For to track down this subtly-compounded elixir through all its various uses one must take a survey of almost the whole round of activities in the hive. The food of the young larva, whether of queen or worker, for the first three days after the eggs are hatched, seems to consist entirely of bee-milk. The drone-grub gets an extra day of this richly nitrogenous diet. And for the remaining two days of the grub stage of the bee’s life milk is given continuously, but, in the case of the worker and drone, in greatly diminished supply. Its place during these two days is largely taken, it is said, by honey and digested pollen in the worker’s instance, and by honey and raw pollen for the males.
The queen-grub alone receives bee-milk, of a specially rich kind and in unlimited quantity, for the whole of her larval life. This “royal jelly,” as the old bee-masters termed it, is literally poured into the capacious queen-cell. For the whole five days of her existence as a larva she actually bathes in it up to the eyes. But, as far as is known, she receives no other food during this time. The regular order of her development, and of that of the worker-bee, during the five days of the grub stage has been carefully studied, and it is curious to note that the very time when the queen’s special organs of motherhood begin to show themselves coincides exactly with the moment at which the worker-grub’s allowance of bee-milk is cut down and other food substituted.
This, no doubt, explains why these organs in the adult worker-bee are so elementary as to be practically non-existent, and accounts for the queen’s generous growth in other directions. But it leaves us completely in the dark as to the reason for the worker’s subsequent elaboration of such organs as the pollen-carrying device, the so-called wax-pincers, and the wax-secreting glands, of which the queen possesses none. Nor are we able to see how the giving or withholding of the bee-milk should furnish the queen with a long curved sting and the worker with a short straight one; nor how mere manipulation of diet can result in making the two so dissimilar in temperament and mental attributes—the worker laborious, sociable, almost preternaturally alert of mind, and withal essentially a creature of the open air and sunshine; the queen dull of intelligence, possessed of a jealous hatred of her peers, for whom all the light and colour and fragrance of a summer’s morning have no allurements, a being whose every instinct keeps her, from year’s end to year’s end, pent in the crowded tropic gloom of the hive.
But the bee-milk as well as being the main ingredient in the larval food, has other and almost equally important uses. It is supplied by the workers to the adult queen and drones throughout nearly the whole of their lives, and forms an indispensable part of their daily diet. And this gives us a clue in our attempt to understand, not only how the population of the hive is regulated, but why the males are so easily disposed of when the annual drone-massacre sets in. By giving or depriving her of the bee-milk, the workers can either stimulate the queen to an enormous daily output of eggs or reduce her fertility to a bare minimum; and, as for the drones, it is starvation that is the secret of their half-hearted, feeble resistance to fate.
Yet though we may recount these things, and speak of this mysterious essence called bee-milk as really the mainspring of all effort and achievement within the hive, it is doubtful whether we have solved the greatest mystery of all about it. Of what is it composed, and whence is it derived? The generally-accepted explanation of its origin is that it is pollen-chyle regurgitated from the second stomach of the bee, combined with the secretions from certain glands of the mouth in passing. But the most careful dissections have never revealed anything like bee-milk in any part of the bee’s internal system. Its pure white, opaque quality has absolutely no counterpart there: nor, indeed—if we are to believe latest investigations—does pollen-chyle exist at all in either the first or second stomach of the bee, whence alone it could be regurgitated. Bee-milk, it would seem, is still a physiological mystery, and so may remain to the end of time.
CHAPTER XXX
THE BEE-BURNERS
Country wanderings towards the end of summer, even now when the twentieth century is two decades old, still bring to light many ancient and curious things. Within an hour of London, and side by side with the latest agricultural improvements, you can still see corn coming down to the old reaping-hook, still watch the plough-team of bullocks toiling over the hillside, still get that unholy whiff of sulphur in the bee-gardens where the old-fashioned skeppists are “taking up” their bees.
Burning-time came round usually towards the end of August, sooner or later according to the turn of the season. The bee-keeper went the round of his hives, choosing out the heaviest and the lightest stocks. The heaviest hives were taken because they contained most honey; the lightest because, being short of stores, they were unlikely to survive the winter, and had best be put to profit at once for what they were worth. Thus a complete reversal of the doctrine of the survival of the fittest was artificially brought about by the old bee-masters. The most vigorous strains of bees were carefully weeded out year by year, and the perpetuation of the race left to those stocks which had proved themselves malingerers and half-hearts.
There was also another way in which this system worked wholly for the bad. If a hive of bees reached burning-time with a fully charged storehouse, it was probably due to the fact that the stock had cast no swarm that year, and had, therefore, preserved its whole force of workers for honey-getting. Under the light of modern knowledge, any stall of bees that showed a lessened tendency towards swarming would be carefully set aside, and used as the mother-hive for future generations; for this habit of swarming, necessary under the old dispensation, is nothing else than a fatal drawback under the new. The scientific bee-master of to-day, with his expanding brood-chambers and his system of supplying his hives artificially with young and prolific queens every third year, has no manner of use for the old swarming-habit. It serves but to break up and hopelessly to weaken his stocks just when he has got them to prime working fettle. Although the honey-bee still clings to this ancient impulse, there is no doubt that selective cultivation will ultimately evolve a race of bees in which the swarming-fever shall have been much abated, if not wholly extinguished; and then the problem of cheap English honey will have been solved. But in ancient times the bee-gardens were replenished only from those hives wherein the swarming-fever was most rampant. The old bee-keepers, in consigning all their heavy stocks to the sulphur-pit, unconsciously did their best to exterminate all non-swarming strains.
The bee-burning took place about sunset, or as soon as the last honey-seekers were home for the night. Small circular pits were dug in some quiet corner hard by. These were about six or eight inches deep, and a handful of old rags that had been dipped in melted brimstone having been put in, the bee-keeper went to fetch the first hive. The whole fell business went through in a strange solemnity and quietude. A knife was gently run round under the edge of the skep, to free it from its stool, and the hive carefully lifted and carried, mouth downwards, towards the sulphur-pit, none of the doomed bees being any the wiser. Then the rag was ignited and the skep lowered over the pit. An angry buzzing broke out as the fumes reached the undermost bees in the cluster, but this quickly died down into silence. In a minute or two every bee had perished, and the pit was ready for the next hive.