The Children's Life of the Bee

by Maurice Maeterlinck

The spirit of the hive is prudent and wise, but never niggardly. In the glad summer days of sunshine and plenty it permits three or four hundred males to exist in the hive—pompous, useless, noisy creatures, who are greedy and dirty, vulgar and arrogant; but, one morning when the flowers are beginning to close earlier and open later, the spirit will quietly issue instructions that every male shall be killed. It draws up a sort of time-table for each one of the workers, allotting them tasks in accordance with their age; it selects the nurses who attend to the larvæ, and the ladies of honor who wait on the queen and never by any chance let her out of their sight. It has given the necessary orders to the house-bees who air and warm the hive by fanning their wings, thereby also helping the honey to settle; to the architects, masons, waxworkers and sculptors who form the mysterious curtain and build the combs; to the foragers who sally forth to the flowers in search of the nectar that turns into honey, of the pollen that feeds the larvæ, and of the water and salt required by the youth of the city.

It is the spirit of the hive that has chosen the chemists whose business it is to keep the honey sweet and fresh by allowing a drop of formic acid to fall in from the end of their sting; the capsule-makers, who seal up the provision-cells when these are filled; the sweepers, who clean the streets and public places of the hive; and the guards who all day and all night keep watch on the threshold, who question all comers and goers, recognize the young bees as they return from their very first flight, scare away vagabonds, loafers and trespassers, expel all intruders, and, if need be, block up and defend the entrance to the hive.

And, last of all, it is the spirit of the hive which decides on the hour at which the bees shall swarm; the hour, that is, when we find a whole people, who have reached the very height of prosperity and power, suddenly abandoning, in favor of the generation that is to follow, all their wealth and their palaces, their homes and the fruits of their labor, content themselves to face the perils and hardships of a journey into a new and distant country. This act will always bring poverty with it and sometimes ruin; and the people who once were so happy are scattered abroad in obedience to a law that they recognize to be greater than their own happiness.

These things that happen to the bee are regarded by us in the way we regard most things that happen in the world. We note some of the bees' habits; we say, they do this, and do that, they work in such and such a way, this is how their queens are born; we observe that the workers are all females and that they swarm at a certain time. And having said this, we think that we know them, and ask nothing more. We watch them hastening from flower to flower, we see the constant movement within the hive; and we tell ourselves that we understand all about their life. But the moment that we try to come nearer the truth, to see more clearly, we find puzzling questions confronting us, questions as to what part is played by destiny and what part by will, how much is due to intelligence and how much to nature; difficult questions, these, that are never absent even from the most simple acts of our own daily life.

Our hive, then, is preparing to swarm, making ready for the great sacrifice to the generation that is to come. In obedience to the order given by the "spirit of the hive," sixty or seventy thousand bees out of the eighty or ninety thousand that form the whole population, will forsake their old city at a given hour. They will not be leaving it at a moment of great unhappiness; they have not suddenly made up their minds to abandon a home that has been rendered miserable by hunger or illness, or ruined by war. No; on the contrary, preparations have for a long time been made, and the hour most favorable for departure patiently awaited.

If the hive were poor, or had suffered from storm or robbery; or if some misfortune had befallen the royal family, the bees would not dream of going away. They do this only when everything is at its very best in the hive; at a time when, thanks to the enormous amount of work done in the spring, the immense palace of wax has its 120,000 well-arranged cells overflowing with honey and with the many-colored flour, known as "bees' bread," on which the larvæ are fed.

