The queen-bee, though provided with a sting, never uses it on any account, except in combat with her sister queens. But she admits of no rival to her throne; almost her first act on coming forth from the cell, is an attempt to tear open and destroy the cells containing the pupæ of princesses likely to become competitors. Should it so happen that another queen of similar age does exist in the hive at the same time, the two are speedily brought into contact with each other in order to fight it out and decide by a struggle, mortal to one of them, which is to be the ruler;—the stronger of course is victorious, and remains supreme. This, it must be admitted, is a wiser method of settling the affair than it would be to range the whole band under two distinct banners, and so create a civil war, killing and destroying each other for matters with which they individually have little or no concern: for the bees care not which queen it is, as long as they are certain of having one to rule over them and perpetuate the community.
After perusing the description given above of the attachment of bees to their queen, it may be easy to imagine the consternation a hive is thrown into when deprived of her presence. The bees first make a diligent search for their monarch in the hive, and then afterwards rush forth in immense numbers to seek her. When such a commotion is observed in an apiary, the experienced bee-master will repair the loss by giving a queen: the bees have generally their own remedy for such a calamity, in their power of raising a new queen from amongst their larvæ; but if neither of these means be available, the whole colony dwindles and dies. The following is the method by which working bees provide a successor to the throne when deprived of their queen by accident, or in anticipation of the first swarm, which is always led by the old queen:—
They select, when not more than three days old, an egg or grub previously intended for a worker-bee, and then enlarge the cell so selected by destroying the surrounding partitions; they thus form a royal cradle, in shape very much like an acorn cup inverted. The chosen embryo is then fed liberally with a peculiar description of nurture, called by naturalists "royal jelly"—a pungent food, prepared by the working bees exclusively for those of the larvæ that are destined to become candidates for the honour of royalty. Should a queen be forcibly separated from her subjects, she resents the interference, refuses food, pines, and dies.
The whole natural history of the queen-bee is in itself a subject that will well repay for continuous study. Those who desire to follow it, we would refer to the complete works of Huber—the greatest of apiarians,—Swammerdam, Bevan, Langstroth, &c. The observations upon the queen-bee needful to verify the above mentioned facts can only be made in hives constructed for the purpose, of which our "Unicomb Observatory Hive" is one of the best. In ordinary hives the queen is scarcely ever to be seen; where there are several rows of comb, she invariably keeps between them, both for warmth and to be more secure from danger. The writer has frequently observed in stocks which have unfortunately died, that the queen was one of the last to expire; and she is always more difficult to gain possession of than other bees, being by instinct taught that she is indispensable to the welfare of her subjects.
The queen enjoys a far longer life than any of her subjects, her age generally extending to four or even five years. The drones, which are mostly hatched in the early spring, seldom live more than three or four months, even if they should escape the sting of the executioner, to which they generally fall victims. The worker-bee, it is now a well-ascertained fact, lives from six to eight months, in no case exceeding the latter; so that we may reckon that the bees hatched in April and May expire about the end of the year, and it is those of the autumn who carry on the duties of the hive until the spring and summer, that being the time when the greatest number of eggs are laid. The population of a hive is very small during the winter, in comparison with the vast numbers gathering produce in the summer,—produce which they themselves live to enjoy but for a short period. So that not only, as of old, may lessons of industry be learned from bees, but they also teach self-denial to mankind, since they labour for the community rather than for themselves. Evans, in describing the age of bees, thus paraphrases the well known couplet of Homer in allusion to the fleeting generations of men:—
Like leaves on trees, the race of bees is found,
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;
Another race the spring or fall supplies.
They droop successive, and successive rise.
The Drone.—The drones are male bees; they possess no sting, are more hairy and larger than the common bee, and may be easily distinguished by their heavy motion, thick-set form, and louder humming. Evans thus describes the drones:—