Maeterlinck's conception of the Spirit of the Hive was an inspiration, and furnishes us with the key to all that happens in the hive. The secret of all its economies are in the phrase. Having hit upon this solution, he should have had the courage to stand by it. But he did not. He is continually forgetting it and applying to his problem the explanations we apply in our dealings with one another. He talks of the power of the bees to give "expression to their thoughts and feelings"; of their "vocabulary," phonetic and tactile; he says that the "extraordinary also has a name and place in their language"; that they are able to "communicate to each other news of an event occurring outside the hive"; all of which renders his Spirit of the Hive superfluous. He quotes from a French apiarist who says that the explorer of the dawn,—the early bee,—like the early bird that catches the worm, returns to the hive with the news that "the lime-trees are blooming to-day on the banks of the canal"; "the grass by the roadside is gay with white clover"; "the sage and the lotus are about to open"; "the mignonette and the lilies are overflowing with pollen." Whereupon the bees must organize quickly and arrange to divide the work. They probably call a council of the wise ones and after due discussion and formalities proceed to send out their working expeditions. "Five thousand of the sturdiest will sally forth to the lime-trees, while three thousand juniors go and refresh the white clover." "They make daily calculations as to the means of obtaining the greatest possible wealth of saccharine liquid."
When Maeterlinck speaks of "the hidden genius of the hive issuing its commands," or recognizes the existence among the bees of spiritual communications that go beyond a mere "yes" or "no," he is true to his own conception.
The division of labor among hive bees is of course spontaneous, like all their other economies—not a matter of thought, but of instinct.
Maeterlinck and other students of the honey bee make the mistake of humanizing the bee, thus making them communicate with one another as we communicate. Bees have a language, they say; they tell one another this and that; if one finds honey or good pasturage, she tells her sisters, and so on. This is all wide of the mark. There is nothing analogous to verbal communication among the insects. The unity of the swarm, or the Spirit of the Hive, does it all. Bees communicate and coöperate with one another as the cells of the body communicate and coöperate in building up the various organs. The spirit of the body coördinates all the different organs and tissues, making a unit of the body.
If some outside creature, such as a mouse or a snail, penetrates into the hive, and dies there, the bees encase it in wax, or bury it where it lies, so that it cannot contaminate the hive, and a foreign object in the body, such as a bullet in the lungs, or in the muscles, becomes encysted in an analogous manner, and is thus rendered harmless.
Kill a bee in or near the hive and the smell of its crushed body will infuriate the other bees. But crush a bee in the fields or by the bee-hunter's box which is swarming with bees, and the units from the same hive heed it not.
Bees have no fear. They have no love or attachment for one another as animals have. If one of their number is wounded or disabled, they ruthlessly expel it from the hive. In fact, they belong to another world of beings that is absolutely oblivious of the world of which we form a part. They murder or expel the drones, after they have done their work of fertilizing the queen, in the most cruel and summary manner. Their apparent attachment to the queen, and their loyalty to her, are not personal. They do not love her. It is the Spirit of the Hive, or the cult of the swarm solicitous about itself. There are no brothers, sisters, fathers, mothers, among the bees; there are only co-workers, working not for the present, but for the future. When we enter the kingdom of the bee, we must leave all our human standards behind. These little people have no red blood, no organs of sense, as we have; they breathe and hear through their legs, their antennæ.
The drones do not know the queen as such in the hive. Their instincts lead them to search for her in the air during her nuptial flight, and they know her only there. The drones have thirteen thousand eyes, while the workers have only six thousand. This double measure of the power of vision is evidently to make sure that the males discover the queen in her course through the air.
The guards that take their stand at the gate, the bees that become fans at the entrance to ventilate the hive, the nurses, the bees that bring the bee-bread, the bees that pack it into the cells, the bees that go forth to find a home for the new swarm, the sweepers and cleaners of the hive, the workers that bring propolis to seal up the cracks and crevices—all act in obedience to the voiceless Spirit of the Hive.
After we have discounted Maeterlinck so far as the facts will bear us out in doing, it remains to be said that he is the philosopher of the insect world. If Fabre is the Homer, as he himself has said, Maeterlinck is the Plato of that realm. How wisely he speaks of the insect world in his latest volume, "Mountain Paths":