will be from sixty to eighty thousand in a hive--will break, and two
large, earnest black eyes will peer forth, while active jaws will be
busily gnawing away at the lid, to enlarge the opening. The nurses at
once come running; they help the young bee out of her prison, they clean
her and brush her, and with the tip of their tongue they give her the
first drop of honey that ushers in the new life. But the bee that has
come so strangely from another world is still trembling and pale, and
stares wildly around; she has something of the look of a tiny old man
who might have been buried alive, and has made his escape from his tomb.
She is perfect, however, from head to foot; and she loses no time, but
hastens at once to other cells that have not yet opened, and there joins
in the dance and starts beating her wings with the others, so that she
may help in quickening the birth of her sisters who have not yet come to
life.
The most arduous labors, however, will at first be spared her. She will
not leave the hive till a week has passed since the day of her birth.
She will then undertake her first flight, known as the
"cleansing-flight," and absorb the air into her lungs, which will fill
and expand her body; and thenceforward she becomes the mistress of
space. The first flight accomplished, she returns to the hive, and waits
yet one week more; and then, with her sisters, who were born the same
day as herself, she will for the first time sally forth and visit the
flowers. A special emotion, now, will lay hold of her; a kind of
shrinking, almost of fear. For it is evident that the bees are afraid;
that these daughters of the crowd, of secluded darkness, shrink from the
vault of blue, from the infinite loneliness of the light; and their joy
is halting, and woven of terror. They cross the threshold, and pause;
they depart, they return twenty times. They hover aloft in the air,
their heads turned towards their home; they describe great soaring
circles, their thirteen thousand eyes taking in, registering and
recording, the trees and the fountain, the gate and the walls, the
neighboring windows and houses, till at last the outside world becomes
familiar to them, and they know that they will be able to find their way
back to the hive.
It is curious how they are able to accomplish this; to return to a home
that they cannot see, that is hidden perhaps by the trees, and that in
any event must form so tiny a point in space. Put some of them into a
box and set them free at a place that is two or three miles from their
hive, they will almost invariably succeed in discovering their way home.
Have they landmarks by which they guide themselves, or do they possess
the instinct, the sense of direction, that is common among swallows and
pigeons? Different experiments that have been made appear to show that
this latter is not the case. I have, however, on more than one occasion
noticed that the bees seem to pay no attention to the color or shape of
the hive. It is rather the platform on which the hive rests that
attracts them, the position of the entrance-gate and of the
alighting-board. When the winter comes on, a hive may be taken away and
put perhaps into some dark cellar where it will remain till the spring;
if then it should be set a little to right or to left of its former
position on the platform, all the bees, on their first return from
visiting the flowers, will steer their straight, direct, unhesitating
course to the precise spot which the hive had occupied in the preceding
year; and it will only be after much hesitating and groping that they
will find the door whose place has now been shifted. And some will be
unable to do this, or will be altogether lost.
In the old hive thousands of cradles are stirring and the larvæ coming
to life; such bustle and movement is there that the solid walls seem to
shake. But the city still lacks a queen. In the center of one of the
combs you may notice seven or eight curious structures, each one about
three or four times as large as the ordinary worker's cell; they look
something like the circles and hillocks that we see on the photographs
of the moon. These dwellings are surrounded by guards who never leave
them, and are always watchful and alert. They know that they are
protecting the home of the queen that is to be.
In these cells eggs will have been placed by the old queen, or more
probably perhaps by one of the workers, before the departure of the
swarm; the eggs will have been taken from some cell that was near, and
will be exactly the same as those from which the ordinary worker-bee is
hatched. And yet the bee that will in due time come out is so unlike the
others that she might almost belong to an entirely different race. Her
life will last four or five years, instead of the six or seven weeks
that are the portion of her worker-sister. Her body will be twice as
long, her color clearer, and more golden; her sting will be curved, and
her eyes have only seven or eight thousand facets instead of twelve or
thirteen thousand. Her brain will be smaller, and she will have no
brushes, no pockets in which to secrete the wax, no baskets to gather
the pollen. She will not crave for air, or the light of the sun; she
will die without once having sipped at a flower. She will spend her life
in the darkness, in the midst of an ever-moving crowd; and her one
thought, her one idea, will be the constant search for cradles in which
she can lay her eggs. It is probable that she will not, twice in her
life, look on the light of day; and as a rule she will only once make
use of her wings.
