As erst the immortal pair, on Ida's height,
Wreath'd round their noon of joy ambrosial night."
The loyalty and attachment of bees to their queen is one of their most remarkable characteristics; they constantly supply her with food, and fawn upon and caress her, softly touching her with their antennæ—a favour which she occasionally returns. When she moves about the hive, all the bees through whom she successively passes pay her the same homage; those whom she leaves behind in her track close together, and resume their accustomed occupations.
The majestic deportment of the queen-bee and the homage paid to her is, with a little poetic licence, thus described by Evans:—
"But mark, of royal port and awful mien,
Where moves with measured pace the insect Queen!
Twelve chosen guards, with slow and solemn gait,
Bend at her nod, and round her person wait."
This homage is, however, only paid to matron queens. Whilst they continue princesses, they receive no distinctive marks of respect. Dr. Dunbar, the noted Scotch apiarian, observed a very striking instance of this whilst experimenting on the combative qualities of the queen-bee "So long," says he, "as the queen which survived the rencontre with her rival remained a virgin, not the slightest degree of respect or attention was paid her; not a single bee gave her food; she was obliged, as often as she required it, to help herself; and in crossing the honey cells for that purpose, she had to scramble, often with difficulty, over the crowd, not an individual of which got out of her way, or seemed to care whether she fed or starved: but no sooner did she become a mother, than the scene was changed, and all testified towards her that most affectionate attention, which is uniformly exhibited to fertile queens."
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 hive under two distinct banners, and so create a civil war, in which the members of the rival bands would kill and destroy each other for matters they individually have little or no concern about: for the bees care not which queen it is, so long as they are certain of having one to rule over them and perpetuate the community.