In the foregoing pages the principles involved in the construction of honey-comb have been gone into rather minutely, because it is here that the lines of thought between the old and the new naturalists seem to make a typical divergence. Both schools are, in the main, agreed on the point that all forms of life emanate from the one omnipotent source; and it matters little whether we speak of the vast periods of time, during which the creation of all things was effected, as ages, or under the old Biblical metaphor of days. But whereas the old school appears to insist on different qualities of life—immortal soul in man, and a mystic, subconscious, perishable thing called instinct in the brute creation—the new school is unable to see any distinction between the intellectual equipment of man and brute, but that of degree. Between the honey-bee and her masters there is indeed a great gulf fixed, but it is conceivably not unbridgable. And unless we are determined at all cost of logical violence to force a favourite set of square opinions into the round holes of observed fact, it is difficult to see how the old position is long to remain tenable.
With regard to this particular question ofcomb-building, an attempt is still being made to show that it is entirely due to the working of certain natural laws, and is independent of any intelligence or volition which the bees are supposed to exercise. We are told that the cells are always begun in a circular form, but that they afterwards assume the hexagon shape quite automatically, in obedience to the laws of mutual interference and pressure. As a proof of this, it is pointed out that the outside cells of the comb, not being subject to these laws, are usually more or less rounded.
The pressure-theory is hardly worth serious consideration, as it is obvious that the growth of a honey-comb is perfectly free and untrammelled in every way. If the bee makes her comb-cells with six sides and a pyramidal base unthinkingly, and under the yoke of imperious obligation, it is certainly not because the cells force this shape upon one another, like Buffon’s peas in a bottle.
And if we believe that the bee works blindly under the law of mutual interference, any close examination of the results of her work must bring us to the conviction that we are only putting aside one marvel for something more wonderful still. For then we see a natural law taking on a very unnatural quality—that of intelligent adaptation to circumstances. The comb, intended for use in the hive-nursery, is made in two sizes. That used for cradling the worker-brood has cells measuring ⅕ inch across, and a fraction less than ½ inch deep, whilethat designed for raising the drone-larva is built up of cells having a diameter of ¼ inch, and a depth of about ⅝ inch. These different-sized cells are not mingled indiscriminately over the comb, but are grouped together in large blocks. Some of the combs will be entirely composed of worker-cells, which are always in the vast majority; other combs will be made up of both kinds.
The bees begin a comb by attaching a small block of wax to the roof of the hive. On either side of this they hollow out depressions, which become the bases of the first cells. The work is then extended downwards and sideways, the cell-bases being multiplied in all directions as fast as possible, so that there are a great number of unfinished cells in progress long before the walls of the first cells have been completed. There is a very reasonable motive for this procedure. When a house is being built, as much of the foundations as possible are laid in at the commencement, to allow a large body of bricklayers to get to work on the walls at the same time; and the bee extends her comb-foundations on the same principle.
When about half the comb has been finished for worker-brood, it may be decided to commence building drone-cells. As the bases of the drone-cells are larger than those of the worker-cells, it follows that a change must be effected in the ground-plan of the comb. The bees prepare for this transition very cleverly, evidently studyinghow the regularity of the comb may be least interrupted. Sometimes the change is contrived without any appreciable loss of space, but more often several misshapen cells have to be made before the symmetrical progress of the comb is resumed. This depends largely on the inherited skill of the bees, which varies according to their strain, as all experienced bee-keepers know. Now, if the work of comb-building is carried through by the bees under blind compulsion of the natural laws of mutual interference and pressure, what other law, it may be asked, interferes with these in turn when the transition from one size of cell to another must be made? If it is all a sort of crystallisation going on independently of the bees’ will or wish, it appears more than curious that the mill should grind large or small, just as the needs of the hive demand it.
But the whole position is really little else than a flagrant example of the evils of argument from a simile. Soaked peas in a bottle will swell to hexagons, or rather, dodecahedrons, by the law of mutual interference. Soap-bubbles will do the same with no more constriction than their own weight. But peas and bubbles are things self-contained and separately existing, before being brought together. If the bees made a vast number of separate, round cells, and then combined them simultaneously, no doubt all but the outside cells would assume the hexagon form. But the essence of the whole art and ingenuity of comb-building lies in the fact that there is nosuch thing as a separate cell. Each single compartment in the comb shares its parts with no less than nine other compartments. And to talk of mutual interference when there is no separate existence is ploughing the sands indeed.
There are other circumstances connected with the work of the comb-builders which go far to confirm the position that bees do exercise reason, and that of a high order. It has been said that the interior of a hive in daytime is not altogether deprived of light. Probably, during the hours of greatest activity, the bees have always enough light to see their way about by means of their wonderful indoor-eyes, which, under the microscope, have all the solemn wisdom of an owl’s. It is a fact, however, that comb-building is usually carried on at night-time, when other employments are in temporary abeyance. Possibly the—to our eyes—profoundest darkness may be no darkness at all to the bees; but, to all appearances, as we can judge of them, honey-comb is virtually made in the dark.
But combs are built side by side, often simultaneously. They grow downwards together, yet always preserve their right distance apart; so that, when finished, there will be an intervening gangway between the sealed surfaces of about a quarter of an inch, which is just enough to allow the two streams of bees to pass each other, backto back. How are these distances preserved, seeing that the bees at work on the bottom edge of each comb are separated by a space of, perhaps, an inch and a half of empty darkness?
A simple experiment will at once give a clue to this. If a hive, in which a swarm has constructed about half its depth of comb, be canted a little sideways, so as to throw the combs out of the perpendicular, and the hive be then left for several days, it will be found on examination that all building, from the moment of disturbance, has followed on the new line of verticality. The combs will all be slightly bent to one side. This means either that the bees have a natural sense of the perpendicular, or that they work by the plumbline, as humanity is constrained to do. The fact seems to be that the hanging cluster of wax-making bees performs the office of a living plummet, and really guides the comb in its downward progress.
Yet, do bees always suspend their combs? Do they never construct a waxen storehouse, raising it tier above tier from the floor of the hive, after the system of the more intelligent creature, Man?
