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.
Not eastern despots, of their splendour vain,
Can boast, in all their pomp, a brighter train
Of fear-bound satraps; not in bonds of love
Can loyal Britons more obedient move."
Some modification has to be made, however, in the old ideas on this head, though, so long as it is understood that the reverence of the bees for their queen is an official and not a personal reverence, it may be allowed, except as to the existence of a regular guard, to be for the most part true enough. But the government is a limited and not an absolute monarchy, for the workers often impose their own will upon the sovereign. This homage, moreover, is paid only to matron queens, as Dr. Dunbar noted 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 treated her with due attention.
The sting of the queen bee is utilised in depositing her eggs, and she does not use it for hostile purposes except in combat with her sister queens. Mr. Langstroth remarks that this forbearance apparently arises from the knowledge that the use of the sting might prove fatal to herself, and thus seriously jeopardise the whole hive. He adds that she will carry it to the extent of allowing herself to be torn limb from limb without an attempt at stinging, though if closely held in the hand she will sometimes use her jaws, which, being more powerful than those of other bees, may occasion some discomfort. 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, then, if one be not promptly destroyed by the workers, as is now considered to be the rule, the two are usually 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, while her rival either falls dead or is left to die.[6] Either of these, 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 had little or no concern about. 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; indeed, they have been known in some cases to form rings round the respective combatants, and even to force them to the conflict if unaware of each other's presence. But Dr. Bevan tells us that there do exist queens which will not fight. The workers do not always decide: the matter in such case; it is, indeed, nothing uncommon, says Vogel, for two fruitful queens to be allowed to live together; and we have had instances of the same kind ourselves, without being able to give a reason other than that "the exceptions prove the rule." An Italian queen, it is said, is usually assisted in her third year by a younger mother born in her own hive.
[6] Dr. Bevan mentions examples both of instant fatality and of survival for twenty-four hours. The sting of the queen is evidently less powerful than that of workers, as her poison-bag is smaller; and we learn from Von Gindly that he once succeeded in inducing a queen to sting him, when the effect was like little more than the prick of a needle. Kleine also, after persevering attempts, was once stung by a queen, and so was Hoffnann of Vienna—the queen in this last case losing thereby the faculty of laying.