These royal duels, though no longer regarded as the invariable routine, have been abundantly testified to by undoubted witnesses, and some of these have deduced a singular law as governing the combatants. Neither queen, it is said, will sting her rival unless she has her at an advantage, and can thrust her body beneath the other's, and inflict the fatal thrust without fear either of receiving another simultaneously, or of being unable to withdraw her own sting. If on the contrary each has grappled the other in readiness for mutual slaughter, they will at once separate and commence the battle anew.
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. If the search is unavailing they will return to the hive and commence what Langstroth calls "a succession of wailings in the minor key," which no experienced bee-master can mistake. When such a commotion is observed in an apiary the competent apiarian 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 this nor the former means is available, the whole colony gradually dwindles and in time dies off. 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 previously intended for a worker bee—but a larva will serve, so it be not grown to its full size—and then they 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 composed of honey and digested pollen, and prepared by the worker bees exclusively for those of the larvæ that are destined to become candidates for the honour of royalty. The effect of this is both to perfect and to hasten the development of the future insect, so that instead of a worker being produced at the end of twenty-one days, a queen emerges in the reduced term of sixteen.
But should the deprivation happen at a time when, either from the season or from abnormal circumstances, there is no worker brood in the hive, the bees will then often exhibit a series of curious and even ludicrous struggles, which Von Berlepsch has aptly compared to the clutchings at straws made by a drowning man. Themselves individually are no sufferers; but bees look beyond themselves, and posterity they must have. Their sole preoccupation, therefore, is to raise drones and a queen. Some of them often develop a capacity to lay drone eggs (as explained under [§ ix].), and most of these they will carefully cherish for their natural purpose, but others they will surround with royal cells and feed with royal jelly, so that the poor things on hatching are soon dosed to death in a frantic effort to change their sex! And if drone eggs are not to hand they will even try to hatch a queen out of a lump of pollen! In more senses than one then we see that when bees have lost their queen they have lost their head.
As curiously dissimilar, though not discordant, instances of the effect of removing the queen from a hive, we may mention that Mr. Langstroth once tried the experiment for only two or three minutes, when he had all in confusion immediately, and found two days after that royal cells had been prepared; while Dr. Bevan once effected the removal so quietly that for eighteen hours all went on as usual, and then on a sudden the fact became known, and everything was changed into agitation and distraction. Should a queen so separated be detained from her subjects, she resents the interference, refuses food, pines, and dies.
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 the "Unicomb Observatory Hive" is 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 for greater security 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 the colony.
The queen enjoys a far longer life than any of her subjects, her age very often extending to four or even five years; her fertility will, however, except in rare cases, have left her long before that term, or she will lay only drone eggs, so that as a general rule a substitute is better found for her when she has entered her third year. Under the next section, and those on "Reproductive Economy" and "Relation of Sex to Cells," as well as in Chapter IV. under "Queen Cages," will be found other information connected with the queen.
§ III. THE DRONE.
The drones are the male bees; they possess no sting, are larger and more hairy than the workers, and may be easily distinguished by their heavy motion, thick-set form, and louder humming. They have a strong odour, which becomes very noticeable if several of them are confined in a box. Evans thus describes the drones:—
"But now, when April smiles through many a tear,