a bee which shall just have found a few drops of honey on your
window-sill or the edge of your table. She will immediately lap it up;
and so eagerly that you will have time to put a tiny touch of paint on
her belt without disturbing or interrupting her. It is not that she is
greedy; she rejoices at the thought that she has found some honey for
the hive. As soon as she has filled her sac, she will go, but watch her
manner of going; she will not, like the fly, for instance, merely buzz
around or make a dart for the window; for a moment or two she will hover
about the room, with her back to the light, eagerly fixing in her mind
the exact position of the honey. Then, and not till then, she will
return to the hive, empty her sac into one of the provision-cells; and
in three or four minutes you will find her back again, going
unhesitatingly to the spot, and making straight for the honey. And so
she will come and go, till evening, if need be, as long as a drop
remains; and her journeys from the hive to the window, from the window
to the hive, will be as regular as clock-work; there will be no interval
for rest; there will be no interruption.
I will frankly admit that the marked bee often returns alone. Are there
the same differences among the bees, perhaps, as among ourselves, some
of them being gossips, and others not given to talk? When I was trying
this experiment once a friend who was with me said that it must be mere
selfishness or vanity on the part of the bee that kept her from letting
her comrades know of the treasure she had found. But, be this as it may,
it will often happen that the lucky bee will bring two or three friends
back with her; and I have found this to be the case four times out of
ten. One day it was a little Italian bee which was the first to find the
honey; I marked her belt with a touch of blue paint. When she had gorged
herself she flew off, and came back with two of her sisters; these I
imprisoned, but did not interfere with her. After her second feast she
went forth once more, and this time returned with three friends, whom I
again shut away, and kept on doing this for the rest of the afternoon,
when, counting my prisoners, I found that she had brought no less than
eighteen bees to the feast.
One may safely say that the bees will very frequently communicate with
each other, even though this is not an invariable rule. American
bee-hunters are so sure of the bees possessing this faculty that their
methods of searching for nests depend in some measure upon it. "They
will take a box of honey," Mr. Josiah Emery writes, "to a field or a
wood far away from any tame bees, and then pick up two or three wild
ones, and let them fill themselves with the honey. The bees will fly off
to their home with the spoil, and soon return with their friends, to
whom they have told the glad news. These will again be allowed to drink
their fill, and then taken to different points of the compass, and
allowed to fly home; the direction of their flight will be carefully
noted, and in this way the hunters are able to discover the position of
the tree in which the bees have built their nest."
It is to be noticed, too, that the bees do not all come together to feed
on the honey we have put on the table; there will be several seconds
between the different arrivals. We ask ourselves therefore whether the
bees are led by, and merely follow the original discoverer, or whether
they go independently, having been told by her where it is? Experts hold
different opinions as to this; in the case of the ant Sir John Lubbock
is satisfied that the ant which finds the treasure merely leads the way
and is followed by the others; but the ant, of course, merely crawls
along the ground, while the bee's wings throw every avenue open.
My study in the country is on the first floor, and rather above the
ordinary range of the flight of the bees, except at times when the lime
and chestnut trees are in blossom. I took an open honeycomb, and kept it
on my table for a week, without its perfume having attracted a single
bee. Then I went to a glass hive that was close by the house, took an
Italian bee, brought her in to my study, set her on the comb, and marked
while she was feeding. When she had drunk her fill, she flew off and
returned to the hive. I followed quickly, saw her crawl over the huddled
mass of the bees, plunge her head into an empty cell, disgorge her
honey, and then get ready to set forth again. At the entrance of the
hive I had placed a glass box, divided by a trap-door into two
compartments. The bee flew into this box; and as she was alone, and no
other bee seemed to accompany or follow her, I left her there, and then
repeated the experiment on twenty bees in succession. By means of the
trap, with its two little compartments, I was able in each case to
separate the marked bee from the ones that might accompany her, and to
keep her a prisoner in one of the little rooms. Then I marked all the
bees in the other room with paint of a different color, and set them
free; I myself returned quickly to my study, to await their arrival.
