The Children's Life of the Bee

by Maurice Maeterlinck

One may safely say that the bees will very frequently communicate with each other, even though this is not an invariable rule. American bee-hunters are so sure of the bees possessing this faculty that their methods of searching for nests depend in some measure upon it. "They will take a box of honey," Mr. Josiah Emery writes, "to a field or a wood far away from any tame bees, and then pick up two or three wild ones, and let them fill themselves with the honey. The bees will fly off to their home with the spoil, and soon return with their friends, to whom they have told the glad news. These will again be allowed to drink their fill, and then taken to different points of the compass, and allowed to fly home; the direction of their flight will be carefully noted, and in this way the hunters are able to discover the position of the tree in which the bees have built their nest."

It is to be noticed, too, that the bees do not all come together to feed on the honey we have put on the table; there will be several seconds between the different arrivals. We ask ourselves therefore whether the bees are led by, and merely follow the original discoverer, or whether they go independently, having been told by her where it is? Experts hold different opinions as to this; in the case of the ant Sir John Lubbock is satisfied that the ant which finds the treasure merely leads the way and is followed by the others; but the ant, of course, merely crawls along the ground, while the bee's wings throw every avenue open.

My study in the country is on the first floor, and rather above the ordinary range of the flight of the bees, except at times when the lime and chestnut trees are in blossom. I took an open honeycomb, and kept it on my table for a week, without its perfume having attracted a single bee. Then I went to a glass hive that was close by the house, took an Italian bee, brought her in to my study, set her on the comb, and marked while she was feeding. When she had drunk her fill, she flew off and returned to the hive. I followed quickly, saw her crawl over the huddled mass of the bees, plunge her head into an empty cell, disgorge her honey, and then get ready to set forth again. At the entrance of the hive I had placed a glass box, divided by a trap-door into two compartments. The bee flew into this box; and as she was alone, and no other bee seemed to accompany or follow her, I left her there, and then repeated the experiment on twenty bees in succession. By means of the trap, with its two little compartments, I was able in each case to separate the marked bee from the ones that might accompany her, and to keep her a prisoner in one of the little rooms. Then I marked all the bees in the other room with paint of a different color, and set them free; I myself returned quickly to my study, to await their arrival.

Now if the bees which had not visited my study had been able to communicate with the others, and to be told by them precisely where the comb was, with instructions how to get at it, a certain number of them would have found their way to my room. I must frankly admit that, to my disappointment, there was only one that did actually arrive. And I cannot tell even whether this may not have been a mere chance. I went down and released the first bee, and my study soon was invaded by the buzzing crowd to whom she showed the way to the treasure.

We need not trouble any further with this unsatisfactory experiment of mine, for there are many other curious circumstances to be noted among the bees which make it quite certain that they can tell each other things that go much further than a mere yes or no. In the hive, for instance, the wonderful way in which they divide up their work, the way in which the work is combined, one bee holding herself in readiness to take the place of another who has finished her own particular job and is waiting for her—these things all prove that they must be able to let each other know. I have often marked bees that went out in the morning collecting food; and found that, in the afternoon, if there was no special abundance of flowers, these same bees would take on another job altogether; would either be fanning and heating the brood-cells, or perhaps adding themselves to the mysterious, motionless curtain in whose midst the sculptors and waxmakers would be at work. In the same way I have found that bees which for one whole day would be gathering nothing but pollen would, on the next, evidently in obedience to some order that had been given, devote themselves entirely to the search for nectar.

Day after day, the sun will scarcely have risen when the explorers of the dawn return to the hive, which awakes to receive the glad tidings of what is happening on the earth. "The lime-trees are blossoming 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, the lilies, are overflowing with pollen." The news is handed in to headquarters, and arrangements are quickly made to divide up the work. Five thousand of the strongest and most active will be sent to the lime-trees, while three thousand juniors sally forth to the clover. Those who yesterday were gathering nectar will to-day give a rest to their tongues and the glands of their sac, and will bring back red pollen from the mignonette or yellow pollen from the tall lilies; for you will never find a bee gathering or mixing up pollens of a different color or species, and indeed it is one of the special cares of the hive to keep the different-hued pollens apart in separate store-rooms.

The workers set out, in long black files, each one flying straight to its own particular task. George de Layens stoutly declares that they have been told where to go to, and which flowers they are to visit; that they are aware how much nectar each flower will give, and know its precise value. It is their business to collect the greatest possible amount of honey; and if we watch the different directions in which the bees fly, we will find that they divide themselves up most carefully among the flowers which offer the best chance of a prosperous harvest. As these vary day by day, so will the different orders be given. In the spring, for instance, when the fields are still bare, the bees will flock to the flowers in the woods, and eagerly visit the gorse and the violets, langworts and anemones. But, a few days later, when cabbage and colza are beginning to flower, the bees will turn their attention to these alone, neglecting the woods almost entirely, for all the abundance that still may be found there. They know that the colza and cabbage flowers are richer in honey, and therefore give them the preference; thus deciding, day by day, what plants they shall visit, their one idea being to amass the greatest value of treasure in the least possible time.

You may ask, perhaps, what does it matter to us whether the bees have or have not a real intelligence of their own? I think that it matters a very great deal. If we could be quite certain that other creatures beside ourselves are able to think or to reason it would give us something of the emotion that came over Robinson Crusoe when he saw the print of a human foot on the sandy shore of his island. Like him, we should seem less alone. And when we study, when we try to understand, the intelligence of the bees, we are at the same time trying to understand what is the most wonderful thing in ourselves; the power that enables the will to effect its purpose, and overcome obstacles in its way.

We will now go on with the story of the hive, take it up where we left it, and lift a fold of the curtain of bees which are hanging, head downwards, from the dome. A curious kind of sweat, as white as snow and airier than the down on the wing of a bird, is beginning to show itself. This is the wax that is forming; but it is unlike the wax that we know; it has no weight, it is amazingly pure, being, as it were, the soul of the honey, which is itself the essence of the flowers.

It is very difficult to follow, stage by stage, the manufacture of wax by the swarm, or even the use to which they put it, for all this comes to pass in the very blackest depth of the mass of bees all huddled together. We know that the honey in the sac of the bees that are clinging to each other turns itself into wax, but we have no idea how this is done. All we can tell is that they will stay in this position, never stirring or making the least movement, for eighteen or twenty-four hours, and that the hive becomes so hot that it is almost as though a fire had been lit. And then at last white and transparent scales show themselves at the opening of four little pockets that every bee has underneath its stomach.