Comb built upwards
The first commentary on this is, that such a departure from their common methods would be no improvement, but a retrograde step. These long comb-walls of the bees have a close analogy to the modern transatlantic sky-scraper building. The trouble with all such buildings is to providethem with sufficient base for their height. If American engineers had at their disposal a material of adequate tensile strength, and there were anything in nature to hang them from, it would be, scientifically, a better plan to suspend these buildings than to erect them, because the house would then naturally tend to keep its verticality, and the base-problem would cease to exist. On the same principle the bees, having at hand a material of almost ideal tensility, and a suitable hanging-beam, wisely suspend their heavily, weighted combs from the roof, instead of erecting them, like certain kinds of ant-structures.
But it is undoubtedly long racial experience, and not inability to follow the humanly approved method, that guides them here. Rarely—so rarely that the writer, in the course of many years spent among bees, has seen only a single example of it—bees will build combupwards, if circumstances will allow no other way. And this would seem not only to drive the last coffin-nail for the poor instinct-theory, but to carve its epitaph as well.
In the instance referred to, a glass-bottomed box had been inverted over the feed-hole of a common hive, and had there remained forgotten. As the season progressed, the hive grew great with bees and honey, and it became imperative to build additional store-comb in the box overhead. But its slippery glass roof would give no foothold to the builders. Time and again they must havetried to get upon it, with their wax-hods filled and ready, and each time failed: the ordinary way of comb-building was clearly impossible. Then the engineers of the hive, inspired by the difficulty, got to work in another way. On the wooden surface below they laid out the plan of a garner-house, not after their usual method of parallel combs, but a regular, oblong house, with cellular storerooms, and communicating passages in between. Upon this they raised storey above storey of horizontal cells, until the glass roof was nearly reached. At this stage, apparently, the honey-flow came to an end in the fields, for the cells in the store-house were never sealed, though all were nearly full of honey; and later in the season it was found and carried away by the bee-master, who still preserves it as a curiosity. He bears a well-known name,[218]and his testimony as to the making of this unique little honey-house is beyond question; but, indeed, it carries in itself infallible evidence of its authenticity. All honey-cells made by bees have a slight upward inclination, which helps, as has been already explained, to retain their contents until they can be capped over. And every cell in the storehouse clearly showed this upward slant.
Itis characteristic of those unlettered in bee-craft that they are often afraid when there is no danger, and will venture with the intrepidity that is born of ignorance where old experienced bee-keepers fear to tread.
Temper in bees is one of the most variable qualities in a creature made up of variabilities. There are times, when a summer storm is threatening and the air is charged with electricity, when to go among the bees is to court certain disaster; and there are other times, such as the full height of the honey-flow, when almost any liberties can be taken with bees, without fear of reprisals. And yet this is not always the rule. Much depends on their lineage and the purity of the strain, and, again, on the systems of the bee-master. Bees respond as readily as any other form of domestic stock to wise and considerate treatment. Handled in a firm, quiet, deliberate way, the most vicious colony can often be dealt with in perfect safety; while the mildest-natured bees will commonlymeet fumbling indexterity with a prompt challenge to war.
Since the Italian bee was brought to England, some half-century ago, there is no doubt that the original English strain has been greatly modified. Some authorities, indeed, question whether there are any absolutely pure British bees left at all. The golden girdles of the Italian crop up in the most unlikely places, and the foreign blood seems to have got into the race in all but the remotest parts of the country. One must regret, although it is a vain regret now, that these undesirable aliens were ever allowed to set foot on the soil. Whatever naturally survives and thrives in a particular country, must be the most suitable thing for that country; and these southern races of the honey-bee seem to have brought back, to the detriment of our own stock, idiosyncrasies long ago bred out of the native race. Much of the nervous irritability and proneness to disease visible in the honey-bee of to-day is more or less directly traceable to the introduction of foreign blood; and the grand special advantage of the Italian bee—its much vaunted and widely advertised possession of a long tongue—has proved an entire myth. Numberless measurements undertaken by our leading scientific apiarians have proved that the Italian bee has a tongue no longer than any other, although most are willing to concede her the possession of a very long and ready sting indeed.But here we do her an injustice: a pure-bred Italian worker-bee is as good or as bad tempered as any other of her species. It is the first crosses with the native bee which display so much vindictive aggressiveness, and have given to the whole race its general bad name.
In the time of the great honey-flow—which in southern England begins in May, early or late, according to the season, and may endure for six weeks—it is a common thing in the country to see people turn back from the footpaths, running through the white-clover or sainfoin fields, because of the huge and terrifying uproar made by the foraging bees. When there is a large acreage under these crops, and the day is a fair one, this note reaches a volume hardly to be credited as a sound of work and peace. It is much more like the din of a great bee-war, and it is small wonder that the stranger, unlearned in the ways of the hives, should fear to go through what is very like a scene of battle and carnage.
And yet there is no time of year when the honey-bee is so little inclined to molest her human fellow-creatures as this. So long as the honey-weather holds—the warm nights when the nectar is secreted, and the rainless days when it can be gathered—she can hardly be induced to attack, even if her home is being turned inside out, and the sudden sunlight riddling its darkness through and through.
Until within comparatively recent years it was universally believed that honey was a pure, untouched secretion from the flowers; and that beyond gathering and storing it the bee had no part in its production. This idea, however, is a wholly mistaken one. Honey is a manufactured article, and differs in almost every way from the raw juices obtained from the various flower-crops. The nectar of flowers, before collection by the bee, seems to have hardly any of the constituents of ripe honey. Three-quarters of its bulk consists of plain water, in which about 20 per cent. of cane-sugar is dissolved, the rest being made up of essential oils and gums, which give it its distinctive flavour. But mature honey contains very little water, certainly never more than a sixth part of its bulk. Its sugar is almost entirely grape-sugar. It is decidedly acid, while the nectar is always neutral. And the oils and aromatic principles of the flower juices are matured and developed into the well-known honey flavour, which is like nothing else in the world.