Now if the bees which had not visited my study had been able to
communicate with the others, and to be told by them precisely where the
comb was, with instructions how to get at it, a certain number of them
would have found their way to my room. I must frankly admit that, to my
disappointment, there was only one that did actually arrive. And I
cannot tell even whether this may not have been a mere chance. I went
down and released the first bee, and my study soon was invaded by the
buzzing crowd to whom she showed the way to the treasure.
We need not trouble any further with this unsatisfactory experiment of
mine, for there are many other curious circumstances to be noted among
the bees which make it quite certain that they can tell each other
things that go much further than a mere yes or no. In the hive, for
instance, the wonderful way in which they divide up their work, the way
in which the work is combined, one bee holding herself in readiness to
take the place of another who has finished her own particular job and is
waiting for her--these things all prove that they must be able to let
each other know. I have often marked bees that went out in the morning
collecting food; and found that, in the afternoon, if there was no
special abundance of flowers, these same bees would take on another job
altogether; would either be fanning and heating the brood-cells, or
perhaps adding themselves to the mysterious, motionless curtain in whose
midst the sculptors and waxmakers would be at work. In the same way I
have found that bees which for one whole day would be gathering nothing
but pollen would, on the next, evidently in obedience to some order that
had been given, devote themselves entirely to the search for nectar.
Day after day, the sun will scarcely have risen when the explorers of
the dawn return to the hive, which awakes to receive the glad tidings of
what is happening on the earth. "The lime-trees are blossoming to-day on
the banks of the canal." "The grass by the roadside is gay with white
clover.", "The sage and the lotus are about to open." "The mignonette,
the lilies, are overflowing with pollen." The news is handed in to
headquarters, and arrangements are quickly made to divide up the work.
Five thousand of the strongest and most active will be sent to the
lime-trees, while three thousand juniors sally forth to the clover.
Those who yesterday were gathering nectar will to-day give a rest to
their tongues and the glands of their sac, and will bring back red
pollen from the mignonette or yellow pollen from the tall lilies; for
you will never find a bee gathering or mixing up pollens of a different
color or species, and indeed it is one of the special cares of the hive
to keep the different-hued pollens apart in separate store-rooms.
The workers set out, in long black files, each one flying straight to
its own particular task. George de Layens stoutly declares that they
have been told where to go to, and which flowers they are to visit; that
they are aware how much nectar each flower will give, and know its
precise value. It is their business to collect the greatest possible
amount of honey; and if we watch the different directions in which the
bees fly, we will find that they divide themselves up most carefully
among the flowers which offer the best chance of a prosperous harvest.
As these vary day by day, so will the different orders be given. In the
spring, for instance, when the fields are still bare, the bees will
flock to the flowers in the woods, and eagerly visit the gorse and the
violets, langworts and anemones. But, a few days later, when cabbage and
colza are beginning to flower, the bees will turn their attention to
these alone, neglecting the woods almost entirely, for all the abundance
that still may be found there. They know that the colza and cabbage
flowers are richer in honey, and therefore give them the preference;
thus deciding, day by day, what plants they shall visit, their one idea
being to amass the greatest value of treasure in the least possible
time.
You may ask, perhaps, what does it matter to us whether the bees have or
have not a real intelligence of their own? I think that it matters a
very great deal. If we could be quite certain that other creatures
beside ourselves are able to think or to reason it would give us
something of the emotion that came over Robinson Crusoe when he saw the
print of a human foot on the sandy shore of his island. Like him, we
should seem less alone. And when we study, when we try to understand,
the intelligence of the bees, we are at the same time trying to
understand what is the most wonderful thing in ourselves; the power that
enables the will to effect its purpose, and overcome obstacles in its
way.
