CHAPTER VII
THE GENESIS OF THE QUEEN
It has been said that the ways of the honey-bee are nearly all subject to variation—that in bee-life there are few hard-and-fast, undeviating laws. The rule, of one queen-mother only to each hive, appears to be more absolute than any other, yet it is not without its exceptions. Well authenticated instances are on record where two queens have existed amicably in the same hive, each laying her daily quota of eggs unmolested by the other, and, apparently, with the full approval of the hive-authorities.
It is now also certain that a skilful bee-master can accustom his bees to the presence of more than one queen. Recent experiments in America on this head, although convincing enough as far as they go, need the test of time before their practical value to apiculture can be rightly estimated. To multiply its domestic deities may prove anything but a blessing to the harmony and welfare of a hive. But the fact has been well established that the old rule, of one queen at a time, may be upset—whether permanently, and for the ultimate advantage of honey-making, time alone can tell.
A single queen, when young and vigorous and of good blood, is able to keep an entire hive filled with brood throughout the short honey-gathering season. The brood-nest of a modern frame-bar hive has a comb-surface of over 2,000 square inches, giving about 50,000 cells available for the breeding of young worker-bees. This represents, at times of greatest prosperity, an enormous floating population; but if several queens can be permanently established in one hive, and the hives enlarged to permit each her fullest scope, the figures will soon begin to stretch out into infinity. Two facts are well known to experienced bee-keepers—that a large stock gathers more honey than two small stocks containing between them the same number of individuals; and that, when the honey-crop is in full yield, there are seldom enough bees to harvest it. The whole art of latter-day bee-keeping consists in bringing up the numerical strength of each colony to its fullest in time for the great main nectar-flow. Yet, in a good district and in a good season, when huge areas of clover or sainfoin come into full blossom at the same time, and the nectar must be gathered or lost within the space of a fortnight or so, the most populous apiary is seldom equal to the task. Probably, in exceptional seasons, half the English honey-crop is lost for want of bees to gather it. If, therefore, the new system of plurality of queens both justifies and establishes itself, the near future may see a revolution in all ideas relating to beemanship. All that can be said for certain at present is that as many as five queens have been induced to occupy the same hive in peace and quiet together; but whether this portentous state of affairs can remain a lasting one is still to be proved.
A curious and, to the expert, a startling outcome of these efforts to break down an old and almost universal custom in bee-life, is that the successful establishment of several mother-bees in a single hive appears to lessen the swarming impulse. Hives so treated do not send out a swarm so far as is known. One of the most disappointing experiences in bee-craft is to see prosperous stocks breaking themselves up into several hopelessly weak detachments just before the great honey-flow, when strength of numbers is the one vital thing; and if plurality of queens will prevent this vexatious evil, the old time-honoured custom is sure to go.
The student of bee-life, watching the year’s work in the hive from its earliest beginnings, and marking its steady, cautious development, will readily see how the ancient idea of the mother-bee’s absolute monarchy gained its vogue. The deception of appearances is all but complete. Right in the heart of the winter-cluster he sees the queen bestirring herself to lay the first eggs, and the bees around her slowly awakening to the duty before them. With the passing of the weeks, he sees the brood-area steadily enlarging; the hitherto close-packed throng of workers gradually extending itself over a larger space of comb; the water-fetchers increasingly busy; the pollen-gathering bees already at work in the crocus-borders of the garden, where the year’s first gold and white and purple is gaily flaunting in the sun. He notes that the progress of the colony within the warm hive does not go by the calendar, but checks with each return of cold, and forges ahead only when the spring seems to be coming in right good earnest. He sees, even now, when February is waning and the hazel-catkins fill the bare woodland with a shimmer of emerald, that the colony still husbands its stores, eking them out with a long-sighted parsimony that shall be more than justified when the inevitable cold break comes in the flowery midst of the English May. It is impossible to overlook the evidence of a wise, directing mind through it all; and where should this be seated but in the brain of the single large bee, courted and fed and groomed unceasingly by the attendant host around her—she who is the teeming mother of past tens of thousands, and who carries in her body the seed of all the generations to come?
Yet the truth is that the queen-bee is the very reverse of a monarch, both by nature and inclination. She possesses only the merest rudiment of intelligence. She has a magnificent body, great docility, certain almost unrestrainable impulse and passions, a yielding, womanish love of the yoke; but she is incapable of action other than that arising from her bodily promptings. Her brain is much smaller than that of the worker. In a dozen different ways she is inferior to the common worker-bees, who rule her absolutely, mapping out her entire daily life and using her for the good of the colony, just as a delicate, costly piece of mechanism is used by human craftsmen to produce some necessary article of trade.
In a word, the queen is the sole surviving representative of the aboriginal female honey-bee. The aborted females, the workers, are almost as much a product of civilisation as the human race itself.
Every step of the way now, in a study of the life of the bee, is hedged about with wonders. It is seen that the common worker-bee is raised in a cell allowing her only the barest minimum of space for development, while the queen has an apartment twice as long as she can possibly need. The worker-cells are so designed that as many a possible may be contained in a given area, and their construction involve the least possible amount of material. Therefore these cells are made in the form of a hexagon, this being the only shape approaching the cylindrical—the ideal form—of which a number will fit together over a plane surface without leaving useless spaces in between. Moreover, the cells needing to be closed at the bottom, half the material required for this purpose is saved by the device of placing the sheets of combined hexagons back to back, so that one base will serve for two cells. But it is not only in the construction of the cradles of the worker-bees that rigid economy is practised. From the moment that the egg hatches until the young grub changes into the chrysalis state, it is given only the smallest quantity of food that will support life and allow necessary development.