Insect Architecture

by James Rennie

It is remarked by the lively Abbé la Pluche, that the foundations of our houses sink with the earth on which they are built, the walls begin to stoop by degrees, they nod with age, and bend from their perpendicular;—lodgers damage everything, and time is continually introducing some new decay. The mansions of the bees, on the contrary, grow stronger the oftener they change inhabitants. Every bee-grub, before its metamorphosis into a nymph, fastens its skin to the partitions of its cell, but in such a manner as to make it correspond with the lines of the angle, and without in the least disturbing the regularity of the figure. During summer, accordingly, the same lodging may serve for three or four grubs in succession; and in the ensuing season it may accommodate an equal number. Each grub never fails to fortify the panels of its chamber by arraying them with its spoils, and the contiguous cells receive a similar augmentation from its brethren.[AZ] Réaumur found as many as seven or eight of these skins spread over one another: so that all the cells being incrusted with six or seven coverings, well dried and cemented with propolis, the whole fabric daily acquires a new degree of solidity.

It is obvious, however, that by a repetition of this process the cell might be rendered too contracted; but in such a case the bees know well how to proceed, by turning the cells to other uses, such as magazines for bee-bread and honey. It has been remarked, however, that in the hive of a new swarm, during the months of July and August, there are fewer small bees or nurse-bees than in one that has been tenanted four or five years. The workers, indeed, clean out the cell the moment that a young bee leaves its cocoon, but they never detach the silky film which it has previously spun on the walls of its cell. But though honey is deposited after the young leave the cells, the reverse also happens; and accordingly, when bees are bred in contracted cells, they are by necessity smaller, and constitute, in fact, the important class of nurse-bees.

We are not disposed, however, to go quite so far as an American periodical writer, who says, "Thus we see that the contraction of the cell may diminish the size of a bee, even to the extinction of life, just as the contraction of a Chinese shoe reduces the foot even to uselessness."[BA] We know, on the contrary, that the queen-bee will not deposit eggs in a cell either too small or too large for the proper rearing of the young. In the case of large cells, M. Huber took advantage of a queen that was busy depositing the eggs of workers to remove all the common cells adapted for their reception, and left only the larger cells appropriated for males. As this was done in June, when bees are most active, he expected that they would have immediately repaired the breaches he had made; but to his great surprise they did not make the slightest movement for that purpose. In the meanwhile the queen, being oppressed by her eggs, was obliged to drop them about at random, preferring this to depositing them in the male cells, which she knew to be too large. At length she did deposit six eggs in the large cells, which were hatched as usual three days after. The nurse-bees, however, seemed to be aware that they could not be reared there, and though they supplied them with food, did not attend to them regularly. M. Huber found that they had been all removed from the cells during the night, and the business both of laying and nursing was at a complete stand for twelve days, when he supplied them again with a comb of small cells, which the queen almost immediately filled with eggs, and in some cells she laid five or six.

[The accompanying illustration exhibits these three kinds of bees, namely, the Queen, the Drone, and the Worker, together with the cells which they respectively inhabit. Fig. 1 shows the queen-bee as she appears when in command of a hive. When she first issues from the royal cell, she is much smaller in the body, and an inexperienced observer might have some difficulty in distinguishing her from an ordinary worker. But any one who has been accustomed to bees can pick her out as soon as his eyes rest upon her. Her body is rather larger and narrower than those of the workers, and the wings are shorter in proportion, slightly crossing at the tips when she is at rest. Fig. 2 represents the common worker-bee, which, as has already been mentioned, is simply an undeveloped female. Fig. 3 is the male or drone-bee, which is easily distinguishable, even by a novice. He is larger, stouter, and heavier built than the female; his eyes are so enormous that they seem to occupy nearly the entire head, and he has some well-defined tufts of hair on the end of the abdomen. He can even be detected by the ear, as he flies, the deep droning hum being quite unlike the fussy, business-like sound produced by the worker. Fig. 4 represents one of the royal cells, a little reduced in size. In making this cell, the bees lose sight of their habitual economy of wax, and use enough material for fifty ordinary cells. It is probable that the great size of the cell enables the inclosed insect to expand, and so to be capable of becoming the mother as well as the ruler of her subjects. The royal cell is always placed at the edge of a comb, so as not to interfere with the other cells, which contain honey, bee-bread, and grubs; and in each hive there are generally several of these cells in different stages of structure. Figs. 5 and 6 represent the proportionate sizes of the cells which contain the drone and worker bees.]

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The architecture of the hive, which we have thus detailed, is that of bees receiving the aid of human care, and having external coverings of a convenient form, prepared for their reception. In this country bees are not found in a wild state; though it is not uncommon for swarms to stray from their proprietors. But these stray swarms do not spread colonies through our woods, as they are said to do in America. In the remoter parts of that continent there are no wild bees. They precede civilization; and thus when the Indians observe a swarm they say, “The white man is coming.” There is evidence of bees having abounded in these islands, in the earlier periods of our history; and Ireland is particularly mentioned by the Venerable Bede as being “rich in milk and honey.”[BB] The hive-bee has formed an object of economical culture in Europe at least for two thousand years; and Varro describes the sort of hives used in his time, 1870 years ago. We are not aware, however, that it is now to be found wild in the milder clime of Southern Europe, any more than it is in our own island.

The wild bees of Palestine principally hived in rocks. “He made him,” says Moses, “to suck honey out of the rock.”[BC] “With honey out of the rock,” says the Psalmist, “should I have satisfied thee.”[BD] In the caves of Salsette and Elephanta, at the present day, they hive in the clefts of the rocks, and the recesses among the fissures, in such numbers as to become very troublesome to visitors. Their nests hang in innumerable clusters.[BE]

We are told of a little black stingless bee found in the island of Guadaloupe, which hives in hollow trees or in the cavities of rocks by the sea-side, and lays "up honey in cells about the size and shape of pigeons’ eggs. These cells are of a black or deep-violet colour, and so joined together as to leave no space between them. They hang in clusters almost like a bunch of grapes."[BF] The following are mentioned by Lindley as indigenous to Brazil. “On an excursion towards Upper Tapagippe,” says he, “and skirting the dreary woods which extend to the interior, I observed the trees more loaded with bees’ nests than even in the neighbourhood of Porto Seguro. They consist of a ponderous shell of clay, cemented similarly to martins’ nests, swelling from high trees about a foot thick, and forming an oval mass full two feet in diameter. When broken, the wax is arranged as in our hives, and the honey abundant.”[BG]

Captain Basil Hall found in South America the hive of a honey-bee very different from the Brazilian, but nearly allied to, if not the same as, that of Guadaloupe. “The hive we saw opened,” he says, “was only partly filled, which enabled us to see the economy of the interior to more advantage. The honey is not contained in the elegant hexagonal cells of our hives, but in wax bags, not quite so large as an egg. These bags or bladders are hung round the sides of the hive, and appear about half full; the quantity being probably just as great as the strength of the wax will bear without tearing. Those near the bottom, being better supported, are more filled than the upper ones. In the centre of the lower part of the hive we observed an irregularly-shaped mass of comb, furnished with cells like those of our bees, all containing young ones in such an advanced state, that, when we broke the comb, and let them out, they flew merrily away.”