When it is wished to introduce into a hive a stranger queen, after having removed the original sovereign, many precautions must be used before putting her into the common home. It is only after some time that the bees become aware of the disappearance of their queen; but they then manifest great emotion. They run hither and thither, as though mad, leaving off their work, and making a peculiar buzzing sound. If you return to them their original sovereign, they recognise her, and calm is immediately restored; but the substitution of a new queen for the original sovereign does not produce the same effect in every case. If you introduce the new queen half a day only after the removal of the old queen, she is very badly received, and is at once surrounded, the workers trying to suffocate her. Generally she sinks under this bad treatment. But if you allow a longer interval to elapse before you introduce the substitute, the bees, rendered more tractable by the delay, are better disposed towards her. If you allow an interregnum of twenty-four hours, the stranger queen is always received with the honours due to her rank, a general buzzing announcing the event to the whole population of the hive. They assign to their adopted queen a train of picked attendants; they draw up in line on her passing by; they caress her with the tips of their antennæ; they offer her honey. A little joyful fluttering of the escort announces that every one in the little republic is satisfied. The labours out of doors and indoors then begin anew with more activity than ever.
It is principally during stormy days, when the heat and the electricity in the air are favourable to the secretion of pollen in plants, that the bees go into the fields to make their harvest. They heap up provisions in the hive against the cold season, not forgetting, however, to watch over the eggs, their future hope, "spem gentis," as Virgil calls them.
These peaceful occupations are sometimes interrupted by the dire necessities of war. It happens that the bees of an impoverished hive, impelled by hunger, that bad counsellor, make up their mind to attack and to pillage the treasures of a neighbouring hive which is abundantly stocked with provisions. A savage fight then takes place between the two battalions. Each one precipitates itself with fury upon its adversary. Two bees press against and bite each other till one is overcome. The victor springs upon the back of the vanquished, squeezes it round the neck with its mandibles, and pierces it between the rings of its abdomen with its sting. The victorious bee places itself by the side of its fallen enemy, and resting on four of its legs, rubs its two hind ones together proudly, as a sign of supreme triumph. Réaumur relates a strange fact, which he says he often observed, and which proves that the insects we are treating of do not fight to satisfy a sanguinary and savage instinct, but (which is less reprehensible) to satisfy their hunger. Bees attacked by a superior force are in no danger of losing their lives if their enemies can induce them to give up their throats—that expression conveys the idea. Supposing three or four are furiously attacking one bee: they are pulling it by its legs and biting it on its thorax. The unfortunate object of this attack has then nothing better to do, to escape alive from such a perilous situation, than to stretch out its trunk laden with sweet-scented honey. The plunderers will come one after the other and drink the honey; then, cloyed, satisfied, having nothing more to demand, they go their way, leaving the bee to return to his dwelling-place.
There are also strange fights—regular duels—between the bees of the same hive. Very hot weather has the effect of irritating them, and making them boil over with rage. They are then dangerous to man, whom they attack boldly. But more often it is amongst themselves that they quarrel. One often sees two bees which meet seize each other by the neck in the air. It happens also that a bee, in a state of fury, throws itself on another who is walking quietly and unsuspiciously along the edge of its hive. When two bees are struggling in this manner they descend to the ground, for in the air they would not be able to get purchase enough to be sure of striking each other. They then engage in a hand-to-hand fight, as the gladiators used formerly to do in the circus. They are continually making stabs with their stings, but almost always the point slips over the scales with which they are covered. The combat is sometimes prolonged during an hour, before one of them has found the weak point in the other's natural cuirass, and has buried its terrible weapon in the flesh. The victor often leaves its sting in the wound which it has made, and then dies, in its moment of triumph, through the loss of this organ. Sometimes the two combatants, in spite of long and savage assaults, cannot succeed in injuring either's solid armour. In such a case they leave each other, tired of war, and fly away, despairing of obtaining a victory.