It is certain that the process of manufacture begins directly the bee draws the nectar from the flower-cup. As the liquid passes into the honey-sac it is mingled with the acid secretion from the gland at the base of the tongue. When the bee reaches the hive she does not pour her burden direct into the cells, but passes it on to one of the house-bees, who conveys it to the honey-vats. It is even probable that the nectar is transferred asecond time before it reaches the cell, although this point is still undecided. The effect of such transference is to add more acid properties to the original juice.
The honey seems to undergo a regular brewing process within the hive. It is kept at a temperature of about 80° or 85°, and it is then that the surplus water passes off into vapour. In this way the raw nectar loses at least two-thirds of its natural bulk before it is finally converted into honey. It is said that at the last moment, just before each cell is stopped with an impervious covering of wax, the bee turns herself about, and injects into the honey a drop of the poison from her sting; but there seems to be not the slightest evidence in support of this. The contents of the poison-sac are, it is true, mainly formic acid, which is a strong preservative; and undoubtedly traces of formic acid are to be found in all honeys. It has been, however, conclusively proved that this acid finds its way into the honey from the glandular system of the bee, and not through its sting.
The industry of the bee in nectar-gathering has always been a stock subject for wonder, and it is commonly supposed that she is born with full instinctive capabilities for her task. A little observation, however, soon tends to upset this theory. The work of foraging has to be learnt step by step, like every other species of skilled work in hive-life. The young bee, setting out on her first flight, has all the will to do well, and her imitativefaculty is strongly developed; but she seems to have very little else. Her first experiences are a succession of blunders. She appears not to know for certain where to look for the coveted sweets, and can be seen industriously searching the most unlikely places—crevices in walls, tufts of grass, or the leaves of a plant instead of its flowers. The fact that the nectar is hidden deep down in the cup of the flower, beyond its pollen-bearing mechanism, seems to dawn upon her only after much thought and many fruitless essays.
It has been proved that bees will go as far as two or even three miles in their foraging journeys. The distance seems to vary according to the nature of the country. Bees in hilly districts appear to venture only short distances from home, while in flat country the foraging flights are more extended. A bee-line has become proverbial for a straight course, but it is doubtful whether the bee ever makes a perfectly direct flight from point to point. The truth seems to be that there are well-defined air-paths out from and home to every bee-garden, and that these are continually thronged with bees going and returning throughout the working hours of the day. These aërial thoroughfares lie high above all but the tallest obstacles, so high indeed that the keenest sight will reveal nothing. Only the busy song of the travellers can be heard, like a river of music, far overhead.
In the South Down country, where the isolatedfarms are each surrounded with their compact acreage of blossoming sheep-feed, and there is nothing but empty miles of close-cropped turf between, these bee-roads in the air can be easily found and studied. Walking over the springy, undulating grass in the quiet of a summer’s morning, a faint, far-off note breaks suddenly upon you like the twang of a harp-string high up in the blue. A step or two onward and you lose it; retracing your path, it peals out again. You can see nothing, strain your eyes as you will; but its cause is evident, and with a little trying you can presently make out the main direction of the flight, and see down in the hollow far below, the huddled roofs of a farmstead with a patchwork of fields about it, white with clover, or rose-red with sainfoin in fullest bloom.
Perhaps there is no honey in the world so fine as that to be obtained from these solitary Downland settlements. With the ordinary consumer honey is merely honey, and there is an end of the matter. But the beeman knows that the quality of honey varies as greatly as that of wine. He will tell you at first taste the crop from which it is gathered, whether it has one source or many, whether it is all flower-essence, or has been contaminated by the hateful honeydew, which is not honey at all. Down in the lowlands, except at certain rare seasons when only one crop is in flower, it is next to impossible to get honeyabsolutely from a single source. But here on the hills the bees are not tempted by glowing gardens with their feeble, washy sweets; nor are they led aside by the coarse-natured privet, or horse-chestnut, or sunflower. There is only one trencher to their banquet, but this is a vast, illimitable one. They have nothing to do but to wend out and home all day long between their hives and a single field.
It is difficult to gauge with anything like approximate truth the amount of honey that one flowering crop will yield. But probably, when all conditions are most favourable, every acre of Dutch clover will produce about five pounds of pure honey for each day it is left standing in full bloom. The nectar is obviously secreted by the flower as an attraction to the bee, who, blundering into it with her pollen-smothered body, unconsciously effects its fertilisation. Directly this object is gained, the flow of nectar in each particular floret appears to cease, and the bee passes it by.
The student of old books on apiculture is often surprised to read so much in praise of honeydew, while in the modern bee-garden he hears of it nothing but hearty condemnation. He is told that directly the bees begin to gather honeydew the store-racks must be removed from the hives, or the good honey will be ruined both in colour and flavour. He is shown some dark, ill-looking, watery stuff carefully sealed up by the bees, and is informed that it is nearly all honeydew. But,he asks himself, can this be the same thing about which the old masters were led into such ardent eulogy? The truth is that when ancient and mediæval writers spoke of honeydew, they used the word as a general term for all that the bees gathered. Honey was all a dew, divinely rained down from the skies; and it is entirely of a piece with the all but universal lack of bee-knowledge down almost to the beginning of the nineteenth century, that so few should have guessed that the flowers themselves had anything to do with the matter. Virgil and the rest of the classics held absolute sway over all minds pretending to the least culture, and even the naturalists seem to have studied the wild life around them with no other object than to force facts into line with ancient poetic fantasies. The old writers explained the varying qualities of honey as being due to the influence of whatever stars happened to be in the ascendant at the time of its gathering, and the honey was good or bad according to whether this was favourable or unfavourable.
The quality and consistency of honey varies extraordinarily as between the different sources of true nectar; but there is no doubt that honeydew well merits the evil name it has gained with modern bee-keepers. There are, perhaps, three hundred distinct kinds of aphides known to English naturalists, and all these eject the sweet liquid which, under certain conditions, bees are temptedto gather. This honeydew varies in flavour according to the species of tree from whose sap it is derived. Probably much of it is only a sweet, slightly mawkish liquor, which, in its pure state, combines with the genuine honey without causing noticeable deterioration, at least to the unexpert taste and eye. But, unfortunately for bee-keepers, the oak is a great favourite with these parasites, no fewer than six varieties preying on this one tree alone. And oak-honeydew is a pestilent thing indeed.
