THE CHILDREN'S LIFE OF THE BEE
BY
MAURICE MAETERLINCK
SELECTED AND ARRANGED BY
ALFRED SUTRO AND HERSCHEL WILLIAMS
ILLUSTRATED BY
EDWARD J. DETMOLD
NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1919
CONTENTS
I ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE HIVE
II THE SWARM
III THE FOUNDATION OF THE CITY
IV THE YOUNG QUEENS
V THE MASSACRE OF THE MALES
VI THE PROGRESS OF THE RACE
ILLUSTRATIONS
"The black throng issues, or rather pours forth, in a
throbbing, quivering stream"--_Frontispiece_
In the heart of the flower.
"And the bees, forming a circle around the two, will
eagerly watch the strange duel"
"The queen takes possession together with her servants,
guardians and counsellors"
The Sphinx
THE LIFE OF THE BEE
I
ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE HIVE
I have not yet forgotten the first apiary I saw, where I learned to love
the bees. It was many years ago, in a large village of Dutch Flanders,
the sweet and pleasant country that rejoices in brilliant flowers; a
country that gladly spreads out before us, as so many pretty toys, her
illuminated gables and wagons and towers; her cupboards and clocks that
gleam at the end of the passage; her little trees marshaled in line
along quays and canal-banks, waiting, one almost might think, for some
splendid procession to pass; her boats and her barges with sculptured
sterns, her flower-like doors and windows, her spotless dams and
many-coloured drawbridges; and her little varnished houses, bright as
new pottery, from which bell-shaped dames come forth, all a-glitter with
silver and gold, to milk the cows in the white-hedged fields, or spread
the linen on flowery lawns that are cut into patterns of oval and
lozenge and are most amazingly green.
To this spot an aged philosopher had retired, having become a little
weary; and here he had built his refuge. His happiness lay all in the
beauties of his garden; and best-loved, and visited most often, were the
bee-hives. There were twelve of them, twelve domes of straw; and some he
had painted a bright pink, and some a clear yellow, but most were a
tender blue, for he had noticed the fondness of the bees for this
color. These hives stood against the wall of the house, in the angle
formed by one of those pleasant and graceful Dutch kitchens whose
earthenware dresser, all bright with copper and brass, was reflected
through the open door on to the peaceful water of the canal. And the
water, carrying these familiar images beneath its curtain of poplars,
led one's eyes to a calm horizon of meadows and of mills.
Here, as in all places, the hives lent a new meaning to the flowers and
the silence, the balm of the air and the rays of the sun. One seemed to
have drawn very near to all that was happiest in nature. One was content
to sit down and rest at this radiant cross-road, along which the busy
and tuneful bearers of all country perfumes were incessantly passing
from dawn until dusk. One heard the musical voice of the garden, whose
loveliest hours seemed to rejoice and to sing of their gladness. One
came here, to the school of the bees, to be taught how nature is always
at work, always scheming and planning; and to learn too the lesson of
whole-hearted labor which is always to benefit others.
In order to follow, as simply as possible, the life of the bees through
the year, we will take a hive that awakes in the Spring and duly starts
on its labors; and then we shall meet, in their order, all the great
events of the bees. These are, first of all, the formation and departure
of the swarm; then, the foundation of the new city, the birth and flight
of the young queens, the massacre of the males, and, last of all, the
return of the sleep of winter. We will try to give the reasons for each
event, and to show the laws and habits that bring it about; and so,
when we have arrived at the end of the bees' short year, which extends
only from April to the last days of September, we shall have gazed on
all the mysteries of the palace of honey.
Before we knock at the door, and let our inquisitive glance travel
round, it need merely be said that the hive is composed of a queen, who
is the mother of all her people; of thousands of female worker-bees, who
are neuters or spinsters; and, finally, of some hundreds of males, who
never do any work, and are known as drones.
When for the first time we take the cover off a hive we cannot help some
feeling of fear, as though we were looking at something not meant for
our eyes, something alarming and frightening. We have always thought of
the bee as rather a dangerous creature. There is the distressful
recollection of its sting, which produces so peculiar a pain that one
knows not with what to compare it: a sort of dreadful dryness, as though
a flame of the desert had scorched the wounded limb; and one asks
oneself whether these daughters of the sun may not have distilled a
dazzling poison from their father's rays, in order to defend the
treasure which they have gathered during his shining hours.
There is no doubt that if some person, who neither knows nor respects
the habits of the bee, were suddenly to fling open the hive, this would
turn itself immediately into a burning-bush of heroism and fury; but the
slight amount of skill needed to deal with the matter can be readily
acquired. Let but a little smoke be deftly applied, let us be gentle and
careful in our movements, and the heavily-armed workers will permit
themselves to be robbed without the least thought of using their sting.