We will now go on with the story of the hive, take it up where we left
it, and lift a fold of the curtain of bees which are hanging, head
downwards, from the dome. A curious kind of sweat, as white as snow and
airier than the down on the wing of a bird, is beginning to show itself.
This is the wax that is forming; but it is unlike the wax that we know;
it has no weight, it is amazingly pure, being, as it were, the soul of
the honey, which is itself the essence of the flowers.
It is very difficult to follow, stage by stage, the manufacture of wax
by the swarm, or even the use to which they put it, for all this comes
to pass in the very blackest depth of the mass of bees all huddled
together. We know that the honey in the sac of the bees that are
clinging to each other turns itself into wax, but we have no idea how
this is done. All we can tell is that they will stay in this position,
never stirring or making the least movement, for eighteen or twenty-four
hours, and that the hive becomes so hot that it is almost as though a
fire had been lit. And then at last white and transparent scales show
themselves at the opening of four little pockets that every bee has
underneath its stomach.
When the bodies of most of the bees forming the curtain have thus been
adorned with ivory tablets, we shall suddenly see one of them detach
herself from the crowd, and eagerly, hurriedly, clamber over the backs
of the motionless crowd till she has reached the top of the dome. To
this she will fix herself firmly, banging away with her head at those of
her neighbors who seem to interfere with her movements. Then, she will
seize with her mouth and her claws one of the scales that hang from her
body, and set to work at it like a carpenter planing a soft piece of
wood. She will pull it out, flatten it, bend it and roll it, moistening
it with her tongue and licking it into shape; and, when at last she has
got it to be just what she wanted, she will fix it to the highest point
of the dome, thus laying the stone, the foundation, of the new city; for
we have here a city that is being built downwards from the sky, and not
from the earth upwards, like the cities of men. To this beginning she
will add other morsels of wax, which she takes from beneath her belt;
and at last, with one final lick of the tongue, one last touch of her
feelers, she will go, as suddenly as she came, and disappear among the
crowd. Another bee will at once take her place, carry on the work from
the point where the first has left it; she will go through her own
carpentering, just like her sister, and add to or improve the first
one's job if she thinks this is called for. And then a third will
follow, a fourth and a fifth, all coming from different corners, all
eager and earnest, till numbers and numbers have taken their turn, none
of them finishing the work but each adding her share to the task in
which all combine.
A small lump of wax, as yet quite formless, hangs down from the top of
the hive. As soon as it is sufficiently thick, we shall see another bee
coming out of the mass. This one is very sure of herself, puts on a
little side as it were; and she is watched very closely by the eager
crowd below. She is one of the sculptors or carvers; she does not make
any wax herself, her job being to deal with the material which the
others have provided. She marks out the first cell, settles where it
shall be; digs into the block for a moment, putting the wax she has
taken out from the hole on the borders around it; and then she goes,
making way for another, who is impatiently waiting her turn, and will go
on with the work that a third will continue, while others close by are
digging away at the wax on the opposite side. And very soon we shall be
able to see the outline of the new comb. In shape it will be something
like our own tongue, if you can imagine this to be made up of little
six-sided cells, which all lie back to back. When the first cells have
been built, the architects put on the ceiling, and then start building a
second row, and a third and a fourth, and so on, gallery on the top of
gallery, and the dimensions so carefully worked out that there will
always be ample space, when the comb is finished, for the bees to move
freely between its walls.
It happens, however, sometimes that a mistake has been made; that too
much space, or too little, will have been left between the combs. The
bees will do the best they can to set matters right; they will slant the
one comb that is too near the other, or fill up the space that has been
left with a new comb specially shaped.
The bees build four different kinds of cells. There are the royal cells,
rather like an acorn in shape; the large cells in which the males are
reared, and provisions stored when flowers are plentiful; the small
cells used as cradles for the workerbees and also as ordinary
store-rooms. These last are the most common kind, and about four-fifths
of the buildings will be composed of them. Then there are also a certain
number of what are known as "transition-cells," irregular in shape,
which connect the larger cells with the smaller.
