The Life of the Bee

by Maurice Maeterlinck

This language is not even confined to the profane; it is made use of by entomologists of the rank of Kirby and Spence, in order to deny the bees the possession of intellect other than may vaguely stir within the narrow prison of an extraordinary but unchanging instinct. "Show us," they say, "a single case where the pressure of events has inspired them with the idea, for instance, of substituting clay or mortar for wax or propolis; show us this, and we will admit their capacity for reasoning."

This argument, that Romanes refers to as the "question-begging argument," and that might also be termed the "insatiable argument," is exceedingly dangerous, and, if applied to man, would take us very far. Examine it closely, and you find that it emanates from the "mere common-sense," which is often so harmful; the "common-sense" that replied to Galileo: "The earth does not turn, for I can see the sun move in the sky, rise in the morning and sink in the evening; and nothing can prevail over the testimony of my eyes." Common-sense makes an admirable, and necessary, background for the mind; but unless it be watched by a lofty disquiet ever ready to remind it, when occasion demand, of the infinity of its ignorance, it dwindles into the mere routine of the baser side of our intellect. But the bees have themselves answered the objection Messrs. Kirby and Spence advanced. Scarcely had it been formulated when another naturalist, Andrew Knight, having covered the bark of some diseased trees with a kind of cement made of turpentine and wax, discovered that his bees were entirely renouncing the collection of propolis, and exclusively using this unknown matter, which they had quickly tested and adopted, and found in abundant quantities, ready prepared, in the vicinity of their dwelling.

And indeed, one-half of the science and practice of apiculture consists in giving free rein to the spirit of initiative possessed by the bees, and in providing their enterprising intellect with opportunities for veritable discoveries and veritable inventions. Thus, for instance, to aid in the rearing of the larvae and nymphs, the bee-keeper will scatter a certain quantity of flour close to the hive when the pollen is scarce of which these consume an enormous quantity. In a state of nature, in the heart of their native forests in the Asiatic valleys, where they existed probably long before the tertiary epoch, the bees can evidently never have met with a substance of this kind. And yet, if care be taken to "bait" some of them with it, by placing them on the flour, they will touch it and test it, they will perceive that its properties more or less resemble those possessed by the dust of the anthers; they will spread the news among their sisters, and we shall soon find every forager hastening to this unexpected, incomprehensible food, which, in their hereditary memory, must be inseparable from the calyx of flowers where their flight, for so many centuries past, has been sumptuously and voluptuously welcomed.

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It is a little more than a hundred years ago that Huber's researches gave the first serious impetus to our study of the bees, and revealed the elementary important truths that allowed us to observe them with fruitful result. Barely fifty years have passed since the foundation of rational, practical apiculture was rendered possible by means of the movable combs and frames devised by Dzierzon and Langstroth, and the hive ceased to be the inviolable abode wherein all came to pass in a mystery from which death alone stripped the veil. And lastly, less than fifty years have elapsed since the improvements of the microscope, of the entomologist's laboratory, revealed the precise secret of the principal organs of the workers, of the mother, and the males. Need we wonder if our knowledge be as scanty as our experience? The bees have existed many thousands of years; we have watched them for ten or twelve lustres. And if it could even be proved that no change has occurred in the hive since we first opened it, should we have the right to conclude that nothing had changed before our first questioning glance? Do we not know that in the evolution of species a century is but as a drop of rain that is caught in the whirl of the river, and that millenaries glide as swiftly over the life of universal matter as single years over the history of a people?

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But there is no warrant for the statement that the habits of the bees are unchanged. If we examine them with an unbiassed eye, and without emerging from the small area lit by our actual experience, we shall, on the contrary, discover marked variations. And who shall tell how many escape us? Were an observer of a hundred and fifty times our height and about seven hundred and fifty thousand times our importance (these being the relations of stature and weight in which we stand to the humble honey-fly), one who knew not our language, and was endowed with senses totally different from our own; were such an one to have been studying us, he would recognise certain curious material transformations in the course of the last two thirds of the century, but would be totally unable to form any conception of our moral, social, political, economic or religious evolution.

The most likely of all the scientific hypotheses will presently permit us to connect our domestic bee with the great tribe of the "Apiens," which embraces all wild bees, and where its ancestors are probably to be found. We shall then perceive physiological, social, economic, industrial, and architectural transformations more extraordinary than those of our human evolution. But for the moment we will limit ourselves to our domestic bee properly so called. Of these sixteen fairly distinct species are known; but, essentially, whether we consider the Apis Dorsata, the largest known to us, or the Apis Florea, which is the smallest, the insect is always exactly the same, except for the slight modifications induced by the climate and by the conditions whereto it has had to conform.*

*The scientific classification of the domestic bee is as follows:
Class....... Insecta
Order....... Hymenoptera
Family...... Apidae
Genus....... Apis
Species..... Mellifica

The term "Mellifica" is that of the Linnaean classification. It is not of the happiest, for all the Apidae, with the exception of certain parasites perhaps, are producers of honey. Scopoli uses the term "Cerifera "; Reaumur "Domestica "; Geoffroy "Gregaria." The "Apis Ligustica," the Italian bee, is another variety of the "Mellifica."