from 12,000 to 20,000 worker-bees, which
fly a little way clustering round her till she alights on the
bough of some tree, and then they form a compact swarm ready for
a new hive or to find a home of their own.
Leaving them to go their way, we will now return to the old hive.
Here the liberated princess is reigning in all her glory; the
worker-bees crowd round her, watch over her, and feed her as
though they could not do enough to show her honour. But still
she is not happy. She is restless, and runs about as if looking
for an enemy, and she tries to get at the remaining royal cells
where the other young princesses are still shut in. But the
workers will not let her touch them, and at last she stands still
and begins to beat the air with her wings and to tremble all over,
moving more and more quickly, till she makes quite a loud, piping
noise.
Hark! What is that note answering her? It is a low, hoarse sound,
and it comes from the cell of the next eldest princess. Now we
see why the young queen has been so restless. She knows her
sister will soon come out, and the louder and stronger the sound
becomes within the cell, the sooner she knows the fight will
have to begin. And so she makes up her mind to follow her
mother's example and to lead off a second swarm. But she cannot
always stop to choose a fine day, for her sister is growing very
strong and may come out of her cell before she is off. And so
the second, or after swarm, gets ready and goes away. And this
explains why princesses' eggs are laid a few days apart, for if
they were laid all on the same day, there would be no time for
one princess to go off with a swarm before the other came out of
her cell. Sometimes, when the workers are not watchful enough,
two queens do meet, and then they fight till one is killed; or
sometimes they both go off with the same swarm without finding
each other out. But this only delays the fight till they get
into the new hive; sooner or later one must be killed.
And now a third queen begins to reign in the old hive, and she
is just as restless as the preceding ones, for there are still
more princesses to be born. But this time, if no new swarm wants
to start, the workers do not try to protect the royal cells. The
young queen darts at the first she sees, gnaws a hole with her
jaws, and, thrusting in her sting through the hole in the cocoon,
kills the young bee while it is still a prisoner. She then goes to
the next, and the next, and never rests till all the young
princesses are destroyed. Then she is contented, for she knows no
other queen will come to dethrone her. After a few days she takes
her flight in the air with the drones, and comes home to settle
down in the hive for the winter.
Then a very curious scene takes place. The drones are no more
use, for the queen will not fly out again, and these idle bees
will never do any work in the hive. So the worker-bees begin to
kill them, falling upon them, and stinging them to death, and as
the drones have no stings they cannot defend themselves, and in
a few days there is not a drone, nor even a drone-egg, left in
the hive. This massacre seems very sad to us, since the poor
drones have never done any harm beyond being hopelessly idle.
But it is less sad when we know that they could not live many
weeks, even if they were not attacked, and, with winter coming,
the bees cannot afford to feed useless mouths, so a quick death
is probably happier for them than starvation.
And now all the remaining inhabitants of the hive settle down to
feeding the young bees and laying in the winter's store. It is
at this time, after they have been toiling and saving, that we
come and take their honey; and from a well-stocked hive we may
even take 30 lbs. without starving the industrious little
inhabitants. But then we must often feed them in return and give
them sweet syrup in the late autumn and the next early spring when
they cannot find any flowers.
Although the hive has now become comparatively quiet and the work
goes on without excitement, yet every single bee is employed in
some way, either out of doors or about the hive. Besides the
honey collectors and the nurses, a certain number of bees are
told off to ventilate the hive. You will easily understand that
where so many insects are packed closely together the heat will
become very great, and the air impure and unwholesome. And the
bees have no windows that they can open to let in fresh air, so
they are obliged to fan it in from the one opening of the hive.
The way in which they do this is very interesting. Some of the
bees stand close to the entrance, with their faces towards it,
and opening their wings, so as to make them into fans, they wave
them to and fro, producing a current of air. Behind these bees,
and all over the floor of the hive, there stand others, this time
with their backs towards the entrance, and fan in the same
manner, and in this way air is sent into all the passages.
Another set of bees clean out the cells after the young bees are
born, and make them fit to receive honey, while others guard the
entrance of the hive to keep away the destructive wax-moth,
which tries to lay its eggs in the comb so that its young ones
may feed on the honey. All industrious people have to guard
their property against thieves and vagabonds, and the bees have
many intruders, such as wasps and snails and slugs, which creep
in whenever they get a chance. If they succeed in escaping the
sentinel bees, then a fight takes place within the hive, and the
invader is stung to death.
Sometimes, however, after they have killed the enemy, the bees
cannot get rid of his body, for a snail or slug is too heavy to
be easily moved, and yet it would make the hive very unhealthy
to allow it to remain. In this dilemma the ingenious little bees
fetch the gummy "propolis" from the plant-buds and cement the
intruder all over, thus embalming his body and preventing it
from decaying.
And so the life of this wonderful city goes on. Building,
harvesting, storing, nursing, ventilating and cleaning from morn
till night, the little worker-bee lives for about eight months,
and in that time has done quite her share of work in the world.
Only the young bees, born late in the season, live on till the
next year to work in the spring. The queen-bee lives longer,
probably about two years, and then she too dies, after having had
a family of many thousands of children.
We have already pointed out that in our fairy-land of nature all
things work together so as to bring order out of apparent
confusion. But though we should naturally expect winds and
currents, rivers and clouds, and even plants to follow fixed
laws, we should scarcely have looked for such regularity in the
life of the active, independent busy bee. Yet we see that she,
too, has her own appointed work to do, and does it regularly and
in an orderly manner. In this lecture we have been speaking
entirely of the bee within the hive, and noticing how
marvellously her instincts guide her in her daily life. But
within the last few years we have learnt that she performs a most
curious and wonderful work in the world outside her home and that
we owe to her not only the sweet honey to eat, but even in a great
degree the beauty and gay colours of the flowers which she visits
when collecting it. This work will form the subject of our next
lecture, and while we love the little bee for her constant
industry, patience, and order within the hive, we shall, I think,
marvel at the wonderful law of nature which guides her in her
unconscious mission of love among the flowers which grow around
it.