The cells designed to contain the worker-brood measure one-fifth of an inch across the mouth; drone cells are larger, having a diameter of a quarter-inch, as well as greater depth. The queen may pass from one species of comb to the other, but she seldom makes a mistake. The egg deposited in the worker-cell hatches out a female; that which is laid in the larger cell becomes a drone, or male bee. Obviously the deposition of the different kinds of eggs is well under the control of the queen. It will be also seen that not only does the mother bee lay either male or female eggs at will, but their number also is subject to her discrimination. From the time when she begins ovipositing, until she reaches her period of greatest activity in early summer, the increase of the colony is not regular, but goes by fits and starts according to the weather, or the amount of incoming food. If the new honey is steadily mounting up in the storehouse, and pollen is plentiful, the work of brood-raising will go freely ahead; but if unseasonable cold stops the work of the foragers, this will immediately affect the output of the queen, and under exceptionally adverse conditions egg-laying may be entirely arrested. This may also take place in the height of the season, and in full favour of sunshine and plenty, if the hive is a small one, and the limit of its capacity has been reached. The combs will then be full of either honey or brood, and the queen must wait until laying space can be cleared for her. That she is able to do this—that her powers can be augmented or restrained, according to the needs of the colony, and that the proportion of the sexes in the hive can be varied at will to suit like contingencies—can only be understood when the details of her life-history have been passed under review.
In the normal, prosperous colony, which we are now studying, the queen will be in her prime, and under natural conditions will remain at the head of affairs until she goes out with the first swarm in May or June. A queen-bee is at the zenith of her fecundity in the second year of her life. After that, her egg-laying powers steadily decline, although she may live to be four, or even five, years old. But the authorities in a hive rarely allow a mother-bee to retain her position after she has shown signs of waning energy. Preparations are at once set on foot for the raising of another queen.
A very old queen will have lost her power to lay worker-eggs, and will have become nothing but a drone-breeder. But the bees are seldom caught napping in this way. Long before this happens the building of the royal cells will have commenced in the hive. A queen-cell has been likened, by various writers, to an acorn, and when half completed it bears a very close resemblance, both in size and shape, to an inverted acorn-cup. This is commonly hung mouth downwards at the side or base of one of the central brood-combs, but it may be placed right in the middle of the comb, in which case the cells around it are cut away to give it air and space. Whether the old queen herself deposits the egg in the royal cell—thus unwittingly supplying the means for her own future dethronement—or whether the worker-bees transfer to it an egg or grub from a common cell, is not yet finally ascertained. As, however, the mere sight of a royal cell usually excites the queen to fury, the chances are that she is never allowed to approach it at any time, and the egg would then be placed there by the worker-bees. But, in the great majority of cases, it is probable that new queens are raised by enlarging an already existing worker-cell, in which an egg has been previously deposited. As far as is known, this is always the case when a young grub is used for the purpose instead of an egg. It is possible, also, that the queen is physically incapable of laying in a royal cell an egg that will produce a female bee; but this curious point will be touched upon at a later stage.
The old trite saying among beemen, that bees never do anything invariably, receives constant illustration in any near study of the ways of the honey-bee. It has been seen that a colony deprived of its queen, and having no worker-egg or grub less than three days old wherewith to make good its deficiency, is commonly doomed to early extinction. But, on rare occasions, colonies supposed to be in this plight will make an unexpected and inexplicable recovery. After a period of the doldrums, extending for three weeks or more, a sudden renewed activity and exhilaration is observable in the hive. The pollen-bearers, who have been hitherto almost idle, resume their busy work; and, on the hive being opened, all the evidences of the presence of a fertile, laying queen-mother are again to be seen. In many instances in which a new lease of life has thus been vouchsafed to a colony under what seems an inexorable ban, no doubt appearances have been deceptive. The bees may have discovered in their midst a worker-larva not yet too far advanced for promotion to queenship, and thus have achieved their salvation at the eleventh hour. But, in at least one case, the testimony against the possibility of this seems complete. A nucleus stock, containing only three or four small combs and only about five hundred bees, was deprived of its queen. Ten days later every queen-cell that had been formed in the interval was destroyed, leaving in the hive not a single egg or bee in the larval state. Nevertheless, on the hive being opened after a further period of eighteen days, one new queen-cell containing an egg was discovered. And this egg duly hatched out into a fine, well-developed queen-bee. Assuming the facts to be true, and they seem to be incontrovertible, there is only one inference to be drawn from this: some enterprising bee of the colony must have gone to another hive and either begged, borrowed, or stolen a worker-egg. Apiarian scientists very rightly hesitate to ascribe to the honey-bee surpassing ingenuity of this kind on the testimony of a single case, however well authenticated. But other instances are on record nearly as indubitable, and as it is an unquestioned fact that worker-bees will carry eggs about from comb to comb within the space of their own hive, it does not seem wholly incredible that they may visit other hives in the immediate neighbourhood, especially when impelled to extra resourcefulness by so vital a need. The whole question is interesting in more ways than one, as it seems to bear very trenchantly on the problem of “Reason versus Instinct,” now busy in the thoughts of most modern naturalists.