Each cell, with the exception of the transition ones, is worked out
absolutely to scale, with extraordinary accuracy. It is a kind of
six-sided tube, and two layers of these tubes form the comb. It is in
these tubes that the honey is stored; and to prevent it from spilling,
the bees tilt the tubes slightly forward. Each cell is solidly built,
and the position of one to the other has been carefully thought out and
arranged. Indeed, such wonderful skill and ingenuity is shown in the
construction of the cells that it is difficult to believe that instinct
alone is sufficient to account for it. The wasps, for instance, also
build combs with six-sided cells; but their combs have only one layer of
cells, and are not only less regular, but also less substantial;
further, the wasps are so wasteful in their manner of working that, to
say nothing of the loss of material, they also deprive themselves of
about a third of the space that they might have used. Some bees
again--which are not as civilized as those in our hives--build only one
row of rearing-cells and rest their combs on shapeless and extravagant
columns of wax. Their provision-cells are nothing but great pots,
grouped together without any system or order. You could no more compare
these nests with the cities of our own honey-bees than you could a
village made up of huts with a modern town.
The very greatest ingenuity is shown in the construction of the combs,
quite apart from the admirable precision of the architecture. Thus, for
instance, there is a most skillful arrangement of alleys and gangways
through and around the comb, which provide short cuts in every
direction, allow the air to circulate, and prevent any block of the
traffic. The connecting cells again, which join the large cells to the
small ones, are so made that their shape can be altered with the least
possible delay. There may be different reasons for desiring this
alteration: an overflowing harvest may render more store-rooms
necessary, or the workers may consider that the population of the hive
should not be further increased, or it may be considered advisable that
more males should be born. In any of these cases the bees will proceed,
with unerring, unhesitating accuracy and precision to make the necessary
changes, turning small cells into large, and large into small; and this
without any waste of space or material, without allowing a single one of
their buildings to become mis-shapen or purposeless, without in any way
interfering with the neatness or general harmony of the hive.
The swarm whose movements we are following have started building their
combs, which are already becoming fit for use. And although, as we look
into the hive, we see little happening, there will be no pause, either
by day or by night, in the creation of the wax, which will proceed with
amazing quickness. The queen has been restlessly pacing to and fro on
the borders that shine out gleamingly white in the darkness; and no
sooner has the first row of cells been built than she eagerly takes
possession, together with her servants, her guardians and
counselors--though whether it be she who leads them, or they who direct
her, is a matter beyond our knowledge. When the spot has been reached
that she, or her retinue, regard as the proper one, she will arch her
back, lean forward, and introduce the end of her long spindle-shaped
body into one of the cells. Her escort form a circle around her, their
enormous black eyes watching her every movement; they caress her wings,
they feverishly wave their antennæ as though to encourage her, to urge
her on, or perhaps to congratulate her. You can always easily tell where
the queen is, because around her there will be a kind of starry
cockade, something like the oval brooch that our grandmothers used to
wear; of this she will be the center. And there is one curious thing
that we may note here: the worker-bees never by any chance turn their
back to the queen. When she approaches a group they immediately form
themselves so as to face her, and walk backwards before her. It is a
token of respect or reverence that they never fail to show; it is the
unvarying custom.
Very soon the queen will be passing from cell to cell, busily laying her
eggs. She will first peep into the cell to make sure that all is in
order, and that she has not been there before. In the meanwhile two or
three of her escort will have hastened into the cell which she has just
left, in order to see that her work has been properly done, and to care
for, and as it were tuck up, the little bluish egg she has laid. From
now on right up to the first frosts of autumn the queen will never stop
laying; she lays while she is being fed, she even lays in her sleep, if
she ever does sleep, which may perhaps seem rather doubtful.