It is commonly supposed that the first cold nights, that mark the beginning of the end of the honey season, stimulate the production of honeydew; for it is after a chilly night that bees are usually seen at work on the trees where the aphides abound. A much more likely theory, however, is that the cold does not accelerate the secretion of the honeydew, but cuts off the more legitimate resources of the hive just when they are in fullest activity; and so the huge armies of foragers are momentarily thrown out of work, and must seek new outlets for their energy. The secretion of true nectar takes place mainly at night, and requires a temperature of about 70°. Anything much lower than this means dearth on the morrow, no matter how fine and warm the weather may then prove.
The dark colour of aphis-syrup—a very little of which will ruin for market the finest honey—seemsto be due as much to foreign matter as to its natural evil character. There is a peculiar growth on the bark of many trees where aphides congregate, which is known as soot-fungus. This and the honeydew get mingled together in a cimmerian slime, and, no doubt, the merest trace of it would serve to darken and spoil the purest honey. There seems to be no way for bee-keepers but to watch for the first chilly nights, as the honey-season draws towards its close; and then to be up early and get the surplus honey-chambers off the hives, before the bees have had a chance to spoil them. But the bee is no desperately early riser, for all her lofty place in the moral-maxim books. She generally waits until the morning sun has drunk up the night dews, and warmed the flower-calyces, before getting down to her work in earnest. The very early bees that may sometimes be seen winging out into the first light of a summer’s morning, are probably only water-carriers. The water-supply is the day’s first and last care with each hive in the breeding season. Every bee-garden seems to have its regular watering-place, generally on the oozy margin of some neighbouring pond; and here, in the early morning, and again towards late afternoon, the bees may be seen drinking in whole battalions, while the meridian hours of the day will find it all but deserted. Curiously, these water-fetching times coincide with the times when the nectar is least get-atable, orwhen the supply is exhausted for the day; which is another sidelight on honey-bee economics.
To follow the bees through their honey-harvesting season is to review nearly the whole year’s natural growth and life. In southern England the earliest nectar is drawn from the willows, which come into flower with late March, but hold back their sweets until the first spate of fine hot weather comes flooding in the track of the chilly northern gales. Of willow-honey there may be much or little, according to the night-temperatures. Generally it goes by fits and starts. For a day or two here and there the trees may be crowded with bees, or they may be deserted for weeks together. Whenever the sun shines, indeed, the trees that stand up like torches of gold in the misty purple of budding woods, are always full of the singing multitude; but these are only the pollen-gatherers. The nectar-bearing willows are far less showy. Their catkins are small, tight-girt tassels of green, and when a warm night has brought them into profit, they attract all the noisy minstrels for miles round. Bee-keepers generally seem to leave the willows out of their calculations as a source of honey, but in riverside districts, and in favourable seasons, they are not to be overlooked. It sometimes happens that April comes in with a succession of mild sunny days and warm nights, and then the hives may suddenly overflow with willow-honey. When the yellow catkins fade out of sight, the willows are apt to fade out of memory; and it does not seem to be commonly known that the female catkins continue to secrete abundant nectar often up to the end of May.
In the store-house: sealing up the new honey
Good honey-years are scarce under the changing English skies; yet Nature’s design for the hive-people is obviously to give an unbroken succession of honey-yielding plants throughout the whole spring and summer, and pollen whenever a bright break of sunshine may lure them out of doors. The white-clover is seldom ready until the first week in June; but, from the earliest willows in March until the last of the flowering seed-crops is down in late July, there is abundance of provender, if only the fickle sun will do its part in the matter. The clover, as farming goes nowadays, is the great main source of honey, in southern England at least; but the connoisseurs are at variance as to what yields the absolute perfection of honey. Scotsmen are all of one mind, for a rare chance, in this; and will hear of nothing but the heather, carefully discriminating between the bell-heather, which is good, and the ling-heather, which is immeasurably better. Yet there is a honey, or rather a honey-blend, which far outstrips them all, though it is as rare and almost as priceless as the once famous Comet vintages. It is to be had only when the apple-blossom and the hawthorn come into full flower together, and this is only when a chill April has delayed the one and a summer-like May has forced on the other. Then, to the mellow refinement of the apple-nectar, is added the delicatealmond flavour of the hawthorn, and the resulting honey is easily the finest sweetmeat in the world.
Wonder is often expressed that one of the most generally cultivated crops, the red-clover, is seldom visited by the honey-bee, although the bumblebees fill it with their deep trombone-music at all times of the day. It is true that the tongue of the hive-bee cannot reach to the bottom of the long red-clover calyx, but this would not deter her if the nectar were worth the gathering. She would cut through the petal at its base, as she does with many other flowers, and so steal an effective march on her better caparisoned rival. But red-clover nectar is poor in consistency and coarse of flavour. When the main crop is in flower, it would yield a practically unlimited amount of honey, but this is just the time when the bee can employ herself more profitably elsewhere. After the red-clover has been cut, a second growth springs up, bearing flower-tubes less developed, and therefore shorter than those of the first crop. But now other and better sources of supply are rapidly failing. The bee—for whom, in prosperous times, nothing but the best is good enough—must revise her tastes to meet her necessities. At this time she is as busy as the rest in the red-clover fields. And when her clearer, sweeter note is heard there, mingling its contralto with the hoarser music of the bumblebee, it is a token that the heyday of the year is past: the honey-chambers must be taken off the hives without delay.
Itis true that all bee-keepers are enthusiasts, and true that long years spent in the companionship of the hives invariably create a fearless fellowship, a prime understanding between the bee-master and his legions. But it is equally true that the longer you study the nature of the honey-bee, the less enamoured you become of certain of her ways.
In the minds of old beemen there grows up, as the years glide, a sort of awe of her. She is so manifestly a power, supreme in her little world. She is so courageous, resourceful, brainy. All the weaknesses and compromises, and most of the pleasures, have long ago been driven out of her life, seemingly by her own act and will; yet, in doing this, she has but refined the science of citizenship to its pure elements. Her entire unselfishness, her readiness to sacrifice her individual good for the good of the State, are as unquestionable as they are changeless. The hive-polity, taken as a whole, is so admirable, and compares soadvantageously with certain human efforts in the same way, that you are apt to exalt all her qualities into virtues; and to conclude that a far-seeing, wise benevolence must have gone to the making of the perfect Bee-State, instead of the cold, undeviating logic that alone has fashioned it.
