I hope the senior members of this assembly will bear with me while I address a few words to the younger portion of my auditors. I shall do so in the form of a letter which I once addressed to a young lady with a present of honey. I should premise, though, that she was a very young lady, lest you should conceive that I am about to read to you one of my old love-letters. It ran thus:—
"My dear young friend,—I dare say you have heard it said that things are great or small by comparison; this true saying is highly applicable on the present occasion. To you the accompanying pot of honey may seem to be a small pittance: to the industrious little insects by whom it was harvested it would have seemed to be a large treasure. By you, I dare say, it could be very comfortably disposed of at half-a-dozen meals: it would serve to maintain a hundred bees for twice as many months! Think how many flowers a bee must have visited to collect it, the trouble she must have had in constructing combs to receive it, how many journeys she must have made to import it, the pains she must afterwards have taken to secure it from being injured by exposure to the air, as well as from the depredations of wasps, moths, and other plunderers. I do not call your attention to these things for the purpose of enhancing or magnifying my little present in your eyes, but because they form a few among the many wonders of creation, with which we are so familiar that we are apt to pass them by without being duly impressed by them. How few are there, for instance, who, when partaking of their daily food, ever think of the numerous heads and hands that have been occupied in producing it, their anxious thoughts and laborious toils—to use a homely expression, that consider how the bread comes into the far mouths! But I have said enough, I trust, to set you a thinking, to call into exercise that best gift of God to man, his reasoning faculty, and feel confident that you will not be addressed in vain by your very sincere friend." (Applause.)
I have told you that the working bees form the most numerous portion of the community; indeed for eight months of the year they and the queen constitute the whole; and in the height of the season every family numbers from twelve to twenty thousand, or more, but in winter they become very much diminished, owing to the natural shortness of their lives, which only extend to from six to eight months. The bees that are so rapidly bred in spring, as to render swarming or additional room necessary, finish their career about the commencement of winter: on those alone that are bred in smaller numbers, in autumn, devolves the business of the hive till the following spring, in the course of which they also become defunct. Hence the very great disproportion observable in the number of all such families at different seasons of the year.
I shall now advert to a few of the most interesting parts in the anatomy of the bee. In common with other insects, it has been divided into the head, the trunk, and the abdomen, or hinder part. The head is furnished with two eyes, two antennæ, or horns, as they are sometimes called, two feelers, and a proboscis, this latter comprising an intricate apparatus of which I shall speak presently. To the trunk are attached a double pair of gauze-like wings and six legs, the thighs of the hinder pair being each furnished with a small cavity fringed with hair, which serves as a basket for the conveyance of food for the young, &c. The hinder part contains the bowels, the honey-bag, the venom-bag, &c., and at its extremity a concealed sting, to which, as also to the proboscis, I have now to bespeak your attention, on account of their peculiar structure and uses. The proboscis has attached to it a very long tongue; it is also provided with several joints; by both these contrivances it is rendered capable of every variety of motion, and of probing to the very bottom of most flowers when searching for honey. And here we may pause to contemplate the very admirable contrivance by which this long implement, the tongue, which would otherwise have proved highly incommodious, is preserved from injury. The joints of which I have spoken enable it to fold itself up when at rest, and the desired protection is still further accomplished by means of a double sheath, in which the tongue, when unemployed, is always enclosed. There is much to excite our admiration in the manner in which the bees collect whatever they are in need of. Their first occupation in the earliest days of spring, as soon as breeding commences, is to collect the fertilising dust of flowers, known by the name of pollen or farina, and, as soon as they afford it, to procure honey from them; the latter chiefly for themselves, the former chiefly for their nurslings. I have often seen them, after rolling upon the anther-dust of the flowers, which their fine hairs enable them to retain upon their bodies, return home thus enveloped, having the appearance of a different kind of bee. This coating of pollen they brash off with their downy legs, or their companions do it for them, and apply it to the general purposes of the hive. Their ordinary mode of proceeding is to collect it into little heaps or pellets, and to transport it upon their thighs to their companions in the hive. That which is not wanted for present use is kneaded down with a little honey and stored in the cells, in which state it is called bee-bread.
The bees collect also another substance called propolis, of a resinous nature. This is collected from certain trees, to fasten the combs to the roof of the hives, to varnish and strengthen the cell-work, and to stop up the crannies of the hive. This substance is used as soon as collected, while it is soft, none of it being stored, for its collectors are well aware that in a short time it would become so hard as to lose its ductility.
