“The attention,” says Lord Brougham,[AE] "which has been paid at various times to the structure and habits of the bee is one of the most remarkable circumstances in the history of science. The ancients studied it with unusual minuteness, although being, generally speaking, indifferent observers of fact, they made but little progress in discovering the singular economy of this insect. Of the observations of Aristomachus, who spent sixty years, it is said, in studying the subject, we know nothing; nor of those which were made by Philissus, who passed his life in the woods, for the purpose of examining this insect’s habits; but Pliny informs us that both of them wrote works upon it. Aristotle’s three chapters on bees and wasps[AF] contain little more than the ordinary observations, mixed up with an unusual portion of vulgar and even gross errors. How much he attended to the subject is, however, manifest from the extent of the first of these chapters, which is of great length. Some mathematical writers, particularly Pappus, studied the form of the cells, and established one or two of the fundamental propositions respecting the economy of labour and wax resulting from the plan of the structure. The application of modern naturalists to the inquiry is to be dated from the beginning of the eighteenth century, when Maraldi examined it with his accustomed care; and Reaumur afterwards, as we have seen, carried his investigations much farther. The interest of the subject seemed to increase with the progress made in their inquiries; and about the year 1765 a society was formed at Little Bautzen in Upper Lusatia, whose sole object was the study of bees. It was formed under the patronage of the Elector of Saxony. The celebrated Schirach was one of its original members; and soon after its establishment he made his famous discovery of the power which the bees have to supply the loss of their Queen, by forming a large cell out of three common ones, and feeding the grub of a worker upon royal jelly; a discovery so startling to naturalists, that Bonnet, in 1769, earnestly urged the society not to lower its credit by countenancing such a wild error, which he regarded as repugnant to all we know of the habits of insects; admitting, however, that he should not be so incredulous of any observations tending to prove the propagation of the race of the Queen-bee, without any co-operation of a male,[AG] a notion since shown by Huber to be wholly chimerical. In 1771 a second institution, with the same limited object, was founded at Lauter, under the Elector Palantine’s patronage, and of this Riem, scarcely less known in this branch of science than Schirach, was a member.
[AE] Vol. i, pp. 333-36.
[AF] Hist. An., lib. ix, cap. 40, 41, 42.
[AG] Œuvres, x, 100, 104.
“The greatest progress, however, was afterwards made by Huber, whose discoveries, especially of the Queen-bee’s mode of impregnation, the slaughter of the drones or males, and the mode of working, have justly gained him a very high place among naturalists. Nor are his discoveries of the secretion of wax from saccharine matter, the nature of propolis, and the preparation of wax, for building, to be reckoned less important. To these truths the way had been led by John Hunter, whose vigorous and original genius never was directed to the cultivation of any subject without reaping a harvest of discovery.”
In conclusion, whatever may be the degree of ignorance or doubt in which on certain points respecting the Honey-bee we are still involved (and these are probably not often practically important), there are few but may receive instruction and example from these wonderful little creatures, in the duties of persevering industry, prudence, economy, and peaceful subordination; whilst all may be taught, by their perfect organization and faultless adaptation of means to an end, a lesson of humility; and, finally, by the contemplation of their beautiful works, "to look from Nature up to Nature’s God."
