The Children's Life of the Bee

by Maurice Maeterlinck

The bumble-bees, the great, hairy creatures that are so familiar to us all, so inoffensive although they appear so fierce, begin their life in solitude. In the first days of March the mother-bee, who has survived the winter, will start to construct her nest, either underground or in a bush, according to the species to which she belongs. She is alone in the world, and around her is only the miracle of awakening spring. She chooses a spot that seems favorable; she clears the rubbish away, digs down and builds her cells. Into these, which will have no special shape of their own, she will store the honey and pollen that she collects, and here she will lay and hatch her eggs; soon a troop of daughters will surround her, and these will all help in the work within the nest and without. More cells will be added, and the construction of these will be better; the colony grows, and there are signs of some prosperity. The old mother finds herself now at the head of a little kingdom which might serve as the model on which that of our honey-bee was formed. But the model is still in the rough. The good-fortune of the humble-bee never lasts. If they have laws, they do not obey them; the elder bees will at times devour the larvæ, the buildings still are far from perfect and much material has been wasted in putting them up; but the most remarkable and essential difference between the two is that the honey-bees' city will endure forever while the poor shelter that the humble-bees have raised will disappear when the winter comes, its two or three hundred inhabitants all perishing, with the exception of one single female. The others have vanished, and left no trace behind; she, when next spring comes, will begin again, in the same solitude and poverty as her mother before her, and with the same useless result.

Yet another stage up, and we find a more civilized class of bee, whose organization is as complete as in our own hives. The males of this race, which are known as the "Meliponitæ," are not wholly idle, and they help in the secretion of wax. The entrance to the hive is carefully guarded; it has a door that can be closed when nights are cold, and a sort of curtain that will let air in when the heat is oppressive. But still there is not the same good government, the same security and general prosperity, as among the honey-bees. Labor is not so well distributed; much less skill is shown in the designing of the city, and the spirit of the hive is not so fully developed.

It is only about a hundred and ninety years ago that people first began to study the habits of wild bees; at that time few were known, and although since then many others have been observed, there may be hundreds, possibly thousands, of whom we know very little. It was in the year 1730 that the first book on the subject was published; and the humble-bees, all powdered with gold, that were feasting then on the flowers, were precisely the same, as regards their habits and ways, as those that to-morrow will be noisily buzzing in the woods round about you. A hundred and ninety years, however, are but as the twinkling of an eye; and many lives of men, placed end to end, form but a second in the history of Nature.

Although the highest type of bee-life is found in our domestic hives, it must not be imagined that these reveal no faults. They contain one masterpiece, the six-sided cell, which displays absolute perfection; a perfection that all the geniuses in the world, were they to meet in council, could in no way improve. No living creature, not even man, has achieved in his sphere what the bee has achieved in her own; and if some one from another world were to descend on this globe and to ask what was the most perfect thing that unaided reason had produced here below, we should have to offer the humble comb of honey.

But such perfection as the honey-comb reveals is not shown in all the works of the bee. We have already drawn attention to some shortcomings, such as the vast number of males and their persistent idleness, the excessive swarming, the entire absence of pity, and the almost monstrous sacrifice that each individual is called upon to make to the community. To these must be added a curious inclination to store enormous masses of pollen, often far in excess of what is required; with the result that the pollen soon turns rancid and goes solid, blocking up the surface of the comb.

Of these defects the most serious is the repeated swarming. But here we must bear in mind that for thousands of years the bee has been interfered with by man. From the Egyptian of the time of Pharaoh down to the peasant of our own day the bee-keeper has always disregarded the desires and the intentions of the bees. The most prosperous hives are those which send out only one swarm after the beginning of summer. They have done their duty; they have safeguarded the future of the swarm, which is composed of so large a number of bees that they will have ample time to erect solid and well-provisioned dwellings before the arrival of autumn. If man had not come in the way, it is clear that these first swarms and their colonies would have been the only ones to survive the hardships of winter, which would have destroyed the others, owing to their weakness and poverty; and the bees would gradually have learned the folly of swarming so frequently, and would have acted accordingly. But it is precisely these prudent, careful hives that man has always destroyed in order to possess himself of the honey which they contained. He allowed only the feeblest colonies to survive; the second or third swarms, which had barely sufficient food to endure through the winter. The result will probably have been that the habit of excessive swarming fastened itself on the bees, in whom, particularly in the black varieties, it is much too general. For some years, however, modern and scientific bee-keeping has done much to correct this dangerous habit; and it is possible, perhaps, that in time the bees themselves will learn to abandon it.

As for the other faults which we have noticed, they are probably due to causes unknown to us, that still remain the secrets of the hive. As for the bees' intelligence, their power of reasoning, let every one judge for himself. To me, many actions of theirs appear to prove that they do possess this power; but, were it otherwise, if it could be conclusively established that all that they do is directed by some blind instinct, my interest in them would not be one whit the less. We are taught by them at least that there are many things in nature that we cannot understand and cannot explain, and this induces us to look with more eagerness on the things around us, and is not without its effect on our thoughts and our feelings, and on all that we try to say.

And, further, I am not at all sure that our own intellect is the proper tribunal to judge the bees and pass a verdict upon their mistakes. Do we not ourselves live in the midst of errors and blunders without being aware of them; and even when aware of them, are we so quick at finding a remedy? The bees might have much to say if they passed us in review, and criticized our world as we do theirs; they would find a good deal to puzzle them in our own reason and moral sense, and would be compelled to admit that we seemed to be governed by principles quite beyond their understanding.

I have referred to the way in which man interferes with the bees; and truly they do here provide a most admirable lesson. No matter to what extent their own plans have been thwarted, they will none the less do what they know to be their profound and primitive duty. And as to what this duty may be they are never in doubt. It is written in their tongue, in their mouth, over every organ of their body, that they are in this world to make honey; as it is written in our eyes, our ears, our nerves, in every lobe of our brain, that we have been created to think, to reason, to understand, to improve our sense of justice, our knowledge, to cultivate our soul. The bees know not who will eat the honey they harvest, as we know not who shall profit by the spiritual treasure we gather. As they go from flower to flower absorbing nectar beyond what they or their hive will need, so let us go from thought to thought, forever seeking the truth. And let the knowledge that this is our duty quicken the zeal, the ardor and purity with which our soul turns to the light.

THE END