A week has passed, let us say, since the old queen has gone, at the head
of the swarm. The royal princesses who still are asleep in their cots
are not all of the same age; for the bees prefer that there should be an
interval between the birth of each one. The time of the eldest princess
draws near; she is already astir, and has begun eagerly to gnaw at the
rounded lid of her cradle, whose walls the workers have already for
several hours been thinning, so as to make it easier for her to get out.
And at last she thrusts her head through the lid; the workers at once
rush eagerly to her, and help her to get clear; they brush her, caress
her and clean her, and soon she is able to take her first trembling
steps on the comb. At first, her food will be the same as that given to
the ordinary workers, but after a very few days she is nourished on the
choicest and purest milk, which is known as "royal jelly."
The princess, at the moment of birth, is weak and pale; but in a very
few minutes she gets her strength, and then a strange restlessness comes
over her; she seems to know that other princesses are near, that her
kingdom has yet to be won, that close by rivals are hiding; and she
eagerly paces the waxen walls in search of her enemies.
This is the gravest and most serious moment in the history of the hive.
The bees have to consider how many swarms they intend to send out; at
times they make mistakes, and leave the mother-city too empty, at times
also the swarms themselves are not sufficiently strong. These are
matters that the "spirit of the hive" has to settle; it has to decide
whether another queen will be required, in addition to the young one who
has just come to birth, in order that she may head a swarm in the
future. On this decision rests the whole prosperity of the hive; and
very rarely will the judgment of the bees go astray.
But let us assume that here the spirit of the hive has decided against a
second swarm. The young princess, who has just come to life, will be
allowed to destroy the rivals who are still asleep in their cradles. She
will hasten towards them, and the guard will respectfully make way. She
will fling herself furiously on to the first cell she comes across,
strip off the wax with teeth and claws, tear away the cocoon and dart
her sting into the victim whom she has laid bare. She will stab her to
death and then go, with the same passionate fury, to the next cell, and
then the next, again uncovering the cradle and killing her rival, till
at last, breathless and exhausted, she has destroyed all her sleeping
sisters.
The watchful circle of bees who surround her have stood by, inactive
and calm, and have not interfered; they have merely moved out of her way
and have let her indulge her fury; and no sooner has a cell been laid
waste than they rush to it, drag out the body, and greedily lap up the
precious royal jelly that clings to the sides of the cell. And if the
queen should be too weak or too tired to carry out her dreadful purpose
to the end, the bees will themselves complete this massacre of the
innocent princesses, and the royal race, and their dwellings, will all
disappear. This is the terrible hour of the hive.
At times it will happen that two queens will come to life together,
though this occurrence is rare, as the bees take special pains to
prevent it. But should such a case arise, the deadly combat would start
the very moment the rivals come out of their cradles. Afraid of each
other, and yet filled with fury, they attack and retreat, retreat and
attack, till at last one of them succeeds in taking her less adroit, or
less active, rival by surprise, and in killing her without risk to
herself. For the law of the race has demanded one sacrifice only.
But let us suppose that the spirit of the hive has decided that there
shall be a second swarm. In this case, as before, the queen will advance
threateningly towards the royal cells; but instead of finding herself
surrounded by obsequious servants, her way will be blocked by a guard of
stern and unflinching workers. In her mad fury, she will try to force
her way through, or to get round them; but in every direction sentinels
have been posted to protect the sleeping princesses. The queen will not
be denied; she returns again and again to the charge, puts forth every
effort; but each time she will be driven back, hustled even, till at
last it begins to dawn upon her that behind these little workers there
stands a law that does not yield even to a queen. And at last she goes,
and wanders unhappily from comb to comb, giving voice to her thwarted
fury in the war-song that every bee-keeper knows well; a note like that
of a far-away silver trumpet, and so clear that one may hear it, at
evening especially, two or three yards away from the double walls of the
hive.