It is not the fact, as some people have stated, that the bees recognize
their owner, nor have they any fear of man; but, when the smoke reaches
them, when they become aware of what is happening, so quietly and
without any haste or disturbance, they imagine that this is not the
attack of an enemy against whom any defense is possible, but that it is
some natural catastrophe, to which they will do well to submit. Instead
of vainly struggling, therefore, their one thought is to safeguard their
future; and they rush at once to their reserves of honey, into which
they eagerly plunge themselves in order to possess the material for
starting a new city immediately, no matter where, should the old one be
destroyed or they compelled to abandon it.
A person who knows nothing of bees will be a little disappointed the
first time he looks into a hive. Let us say that it is an
observation-hive, made of glass, with black curtains and shutters and
only one comb, thus enabling the spectator to study both sides. These
hives can be placed in a drawing-room or a library without any
inconvenience or danger. The bees that live in the one I have in my
study in Paris are able--even in that great city--to do their own
marketing, as it were--in other words, to find the food they
require--and to prosper. You will have been told, when you are shown
this little glass box, that it is the home of a most extraordinary
activity; that it is governed by a number of wise laws, that it
enshrines deep mysteries; and all you will see is a mass of little,
reddish groups, somewhat resembling roasted coffee-berries or bunches of
raisins, all huddled up against the glass. They look more dead than
alive; their movements are slow, and seem confused and without any
purpose. We ask ourselves, can these be the dazzling creatures we had
seen, but a moment ago, flashing and sparkling as they darted among the
pearls and the gold of a thousand wide-open flowers?
Now, in the darkness, they seem to be shivering; to be numbed,
suffocated, so closely are they huddled together. They look as though
they were prisoners; or shall we say queens who have lost their throne,
who have had their one moment of glory in the midst of their radiant
garden, and are now compelled to return to the dingy misery of their
poor overcrowded home.
It is with them as it is with all the real things in life; they must be
studied, and we have to learn how to study them.
Much is happening inside this mass that seems so inactive, but it will
take you some time to grasp it and see it. The truth is that every
single creature in the little groups that appear scarcely to move is
hard at work, each one at its own particular trade. There is not one of
them that knows what it means to be idle; and those, for instance, that
seem fast asleep, as they hang in great clusters against the glass, are
entrusted with the most mysterious and fatiguing task of all; it is
their duty to create the marvelous wax. But we shall tell later, and in
its place, precisely what each of the bees is doing; for the moment we
will merely point out why it is that the different classes of workers
all cluster together so strangely. The fact is that the bee, even more
than the ant, is only happy when she is in the midst of a crowd; she can
only live in the crowd. When she leaves the hive, which is so densely
packed that she has to keep on butting with her head in order to pass,
she is out of her element, away from what she loves. She will dive for
an instant into flower-filled space, as the swimmer will dive into the
sea that is filled with pearls; but, just as the swimmer must come to
the surface and breathe the air, so must she, at regular intervals,
return and breathe the crowd--or she will die. Take her away from her
comrades, and however abundant the food may be, however gentle the
climate, she will perish in a few days, not of hunger or cold, but
merely of loneliness. She needs the crowd, she needs her own city, just
as she needs the honey on which she lives. This craving for
companionship in some way helps us to understand the nature of the laws
that govern the hive. For in these laws the individual bee, the one bee
apart from the other, simply does not count. Her entire life is
sacrifice, and only sacrifice, to the bees as a race; as it were, to the
everlasting community, of which she forms part.
This, however, has not always been the case, for there is a lower order
of bees that prefers to work alone, and very miserably too, sometimes
never seeing its young, and at others, like the bumble-bee, living in
the midst of its own little family. From these we arrive, through one
stage after another, to the almost perfect but pitiless society of our
hives, where the individual bee exists only for the republic of which it
forms a part, and where that republic itself will at all times be
sacrificed in the interests of the immortal city of the future.
II
THE SWARM
We will now leave our observation hive, and, in order to get nearer to
nature, consider the different events of the swarm as they come to pass
in an ordinary hive, which is about ten times larger than the other, and
offers entire freedom to the bees.
Here, then, they have shaken off the sluggishness of winter. The queen
started laying her eggs in the very first days of February, and the
workers have gone in streams to the willows and nuttrees, the gorse and
violets, anemones and lungworts. Then Spring comes upon the earth, and
in the hive honey and pollen abound in cellar and attic, while each day
sees the birth of thousands of bees. The overgrown males now all sally
forth from their cells, and sun themselves on the combs. So crowded does
the city become that hundreds of workers, coming back from the flowers
in the evening, will vainly seek shelter within, and will be forced to
spend the night on the threshold of the hive, where many will die from
the cold.