This remorseless smelting-down of life into the set moulds of principle, without mercy and without reproach, has a cumulative effect on the mind of the observer; and sooner or later, though he will early lose his fear of her sting, he will develop a very real, but vague, awe of the honey-bee in another way.
Just as Moses Rusden, the King’s bee-master, held up the life of the hive as Nature’s evidence of the Divine will in earthly monarchy, so the latter-day student is often constrained to ask himself whether the bee-commonwealth does not point an authoritative moral in another way. Here is a State—only a mimic one, but still not a negligible example—where several of the most fiercely-debated questions of modern human life are seen in long adopted and perfected working-order, and seen in their fullness of result. Any attempt at a serious comparison between men and women, and the drone and worker-bee, would justly lay the writer open to the charge of grotesque trifling; but there is more than a fanciful analogy between the principles on which all civilisations must be based, whether they are insect or human. It cannot bedenied that the communal life of the honey-bee is a high civilisation; that it has grown to be what it is to-day through ages of necessity; that the one sex has the other under a complete and terrible subjection, for which, and for the privilege of all power, the dominant sex has paid a terrible price.
The worker-bee to-day is an over-intellectual, neurotic, morbidly dutiful creature, while the drone is admittedly nothing but a stupid, happy, sensual lout. If the extreme difference between the sexes in bee-life had been aboriginal, the relations of drone and worker, as we see them in the hives to-day, would be meet and reasonable enough; but there seems to be clear evidence that, far back in the life of the race, the female bee was not so hopelessly superior to her mate. The queen-bee, in all likelihood, fairly represents the mother-bee as she was before the cooling crust of the earth made some sort of protected habitation necessary, which led first to close clustering for mutual warmth, and then gradually developed the complicated hive-life of to-day. But evolution will hardly account for all that we see: revolution must have had its part in the production of the modern self-unsexed worker. It has been seen that there is no physiological reason why each worker in the hive should not have grown into the fertile mother of thousands. The workers are not a stunted, specialised race, slowly evolved by time and necessity, and procreating their own stuntedkind; but each worker is deliberately manufactured to a set pattern by the authorities in the hive, obedient to the call of the State. And when did the female bees begin this tampering with the springs of life, this improving upon Creation, which was the first vital step, failing which the present bee-commonwealth had been impossible? It looks very like a superb act of generalship in the great primæval war of sex—a brilliant piece of strategy that gave victory at a blow, and rendered the after-steps in the scheme of conquest a matter of logical sequence.
The whole question of the artificial production of the worker-bee is surrounded with difficulties; and it seems possible, on our present level of knowledge, to do little more than state the facts, and there leave them. The supremacy of the females in hive-life appears to have dated from the time that the vast majority deprived themselves, or were deprived by their immediate ancestors, of their share in procreation, and the ovipositor discovered itself as a weapon of offence and defence. Before the worker-bees existed as an armed force, there is no reason to suppose that the female bee had a great physical advantage over the drone. The queen-bee’s propensity to thrust her ovipositor into the spiracles of her rival, and so effectually to despatch her, as well as her inveterate hatred of her kind, may both be late developments, due to the isolated, artificial life she now leads. Whilethe worker is ever ready with her sting, the queen uses it so rarely that many old experienced bee-keepers of the present time deny her altogether the power of stinging. A much more natural tendency with her is to bite; and when it comes to the use of the sharp, strong, sidelong jaws, the drone has a more redoubtable equipment than any, although he has apparently lost the will and sense to use it.
Whatever the drone may have been in far-off ages, the worker-bees have him now well under the iron heel of matriarchal expediency; and they see to it that he shall be fit only for the one indispensable office, although in that regard they exhaust every ingenuity to make him all that his kind should be. It is plain they would do without him altogether if that were possible. As it is, for nine months in the year there are no drones at all, and then only a few hundreds are raised in each hive—the bare minimum that will ensure the successful mating of the young queens when the summer sunshine calls them to their wooing. It might be supposed that where there are comparatively so few queens to be fertilised—only two or three at most from each hive, and these only once in a lifetime—that even those drones which are now tolerated are in excess of the number required. But a cardinal principle in bee-life is that the young queens shall choose their mates from another tribe, and so ensure a continualinflux of new blood to the colony. This can only be effected out-of-doors, and as far as possible from the parent hive. The strongest impulse, therefore, of the virgin-queen, when she goes off on her mating-flight, is to get away quickly from her home surroundings. She flies straight off at tremendous speed, and thus has every chance of getting unperceived into new country, and so into the reconnoitring ground of strange drones.
Another reason for her extended flight and its remarkable pace is that only the strongest and swiftest drone of all the pursuing multitude is likely to overtake her, and this again makes for the betterment of the race. Perhaps there is no parallel instance in nature where the selection of the fittest individuals to continue a species is so carefully provided for, and no doubt this accounts for the high place of the honey-bee in the scale of created things. But this scheme involves enormous risk to the young queen. A hundred dangers lurk on her path. She is a tempting morsel for every bird that throngs the air of the June morning. Her untried wings may fail her. Even if she gets back safely to the bee-garden, she may enter the wrong hive, to her instant destruction. But she must take her chance of all risks; and the only thing to do is to render her absence from home as brief as may be, and her fertilisation as sure, by making the wandering drone-population large enough to cover all probable ranges of flight.
From the very first the drone is nurtured in a different way from the worker-bee. The egg is laid in a wider and deeper cell; and during its first three days of life the drone-larva is fed with bee-milk, probably of a special kind and certainly of more generous quantity. After the third day this chyle-food is reduced, as is the case with the worker-grub; but while the worker is then given only honey, it is certain that the drone-larva receives both honey and pollen, and that for a full day longer. In all, it takes about twenty-four or twenty-five days to produce the perfect drone-bee, as against an average twenty-one days for the worker. The queen-bee, as has been already seen, is developed in much less time than either, little more than a fortnight elapsing between the time the egg is laid and the time she is ready to gnaw her way out of the cell.