In whatever way the egg for the queen-cell may be furnished by the stock intending to raise a new mother-bee, the first sign of life is always the same—a tiny, white, elongated speck, glued on end to the base, or what must rather be called the roof, of the inverted cell-cup. In this state it remains about three days, when the larva hatches out, and at once the special treatment accorded to the young queen begins. She is loaded with rich provender from the first moment of her existence, living literally up to the eyes in the white, shining, jelly-like substance that the nurse-bees are continually regurgitating and pouring into the cells. This superfeeding process is continued for about five days, when the larva has reached its full growth and the cell its greatest dimensions. The larva then stops feeding to spin itself a silken shroud before changing into the pupa state, and the bees seal up the door of the cell. In its completed state the cell loses its resemblance to an acorn, and is rather to be likened to a fir-cone. In the case of the common workers and drones, the cells are made of pure wax, only the capping being of mingled wax and pollen; but the queen cell is constructed throughout of this porous material.
The fully grown queen-bee is ready, and more than anxious to leave her cradle-cell in about fifteen or sixteen days after the laying of the egg. The bees, however, generally give her a first lesson in obedience even at this early point in her career. It is a critical time in the history of the hive, and much thought and care have been bestowed on the complicated business in hand. In the first place, it would never have done to allow the whole future welfare of the colony to depend on a single life alone. Therefore not one queen has been raised, but several. As many as five or six queens may be ready to hatch out in different parts of the brood-nest, and none of them will be permitted to break from her cell until the appointed time arrives. For each the cradle now becomes a prison. A small hole is bored in the cell-wall, through which the impatient captive is fed, pending the day when she is to be allowed her liberty; and close guard and watch is kept over each cell to save it from the violence of the old queen, who is becoming hourly more restless and suspicious.
The complete subjection of the mother-bee to the ruling worker-class in the hive receives here a striking confirmation. She is a true exemplar of a prevailing kind of femininity—comely of person, untutored in mind, an inveterate stay-at-home, a prolific mother; and now there awakens in her the sounding chord of jealousy. Left free to act on her own impulses, she would soon bring about a speedy end to all the careful, long-sighted preparations within the hive. She would tear open each royal cell, and with one thrust of the curved, cruel scimitar that queen-bees use only on their equals in rank, its occupant would be ruthlessly despatched, and her own supremacy reinstated. But an impassable barrier stops the way—the collective will of the hive. The violent delight of killing has once been hers; she will never know it again. Now her own fate is in the balance. It may be death, or a new life in a new home: all depends on the deliberate decree of those who have made her, and who now use or discard her, for their own purposes. If it be late spring, and the condition of the stock warrant it, this governing spirit may decide for colonisation, and the old queen may be disposed of by sending her off with a swarm. But other counsels may prevail. The times may be unripe, or the weather inopportune. And then Fate, in the shape of a merciless application of principles, will descend upon her, and her own wise children will ruthlessly put her to death.
This State-execution of the queen, at the first sign of waning fertility, is a peculiarly pathetic as well as a tragic phase of bee-life. The stern, soured amazons of the hive must have their systems and conventions in everything they undertake; and they cannot even bring about the supersession of the old queen without due circumstance and ceremonial. Given that it would be against the best interests of the common weal that she should retain her life after the loss of her queenhood, one swift stroke would immediately determine the matter, and the law—that there shall be no useless members in the bee-republic—would have its due fulfilment. But old tradition rules that the queen shall suffer no violence from the weapons of the common herd. She is to die, but her death must be brought about in another way. And so the fawning executioners gather round her, locking her in an embrace that tightens with every moment, until the breath is literally hugged out of her body. All her life has been spent in the midst of caresses, and now she is to die of them, close held to the last in that silent, terrible grip.