The inhabitants of the hive become restless, and the old queen begins to
stir. She feels that there is something to be done; something strange,
that she has to do. So far, she has religiously fulfilled her duty as a
good mother; but, to her, the accomplishment of this duty will bring no
reward. An unknown power threatens her tranquillity; she will soon be
forced to quit this city of hers, where she has so long reigned. But
this city has been made by her. She is not its queen in the sense in
which men use the word. She gives no orders; she obeys, as meekly as the
humblest of her subjects, the hidden power that for the present we will
call the "spirit of the hive." But she is the mother of the city; its
inhabitants are all her children. It is she who has founded it, brought
it together out of nothing, triumphed over the uncertainty and poverty
of its beginning; it is she who has peopled it; and those who move
within its walls--the workers, the males, the larvæ, the nymphs and
young princesses--she is the mother of them all.
What is this "spirit of the hive"--where is it to be found? It is not
like the special instinct that teaches the bird to build its
well-planned nest, and then seek other skies when winter threatens. It
is not a fixed and unchanging habit; it is not a law that deals with
special cases. On the contrary, it deals with all cases; it studies
them, watches them--and then gives orders for the right thing to be
done--just as a faithful steward might do who had only the interests of
his master at heart.
It deals unmercifully with the wealth and the happiness, the liberty and
the life, of all this winged people; and yet it always acts with
judgment and wisdom, as though it were itself directed by some
overpowering duty. It is the "spirit of the hive" that decides how many
bees shall be born every day, arranging this in accordance with the
number of flowers that gladden the country-side. It is the "spirit of
the hive" that warns the queen when it is time to depart, that compels
her to allow the young princesses to come into the world, although these
princesses shall be her own rivals. Or perhaps, when the season is on
the wane, and the flowers are growing less plentiful, the spirit will
instruct the workers to do away with the princesses, so that there may
be no chance of disturbance, and work may once again become the sole
object of all.
The spirit of the hive is prudent and wise, but never niggardly. In the
glad summer days of sunshine and plenty it permits three or four hundred
males to exist in the hive--pompous, useless, noisy creatures, who are
greedy and dirty, vulgar and arrogant; but, one morning when the flowers
are beginning to close earlier and open later, the spirit will quietly
issue instructions that every male shall be killed. It draws up a sort
of time-table for each one of the workers, allotting them tasks in
accordance with their age; it selects the nurses who attend to the
larvæ, and the ladies of honor who wait on the queen and never by any
chance let her out of their sight. It has given the necessary orders to
the house-bees who air and warm the hive by fanning their wings, thereby
also helping the honey to settle; to the architects, masons, waxworkers
and sculptors who form the mysterious curtain and build the combs; to
the foragers who sally forth to the flowers in search of the nectar that
turns into honey, of the pollen that feeds the larvæ, and of the water
and salt required by the youth of the city.
It is the spirit of the hive that has chosen the chemists whose business
it is to keep the honey sweet and fresh by allowing a drop of formic
acid to fall in from the end of their sting; the capsule-makers, who
seal up the provision-cells when these are filled; the sweepers, who
clean the streets and public places of the hive; and the guards who all
day and all night keep watch on the threshold, who question all comers
and goers, recognize the young bees as they return from their very first
flight, scare away vagabonds, loafers and trespassers, expel all
intruders, and, if need be, block up and defend the entrance to the
hive.
And, last of all, it is the spirit of the hive which decides on the hour
at which the bees shall swarm; the hour, that is, when we find a whole
people, who have reached the very height of prosperity and power,
suddenly abandoning, in favor of the generation that is to follow, all
their wealth and their palaces, their homes and the fruits of their
labor, content themselves to face the perils and hardships of a journey
into a new and distant country. This act will always bring poverty with
it and sometimes ruin; and the people who once were so happy are
scattered abroad in obedience to a law that they recognize to be
greater than their own happiness.
These things that happen to the bee are regarded by us in the way we
regard most things that happen in the world. We note some of the bees'
habits; we say, they do this, and do that, they work in such and such a
way, this is how their queens are born; we observe that the workers are
all females and that they swarm at a certain time. And having said this,
we think that we know them, and ask nothing more. We watch them
hastening from flower to flower, we see the constant movement within the
hive; and we tell ourselves that we understand all about their life. But
the moment that we try to come nearer the truth, to see more clearly, we
find puzzling questions confronting us, questions as to what part is
played by destiny and what part by will, how much is due to
intelligence and how much to nature; difficult questions, these, that
are never absent even from the most simple acts of our own daily life.
Our hive, then, is preparing to swarm, making ready for the great
sacrifice to the generation that is to come. In obedience to the order
given by the "spirit of the hive," sixty or seventy thousand bees out of
the eighty or ninety thousand that form the whole population, will
forsake their old city at a given hour. They will not be leaving it at a
moment of great unhappiness; they have not suddenly made up their minds
to abandon a home that has been rendered miserable by hunger or illness,
or ruined by war. No; on the contrary, preparations have for a long time
been made, and the hour most favorable for departure patiently awaited.
