CHAPTER XXIII
THE GUARD BEES
IF we watch for a short time at the city gates, we shall very likely see two bees apparently fighting desperately. If we look closely we may see that one of the bees has hold of the other by the wing, and is dragging it away from the door. To and fro the fight rages, and the bee which is held struggles fiercely, but without avail, for the other has her in a firm grip. The captive bee is really a robber, which has been caught whilst trying to slip into the hive to steal honey. It may be that the robber is from another hive, or perhaps is a wild bee, for there are communities of bees which are really like pirates. They have their homes in some hollow tree, and live either by robbing other cities, or by waylaying workers on their return from the fields, and taking from them the honey which they have so laboriously gathered. The bees, therefore, have found it very necessary that there should be a guard at the gates of their cities, and there are always some soldier bees on sentry-go.
To us, no doubt, one bee looks very much like another, and it is a mystery how the guards are able to recognise a strange bee. It is probable that the sense of smell has a great deal to do with this, for it is thought that all the bees of one hive smell alike, but differently from those of another hive, and that by this means the guards may detect a robber. A strange bee is never allowed to cross the threshold unless it is perhaps in the busy season, when the bees are “working overtime” as we might say, straining every nerve and muscle to gather in as much honey as they can before the summer goes and the flowers die. Then if a stranger comes to the hive, with her honey-sac full of the precious fluid, she may be allowed to pass in. Wasps often try to gain an entrance, as also do many other insects of one sort or another. If we watch the door for quite a short time in summer, it is pretty certain that we shall see several struggles. Sometimes it takes two or even three bees to expel the intruder.
On one occasion I witnessed a fight which lasted well over half-an-hour between a robber bee and a guard bee. They rolled over and over on the board, this way and that, each trying to get the better of the other. At last they fell on to the ground below, but even then they did not stop the fight, and the struggle continued on the grass. Eventually the guard bee won the day, and by what appeared to be a final effort, she managed to pierce the abdomen of the robber bee with her sting. Instantly the robber bee was killed, and the brave little soldier bee returned to the hive in triumph.
It is not easy for one bee to sting another, for the abdomen and thorax are so hard that it can only be done through one of the rings of the abdomen, where the skin is thin.
CHAPTER XXIV
WORKERS IN THE CITY
BESIDES the fanners, the foragers, and the guards, there are other classes of bees at work in the hive. There are, for instance, the scavengers and cleaners-up, whose duty it is to keep the city and the combs spotlessly clean. Little twigs, dead leaves, and bits of gravel are all removed by these bees. Sometimes a mouse or a snail enters the hive, and then indeed there is great excitement. Imagine a great elephant-like creature, thirty or forty feet high, with a tail thirty feet long, to come walking into one of our cities, and you will have some idea what it seems like to the bees when a mouse is foolish enough to poke its head into the hive! But the bees are not frightened; the guards are promptly called out, and the poor mouse is soon put to death by hundreds of stings. Having made sure that the intruder is quite dead, the bees leave his body to the scavengers, who are confronted with the problem of disposing of it. If it were left it would cause disease and pestilence throughout the city, and it is too big and heavy for them to move. It is true that they might bite it into tiny pieces and thus carry it outside the hive, but this would take too much of the bees’ valuable time. A better plan is thought of, and the body is soon covered over with a thin coating of wax. It is thus embalmed in a beautiful white tomb, which is made perfectly air-tight. If the tomb is near to the door, and interferes with the passing in and out of the workers, tunnels are cut through it. Sometimes when we look inside a hive, we may see two or three of these little mounds of wax, and we may be sure that each one is the grave of some intruder who had no right to be there.
Then there are the undertakers, who have a grim duty to perform. They carry away the bodies of workers who may have died within the hive, and in winter they have a busy time. It has been said, with what truth we do not know, that each hive has a burial-ground where the bodies of its workers are placed. It may be behind some bush in a corner of the garden, or perhaps down by the willows which fringe the banks of the stream. Whether this is so or not, it is certain that the undertakers carry the bodies of the dead bees away from the hive, so that they shall not pollute the pure air of the city and so cause disease. Now and then as we watch we may see one of these undertakers carrying what looks like the ghost of a bee! It is a bee in form, but its wings are folded, and its body is not a beautiful brown, but pearly white. This is a young bee, which has died before its birth, in the cell which has been both its cradle and its tomb. In winter, when it is too cold for the undertakers to journey far with their gruesome burdens, they will drop them just over the alighting-board, and so we sometimes see the ground near a hive strewn with dead bees, for many die during the colder months.
The water carriers are the bees who fly backwards and forwards between some neighbouring stream and the hive, supplying it with the water necessary to the workers. A hive should be placed near a stream or river, so that the bees may have as much water as they want, and they are helped in this if the stream be a shallow one in which there are little pebbles and rocks so that they can easily sip up the water. Another class of workers are the chemists, whose duty it is to place a tiny drop of acid, from their poison-bag, into each cell of honey, before it is finally sealed over. The acid supplied is chiefly what is called formic acid, and this is a very good preservative; it serves to keep the honey fresh and sweet until it is wanted.
You will remember that we said that it was actually good for us to be stung. This is because the formic acid which is pumped into the wound by the bee mixes with our blood, and prevents rheumatism. You will hardly ever find that a bee-keeper is troubled with this complaint.