Fresh showers prolific round her genial bed."
Evans.
§ VIII. EGGS AND TRANSFORMATIONS.
It is necessary that some explanation should be given, as to the existence of the bee before it emerges from the cell.
The eggs ([Plate II. Fig. 7]) of all the three kinds of bees, when first deposited, are of an oval shape, slightly curved, and of a bluish-white colour. They are glutinous on the surface when laid, which causes them to adhere to the bases of the cells where the queen deposits them. In three or four days the egg changes to a small white worm, and in this stage is known by the names of larva or grub ([Plate II. Fig. 8]), in which state it remains four to six days more—a drone six and a half; its dimensions enlarge during this period till it appears as a ring at the base of the cell. While in this stage it is fed by the nurse bees with a mixture of farina and honey, a transparent white fluid in which the larva floats, and the supply of which is so exactly apportioned that not a drop remains on its ceasing to be required.
The next transformation is to the nymph or pupa form. The nurse bees now seal up the cells with a preparation similar to wax, leaving them with coverings which, by their greater convexity and darker colour, distinguish them readily from honey cells. The pupa then spins round itself a film or cocoon, just as a silkworm does in its chrysalis state: workers and drones occupy thirty-six hours with this process; princesses, which spin only half-cocoons, finish them in twenty-four. The microscope shows that this cradle-curtain is perforated with very minute holes, through which the baby bee is duly supplied with air. No farther attention on the part of the bees is now requisite, except a proper degree of heat, which they take care to keep up—a position for the breeding cells being selected in the centre of the hive, where the temperature is likely to be most congenial. The cells destined for the rearing of drones are larger than those from which workers will proceed, the former standing nineteen to the square inch against twenty-seven of the latter: the former are also one-third as deep again as the latter, and are made slightly more convex when sealed over. But between the eggs themselves there is externally no difference whatever.
In from nineteen to twenty-one days after the egg is first laid (unless cold weather should have retarded it) the bee quits the pupa state, and, nibbling its way through the waxen covering that has enclosed it, comes forth a winged insect. The eggs of drones require twenty-four or twenty-five days, and those of queens sixteen or seventeen, to arrive at maturity. In the unicomb observatory hives the young bees may distinctly be seen as they literally fight their way into the world, for the other bees do not take the slightest notice, nor afford them any assistance. We have frequently been amused in watching the eager little new comer, now obtruding its head, and anon compelled to withdraw into the cell to escape being trampled on by the apparently unfeeling throng, until at last it has succeeded in making its exit. The little grey creature, after brushing and shaking itself, enters upon its duties in the hive, and after a while issues forth to the more laborious occupation of gathering honey in the fields—thus early illustrating that character for industry which has been proverbial at least since the days of Aristotle, and which has in our day been rendered familiar even to infant minds through the nursery rhymes of Dr. Watts.
§ IX. REPRODUCTIVE ECONOMY.
The fertilisation of the queen and the determination of the sexes of her progeny are two subjects of so much interest that we must make room for some exposition of the discoveries of the past thirty years in relation thereto. What has been already stated on the former of these under the section on "The Drone" consists of facts which were mainly established by Huber; but within the present generation the great German apiarians have returned to the question, and Dzierzon has set forth some most marvellous deductions, which Baron von Berlepsch has followed up with amplification and further proof. It was found that the queen while in a virgin condition was often capable of depositing eggs, and that these eggs, unlike those of poultry laid under somewhat similar conditions, would hatch equally with others, but they all produced drones. From this arose the question. Whence come the drones after the queen has been fertilised? A fact known from the days of Huber and Riem was by some supposed to settle the difficulty. In many hives there exist what are called "fertile workers"—bees having the female organs sufficiently developed to deposit eggs, but not sufficiently so to receive fecundation; and as it was found that the eggs of these fulfilled the conditions required, and invariably produced drone bees, the theory was erected that these fertile workers were the regular producers of that sex. But this plausible solution of the problem did not stand examination. Every fertile queen does habitually lay eggs in drone cells, and from those eggs drones are uniformly developed. Dissection and microscopic analysis had therefore to be resorted to, and the course of investigation commenced by Swammerdam and pursued by Mlle. Jurine was now pushed to a much further extent.
Proceeding from the two ovaries of the queen there are two canals, called oviducts, which presently unite, and immediately beyond their point of juncture is a small globular receptacle which is called the spermatheca. With fertile queens it was found that this appendage is permanently occupied by a fluid identical with that in the reproductive organs of the drones, and that as such it abounds in spermatozoa; while with a virgin queen the fluid is totally destitute of these, and is wholly different in appearance, being thin and transparent. From this discovery the conclusion followed that each egg, as it passes down the oviduct and over the mouth of the spermatheca, may either receive fecundation or not, according as the queen's own will or some other circumstance shall determine. Dzierzon accordingly propounded as the apparent, though still only hypothetical, solution of the enigma, what is known as the doctrine of parthenogenesis or virgin breeding—the law that life is imparted by the mother independently, and that every egg as originally developed in her ovaries is of the male sex, but that whenever fertilised with the male fluid it becomes transformed into a female!