This cry, this war-song, has the strangest effect on the workers. It
fills them with terror, it has an almost paralyzing influence upon them.
When she sends it forth, the guards, who the moment before may have been
treating her rather roughly, will at once cease all opposition, and will
wait, with bent heads, in meekest submission, till the dreadful song
shall have stopped.
For two or three days, sometimes even for five, the queen's lament will
be heard, the fierce challenge to her well-guarded rivals. And these, in
their turn, are coming to life; they are beginning to gnaw at the lids
of their cradles. Should they emerge from them while the angry queen is
still near, with her one desire to destroy them, a mighty confusion
would spread itself over the city.
But the spirit of the hive has taken its precautions, and the guards
have received the necessary instructions. They know exactly what must be
done, and when to do it. They are well aware that if the princesses were
to come out of their lodging too soon, they would fall into the hands of
their furious elder sister, who would destroy them one by one. To avoid
this, therefore, the workers keep on adding layers of wax to the cells
as fast as the princesses within are stripping it away; so that all
their gnawing and eagerness are of no avail, and the captives must bide
their time. One of them perhaps will hear the war-cry of her enemy; and
although she has not yet come into contact with life, nor knows what a
hive may be, she answers the challenge from within the depths of her
prison. But her song is different; it is hollow and stifled, for it has
to pass through the walls of a tomb; and when night is falling and
noises are hushed, while high over all is the silence of the stars, the
bee-keeper is able to distinguish, and recognize, this exchange of
challenges between the restlessly wandering queen and the young
princesses still in their prison.
The young queens will have benefited by the long stay in their cradles,
for when at last they come out they are big and strong, and able to fly.
But this period of waiting has also given strength to the first-born
queen, who is now able to face the perils of the voyage. The time has
come, therefore, for the second swarm, called the "cast," to depart,
with the eldest queen at its head. No sooner has she gone than the
workers left in the hive will release one of the princesses from her
cradle; she will at once proceed to show the same murderous desires, to
send forth the same cries of anger, as her sister had done before her,
till at last, after another three or four days, she will leave the hive
in her turn, at the head of the third swarm, to build a new home far
away. A case has been known where a hive, through its swarms and the
swarms of its swarms, was able in a single season to send forth no less
than thirty colonies.
This excessive eagerness, which is known as "swarming-fever," usually
follows a severe winter; and one might almost believe that the bees,
always in touch with the secrets of nature, are conscious of the dangers
that threaten their race. But at ordinary times, when the seasons have
been normal, this "fever" will rarely occur in a strong and
well-governed hive; many will swarm only once, and some, indeed, not at
all.
The second swarm will in any event generally be the last, as the bees
will be afraid of unduly impoverishing their city, or it may be that
prudence will be urged upon them by the threatening skies. They will
then allow the third queen to kill the princesses in their cradles;
whereupon the ordinary duties of the hive will at once be resumed, and
the bees will have to work harder than ever in order to provide food for
the larvæ and generally to replenish the storehouses before the arrival
of winter.
The second and third swarms will sally forth in the same way as the
first, with the difference only that the bees will be fewer in number,
and that, owing perhaps to less scouts being available, operations will
not be conducted with quite as much prudence and forethought. Also, the
younger queen will be more active and vigorous than her sister, and will
therefore fly much further away, leading the swarm to a considerable
distance from the hive. As a consequence, these second and third swarms
will have greater difficulties to meet, and their fate will be more
uncertain. So all-powerful, however, is the law of the future, that
none of these perils will induce the queen to show the least hesitation.
The bees of the second and third swarms display the same eagerness, the
same enthusiasm, as those of the first; the workers flock round the
fierce young queen, as she gropes her way out of her cell, and there is
not one of them that shrinks from accompanying her on the voyage where
there is so much to lose and so little to gain. Why, one asks, do they
show this amazing zeal; what makes them so cheerfully abandon all their
present happiness? Who is it selects from the crowd those who shall stay
behind, and dictates who are to go? The exiles would seem to belong to
no special class; around the queen who is never to return, veteran
foragers jostle tiny worker-bees who will for the first time be facing
the dizziness of the skies.