After the drone is hatched, it will be another two weeks or so before he makes his first venture in the open air. All this time he has the free run of the larder, and steadily gorges himself on honey when he is not sleeping off the effects of his surfeit in some snug, out-of-the-way corner of the hive. But honey is not his only, or even his principal, food. Throughout his whole life he is constantly fed by the house-bees with the rich chyle-food given to him as a larva, and it has been proved that if this is withheld from him for the space of three days he will die of starvation, even in themidst of abundant honey. Thus the worker-bees have him completely in their power.
The first flight of the drones is a stirring event in the bee-garden. The common sound of the hives goes on practically the whole year through. Every sunny midday, when the temperature mounts to 45° or 50°, will see each hive the centre of a little galaxy of singers: it is only the volume of the music that varies with the waxing or waning days. But with the coming of the drones the whole symphony of the bee-garden abruptly changes. They never move from their snug indoor quarters until the day is wearing on towards noon, and then only in the brightest weather. Blundering aggressively through the crowd of busy foragers, they rise heavily on the wing, and soon the ordinary note of the garden is drowned in the new uproar. They seem to come almost simultaneously from all hives at once. For a minute or two the rich, hoarse melody holds the air; and then, almost as suddenly, it dies away, as these roystering ne’er-do-wells troop off over hill and dale, each to his favourite hunting-ground.
There is great divergence of opinion as to the limits of flight of the drone, but probably he goes farther and faster than any have yet credited. His magnificent stretch and strength of wing mark him for a flier. He is all brute force and lusty energy; and it would be strange if, with but one thing to do in life—to gad about in search of amorousadventure—he could not do it to a purpose. If a hive of bees be removed to a distance in the height of the season, some of both workers and drones are sure to find their way back to the old spot. This has constantly taken place when hives have been carried no farther than two miles. But in one case, when the distance was more than twice as much, no workers were seen round the old hive-station, yet a little company of drones was winging aimlessly about the tenantless stool, and there can be little doubt that these belonged to the removed colony. It is not suggested that they deliberately travelled all these miles. The chances are that, in their daily flight, they got so far away from the new station that they came within the zone of old landmarks, and thus naturally went on by the long-accustomed ways.
As a typical instance of a sluggard and idler, the drone-bee has enjoyed a vogue in the preparatory-school books for ages past. But, whatever his primæval equipment for usefulness may have been, it is evident now that he could not labour if he would. Physically, in all points but that of muscle, as well as mentally, he has become degraded to the inferior of the worker-bee in every way. He is destitute of all those special contrivances with which she is so amply furnished. He has no baskets for pollen-carrying, nor any of the ingenious brushes and combs which she uses to scrape the pollen from herself and others. He hasneither wax-generating organs, nor leg-pincers to deal with wax. His tongue is too short for honey-getting. His brain is much smaller than even that of the feeble-minded queen. The intricate gland-systems, which play so important a role in the daily life of the worker, are either completely atrophied in the drone or exist only in an elementary state. While it has been the communal will of the hive that the worker-bee should develop an amazing proficiency of mind and body, the same forces have been steadily at work to degrade the male-bee into a creature of dependence, gradually training out of him all initiative and idea, except in the one direction. Just as in the case of the queen and the worker, drone and worker-bee seem hardly to belong to the same race.
And yet, for all his frank incapabilities and lack of ideals, the drone offers, in one respect, a refreshing contrast to his sour, stern, duty-worshipping sister. He is a life-long, incorrigible optimist. He fiddles gaily while the city burns. All his misery and mourning would not serve to quench a single spark of it; so he eats, drinks, and is merry, with the intuition of all drones that Nemesis waits on the morrow with something disagreeable. It is impossible to study his ways for long without recognising the spirit of rude jollity and horse-play that thoroughly pervades all he does. In and out of the hive he blusters, cannoning roughly against all he meets, and raising his burly, bullying songin the air as a sort of protest against all this anxious industry going on about him. Once gone from the neighbourhood of the hive, he seems to keep incessantly on the wing until hunger prompts him home again. For no one has ever seen a drone-bee among the insects that haunt the flowers, nor ever seen him basking on a sunlit wall or tree-trunk, after the kind of almost every other winged atom in the universe.
He comes back to the hive with the same noisy, careless fanfaronade, and is received by the workers with the same sullen indifference. They give him his fill of bee-milk, linking tongues with him as he sits up like an overgrown baby, voracious, clamouring to be fed. They suffer him to swill at the honey-stores unchecked, but plainly regard him with contumely. He is a terrible expense to the State, yet a necessary one. Silently they go about their uncongenial business of nourishing him—silently, and with an ominous patience. They grudge him every drop, and, all the more, urge him to his excesses. It is not for long. The day of reckoning is near at hand. Already the poppies glow scarlet on the hill—the poppies that mark the turning-point of the summer; and after them the long decline, with its ever-diminishing sun-glow; each day with a scantier meed of blossom, until the path runs again into the dreary levels, the sober greys and russets, of winter death.
Now the worker-bee is to show a grizzly seamin her nature, matching ill with the fine hues and qualities of mind for which she is so justly famed. And that she is not all lovable, all admirable, accounts for the exceeding love of her that moves the hearts of men who know her through and through. The story of the massacre of the drones has hardly a parallel for sheer relentless ferocity—unrecking abandonment to a vengeance long withheld for expediency’s sake. There come the first chill nights of mid-July, and the honey-flow is suddenly at an end. The clover and sainfoin have already fallen to the sickle. Nothing but the bravest warmth and exuberance of the summer could now withstand the drain of the myriad honey-makers, and a few hours’ cold dams up at once the attenuated stream. The time of prosperity is over. There will be no more abundance of honey. It remains for the genius of hive-economy to prove how much of what has been gathered can be preserved for future needs.
