When the emigration is effected, the workers which had remained at home set free another female. This one acts in the same way as the first. She tries to get at her rivals still imprisoned, and whom she can smell in their cradles; but the guards repel her with vigour, and defeat all her attempts, till she makes up her mind to emigrate with a new swarm. This curious scene is repeated, with the same circumstances, three or four times in the space of a fortnight, if the weather is favourable, and the hive well peopled. In the end, the number of bees is so much reduced, that they can no longer keep such vigilant guard round the royal cells, and it then happens that two females come out together from their cradles. Immediately the two rivals look for each other, and fight, and the queen that comes victorious out of this duel to the death reigns peaceably over the people she has won for herself. If, in the tumult which precedes the swarming, a female escapes from her prison, it may happen that she is carried away in the swarm. In this case the deserters divide into two separate bands, but the weakest in numbers are not long in breaking up, the deserters going to swell the principal swarm. At last all the troop is reunited, and it then contains two queens. As long as the swarm remains fixed on its branch, all passes quietly, in spite of the presence of a second queen. But as soon as it has become domiciled, the affair becomes serious; a duel to the death takes place between the two aspirants to the command. Two queens cannot exist in the same hive. One of them is de trop and must be got rid of.
Francis Huber was the first to describe these duels between the queens. We quote an interesting account which he has left us of a combat which he watched on the 12th of May, 1790:—"Two young queens," says he, "came out on that day from the cells almost at the same moment, in one of our smallest hives. As soon as they saw each other they dashed one against the other with every appearance of the greatest rage, and put themselves in such a position that each one had its antennæ seized between the teeth of its rival; the head, the thorax, and abdomen of the one were opposite to the head, the thorax, and abdomen of the other; they had only to bend round the posterior extremity of their bodies, and they would reciprocally have stabbed each other with their darts, and both engaged in the combat would have been killed. But it seems as if Nature would not allow this duel to end by the death of both of the combatants. One would say that she had ordained that those queens, finding themselves in this position (that is to say, face to face and abdomen to abdomen), should retreat that very instant with the greatest precipitation. And so, as soon as the two rivals felt that their posterior parts were about to meet, they left go of each other, and each one ran away in an opposite direction.... A few minutes after they had separated from each other their fear ceased, and they recommenced looking for each other. Very soon they perceived the object of their search, and we saw them running one against the other. They seized each other, as at the first, and put themselves in exactly the same position. The result was the same; as soon as their abdomens approached each other they only thought of getting free, and ran away. The working bees were very much agitated during the whole of this time, and their tumult seemed to increase when the two adversaries separated from each other. We saw them on two different occasions stop the queens in their flight, seize them by the legs, and keep them prisoners for more than a minute. At last, in a third attack, the queen which was the most infuriated or the strongest, rushed upon her rival at a moment when she did not see her coming; seized her with her jaws by the base of her wing, then mounted on to her body, and brought the extremity of her abdomen over the last rings of her enemy, whom she was then able to pierce with her sting very easily. She then let go the wing which she held between her teeth, and drew back her dart. The vanquished queen dragged herself heavily along, lost her strength, and expired soon afterwards." [92]
These singular combats take place between young maiden queens. Francis Huber, by introducing into a hive some queens from other hives convinced himself that the same animosity impels the females which are pregnant to fight with and destroy each other. From the moment when the young queen to whom the sovereignty has fallen is pregnant, she is anxious to destroy all the royal pupæ which still exist in the hive, and which are then given up to her without resistance by the workers.
Οὑκ ἁγαθὁν πολνκοιρανἱη. ἑις κοιοανος ἑστω,
Εἱς βασιλεὑς…. [93]
Become a mother, the female attacks one after the other the cells which still contain females. She may be seen to throw herself with fury on the first cell she comes to. She makes an opening in it with her mandibles large enough to allow her to introduce her abdomen, and then turns herself about till she has succeeded in giving a stab with her sting to the female which it contains. She then withdraws, highly satisfied with what she has done. The working bees, who up to this moment have remained indifferent spectators of her efforts, take upon themselves the rest of the business. They set to work to enlarge the hole made by the ruling queen, and to draw out the carcase of the victim.
In the meanwhile, the fierce and jealous sovereign throws herself on another cell, and breaks into it with violence. If she does not find in it a perfect insect, but only a pupa, she does not condescend to make use of her royal weapon. The workers take on themselves to empty the cell and destroy its contents. These executions over, the queen can for the future occupy herself in laying, without having anything to fear from rivals. Let us remark, in passing, that man is not much behind these insects whose savage exploits in cruelty we have just related. Among certain tribes of Ethiopians the first care of the newly-crowned chief is to put in prison all his brothers, so as to prevent wars by pretenders to the throne. Delivered from all dread of rivals, our queen sets to work with an indefatigable zeal; and the workers, animated by the hope of a numerous progeny, heap up provisions around them.
But now a new tragedy is about to be enacted. The drones, that is to say, the males, are now no longer wanted in the colony: their mission is over. By an inexorable law of Nature they must be got rid of, and the working bees proceed to make general massacre of them. It is in the months of July and August that this frightful carnage takes place. The workers may be seen furiously giving chase to the males, and pursuing them to the extremity of the hive, where these unfortunate insects seek a place of safety. Three or four workers dash off in the pursuit after a male. They seize hold of him, pull him by his legs, by his wings, by his antennæ, and kill him with their stings. This pitiless massacre includes even the larvæ and pupæ of the males. The executioners drag them from their cells, run them through with their stings, greedily suck the liquids contained in their bodies, and then cast their remains to the winds. This slaughter goes on for many days, continuing till the males have been completely got rid of, they not being able to defend themselves, as they have no stings.
They are allowed to live, however, when they are fortunate enough to inhabit a hive deprived of its queen. There they even find a place of perfect safety when they have been driven out of another hive, and may be met with in this refuge until the month of January. In like manner the lives of the males are spared in those hives which, instead of a true queen, have only a female half impregnated, which lays only male eggs; but a hive of this kind, whose active population cannot be increased, ends by being abandoned by its inhabitants. The sterility or absence of the queen entails the dissolution of the society. She is, in fact, the life and soul of the hive; and without her there is no hope, no courage, no activity. The populace, abandoned to itself, falls into anarchy. Famine, pillage, ruin, and death are at its doors. Having no progeny to set their hopes on, the bees live from one day to another without a care for the morrow. They leave off working, and live entirely on theft and rapine, and at last they disappear entirely. It is a society become rotten and broken up for the want of a moral tie.
If the loss of the mother bee takes place at a period at which there still exist in the hive some larvæ of working bees of less than three days old, the nurse (as we have already said) adopt some of these larvæ, and make them into queens by means of the physical education and special nourishment which they give them. In this case, then, the evil can be repaired; the workers themselves find a remedy without assistance. But if the hive possesses a degenerate queen, which only lays male eggs, the intervention of man is necessary to save it, by the substitution of a properly impregnated queen. If, indeed, a strange queen wished to penetrate alone into a hive already containing a sovereign, she would infallibly be stopped at the door and stifled by the sentinels who guard the entrance to the hive. These would surround her immediately, and keep her captive under them till she perished, either through suffocation or hunger. They do not employ their stings against an intruding queen, except in the case of an attempt being made to deliver her from their clutches: they get rid of her by stifling.