A queer figure my father cut in his short grey smock and his long lean bent legs encased in leathern gaiters, legs between which, when I was little, and trotting after him, I had always a fine view of the sky. He was never at fault in his estimate of a hive’s prosperity. The rich clear song and steady traffic of a well-to-do bee-nation he knew at once from the anxious note and frantic coming and going of a starvation-threatened hive. It was the tune that told him. Nowadays we just rip the coverings from a hive and, lifting the combs out one by one, judge by sheer brute-force of eyesight whether there be need or plenty. “One-thirty-two!”—from my sunny seat under the pink currant blossom I can hear the call of the foreman to the booking ’prentice down in the bee-farm—“One-thirty-two—six frames covered—no moth—medium light—brood over three—mark R.Q.” R.Q. means that the stock is to be re-queened at the earliest opportunity. She has been a famous queen in her time—One-thirty-two. This would have been her fourth year, had she kept up her fertility. But “brood over three”—that is to say, only three combs with young bees maturing in them—is not good enough for progressive, up-to-date Warrilow in April, and she must be pinched at last. In the common course, I never let a queen remain at the head of affairs after her second season. Nine out of ten of them break down under the wear and stress of two summers, and fall to useless drone-breeding in the third.
Already the sun has climbed high, and yet I linger, though I know I should be gone an hour ago. The darkness, far away as it seems, will not find all done that should be done on the bee-farm, toil as hard as we may. For these sudden hot days in spring often come singly, and every moment of them is precious. To-morrow the north wind may be keening under an iron-grey sky, and pallid wreaths of snow-flakes weighing down the almond-blossom. So it happened only a year ago, when on the twenty-fifth of April I must clear away the snow from the entrance-boards of the hives. It is, I think, the unending round of business—the itch that is on us now of finding a day’s work for every day in the year in modern beecraft—which has had most to do with the changed times. The old leisure, as well as the old colour and mystery, has gone out of bee-keeping. Between burning-time in August and swarming-time in May there used to be little else for the bee-master to do but smoke his pipe and ruminate and watch the wax flowing into the hives. For we all believed that the little pellets of many-tinted pollen which the bees constantly carry in on their thighs were not food for the grubs in the cells, but wax for the comb-building. I could believe it now, indeed, if I might only sit here long enough; but the busy voices are calling, calling, and I must be gone.
CHAPTER XXIX
THE BEE-MILK MYSTERY
Among the innumerable scraps of more or less erroneous information on hive-life, dished up by the popular newspapers in course of the year’s round, there is occasionally one which is sure to grip the curious reader’s attention. No one expects nowadays to read of the honey-bee without being set agape at the marvellous; but, really, when he is gravely told that the nurse-bees in a hive actually give the breast to their young, suckling them with a secreted liquid which is nothing more or less than milk, the ordinarily faithful newspaper student is entitled to be for once incredulous.
The thing, however, in spite of its grotesque improbability, comes nearer to the plain truth than many another item of bee-life more often encountered and unquestionably accepted. There are veritable nurse-bees in a hive, and these do produce something not unlike milk. In about three days after the egg has been deposited in the comb-cell by the queen, or mother-bee, a tiny white grub emerges. The feeding of this grub is immediately commenced by the bees in charge of the nursery quarters of the hive, and there is administered to it a glistening white substance closely resembling thick cream.
Analysts tell us that this bee-milk, as it is called, is highly nitrogenous in character, and that it has a decidedly acid reaction. It is obviously produced from the mouths of the nurse-bees, and appears to be digested matter thrown up from some part of the bee’s internal system, and combined with the secretions from one or more of the four separate sets of glands which open into different parts of the worker-bee’s mouth. The power to secrete this bee-milk seems to be normally limited to those workers who are under fourteen or fifteen days old. After that time the bee runs dry, her nursing work is relinquished, and she goes out to forage for nectar and pollen, never, as far as is known, resuming the task of feeding the young grubs. But if the faculty is not exercised, it may be held in abeyance for months together. This takes place at the close of each year, when we know that the last bees born to the hive in autumn are those who supply the milk for the first batches of larva raised in the ensuing spring.
It is difficult to keep out the wonder-weaving mood when writing of any phase of hive-life, and especially so when we have this bee-milk under consideration. For all recent studies of the matter tend to prove several facts about it not merely wonderful, but verging on the mysterious.
In the first place, its composition seems to be variable at the will of the bees. The white liquid is supplied to the grubs of worker, queen, and drone, and not only is its nature different with each, but it is even possible that this may be farther modified in the various stages of their development. It is well ascertained that the physical and temperamental differences between queen and worker-bee, widely marked as they appear, are entirely due to treatment and feeding during the larval stage. That the eggs producing the two are identical is proved by the fact that these can be transposed without confounding the original purpose of the hive. The queen-egg placed in the worker-cell develops into a common worker, while the worker-egg, when exalted to a queen’s cradle, infallibly produces a fully accoutred queen bee. The experiment can also be made even with the young grubs, provided that these are no more than three days old, and the same result ensues.
A close study of the food administered to bees when in the larval stage of their career is specially interesting, because it gives us the key to many otherwise inexplicable matters connected with hive-life. We do not know, and probably never shall know, how mere variation in diet causes certain organs to appear and certain other bodily parts to absent themselves. If the difference between queen and worker-bee were simply one of development, the worker being only an undersized, semi-atrophied specimen of a queen, there would be little mystery about it. But each has several highly specialised organs, of which the other has no trace, just as each has certain functions reduced to mere rudimentary uselessness, which, in the other, possess enormous development and a corresponding importance.
Clearly the food given in each case has peculiar properties, bringing about certain definite invariable results. We are able, therefore, to say positively that most of the classic marvels of bee-life are built up on this one determined issue, this one logical adjustment of cause and effect. The hive creates thousands of sexless workers and only one fertile mother-bee. It limits the number of its offspring according to the visible food supplies or the needs of the commonwealth. It brings into existence, when necessity calls for them, hundreds of male bees or drones, and when their period of usefulness is over it decrees their extermination. When the queen’s fecundity declines, it raises another queen to take her place. It can even, under certain rare conditions of adversity, manufacture what is known as a fertile worker, when some mischance has deprived it of its mother-bee and the materials for providing a legitimate successor to her are not forthcoming. And all these results are primarily brought about by the one means, the one vehicle of mystery—this wonderful bee-milk playing its part at all stages in the honey-bee’s life from her cradle to her grave.