The first sign of thedébâcleis the throwing out at the hive entrance of certain pale, gruesome objects—the corpses of immature drones, not dead from mischance, but ruthlessly torn from their cells. This may go on intermittently for many days, and while the fell work is proceeding the living drones seem to take no warning. They keep up their merry round; the unending feast riots forward; daily the bee-garden is filled with their careless, overweening song. And then at last the signalfor the slaughter is given. Within each hive a curious sobbing outcry begins—a cry that is nothing but sheer terror put into sound. The drones no longer lie in easy ranks between the combs, placidly sleeping off one debauch and dreaming of another. They are all awake now, and fleeing abjectly for their lives through the narrow ways of the bee-city, the workers in hot pursuit.
The deep, vibrant, horror-laden note increases hour by hour. As each executioner overtakes her victim, she grips him by the base of the wing; and, helped by others all alike infuriate at the work, she half drags, half pushes him through the throng, until she has him in the light of day, and tumbles with him to the ground; he for ever fighting and struggling, and uttering that frenzied note of fear; she savagely gnawing at the wing until it is disabled, and he can never more return to the hive. Many of the strongest drones escape from their persecutors for the time being, and fly away unhurt. But it is only for a few hours. Hunger is sure to bring them back to the hive, when the waiting guards fall upon them, and maim or drive them off once more. It is specially to be marked that the bees never sting the drones at this great annual feast of carnage. There is that much method in the madness which has seized upon them; for, in the rough-and-tumble of such a conflict, stings would be plucked out by theroots, and thus valuable lives would go down with the worthless. The sole object seems to be to rid the hives as effectively as possible of the presence of the drones; and the disablement of one wing appears to be all that is necessary, and therefore all for which the deft assassin strives.
With some bee-races the massacre of the drones is carried through in an incredibly short space of time; with others the agony of the thing is drawn out for days together. The wretched sires of the hive are caught between two evils, each as fatal as the other. If they fly off to the fields, starvation and the night-chills will swiftly bring about their end. If they return to the hive, a still speedier death awaits them. Night and day, at this time, the guard-bees are doubled and re-doubled at the city-gates; and there is little chance of the wiliest drone outwitting them. But he usually takes the home-hazard; and sooner or later comes blundering in, receiving with open arms, as it were, his share of the knife, as Huddlestone faced the Carbonari.
All this is the common way with the bee-republic, when the season goes as it should; and the hive is in possession of a mother-bee—young, strong, and of proved fecundity. But there are times when the drones—for all their great expense and drain on the wealth of the colony—are suffered to live on until the late autumn, or even to remain unmolested throughout the winter and followingspring. If the bee-master sees drones about a hive, when other colonies have long ago made a good riddance of them, he well knows what ails the stock. Its queen is old and failing; and these astute amazons have given reprieve to their male-kind until a new mother-bee can be raised and properly mated. It is a case of mercy to the drones tempered with so much justice to themselves that the original virtue is largely discounted.
And where the drones are carried through the winter, it is ever a sign that the hive is not only without a queen, but never will contrive one, of their own race. Yet they know that, in the preservation of the drones, they have at least one indispensable element for their salvation, and—who shall gainsay it of the sovereign honey-bee?—perhaps they rely on the bee-master to guess their plight, and furnish them with another queen, in time to save his property from extinction.
Asthe year grows in the bee-garden, so it goes, with all but imperceptible tread and tread. In southern England, after the seed-hay is down, there is little more for the bees to do but prepare their hives for the coming winter. The queen is slowly weaned from her absorption in egg-laying by a gradual change in food. Day by day she receives less of the mysterious bee-milk which was her urging and inspiration; day after day she finds herself the more constrained to slake her hunger at the open honey-cells with the common crowd. Every day sees fewer bee-children born to the hive, and every day sees more and more of the old workers—worn out with a short six weeks or so of summer toil—pass away in that inexplicable fashion, using, perchance, their last strength of wing to hie them to the traditional graveyard of their kind. What becomes of them all, not the wisest among beemen knows; but it is certain that, as they lived by communal principle, in the same faith they die; and their last act may be the truly collective one—of removing their own bodies out of the way of harm to the cherished State.
Queen bee in off season, showing that the workers pay her no special attention when she is not required to lay
With the waning months, the population of the hive decreases visibly, and, as their numbers fail, the temper of the bees suffers just as evident a change. Old bee-keepers know by sharp experience that early autumn is a time when vigilance well repays itself. For all life the season of autumn has its peculiar tests and trials of character; and this is especially true with regard to the honey-bee. Each strain of bees has its proclivities, good or bad, which are sure to come to the front at this season. And, more than any, bad qualities will show themselves, now that the rush of the year’s work is over, and the common energy must take its course through an ever shallowing and straitening way.
To find rank dishonesty in a creature of so small account in creation as an insect, is rather startling to old-fashioned ideas; but it is nevertheless beyond dispute that some stocks of bees are prone to develop a tendency to housebreaking and robbery of their neighbour’s goods during early autumn, and, in a lesser degree, when the first scanty supply of nectar begins in early spring.
Virgil, and almost all the classic writers, give stirring accounts of the frequent battles among bees in their day. We are told of vast conflictstaking place in mid-air, of the kings leading forth their hosts of warriors—the din of carnage—the wounded and dying falling like rain out of the blue of the summer sky. These descriptions have always been a great puzzle to modern students of bee-life, because nothing of the kind seems to take place at the present day. Each hive goes about its business, apparently in complete disregard of the existence of other hives. Neither at home, nor abroad in the fields, are reprisals ever witnessed among bees, whether singly or collectively. The most peaceable creature in the world is the honey-bee, except in the single case when her home is being wantonly assailed.
But in autumn frequent encounters take place between robber-bees and the hive they are attacking, and one is constrained to believe that it is of this Virgil writes.
Perhaps when once a stock has discovered that stealing honey is a much quicker and easier method of obtaining it than by the laborious process of gathering, these particular bees will never again be won back to honest courses. Not only will the parent hive continue to break out in this way at the close of every season, but all swarms from the same hive are certain to develop the like tendencies. The strain will be a continual source of annoyance and loss to the bee-master, and, if he be wise, he will take the shortest and surest way of putting an end to the trouble, by promptlychanging the queen, and thus in the end exterminating the original stock. Where this is in his own garden, there will be no difficulty in the matter; but often the robbers are wild bees, brigands inhabiting a hollow tree in some neighbouring wood, and making sudden raids upon their law-abiding neighbours in adjacent villages, after the manner of brigands all the world over. The strangers have often a peculiar appearance, which singles them out immediately from the legitimate members of the gardens. They are darker in colour and shinier; and they have a bold, yet furtive, way of getting about, which suggests at once the prowling marauder.