If the hive were poor, or had suffered from storm or robbery; or if some
misfortune had befallen the royal family, the bees would not dream of
going away. They do this only when everything is at its very best in the
hive; at a time when, thanks to the enormous amount of work done in the
spring, the immense palace of wax has its 120,000 well-arranged cells
overflowing with honey and with the many-colored flour, known as "bees'
bread," on which the larvæ are fed.
Never is the hive more beautiful than on the eve of its great sacrifice.
Let us try to imagine it for ourselves--not as it appears to the bee,
for we cannot tell what it looks like to her, seen through the triple
eye on her brow and the six or seven thousand facets of the eyes on her
side--but as it would seem to us, were we no bigger than she is. From
the height of a dome greater than that of St. Peter's at Rome waxen
walls descend to the ground; and these walls, although they have all
been built in the dark, are more perfect, more wonderful, than any that
have been erected by human hands. Each one, smelling so fresh and so
sweet, contains thousands of cells that are stored with provisions;
enough, indeed, to feed the whole population for weeks. Here, too, are
transparent cells filled with the pollen of every flower of spring,
making brilliant splashes of red and yellow, of black and mauve. Close
by, sealed with a seal to be broken only in days of distress, is the
honey of April, clearest and most perfumed of all, stored in twenty
thousand vats, which look like a long and beautiful embroidery of gold,
with borders that hang stiff and rigid. Lower down still, the honey of
May is maturing, in huge open tanks, that are fanned all the time by
watchful, untiring guardians. In the center, in the warmest part of the
hive, are the royal nurseries, the domain set apart for the queen and
her attendants; here also are about 16,000 cells wherein the eggs
repose, 15 or 16,000 chambers occupied by the youthful bees, and 40,000
rooms filled with infants in their cradles, cared for by thousands of
nurses. And, last of all, in the most secret and private quarters, are
the three, four, six or twelve sealed palaces, vast in size compared
with the others, where the growing princesses lie who await their hour;
wrapped in a kind of shroud, all of them motionless and pale, and fed in
the darkness.
The appointed day arrives, the one that has been chosen by the "spirit
of the hive"; and a certain part of the population will at once sally
forth. In the sleeping city there remain the males, the very young bees
that look after the brood-cells, and some thousands of workers who go on
gathering honey, guarding the treasure, and keeping up the moral
atmosphere of the hive. For it must be understood that each hive has its
own moral code; some are admirable in every respect, while others have
fallen away sadly from the paths of virtue. A careless bee-keeper will
often spoil his people, and cause them to lose respect for the property
of others, whereby they will become a danger to all the hives around.
They will give up the hundreds of visits to neighboring flowers that are
necessary in order to form one drop of honey, and will prefer to force
their way into other hives, that are too weak for selfdefense, and to
rob these of the fruit of their labors; and it is very difficult to
bring back to the paths of duty a hive that shall have become so
depraved.
All things go to prove that it is not the queen, but the "spirit of the
hive," that fixes on the hour for the swarm. This queen of ours, like
many a leader among men, is herself compelled to obey commands that are
far more important, and far more secret, than those which she gives to
her subjects. At break of dawn, or perhaps a night or two before, the
word will be given; and scarcely has the sun drunk in the first drops of
dew when a most unusual stir may be noticed inside and all around the
buzzing hive. Sometimes, too, for day after day before the actual
swarming takes place, one will find a curious excitement, for which
there would seem no cause, that suddenly appears, and as suddenly
vanishes, in the golden, gleaming throng. One asks oneself, has a cloud
that we cannot see crept across the sky that the bees are watching; or
is it their mere sorrow at the thought of leaving? Has a council of bees
been summoned to consider whether they really must go? Of all this we
know nothing; we do know that the "spirit of the hive" has no difficulty
in letting its message be known to the multitude. Certain as it may seem
that the bees are able to communicate with each other, we cannot tell
whether this is done in our human fashion. It is possible that they
themselves do not hear their own song, the murmur that comes to us
heavily laden with perfume of honey, the joyous whisper of fairest
summer days that the bee-keeper loves so well, the festival song of
labor that rises and falls around the hive, and that might almost be the
chant of the eager flowers, the voice of the white carnation, the
marjoram, and the thyme.
