Yet, for some inscrutable reason, the honey-bee elects to keep awake—uselessly awake, it seems—throughout the four months or so during which outdoor work is impossible; and to this apparently undesirable, unprofitable end, she sacrifices all that makes such a life as hers worth the living from a human point of view.
Restlessness, and the Reason for It
You can, however, seldom look at wild Nature’s ways from the human standpoint without danger of postulating too much, or, worse still, leaving some vital, though invisible thing out of the argument. And this latter, on a little farther consideration, proves to be what we are now doing. Prolonged study of hive-life in winter will reveal one hitherto unsuspected fact. At this time, far from settling down into a life of sleepy inactivity, the queen-bee seems to develop a restlessness and impatience not to be observed in her at any other season. It is clear that the workers would lie quiet enough, if they had only themselves to consider. They collect in a dense mass between the central combs of the hive, the outer members of the company just keeping in touch with the nearest honey-cells. These cells are broached by the furthermost bees, and the food is distributed from tongue to tongue. As the nearest store-cells are emptied, the whole concourse moves on, the compacted crowd of bees thus journeying over the comb at a pace which is steady yet inconceivably slow.
But this policy seems in no way to commend itself to the queen. Whenever you look into the hive, even on the coldest winter’s day, she is generally alert and stirring, keeping the worker-bees about her in a constant state of wakefulness and care. Though she has long since ceased to lay, she is always prying about the comb, looking apparently for empty cells wherein to lay eggs, after her summer habit. Night or day, she seems always in this unresting state of mind, and the work of getting their queen through the winter season is evidently a continual source of worry to the members of the colony. Altogether, the most logical inference to be drawn from any prolonged and careful investigation of hive-life in winter is that the queen-bee herself is the main obstacle to any system of hibernation being adopted in the hive. This lying-by for the cold weather, however desirable and practicable it may be for the great army of workers, is obviously dead against the natural instincts of the queen. And since, being awake, she must be incessantly watched and fed and cared for, it follows that the whole colony must wake with her, or at least as many as are necessary to keep her nourished and preserved from harm.
The Queen a Slave to Tradition
Those, however, who are familiar with the resourceful nature of the honey-bee might expect her to effect an ingenious compromise in these as in all other circumstances; and the facts seem to point to such a compromise. It is not easy to be sure of anything when watching the winter cluster in a hive, for the bees lie so close that inspection becomes at times almost futile. But one thing at least is certain. The brood-combs between which the cluster forms are not merely covered by bees. Into every cell in the comb some bee has crept, head first, and lies there quite motionless. This attitude is also common at other times of the year, and there is little doubt that the tired worker-bees do rest, and probably sleep, thus, whenever an empty cell is available. But now almost the entire range of brood-cells is filled with resting bees, like sailors asleep in the bunks of a forecastle; and it is not unreasonable to suppose that each unit in the cluster alternately watches with the queen, or takes her “watch below” in the comb-cells.
That there should be in this matter of wintering so sharp a divergence between the instincts of the queen-mother and her children is in no way surprising, when we recollect how entirely they differ on almost all other points. How this fundamental difference has come about in the course of ages of bee-life is too long a story for these pages. It has been fully dealt with in an earlier volume by the same writer—“The Lore of the Honey-Bee”—and to this the reader is referred. But the fact is pretty generally admitted that, while the little worker-bee is a creature specially evolved to suit a unique environment, the mother-bee remains practically identical with the mother-bees of untold ages back. She retains many of the instincts of the race as it existed under tropic conditions, when there was no alternation of hot and cold seasons; and hence her complete inability to understand, and consequent rebellion against the needs of modern times.
The Future Evolution of the Hive
Whether the worker-bees will ever teach her to conform to the changed conditions is an interesting problem. We know how they have “improved” life in the hive—how a matriarchal system of government has been established there, the duty of motherhood relegated to one in the thirty thousand or so, and how the males are suffered to live only so long as their procreative powers are useful to the community. It is little likely that the omnipotent worker-bee will stop here. Failing the eventual production of a queen-bee who can be put to sleep for the winter, they may devise means of getting rid of her in the same way as they disburden themselves of the drones. In some future age the mother-bee may be ruthlessly slaughtered at the end of each season, another queen being raised when breeding-time again comes round. Then, no doubt, honey-bees would hibernate, as do so many other creatures of the wilds; and the necessity for all that frantic labour throughout the summer days be obviated.
This is by no means so fantastic a notion as it appears. Ingenious as is the worker-bee, there is one thing that the mere man-scientist of to-day could teach her. At present, her system of queen-production is to construct a very large cell, four or five times as large as that in which the common worker is raised. Into this cell, at an early stage in its construction, the old queen is induced to deposit an egg; or the workers themselves may furnish it with an egg previously laid elsewhere; or again—as sometimes happens—the large cell may be erected over the site of an ordinary worker-cell already containing a fertile ovum. This egg in no way differs from that producing the common, undersized, sex-atrophied worker-bee; but by dint of super-feeding on a specially rich diet, and unlimited space wherein to develop, the young grub eventually grows into a queen-bee, with all the queen’s extraordinary attributes. A queen may be, and often is, raised by the workers from a grub instead of an egg. The grub is enclosed in, or possibly in some cases transferred to, the queen-cell; and, providing it is not more than three days old, this grub will also become a fully developed queen-bee.