THE STORY OF THE SWARM
WHEN professional breeders of the honey-bee have succeeded in producing
the much-desired non-swarming race, and swarming has become a thing of
the past, naturalists of the old “instinct” school will be able to turn
their backs on at least one very inconvenient question.
There is no denying that the breeders are theoretically right in their
present efforts. The swarming-habit in the honey-bee is admittedly the
main obstacle to large honey-takes; and now that two of the principal
objects of swarming—the multiplication of stocks and renewal of
queens—are fairly well understood, and can be artificially effected,
there is no doubt that the universal adoption of a non-swarming strain
throughout the bee-farms of the country, if such a thing were possible,
would result in a very greatly increased honey-yield, and the people
would get cheap honey. But at present it is not easy to see that any
progress whatever in this direction has been made. The bees continue to
swarm, in spite of beautifully adjusted theories; and the old attempt to
fit the square peg of instinct into the round hole of fact goes on as
merrily as ever.
Students of bee-life, approaching the matter unencumbered by ancient
postulates, find themselves face to face with many surprising things,
which would seem unexplainable on any other hypothesis than that the bees
are endowed with reason, and that of no mean order.
Instinct implies invariability, a dead perfection of motive working
blindly against all odds of circumstance, and always succeeding in the
main. But the very essence of reason, humanly speaking, is its
imperfection and continual deviation both in motive and performance.
Watching a swarm of bees from the moment of its issue from the hive, the
first thing that strikes the unacademic observer is that most of the bees
seem to have no notion at all as to what the furore is about. They are
by no means the obedient items of a common inexorable purpose. They are
more like a crowd of people running in a street, all agog with excitement
and curiosity, but not one of them knowing the cause of the general
stampede. Sometimes a stock of bees will give visible sign of the
approach of a swarming-fit for several days before the swarm actually
issues. But, as often as not, no such manifestation is given. The hive,
at least to the unexpert eye, seems in its normal condition right up to
the moment when the great emigration takes place. And then, as at a
given signal, the work suddenly stops, and the bees pour out of the
hive-entrance in a living stream, darkening the air for many yards round,
the cloud of darting bees rising higher and higher, and spreading over a
greater space with every moment. The swarm may take three or four
minutes to get fairly on the wing; and, from a populous hive, may number
twenty-five or thirty thousand individuals.
[Picture: “Hiving a swarm”]
There is seldom any fear of stings at such a time, and this extraordinary
phase of bee-life may usually be studied at close quarters. One of the
most puzzling things about it is that, however large the swarm proves to
be, enough workers and drones are still left behind in the old hive to
carry on the work of the stock. When the order for the sally is given,
and a feverish excitement spreads at once throughout the hive, those bees
chosen to remain in the old dwelling are perfectly unmoved by the general
mad spirit. Directly the last of the trekking-party has gone off, the
home-bees set diligently and quietly to work as if nothing had happened.
With the whole garden alive with flashing wings, and resounding with the
rich deep hubbub of the swarm, the bees forming the remnant of the old
colony go about their usual business in perfect unconcern, lancing
straight off into the sunshine towards the clover-fields, or winging
busily homeward laden with honey and pollen, just as they have been doing
for weeks past. And if the hive be opened at this time, it will show
nothing unusual except that no queen will be found. There will be three
or four queen-cells like elongated acorns hanging from the edges of the
central combs; and the first queen to hatch out, and prove herself
happily mated, will be allowed to destroy all the others. For the rest,
work seems to be going on in a perfectly normal way. The nectar and
pollen are being stored in the cells; the young grubs are being fed; most
of the combs are fairly well covered with their busy population,
consisting principally of young bees, although a fair sprinkling of
mature workers and drones is everywhere visible. In eight or ten days
the new queen will be laying and the colony rapidly regaining its former
strength.