Certain sounds that the bees put forth, however, can be readily
understood by us, sounds that convey anger, sorrow, rejoicing or
threats. They have their songs of abundance, when the harvest is
plentiful, their psalms of grief and the chorus they chant to the queen;
and at the time when she is being chosen the young princesses will send
forth long and mysterious warcries.... It is quite possible that the
sounds we ourselves make do not reach the bees; in any event these
sounds do not seem in the least to disturb them, but are regarded by the
bees perhaps as not intended for them, not in their world, and anyhow of
no interest. In the same way perhaps we too only hear a very small part
of the sounds that the bees produce, and there may be many of which we
are ignorant. We soon shall be shown how quickly they contrive to
understand each other, and how each one is told precisely the right
thing to do, when, for instance, that great honey-thief, the dreadful
moth that bears a death's head on its back, forces its way into the
hive, humming its own strange song. The news travels quickly from group
to group; and from the guards on the threshold to the workers on the
most distant combs, the whole population of the hive becomes suddenly
alert and eager, and trembles with fear.
For a long time it was thought that when these clever bees, usually so
prudent and well-advised, left the treasures of their kingdom and sought
a future that was so full of uncertainty, they were obeying some foolish
impulse, some suggestion that had no especial meaning. It is our habit,
when we consider the bees, to say that all that we do not as yet
understand is just due to fate, that it happens because it had to
happen. But now that we have discovered two or three of the secrets of
the hive, we have learned why it is that the bees swarm; the reason
being merely that the generation at present in the hive has thought it
its duty to sacrifice itself on behalf of the generation that is to
come.
The fact that this is the case can easily be proved. If the bee-keeper
chooses to destroy the young queens in their cells, to enlarge the
store-houses and dormitories in the hive, all the restlessness,
confusion, the stir and the worry, would at once disappear. The bees
would immediately take up their work again and revisit the flowers; the
old queen, having no one to fill her place, would give up her great
desire for the light of the sun, and decide to remain where she was. All
her doubts as to the future being now set at rest, she would peacefully
continue her labors, which consist in the laying of two or three
thousand eggs a day, as she passes from cell to cell, omitting none, and
never pausing to rest.
This particular hive, however, that we are now watching, has not been
interfered with by man; the bees have been left to do what seemed right
to them. On the appointed day then, the beautiful day, whose dawn, still
moist with the dew, comes nearer and nearer beneath the trees,
approaching with radiant and glowing steps, the bees all become
impatient, and feverishly restless. Over the whole surface of the golden
corridors that divide the walls of the hive, the workers are busily
making preparations for the journey. Each one will first of all provide
herself with honey sufficient for five or six days. From this honey
that they carry within them they will distil the wax needed to build the
new home. They will take with them also some kind of solid substance
with which they will afterwards block up all the holes, strengthen weak
places, varnish the walls and shut out the light; for the bees love to
work in complete darkness, guiding themselves with their wonderful eyes,
or perhaps with their antennæ, or feelers, which very possibly possess
some sense, unknown to us, that enables them to triumph over the
darkness.
This is the most dangerous day in the life of the bee; it is full of the
most dreadful possibilities; and the bees are well aware of it. Thinking
of nothing now but their mighty adventure, they will have no time to
visit the gardens and meadows; and to-morrow, and after to-morrow, it
may rain, or there may be wind; their wings may be frozen and the
flowers refuse to open. They would soon die of hunger; no one would come
to help them, and they would seek help from none. For one city knows not
the other, and assistance never is given. And even if the bee-keeper
place the new hive by the side of the old one, the queen and her cluster
of bees would not dream of returning to the safety and wealth of the
home they had left, no matter what hardships they might have to endure;
and all, one by one, and down to the last of them, would perish of
hunger and cold around their unhappy queen rather than go back to the
hive where they were born.
This is a thing, some people might say, that men would not do; it is a
proof that the bee cannot have much intelligence. Is this so certain?
Other creatures may have an intelligence that is different from ours,
and produces different results; and yet it does not follow that they are
inferior to us. Are we so readily able to understand of what the people
are thinking whom we see, perhaps, talking behind a closed window or
moving about in the street? Or let us suppose that an inhabitant of
Venus or Mars were to look down from the top of a mountain, and watch
us, who to him would seem mere little black specks, as we come and go in
the streets and squares of our towns. Would the mere sight of our
movements, our buildings, machines and canals, give him any very real
idea of ourselves? All he could do, like ourselves as we gaze at the
hive, would be to take note of one or two facts that seem very
extraordinary. And from these facts he would jump at conclusions that
would be just as uncertain as those that it pleases us to form
concerning the bee.
"What are they aiming at, what are they trying for?" he would wonder,
after years and years of patient watching. "I can see nothing that seems
to direct their actions. The little things that one day they collect and
build up, the next they destroy and scatter. In a great many cases their
conduct is quite extraordinary. There are some men, for instance, who
seem to do no work and hardly to stir from their place. They can be told
from the others by their glossier coat, and also by their being
generally fatter. They live in buildings ten or twenty times bigger than
those of the workers, very much richer, and full of little ingenious
contrivances. They spend a great many hours every day at their meals, of
which they take a great number. They appear to be held in high honor by
all who come near them; and have numbers of men and women to wait on
them, to feed them and look after them. It can only be assumed that
these persons must be of the greatest use and service to the country,
but I have so far not been able to discover what this service may be.