Wandering among the hives on a fine September morning, several of these light-fingered, sinister folk may be seen hovering about the entrance to a hive, or trying to creep in unobserved. Their presence is promptly detected, and a sudden hubbub arises as the guard-bees set upon the intruders and drive them off. There is no doubt of their intention. They are spies from the robber camp, and their object is to discover those hives which are weak in population, and so will fall the easier prey to the depredators when in force. Strong stocks have little to fear from robbers; they can always hold their own against attack, and therefore are seldom molested.
These scouts disappear for a time, and the hive settles down to its wonted, busy tranquillity. Butsoon a little blur of bees may be seen coming over the hedge-top, and making straight for the selected hive. There is no more crafty reconnoitring. It is to be battle undisguised. The robbers descend upon their prey, and at once a terrific uproar begins, a desperate hand-to-hand fight between besiegers and besieged. Left to themselves, the weak stock will have little chance from the outset. It is quickly overcome. And then a curious thing often happens. The bees of the home-colony which have survived the fight, join forces with the victors, and themselves help to rifle and carry away to the robbers’ lair the treasure which is their own by right. Luckily, the bee-master has an all but unfailing preventive of this vexatious trouble ready to his hand. He can safely leave all those hives which are numerically strong of citizens to take care of themselves, and those which are weak of population he can join together in twos or threes, converting them also into strong, self-protective colonies. The modern movable-comb hive is a power in the hands of the capable beeman, for the comb-frames from several hives can be placed together in one, and the bees will unite quite peaceably at this season, if all are well dusted with a flour-dredger, or treated with a scent-spray, so that in odour and appearance they may be alike. Probably every hive has its own distinct odour, which is shared by all its denizens, and this is no doubt the means by which thesentinel bees at the entrance recognise their own comrades, while they promptly fall upon all interloping strangers.
The preparation of the hive for the winter is of a piece with all else that the bee undertakes. As the area of the brood-nest shrinks, the empty cells are filled with honey, this being brought down from the store-cells farthest away. The foragers keep steadily at work whenever the weather holds, gathering up the remnants of the feast and bringing them home to swell the winter-larder. Where there is much ivy, a fine October will often see the hives as busy again as ever they were in the bravest days of June; but the throng of bees is manifestly smaller. The rich song of life begins later in the day, and lasts only during the brightest hours; and that wonderful night-sound, the deep underground thunder of the fanning bees, is gone from the bee-garden, just as the scent of the clover-nectar, brewing and steaming in the hives, no longer drifts across in the darkness, filling the bee-master’s house with the fragrance he loves more than all else in the world.
The old ragged-winged bees, that have stood the brunt of the season, are now, too, nearly all gone. The hives are filled with bees of the same race, inspired by the same traditions; but they are at the beginning of life, the raw recruits of destiny, a mere stop-gap crew. They have no memories of the time when work was a fever, a tumultuousrace with the sun, in which the swiftest must lag behind. They have never known the over-weighty cargoes, the bursting honey-sacs, and pollen-panniers so laden that they could be scarce dragged into the hive, and they will never know them. These bees, born late in the season, have their lot cast in the torpid backwaters of their little world. Theirs is to be but a dreary eking out of days, so that they may have strength enough to warm the first spring broods into life. The few hot days that burn in the midst of the snows of each English March—immeasurably far off now, and unattainable, seemingly—will be all they will ever see of the power of sunshine. Winter bees are born to the prison-house; and in it, and for it, live and die.
At the most, a worker-bee sees but six months of life: at the least—and this is the lot of many—she withstands the incessant wear and tear of her hard calling for six, or possibly eight, weeks. Thus, though the hive may be always packed with citizens, the population is for ever changing. Half a dozen times in the year, perhaps, and for a score of years, you may go to your bee-garden, and each time move among tens of thousands to whom you are an utter stranger, and whom you have never seen before. And yet, in all its customs, its propensities, its traditions, the life of the bees is Continuity impersonified. You may go round the world, and spend ten years on the journey; and,coming back to the old leafy nook of the country, find the old green hive still in its corner under the lilac, still the centre of what seems the same crowd of winged merchant-women sailing home under the same gay colours, singing the old glad songs, building the old wondrous fabrics in the darkness, transmuting the same fragrant essences into the same elixir of gold. And what is this mysterious thing called the Bee-Commonwealth, which is alone immortal, while all that composes it, and pertains to it, and upholds it, passes and dies?
You must not forget the queen-bee here. She alone, it must be remembered, persists year in and year out, while generation after generation of her children grow up and die about her—a hundred thousand of them, may-be, in each twelve-month, thousands even between one single summer dawn and the dusk of the western sky. Methuselah of old, on the more moderate human scale, must have had some such experience—must have divined the broader plan of life from the incessant repetitions of chance and change that passed before him. The power to generalise into symbols comes only to the ancient of days; and he of all men had learnt to fathom, to estimate, to winnow out the sober drab grain from the glittering, rainbow chaff of life. Over and over again he must have kept the true true to itself with one wise word, and turned back the false, dazzled and discomfited, with one flash from his mirror of the ages. Hewas a living history-book, where all men might read the common drift and outcome of life; and as a record of the hive’s story, a living archive for its plans, its systems, its ideals, the mother-bee may exist to day—she who, in comparison with its ever coming and going thousands, is an age-old, imperishable thing.
And so you may think of her, in the short days of December twilight, or in the interminable night-darkness full of the raging of the winter wind, gathering her children about her, and telling them tales of their forbears’ prowess; teaching them old bee-songs which have but the one refrain of work and winning; and never forgetting her own little story—of the one brief hour of her love-flight and marriage, bought and paid for by widowhood lasting her whole life.