We will not attempt to relate the many adventures that these different
swarms will encounter. At times, two of them will join forces; at
others, two or three of the imprisoned princesses will contrive to join
the groups that are forming. The bee-keeper of to-day takes steps to
ensure that the second and third swarms shall always return to the
mother-hive. In that case, the rival queens will face each other on the
comb; the workers will gather around and watch the combat; and, when the
stronger has overcome the weaker, they will remove the bodies, forget
the past, return to their cells and their storehouses, and resume their
peaceful path to the flowers that are awaiting and inviting them.
V
THE MASSACRE OF THE MALES
If the skies remain pure, the air still warm, and pollen and nectar are
plentiful in the flowers, the workers will endure the presence of the
males for a brief space longer. The males are gross feeders, untidy in
their habits, wasteful and greedy; fat and idle, perfectly content to do
nothing but feast and enjoy themselves, they crowd the streets, block up
the passages, and are always in the way; they are a nuisance to the
workers, whom they treat with a certain good-natured arrogance,
apparently never suspecting how scornfully they themselves are
regarded, or the deep and ever-growing hatred to which they give rise.
They are still happily unconscious of the fate in store for them.
Careless of what the workers have to do, the males invariably select the
snuggest and warmest corners of the hive for their pleasant slumbers;
then, having slept their fill, they stroll jauntily to the choicest
cells, where the honey smells sweetest, and proceed to satisfy their
appetite. From noon till three, when the radiant countryside is a-quiver
beneath the blazing stare of a July or August sun, the drones will
saunter on to the threshold, and bask lazily there. They are gorgeous to
look at; their helmet is made of enormous black pearls, they have
doublet of yellowish velvet, two towering plumes and a mantle draped in
four folds. They stroll along, very pleased with themselves, full of
pomp and pride; they brush past the sentry, hustle the sweepers, and get
in the way of the honey-collectors as these return laden with their
humble spoil. Then one by one, they lazily spread their wings, and sail
off to the nearest flower, where they doze till they are awakened by the
fresh afternoon breeze. Thereupon they return to the hive, with the same
pomp and dignified air, sure of themselves and perfectly satisfied; they
make straight for the storehouses, and plunge their head up to the neck
into the vats of honey, taking in nourishment sufficient to restore
their strength that has been exhausted by so much labor; afterwards,
with ponderous steps, seeking the pleasant couch and giving themselves
up to the good, dreamless slumber that shall fold them in its embrace
till it be time for the next meal. But bees are less patient than men;
and one morning the long-expected word of command goes through the hive.
And there is a sudden transformation: the workers, hitherto so gentle
and peaceful, turn into judges, and executioners. We know not whence the
dreadful word issues; it may be that endurance has reached its limit,
and that indignation and anger have bubbled over. At any rate we find a
whole portion of the bee-people giving up their visits to the flowers,
and taking on themselves the administration of stern justice.