There are others who do nothing but work, and work very hard indeed, in
great sheds full of wheels that are always turning round and round, or
in dark and dirty hovels, or on small plots of earth that from sunrise
to sunset they are always digging and delving. It is certain that this
labor must be an offense, and one which is punished. For the persons who
are guilty of it are lodged in wretched little houses, in which there is
absolutely no comfort at all, and very often no light and no air. They
are clothed in some colorless sort of hide. They are so madly fond of
the foolish things they are doing that they scarcely allow themselves
time to eat or to sleep. In numbers they are to the others as a thousand
to one. The curious thing is that, apart from this extraordinary craving
for their work--which would seem to be very tiring--they appear to be
quite gentle and harmless, and satisfied with the leavings of those who
are evidently the guardians, if not the saviors, of the race."
Whatever we may think about the intelligence of the bee, we must at
least admire the way in which it sacrifices itself to the one thing it
seems to care for or value--and that is, the future. It is the future of
the race, and that only, which directs the bee's actions, its virtues,
and even its cruelties. That is its ideal, the one thing it lives for;
and where shall we find one that is more sublime, where shall we look
for a self-denial that is braver or more complete?
It is such a logical little republic, this one of the bees; they reason
so clearly, they are so careful and wise; and yet they allow this dream
of theirs, this dream that is so uncertain and full of doubt, to master
them completely. Who shall tell us, oh little people, who are so deeply
in earnest, who have fed on the warmth and the light and on all that is
purest in nature, on the very soul of the flowers, who shall tell us why
you seem to have found the answer to questions that to us are
unanswerable still? Oh little city, so full of faith, and mystery, and
hope, why do your thousands of workers sacrifice themselves so
cheerfully? Another spring, another summer, would be theirs if only they
would not waste their strength so recklessly, if only they would take a
little more care of themselves and not work so dreadfully hard; but at
the wonderful moment when the flowers are calling to them, the bees
forget everything but their work, give themselves up to it
whole-heartedly, passionately; with the result that in less than five
weeks they are worn out, their wings are broken, their bodies shriveled
and covered with wounds.
Why, we ask ourselves, why do they give up their sleep, the delights of
honey, the leisure that their winged brother, the butterfly, enjoys so
gaily? It is not because they are hungry. Two or three flowers will
provide each bee with the nourishment that she requires, and in one hour
she will visit two or three hundred, to gather a treasure whose
sweetness she never will taste. Oh bees, we wonder, why all this toil
and suffering? And the answer is that they aim at one thing only, to
live, as long as the world itself, in those that come after them.
But we are forgetting the hive, where the swarming bees have begun to
lose patience; the hive whose black and trembling waves are bubbling and
overflowing, like melting copper beneath a hot sun. It is noon, and the
heat so great that the trees around appear almost to hold back their
leaves, as we hold our breath when something very solemn and wonderful
is about to happen. The bees give their honey and sweet-smelling wax to
the man who keeps 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
joyous hours of the year when flowers are brightest. The bees are the
soul of the summer, the clock whose hands are marking the moments of
plenty; they are the untiring wing on which delicate scents are
floating; they are the guide of the quivering sunbeams, the song of the
tranquil, gentle air. To see them in their flight recalls to us the many
simple joys of the quiet hours of summer; as we look at them, we seem to
hear the whisper of the good, kindly heat. 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.
It will startle you just a little, the first time you see the great
swarm of a bee-hive. You will be almost afraid to go near it. You will
wonder, can these be the same friendly, hard-working bees that you have
so often watched in the past? A few minutes ago, perhaps, you may have
seen them flocking in from all parts of the country, as busy as little
housewives, with no thought beyond household cares. You will have
watched them stream into the hive, all out of breath, tired, flurried;
you will have seen the young guards at the gate salute them as they
passed by. They will have rushed through, to the inner court, and have
quickly handed over their harvest of honey to the workers on duty there,
exchanging with these the three or four necessary words; or perhaps they
will have hastened to the great vats near the brood-cells, and will have
emptied the two heavy baskets of honey that hung from their thighs, then
going out again without giving a thought to what might be happening in
the royal palace, the work-rooms, or the nurseries, where the young
bees lie asleep; without for one instant heeding the babble in the
public place in front of the gate, the place where the cleaners, when
the heat is very great, are accustomed to gather and gossip.