In the generality of seasons the bees obtain their principal stores of honey from the flowers of the fields, but they also, in some seasons, collect it much more abundantly from the leaves of several sorts of trees, on which it is deposited in the form of honey-dew, a very sweet substance which, having been sucked from the aforesaid leaves by an insect called the aphis or tree-louse, passes through its body nearly unchanged, covers those leaves which are beneath, and thus affords a delicious repast to bees, butterflies, and other insects. The bees collect this food by means of the long tongue which I have described to you, and which acts as a sort of brush, so that bees may be said rather to lap their food than to suck it. By the repeated action of this brush-like contrivance, they gradually conduct the sweet juices into their mouths, from whence they pass into their honey-bag, and when this is filled, they carry home the cargo, regurgitate it, and deposit it in those cells which, either by themselves or their companions, have been previously prepared to receive it. They are then quickly in the fields again in quest of a fresh supply. Thus, throughout the spring, summer, and autumn, whenever the weather is favourable, and even in unfavourable weather, if they are much in want of food or other materials, to use the language of the poet, the bees are to be seen,
"Gathering honey from every opening flower."
The quantity which they collect in this way is often surprising, considering how small a portion is imported on each excursion. I have just stated that, with the exception of those seasons when honey-dews abound, the principal resources of the bees are the flowers of the fields, chiefly those of the white clover,—a plant which is found upon most pasture lands, but none are more luxuriantly clothed with it than the meadows of this county. Hence the excellent pasturage they afford for sheep as well as for bees; thus corroborating a very ancient opinion, that the finest honey is collected in districts which yield the finest wool and the finest wheat; these productions comprehending two of the five w's for which Herefordshire has been long so justly celebrated, viz., wheat, wool, wood, water, and women! How worthy the latter are of this pre-eminence I have abundant evidence around me!
Having explained to you the mechanism and functions of the proboscis, I now proceed to describe those of the sting, which are no less worthy of admiration for the perfection with which that organ is formed, and by which it accomplishes its various purposes. It consists of a couple of darts, enclosed in a sheath; but the darts and sheath are so very minute that the separate parts are not distinguishable by the naked eye. That part called the sheath, though appearing to be a single tube, is divided into several portions, each of which is capable of being received by the one above it, like the pieces of a telescope, so that it can be lengthened or shortened at pleasure. The beauty and utility of this latter part of its organisation will be still more evident when I come to speak of the Queen. In some other insects this apparatus serves not only the purpose of a sting, but also that of a saw or a gimlet, to pierce a passage through wood or other materials. When the insect stings, the sheath is the first part that penetrates the skin, but it is instantly followed by the darts, not simultaneously, but first one and then the other, and with the rapidity of lightning; by which means, as each dart is provided with a barb, it can lay firmer hold, and penetrate deeper into the flesh. When at its full depth, a poisonous liquor, which is always ready prepared at its root in the venom bag, is forced down the sheath into the wound, causing that sharp pain, inflammation, and swelling which usually ensue. I say usually ensue, for in some peculiar habits, as I have known, in several instances, no apparent inconvenience is produced by a sting, not even so much as would be caused by the prick of a needle; owing to the exquisitely superior fineness of the former. I once had an opportunity of having this confirmed in a remarkable maimer by a respectable Kentish farmer, who pat it to the test upon one of his female servants. She was boasting one day of her flesh being poison proof, and saying she did not mind the sting of a bee or a wasp—not she, for they never did her any damage, and that she should not mind letting any one inflict any number of stings upon her at a penny a piece I Her incredulous master accepted the challenge, and "Verily," said he, "I took six penny worth of stinging out of her, without causing her to flinch in the least, or apparently to suffer the very slightest uneasiness, or any subsequent inconvenience!" This, however, is an impunity which very few are endowed with, for in general the pain inflicted by a sting is very severe, not only at the moment, but, where timely remedies have not been applied, of considerable duration, ending often in much tumour and inflammation, and in some instances, where the stings have been numerous, fatal consequences have ensued. Whenever an attack is made by a bee, the person aimed at should walk quietly away to the nearest bush or other shelter. If he start or suffer himself to be ruffled, he is much more likely to be stung; and even if he were stung, in such a comparatively quiescent state, so much the smaller would be the injury received, a calm deportment enabling the bee to withdraw the sting by her own efforts, by clenching the barbs round its shafts, these forming the only obstacles to its withdrawal. If it be left behind in the wound, the best treatment is quickly to extract it with a pair of tweezers, and in any case to apply promptly a little spirit of hartshorn, or any other alkaline liquor that will penetrate the wound; the venom inserted, being evidently an acid, is neutralised by an alkali, and rendered comparatively harmless; but everything depends upon its prompt application. From what I have stated to be the most effectual remedy for the sting of a bee, it may be inferred that those who are stung with impunity are very good tempered, for if they had any sourness in their composition they would have no such exemption from suffering when stung! Considering, therefore, how very important good temper is to connubial felicity, may it not be prudent for persons prior to betrothment to submit each other to the test of the bee's sting, when perhaps the amount of good temper possessed might be ascertained by the extent of the suffering inflicted? Should such a test be found upon trial to be depended upon, what persevering efforts would it not infallibly induce in the cultivation of good temper, and to what an incalculable degree would it contribute to the promotion of social harmony! And how delightful it would be to find that, in addition to their well known importance in other respects, we had made of the hivites a virtuous nation.
I have now to introduce to your notice another highly-interesting and important member of the bee community—one that is generally considered to rank above all the rest, and hence the following couplet has been applied to her:—