It will sometimes happen that the worker-bees, in their eagerness to
find room for their honey, will have stored it in some of the vacant
cells reserved for the queen; when she comes to these the workers
frantically carry away the honey so that she may lay her eggs. If there
is a shortage of cells for honey, and this is accumulating very fast,
the bees will contrive, as quickly as they can, to get ready a block of
large cells for the queen, as these take less time to build. But they
are cells for male bees; and when the queen comes to them, she seems
vexed; she will lay a few eggs, then stop, move away, and insist on
being given the smaller cells that are used for the workers' eggs. Her
daughters obey; they set to at once and reduce the size of the cells;
and the queen, in the meantime, goes back to the cells at which she had
started at the very beginning. These will be empty now, for the larvæ
will have come to life, leaving their shadowy corner, and will already
have spread themselves over the flowers around, glittering in the rays
of the sun and quickening the smiling hours; and soon they will
sacrifice themselves in their turn to the new generation that now is
beginning to take their place in the cradles they have left.
The bees all obey the queen; and yet they themselves contrive to direct
her movements; for the number of eggs that she lays will be in strict
proportion to the food that is given her. She does not take it herself;
she is fed like a child by the workers. And if flowers are abundant, so
will the food be, and therefore the number of eggs. Here we find, as
everywhere in life, cause and effect working together in a circle of
which one part is always in darkness; the bees, like ourselves, obey the
lord of the wheel that is always turning and turning.
Some little time back I was showing one of my glass hives to a friend,
and he was almost startled to see the frantic activity there. Each comb
seemed alive; on every side there was movement, hurry, bustle, activity;
the nurses, incessantly stirring and doing, were busy around the
broodcells; the wax-makers were forming their ladders and living
gangways; the sculptors, the architects, cleaners, the builders, all
were at work, feverishly, restlessly, never pausing for food or sleep;
there was constant and pitiless effort among them all, save only in the
cradles where lay the larvæ that soon themselves would be taking their
turn in this chain of unending duty, which permits of no illness and
accords no grave. And my friend, his curiosity soon satisfied, turned
away, and in his eyes there were signs of sorrow, and almost of fear.
And in good truth, beneath all the gladness that we find in the hive,
with its memories of precious jewels of summer--of flowers, of running
waters and peaceful skies--beneath all this there dwells a sadness as
deep as the eye of man ever has seen. And we, who dimly gaze at these
things, we who know that around us, in our own lives, among our own
people, there also is sadness, we know too that this has to be, as with
all things in nature. And thus it ever shall be, so long as we know not
her secret; and yet there are duties all must do, and those duties
suffice. And in the meantime let our heart murmur, if it will, "It is
sad," but let our reason be content to add "So it must be."
IV
THE YOUNG QUEENS
Let us now leave the new hive, which we find to be already beginning to
work as before, and go back to the old one, the mother-city, which the
swarm had left. Here, at the start, all looks forlorn, and dreary, and
empty. Two-thirds of the population have gone, have departed forever.
But thousands of bees remain; and these, whatever their feelings may be,
still are faithful to the duty that lies on them, and have not forgotten
what they have to do. They set to work, therefore, and try their best to
fill the places of those who have joined the swarm. They start cleaning
the city, look to the store-cells and put things in order there, attend
to what is necessary in the hive, and despatch their bands of
worker-bees to collect fresh food from the flowers.
And if the outlook at first appear rather gloomy, there still are signs
of hope wherever the eye may turn. One might almost fancy oneself in one
of the castles they tell of in fairy-stories, where there are millions
of tiny phials along the walls containing the souls of men about to be
born. For here, too, are lives that have not yet come to life. On all
sides, asleep in their closely-sealed cradles, in their thousands of
waxen cells, lie the larvæ, the baby bees, whiter than milk, their arms
folded and their head bent forward as they wait for the hour to awake.
Around them hundreds of bees are dancing and flapping their wings. The
object of this seems to be to increase the temperature, and procure the
heat that is needed--or perhaps there may be some reason that is still
more obscure; for this dance of theirs combines some very extraordinary
movements whose meaning no observer has as yet been able to understand.