But to-day everything is changed. A certain number of workers, it is
true, will quietly go off to the fields, as though nothing were
happening, and will come back, clean the hive, attend to the
brood-cells, and take no part whatever in the general rejoicing. These
bees are the ones who are not going away with the queen. They will
remain to guard the old home, to look after the nine or ten thousand
eggs, the eighteen thousand young bees, and the seven or eight royal
princesses who to-day will be forsaken. The order has been given, and is
faithfully obeyed; and hardly ever will one of these resigned
Cinderellas be found in the giddy throng of the swarm.
And yet, the temptation must seem very great. It is the festival of
honey, the triumph of the race; the one day of joy, of forgetfulness and
light-heartedness, the only Sunday the bees ever know. It seems, too, to
be the one day on which all eat their fill, and revel, to heart's
content, in the treasure which they have amassed. They might be
prisoners freed at last, suddenly led into a land overflowing with
plenty. They cannot contain the joy that is in them. They come and go
without aim or purpose; they depart and return, sally forth again to see
if the queen is ready; they tease and play about with their sisters, and
do anything to pass the time. They fly much higher than usual, and the
leaves of the mighty trees round about are all quivering in reply. The
bees have left all trouble behind, and all care. They no longer are
fierce, suspicious, angry. On this day man can go near them and handle
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, he can 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, so long as they be not separated from
their queen, on whom that future depends.
But the signal has not yet been given. In the hive there is the
strangest confusion, a disorder which we are unable to understand. At
ordinary times, each bee, as soon as she has returned to the hive,
appears to forget her wings; she will do her work, scarcely making a
movement, on that particular spot in the hive where her special duties
lie. But to-day every bee seems bewitched; they fly in dense circles
round and round the smooth walls, like a living jelly stirred by an
unseen hand. There are times even when the air inside the hive will
become so hot that the wax of which the buildings are made will soften,
and twist out of shape.
The queen, who till now never has stirred from the center of the comb,
is rushing wildly to and fro, in breathless excitement, clambering over
the crowd that keeps on turning and turning. Is she hastening their
departure, or trying to prevent it? Is she commanding or imploring? Is
she the cause of all this emotion, or merely its victim?
There would seem reason to believe that the swarming always takes place
against the wish of the queen. The workers, her daughters, are
extraordinarily good to her, but it is just possible that they have not
much faith in her intelligence. They treat her rather like a mother who
has seen her best days. Their respect for her, their tenderness, is
remarkable, and there is nothing they would not do for her. The purest
honey is kept for her use. She has guardians who watch over her by day
and by night, and get the cells ready in which the eggs are to be laid.
She has loving attendants who pet and fondle her, who feed her and clean
her. Should she meet with the slightest accident, the news will spread
quickly from group to group, and the whole people will rush to and fro
with loud expressions of sorrow. If she were to be taken away from the
hive at a time when the bees had no hope of filling her place, the work
of the city would stop in every direction. No one would look after the
young; the bees would wander about looking for their mother, many of
them leaving the hive. The workers who were building the comb would
scatter, the gatherers of honey would no longer visit the flowers, the
guards at the gate would give up their post; and the enemies of the
hive, who are always watching for a chance to come in and steal, would
enter and leave without any one giving a thought to the defense of the
treasure which it had taken so long to collect. And poverty, little by
little, would creep into the city; and the miserable inhabitants would
before long all die of sorrow and hunger, though every flower of summer
should be blossoming before them.
But if the queen be put back before the bees have suffered too much,
before they believe her to be lost forever, they will give her the
deepest, most touching welcome. They will flock eagerly round her;
excited groups will crawl over each other in their anxiety to see her.
They rush to offer her honey, and lead her in triumph back to the royal
chamber. And order at once comes back and work starts again, from the
comb gatherer of brood-cells to the furthest cells where the reserve
honey is stored. And the bees go forth to the flowers, in long black
files, to return, in less than three minutes sometimes, with their
harvest of nectar and pollen. The streets will be swept, thieves and
other enemies driven out, and in the hive will be heard the soft sounds
of the strange hymn of rejoicing, which would seem to be the chant that
denotes the presence of the queen.
A number of instances could be given of the absolute devotion that the
workers show for their queen. Should a disaster fall on the city;
should the hive or the comb collapse; should the bees suffer from
hunger, from cold or disease, and die in their thousands, the queen will
nearly always be found, alive and safe, beneath the bodies of her
faithful daughters. They may be relied on to protect her, and help her
to escape; they will keep for her the last drop of honey, the last
morsel of food. And be the disaster never so great, they will not lose
heart so long as the queen be alive. You may break their comb twenty
times in succession, twenty times take from them their young and their
food, you will still never succeed in making them despair of the future.
