Curtain of Wax-workers secreting wax.
“A person,” says Réaumur, “must have been born devoid of curiosity not to take interest in the investigation of such wonderful proceedings.” Yet Réaumur himself seems not to have understood that the bees suspended themselves in this manner to secrete wax, but merely, as he imagined, to recruit themselves by rest for renewing their labours. The bees composing the festooned curtain are individually motionless; but this curtain is, notwithstanding, kept moving by the proceedings in the interior; for the nurse-bees never form any portion of it, and continue their activity—a distinction with which Réaumur was unacquainted.
Although there are many thousand labourers in a hive, they do not commence foundations for combs in several places at once, but wait till an individual bee has selected a site, and laid the foundation of a comb, which serves as a directing mark for all that are to follow. Were we not expressly told by so accurate an observer as Huber, we might hesitate to believe that bees, though united in what appears to be an harmonious monarchy, are strangers to subordination, and subject to no discipline. Hence it is, that though many bees work on the same comb, they do not appear to be guided by any simultaneous impulse. The stimulus which moves them is successive. An individual bee commences each operation, and several others successively apply themselves to accomplish the same purpose. Each bee appears, therefore, to act individually, either as directed by the bees preceding it, or by the state of advancement in which it finds the work it has to proceed with. If there be anything like unanimous consent, it is the inaction of several thousand workers while a single individual proceeds to determine and lay down the foundation of the first comb. Réaumur regrets that, though he could by snatches detect a bee at work in founding cells or perfecting their structure, his observations were generally interrupted by the crowding of other bees between him and the little builder. He was therefore compelled rather to infer the different steps of their procedure from an examination of the cells when completed, than from actual observation. The ingenuity of Huber, even under all the disadvantages of blindness, succeeded in tracing the minutest operations of the workers from the first waxen plate of the foundation. We think the narrative of the discoverer’s experiments, as given by himself, will be more interesting than any abstract of it which we could furnish:—
"Having taken a large bell-shaped glass receiver, we glued thin wooden slips to the arch at certain intervals, because the glass itself was too smooth to admit of the bees supporting themselves on it. A swarm, consisting of some thousand workers, several hundred males, and a fertile queen, was introduced, and they soon ascended to the top. Those first gaining the slips fixed themselves there by the fore-feet; others, scrambling up the sides, joined them, by holding their legs with their own, and they thus formed a kind of chain, fastened by the two ends to the upper parts of the receiver, and served as ladders or a bridge to the workers enlarging their number. The latter were united in a cluster, hanging like an inverted pyramid from the top to the bottom of the hive.
"The country then affording little honey, we provided the bees with syrup of sugar, in order to hasten their labour. They crowded to the edge of a vessel containing it; and, having satisfied themselves, returned to the group. We were now struck with the absolute repose of this hive, contrasted with the usual agitation of bees. Meanwhile, the nurse-bees alone went to forage in the country; they returned with pollen, kept guard at the entrance of the hive, cleansed it, and stopped up its edges with propolis. The wax-workers remained motionless about fifteen hours: the curtain of bees, consisting always of the same individuals, assured us that none replaced them. Some hours later, we remarked that almost all these individuals had wax scales under the rings; and next day this phenomenon was still more general. The bees forming the external layer of the cluster, having now somewhat altered their position, enabled us to see their bellies distinctly. By the projection of the wax scales, the rings seemed edged with white. The curtain of bees became rent in several places, and some commotion began to be observed in the hive.
"Convinced that the combs would originate in the centre of the swarm, our whole attention was then directed towards the roof of the glass. A worker at this time detached itself from one of the central festoons of the cluster, separated itself from the crowd, and, with its head, drove away the bees at the beginning of the row in the middle of the arch, turning round to form a space an inch or more in diameter, in which it might move freely. It then fixed itself in the centre of the space thus cleared.
Wax-worker laying the foundation of the first Cell.