An army of furious workers suddenly attacks the great idle drones, as
they lie pleasantly asleep along the honeyed walls, and ruthlessly tear
them from their slumbers. The startled drones wake up, and stare round
in amazement, convinced at first that they must be dreaming, and the
prey of some dreadful nightmare. There must be some shocking mistake;
their muddled brains grope like a stagnant pond into which a moonbeam
has fallen. Their first impulse is to the nearest food-cell, to find
comfort and inspiration there. But gone for them are the days of May
honey, the essence of lime-trees and the fragrant ambrosia of thyme and
sage, of marjoram and white clover; the path that once lay so invitingly
open to the tempting reservoirs of sugar and sweets now bristles with a
burning-bush of poisonous, flaming stings. The air itself is no longer
the same; the dear smell of honey is gone, and in its place only now the
terrible odor of poison, of which thousands of tiny drops glisten at the
tip of the threatening stings. Around them is nothing but fury and
hatred; and before the bewildered creatures have begun to realize that
there is an end to the happy conditions of the hive, each drone is
seized by three or four ministers of justice, who proceed to hack off
his wings and antennæ and deftly pass their sword between the rings of
his armor. The huge drones are helpless; they have no sting with which
to defend themselves; all they can do is to try to escape, or to oppose
the mere force of their weight to the blows that rain down. Forced on to
their back, with their enemies hanging on to them, they will use their
powerful claws to shift them from side to side; or, with a mighty
effort, will turn round in wild circles, dragging with them the
relentless executioners, who never for a moment relax their hold. But
exhaustion soon puts an end; and, in a very brief space, their condition
is pitiful. The wings of the wretched creatures are torn off, their
antennæ severed, their legs hacked in two; and their magnificent eyes,
now softened by suffering, reflect only anguish and bitterness. Some die
at once of their wounds, and are dragged away to distant burialgrounds;
others, whose injuries are less, succeed in sheltering themselves in
some corner, where they lie, all huddled together, surrounded by guards,
till they perish of hunger. Many will reach the gate, and escape into
space, dragging their tormentors with them; but, towards evening, driven
by famine and cold, they return in crowds to the hive and pray for
admission. But there they will meet the merciless guard, who will not
allow one to pass; and, the next morning, the workers, before they start
on their journey to the flowers, will clear the threshold of the corpses
that lie strewn on it; and all recollection of the idle race will
disappear till the following spring.
It will often happen that, when several hives are placed close together,
the massacre of the drones will take place on the same day. The richest
and best-governed hives are the first to give the signal; smaller and
less prosperous cities will follow a few days later. It is only the
poorest and weakest colonies that will allow the males to live till the
approach of winter. The execution over, work will begin again, although
less strenuously, for flowers are growing scarce. The great festivals of
the hive, the great tragedies, are over. The autumn honey, that will be
needed for the winter, is accumulating within the hospitable walls; and
the last reservoirs are sealed with the seal of white, incorruptible
wax. Building ceases; there are fewer births and more deaths; the nights
lengthen and days grow shorter. The rain and the wind, the mists of the
morning, the twilight that comes on too soon--these entrap hundreds of
workers who never return to the hive; and over this sunshine-loving
little people there soon hangs the cold menace of winter.
Man has already taken for himself his good share of the harvest. Every
well-conducted hive has presented him with eighty or a hundred pounds of
honey; there are some even which will have given twice that quantity,
all gathered from the sun-lit flowers that will have been visited a
thousand or two times every day. The bee-keeper gives a last look at his
hives, upon which slumber now is falling. From the richest he takes some
of their store, and distributes it among those that are less
well-provided. He covers up the hives, half closes the doors, removes
the frames that now are useless, and abandons the bees to their long
winter sleep.
They huddle together on the central comb, with the queen in the midst of
them, attended by her guard. Row upon row of bees surround the sealed
cells, the last row forming the envelope, as it were; and when these
feel the cold stealing over them, they creep into the crowd, and others
at once take their places. The whole cluster hangs suspended, clinging
on to each other; rising and falling as the cells are gradually emptied
of their store of honey. For, contrary to what is generally believed,
the life of the bee does not cease in winter; it merely becomes less
active. These little lovers of sunshine contrive, through a constant and
simultaneous beating of their wings, to maintain in their hive a degree
of warmth that shall equal that of a day in spring. And they owe this
to the honey, which is itself no more than a ray of heat which has
passed through their bodies, and now gives its generous blood to the
hive. The bees that are nearest the cells pass it on to their neighbors,
and these in their turn to those next them. Thus it goes from mouth to
mouth through the crowd, till it reaches those furthest away. And this
honey, this essence of sunshine and flowers, circulates through the hive
until such time as the sun itself, the glorious sun of the spring, shall
thrust in its beam through the half-open door, and tell of the violets
and anemones that are once more coming to life. The workers will wake,
and discover that the sky again is blue in the world, and that the wheel
of life has turned, and begun afresh.
VI
THE PROGRESS OF THE RACE