Though they be starving, and so few in number that they scarcely can
conceal their mother from the enemy's gaze, they will set about to start
the city again and to provide for what is most pressing. They will
quietly accept the new conditions, and divide the work between them in
accordance with these conditions; they will take up their labors again
with extraordinary patience, and zeal, and intelligence.
"I have come across a colony of bees," says Langstroth, "that was not
sufficiently large to cover a comb of three inches square, and yet they
tried to rear a queen. For two whole weeks did these bees cherish their
hope. Finally, when their number was reduced by a half, their queen was
born, but her wings were imperfect, and she was unable to fly.
Incomplete as she was, her bees did not treat her with less respect.
Another week, and scarcely a dozen remained alive; a few days more, and
the queen had vanished, leaving only a few wretched, inconsolable
insects mourning for her on the comb."
I have more than once had queens sent to me from Italy, for the Italian
species is stronger, more active and gentler than our own. It is the
custom to forward them in small boxes, with holes made in the top so as
to let in the air. In these boxes, some food is placed, and the queen
put in, together with a certain number of workers, who are selected as
far as possible from among the oldest bees in the hive. (The age of the
bee can easily be told by its body, which becomes more polished, thinner
and almost bald as it grows older; and more particularly by the wings,
which the hard work uses and tears.) It is the mission of these
worker-bees 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 had died. 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 strength. The last of her companions had
probably died in the act of presenting the last drop of honey she held
in her sac to the queen, who was the emblem of a life more precious and
more sacred than her own.
It is probably not because of the queen herself, but of the future that
she represents, that the bees show so great a devotion. For they are by
no means sentimental; and should one of their number return to the hive
so badly wounded that she will be unable to work again, they will
unmercifully drive her away from the city. But for their mother they
always show the same strong attachment. They will recognize her from
among all; and even though she be old, crippled and forlorn, the guards
at the gate will never allow another queen to enter the hive, however
young and much needed she be.
When the queen has grown old, the bees will bring up a certain number of
royal princesses to take her place. What happens then to the old queen?
As to this, we have no certain knowledge; but bee-keepers will
occasionally find a magnificent young queen perched on the central comb
of the hive, and in some dark corner, hidden away at the back, the
haggard old queen who had reigned before her. In cases like this the
bees will have to take the greatest care to protect her from the hatred
of the powerful newcomer who longs for her death; for queen hates queen
so fiercely that, were two to find themselves under the same roof, they
would immediately fly at each other. One would like to believe that the
bees contrive to provide a shelter for their poor old queen, in some
far-away corner of the hive, where she may end her days in peace. But
here we are confronted again by one of the thousand mysteries of the
city of wax; and we are once more shown that the habits and actions of
the bees depend on themselves, and are governed by an intelligence much
greater than we are inclined to believe.
What would the bees do, if we, by force or by some trick, were to bring
a second queen into the city? Though their sting is always in readiness,
and they make constant use of it in fights among themselves, _they will
never draw it against a queen;_ nor will the queen ever draw hers on
man, or an animal or any ordinary bee. She will never unsheath her royal
weapon--which is curved, instead of being straight, like that of the
worker-bee--except only when she is opposed to, and fighting, another
queen.
If a new queen were brought into the hive, the bees would at once
surround her, making a ring with their bodies. They would thus form a
sort of living prison in which the captive would be unable to move; and
in this prison they would keep her for twenty-four hours, or longer if
need be, till the victim shall have died of suffocation or hunger.
But if the reigning queen should approach, and seem anxious to attack
the stranger, the living walls would at once fly open; and the bees,
forming a circle around the two, will eagerly watch the strange duel, in
which they themselves will take no part whatever. For it is written that
against a queen-bee only another queen may draw her sting.
If the fight should last too long, or one of the rivals attempt to
escape, then, no matter whether she be the reigning queen or the
intruder, she will at once be seized and kept in the living prison until
she again shows readiness to attack her foe. The reigning queen will
almost always conquer, being emboldened and encouraged perhaps by the
knowledge that she is fighting in her own home, with her subjects around
her. Perhaps too the bees may make some difference in their treatment of
the rivals during the period of imprisonment, for their mother seems
scarcely to suffer from it at all, while the stranger always appears a
little weakened and bruised.
We have shown that, if the queen be taken away from the hive, her people
will mourn her, and display every sign of the deepest distress. If she
be put back, a few hours later, her daughters will hasten joyfully
towards her, offering honey; one section will respectfully form a lane
for her to pass through, while others, their heads bent low, will move
in great semi-circles before her, singing the song of welcome that is
only heard at moments of great happiness and solemn devotion.
But if a new queen were placed in the hive, instead of the old one, the
greatest trouble and disturbance would ensue. The bees would know at
once that a trick had been played on them; the impostor would be seized,
and immediately confined in the terrible living walls made by their
bodies, and held there until she died. She will hardly ever be allowed
to come out alive.