Meanwhile, the swarm is still in the air, every bee careering hither and
thither with no other apparent purpose than that of allowing full vent to
the mad excitement which has so mysteriously seized upon it. This state
will often last a considerable time, and, in rare cases, will end by the
bees trooping soberly back to the hive under just as mysterious a
revulsion of feeling and resuming their old steady work. At other times
the cloud of bees will suddenly rise high into the air and go straight
off across country, disappearing in a few moments from the keenest view.
But generally, after a short spell of this berserk frolic, the swarm
seems gradually to unite under common direction. The dark network of
flying bees overhead shrinks and grows denser. At last you make out the
beginnings of the cluster—a mere handful of bees clinging to a branch in
a tree or bush. The handful swells at a wonderful pace as the bees crowd
towards it from all quarters. In three or four minutes the whole
multitude is locked together in a solid pendent mass, and the wild song
of freedom has died down to a few stray intermittent notes.
This silence, following the shrill, abounding turmoil, has an almost
uncanny effect. It seems so utterly opposed to, and incongruous with,
the mad state of things that existed before; and it is difficult to
escape the conclusion that the bees have weakly given way to an
incontrollable impulse against all their principles and inherited
traditions of right, and that now, hanging thoroughly sobered and shamed
and disillusioned, homeless and beggared, they realise themselves face to
face with the unforeseen consequences of their thoughtless act. It is
just the conduct which might be expected of some savage human race, pent
up for long years in the rigid bounds of an alien civilisation, which in
one blind moment has thrown to the four winds all its irksome blessings,
only to realise, when the first glowing hour of freedom is over, that
their long captivity has made the old wild life no longer possible in
fact. Some such period of deep despondency as has come to the silent
swarm in the hedgerow can be imagined as inevitably falling on such a
race of men. But if the conquerors were to follow the absconding tribe
into the lean wilderness and bring them home again repentant, restoring
them to their old shelter and plenty once more, probably they would vent
their satisfaction in a chorus of joyful approval. And it is just this
which seems to be happening when the swarm is shaken down in front of a
new, well-furnished hive. The first bees that find their way into the
cool dark interior set up a jubilant hum unlike any other sound known in
beecraft. At once the strain is taken up by all the rest, and the whole
multitude marches into the new home to a tune which the least fanciful
must concede is nothing but sheer satisfaction melodised.
There is little in all this which suggests a race of creatures bound
within the hard and fast laws of an implanted instinct, which it is
neither in their power nor their pleasure to override. It is true that
in the natural life of the honey-bee this annually recurrent impulse of
swarming serves several necessary ends; but the utilitarian argument,
however stretched, cannot be made to explain the whole fact. There is
unmistakably an element of caprice about it—a kicking over the
traces—which would be natural enough in creatures possessed of reason,
but totally inconceivable from any other point of view. And the farther
we look into the whole problem the more perplexing it seems. If we grant
that the issue of a swarm, from a hive overcrowded and headed by a queen
past her prime, is a necessity, why is it that the same hive will often
swarm a second and even a third time until the stock is practically
extinguished and the original object of swarming wholly defeated? Or if,
under the same conditions, a hive prepares to swarm and cold windy
weather intervenes, how is it that frequently all idea of swarming is
abandoned for the season, although apparently the necessity for it
continues to exist?
Creatures which pursue a certain line of conduct under the blind
promptings of instinct could hardly be credited with intelligence enough
to lead them to seek another means for the desired end when the
preordained means has failed. But this is just what the honey-bee
appears to do in at least one instance. If the mother-bee of a colony is
getting past her work, and she cannot be sent off with a swarm in the
usual way, the bees will supersede her. They will deliberately put her
to death, and raise another queen to take her place. This State
execution of the old worn-out queens is one of the most curious and
pathetic things in or out of bee-life. One probe with a sting would
suffice in the matter; but the honey-bee is a great stickler for the
proprieties. The royal victim must be allowed to meet her fate in a
royal way; and she is killed by caresses, tight-locked in the joint
embrace of the executioners until suffocation brings about her death.