Mr. Morris of Isleworth, in the Transactions of the Society for the encouragement of Arts, &c. for 1791, gives it as his opinion that the drones “sit upon the eggs, as the mother lays them;” and says that he has “often seen them sit in a formal manner on the combs, when the brood is hatching, while the other bees were very busy at work.” I suspect that Mr. Morris mistook sleeping for brooding, and that the drones were only taking a nap. Fabricius says that insects never sit on their eggs. Messrs. Kirby and Spence, however, have observed that the female ear-wig does: they also make one other exception in favour of the field bug (Cimex griseus), but add that these are the only ones. De Geer has given a very interesting account of both these insects, particularly of the strength of parental affection exhibited by the females. The female of the former assiduously sits upon her eggs, as if to hatch them, and after they are hatched, broods over the young as a hen over young chickens. And when the eggs of the latter are hatched, she also, after the manner of a hen, goes about with the brood, consisting of thirty or forty in number and never leaves them: they cluster round her when she is still, and follow her closely wherever she moves.
Besides the three essential members of the bee community, which I have just described, Huber has called the attention of the Apiarian to a fourth kind, which appear to be only casual inmates of the hive, from which however they are soon expelled by the workers. He has called them black bees, and says he first noticed them in two of his hives, in the year 1809, and on several other occasions from that time to the year 1813. They present a perfect resemblance to the working bees, excepting in their colour, which, in consequence of their being less downy, appears darker. On dissection, their internal structure also appears to be the same. Huber regards them as imperfect bees, but leaves to future naturalists an inquiry into their nature and origin. Messrs. Kirby and Spence have thrown out a conjecture that these black bees may be superannuated bees, that being no longer capable of contributing towards the labours of the community, are banished or destroyed by its younger members. They found their conjecture upon the usual effect of superannuation in rubbing off the hair of insects and thereby giving them a darker hue.
It is the office of the queen-bee to lay eggs, which she deposits in cells constructed for their reception by the working bees. These cells vary from one another in size, (and in the instance of the royal cells, they also vary in form), according as they are intended to be the depositories of eggs that are to become drones, or of those that are to become workers. But for a more particular account of these cells, Vide Part II. "[Architecture of Bees]." The Rev. W. Dunbar, minister of Applegarth, who has recently added some important particulars to our general stock of knowledge respecting bees, states that when the queen is about to lay, she puts her head into a cell, and remains in that position for a second or two, probably to ascertain its fitness for the deposit which she is about to make. She then withdraws her head, and curving her body downwards, inserts her tail into the cell: in a few seconds she turns half round upon herself and withdraws, leaving an egg behind her. When she lays a considerable number, she does it equally on each side of the comb, those on the one side being as exactly opposite to those on the other, as the relative position of the cells will admit. The effect of this is to produce a concentration and œconomy of heat for developing the various changes of the brood. The following sketch is taken from a plate given by Mr. Dunbar in the Edinburgh Philosophical Magazine, to represent the comb upon which his observations were made, and to show that part of it which was occupied by brood, the surrounding part of the square being full of sealed honey.
The eggs of bees are of a lengthened oval shape, with a slight curvature, and of a blueish white colour: they are composed of a thin membrane, filled with a whitish liquor, and being besmeared, at the time of laying, with a glutinous substance, they adhere to the bases of the cells, where they stand upright, and remain unchanged in figure or situation for four days; they are then hatched, the bottom of each cell presenting to view a small white worm or maggot, with several ventral rings. On its growing, so as to touch the opposite angle of the cell, it coils itself up in the shape of a semicircle, and floats in a whitish transparent fluid, by which it is probably nourished and enlarged in its dimensions, till the two extremities touch one another and form a ring. In this state it obtains indifferently the name of worm, larva, maggot or grub, and is fed with farina or bee-bread, to receive the welcome morsels of which, it eagerly opens its two lateral pincers. It is the opinion of Reaumur and others that farina does not constitute the sole food of the bee-larvæ, but that it consists of a mixture of farina with a certain proportion of honey and water, partly digested in the stomachs of the nursing[B] bees, the relative proportions of honey and farina varying according to the age of the young. It is insipid whilst they are very young, and becomes sweeter and more acescent the nearer they approach maturity.
[B] For an account of these see Part II. “Nature and Origin of Bees-wax.”
Schirach imagined that the semen of the male was the food of the larvæ: Bonnet entertained the same opinion, founded upon his observation that the drones, in going across the combs, pass by those cells that contain no maggots, but stop at those which do, giving a knock with the tail at them three times. Upon this Mr. Hunter observes that three is a famous number! and we know very well that the development is complete in hives that do not contain a single drone.
The larva having derived support in the manner above described, for four, five or six days, according to the season[C], continues to increase during that period, till it occupies the whole breadth and nearly the length of the cell. The nursing-bees now seal up the cell, with a light brown cover, externally more or less convex, (the cap of a drone-cell is more convex than that of a worker,) and thus differing from that of a honey-cell, which is paler and somewhat concave. It is no sooner perfectly inclosed than it begins to labour, alternately extending and shortening its body, whilst it lines the cell by spinning round itself, after the manner of the silk-worm, a whitish silky film or cocoon, by which it is encased, as it were, in a pod or pellicle. “The silken thread employed in forming this covering, proceeds from the middle part of the under lip, and is in fact composed of two threads gummed together as they issue from the two adjoining orifices of the spinner[D].” When it has undergone this change, it has usually borne the name of nymph or pupa.
[C] Schirach asserts, that in cool weather the development takes place two days later than in warm.