At the end of autumn, when the bees no longer find any flowers in the fields to plunder, they finish rearing their eggs on the pollen, which they keep in store, and the queen ceases to lay. Numbed by the cold of the winter, the workers cease to go out. Crowded together they mutually warm each other, and thus hold out, when the cold is not too intense, against the rigour of the frosts. Huddled up between the cakes of the honeycomb, they wait for the return of fine weather, to recommence their labours at home and abroad. After two or three years of this laborious existence the bee dies, but to live again in a numerous posterity, as Virgil says:—
"At genus immortale manet, multosque per annos
Stat fortuna domus, et avi numerantur avorum!"
There has been a good deal of discussion on the question whether bees constitute monarchies or republics. According to our opinion, theirs is a true republic. As all the population is the issue of a common mother, and as each bee of the female sex can become a queen—that is to say, a mother-bee, if it receives an appropriate nourishment—it is manifest that the title of queen has been wrongly given to the mother-bee. After all, she is nothing more than president of a republic. The vice-presidents, as we have already pointed out, are all those females which at any given moment may be called by choice—that is, by popular election—to fulfil the functions of the sovereign, when death or accident has put an end to her existence. "There is no such thing as a king in Nature," said Daubenton one day, in one of his lectures at the Jardin des Plantes. The audience immediately applauded, and cried "Bravo!" The honest savant stopped, quite disconcerted, and asked his assistant naturalist the cause of this applause, perhaps ironical. "I must have said something stupid," repeated poor Daubenton between his teeth, remembering the saying of Phocion under similar circumstances. "No," replied his assistant naturalist, "you have said nothing but what is quite true; but, without meaning it, you have made a political allusion. You spoke against kings, and our young republicans thought that you were alluding to Louis XVI." "Indeed," said the coadjutor of Buffon, "I had no idea that I was talking politics!" The bee republic, this little animal society, is admirably constituted, and all its citizens obey its laws with docility.
Bees have often served as an example, proving, according to some, the marvellous intelligence of certain little animals; according to others, an insect wonderfully developed. For ourselves, we have never well understood what people mean by the word instinct; and we frankly grant to the bee intelligence, as we do also to many animals. The greater number of the acts of their life seem to be the result of an idea, a mental deliberation, a determination come to after examination and reflection. The construction of their cells, always uniform, is, they say, the result of instinct. However, it happens that under particular circumstances, these little architects know how to abandon the beaten track of routine, reserving to themselves the power of returning, when it is useful to do so, to the traditional principles which ensure the beauty and regularity of their constructions. Bees have been seen, indeed, to deviate from their ordinary habits in order to correct certain irregularities—the result of accident or produced by the intervention of man—which had deranged their works.
Francis Huber relates that he saw bees propping up with pillars and flying buttresses of wax a piece of the honeycomb which had fallen down. At the same time, put on their guard by this sad accident, they set to work to fortify the principal framework of the other combs, and to fasten them more securely to the roof of the hive. This took place in the month of January, and therefore not during the working season, and when to provide against a distant eventuality was the only question. M. Waland has reported an analogous observation. Is there not here, in the first place, a true and excellent reasoning, then an act, an operation, a work, executed as the result of this reasoning? Now, an operation which is performed as the result of reasoning, is attributable to intelligence. Again, the bees give different sorts of food to the different sorts of larvæ. They know how to change this food when an accident has deprived the hive of its queen, and it is necessary to replace her; this is another proof of intelligence.
But it is, above all, in the face of an enemy that the intellectual faculties of these insects show themselves. There are always at the entrance of every hive three or four bees, which have nothing else to do but to guard the door, to keep a watch over incomers and outgoers, and to prevent an enemy or an intruder from slipping into the community. When one of them perceives an enemy on the borders of the hive, it dashes forwards towards it, and by a menacing and significant buzzing warns it to retire. If it does not understand the warning, which is a rare occurrence—for men, horses, dogs, and animals of all kinds know perfectly well the danger to which they expose themselves by approaching too near a hive in full operation [94] —the bee gets a reinforcement, and very soon returns to the combat with a determined battalion. All this is, it seems to us, intelligence.