Never is the hive more beautiful than on the eve of its great sacrifice. Let us try to imagine it for ourselves—not as it appears to the bee, for we cannot tell what it looks like to her, seen through the triple eye on her brow and the six or seven thousand facets of the eyes on her side—but as it would seem to us, were we no bigger than she is. From the height of a dome greater than that of St. Peter's at Rome waxen walls descend to the ground; and these walls, although they have all been built in the dark, are more perfect, more wonderful, than any that have been erected by human hands. Each one, smelling so fresh and so sweet, contains thousands of cells that are stored with provisions; enough, indeed, to feed the whole population for weeks. Here, too, are transparent cells filled with the pollen of every flower of spring, making brilliant splashes of red and yellow, of black and mauve. Close by, sealed with a seal to be broken only in days of distress, is the honey of April, clearest and most perfumed of all, stored in twenty thousand vats, which look like a long and beautiful embroidery of gold, with borders that hang stiff and rigid. Lower down still, the honey of May is maturing, in huge open tanks, that are fanned all the time by watchful, untiring guardians. In the center, in the warmest part of the hive, are the royal nurseries, the domain set apart for the queen and her attendants; here also are about 16,000 cells wherein the eggs repose, 15 or 16,000 chambers occupied by the youthful bees, and 40,000 rooms filled with infants in their cradles, cared for by thousands of nurses. And, last of all, in the most secret and private quarters, are the three, four, six or twelve sealed palaces, vast in size compared with the others, where the growing princesses lie who await their hour; wrapped in a kind of shroud, all of them motionless and pale, and fed in the darkness.

The appointed day arrives, the one that has been chosen by the "spirit of the hive"; and a certain part of the population will at once sally forth. In the sleeping city there remain the males, the very young bees that look after the brood-cells, and some thousands of workers who go on gathering honey, guarding the treasure, and keeping up the moral atmosphere of the hive. For it must be understood that each hive has its own moral code; some are admirable in every respect, while others have fallen away sadly from the paths of virtue. A careless bee-keeper will often spoil his people, and cause them to lose respect for the property of others, whereby they will become a danger to all the hives around. They will give up the hundreds of visits to neighboring flowers that are necessary in order to form one drop of honey, and will prefer to force their way into other hives, that are too weak for selfdefense, and to rob these of the fruit of their labors; and it is very difficult to bring back to the paths of duty a hive that shall have become so depraved.

All things go to prove that it is not the queen, but the "spirit of the hive," that fixes on the hour for the swarm. This queen of ours, like many a leader among men, is herself compelled to obey commands that are far more important, and far more secret, than those which she gives to her subjects. At break of dawn, or perhaps a night or two before, the word will be given; and scarcely has the sun drunk in the first drops of dew when a most unusual stir may be noticed inside and all around the buzzing hive. Sometimes, too, for day after day before the actual swarming takes place, one will find a curious excitement, for which there would seem no cause, that suddenly appears, and as suddenly vanishes, in the golden, gleaming throng. One asks oneself, has a cloud that we cannot see crept across the sky that the bees are watching; or is it their mere sorrow at the thought of leaving? Has a council of bees been summoned to consider whether they really must go? Of all this we know nothing; we do know that the "spirit of the hive" has no difficulty in letting its message be known to the multitude. Certain as it may seem that the bees are able to communicate with each other, we cannot tell whether this is done in our human fashion. It is possible that they themselves do not hear their own song, the murmur that comes to us heavily laden with perfume of honey, the joyous whisper of fairest summer days that the bee-keeper loves so well, the festival song of labor that rises and falls around the hive, and that might almost be the chant of the eager flowers, the voice of the white carnation, the marjoram, and the thyme.

Certain sounds that the bees put forth, however, can be readily understood by us, sounds that convey anger, sorrow, rejoicing or threats. They have their songs of abundance, when the harvest is plentiful, their psalms of grief and the chorus they chant to the queen; and at the time when she is being chosen the young princesses will send forth long and mysterious warcries.... It is quite possible that the sounds we ourselves make do not reach the bees; in any event these sounds do not seem in the least to disturb them, but are regarded by the bees perhaps as not intended for them, not in their world, and anyhow of no interest. In the same way perhaps we too only hear a very small part of the sounds that the bees produce, and there may be many of which we are ignorant. We soon shall be shown how quickly they contrive to understand each other, and how each one is told precisely the right thing to do, when, for instance, that great honey-thief, the dreadful moth that bears a death's head on its back, forces its way into the hive, humming its own strange song. The news travels quickly from group to group; and from the guards on the threshold to the workers on the most distant combs, the whole population of the hive becomes suddenly alert and eager, and trembles with fear.