During the first two days of her life as a perfect insect, we saw the young virgin queen mingling with the throng in the hive almost unnoticed, and left to seek her own food from the common store like the rest. But now that her fecundation has been achieved, she has a whole suite of chamber-women, whose principal duty is to attend to her nourishment. From their mouths they feed her, giving her, in all probability, the same rich substance that was administered to her when but a larva in the cell. This bee-milk consists mainly of honey and pollen pre-digested, but it has been proved that its composition can be altered at will by the ministering bees. Additions to it are made, either separately, or combined in varying proportions, from three or four distinct glands, each of which exudes a liquid differing in nature from that of the rest. The particular kind of nourishment given to a queen who is to be urged on in the work of egg-laying, has the effect of stimulating her ovaries. The more food of this kind she receives, the greater will be her prolificacy. On the other hand, a diminishing allowance will mean a corresponding decrease in her egg-laying powers; while, if this rich diet be withheld altogether, and she is forced to help herself from the honey-cells, the development of these eggs may cease entirely, as it actually does in the coldest time of the year. Thus the bees play upon her, producing just the music needed for their purposes. As the days lengthen, and the spring sun gets higher and warmer, they gradually waken her docile nature to its one paramount task. In the flaming weeks of summer she sits at an unending banquet. And when autumn comes, with its chilly nights and steadily failing sun-glow, the generous fare is slowly withdrawn; her retinue thins and disperses; at length she becomes a solitary, unmarked wanderer again, sipping, with the commonest worker, at the plain household sweets.
How the proportion of the sexes is so unerringly regulated by the hive-authorities through their influence on the mother-bee, is not so readily explained; nor can it be at present more than shrewd conjecture, a backward reckoning from effect to cause. Probably the opening or closing of the fertilising gland, which decides the sex of the egg, is automatic, the attitude of the mother-bee during oviposition determining its action. When she enters the narrow worker-cells, her body is necessarily straightened, and this may produce pressure on the fecundating gland, resulting in the impregnation of the egg. But in the wider drone-cell no such constricted posture is needful, and the egg may therefore pass untouched by the fructifying germ. If this version of the matter be accepted, the natural inference is that either the mother-bee is incapable of laying female eggs in the cells specially constructed for raising queens—these being the largest of all,—or that there is something in the peculiar curve of the cell-cup which compels her to straighten her body in the act, and so brings about the same posture as with the narrow worker-cells.
This theory, although at present the most plausible, has received, it is true, little confirmation in fact. No one, apparently, has ever seen the mother-bee lay in a queen-cell, nor has the transportation thither of a worker-egg by the bees actually been witnessed. To cling to the old idea of the supremacy of the queen-bee, giving her the power and ability of a despotic, all-wise sovereign, would, of course, set this and many other vexed questions at rest. Nothing, however marvellous, would be too much to expect of her. But the farther the student of bee-life goes in his absorbing subject, the more impossible the old notion seems. Proof comes to him with every hour that the mother-bee is virtually a servant, and never a ruler in the hive; and just as assured testimony reaches him of the universal potency of the worker-bees. All else that takes place within the hive is brought about by their collective will and agency; and it would be strange indeed if this vital matter of progeneration were not subject to the same controlling force.
CHAPTER IX
THE SOVEREIGN WORKER-BEE
Watching the inner life of the hive in the season of its full activity, it is not the untiring spirit of industry pervading the whole bee-commonwealth that most excites the student’s wonder, but rather the fact that this ceaseless diligence finds so many outlets—that so many different kinds of necessary work are going forward at one and the same time.
Between the brood-combs the nurses are feeding the young larvæ, or clearing out the empty cells, or sealing over the full-grown nymphs for their pre-natal slumber. Hard by, the sowers are at their vital work, driving their living seed-barrow, the queen, over the combs. Elsewhere the wax-makers hang in a silent, densely packed cluster. Overhead, the new honey-combs are growing; the masons building up the cell-walls, while the engineers devise means and ends, calculate strains, put in a strut here, a stay there, or flying buttress from one comb to another, or cut new passageways where the traffic seems too congested for the old thoroughfares of the hive.
On all sides the scavenging bees go to and fro, picking up every particle of refuse, and carrying it safely away. Winged undertakers drive their trade in the midst of the throng, bearing the corpses of their comrades, old and young, towards the entrance, and flying away with them into the sunlight of the young spring day. There is the ventilating army outside the city gates, skilfully organised in relays, so that, day and night, a constant circulation of air is maintained. There are the guard-bees close by, watching all in-comers and out-goers. There is a sort of General Purposes Committee ready outside the threshold with a helping hand for all: succouring the overladen, grooming down any in need of such assistance, gathering up fallen treasure, or, as it would seem, taking careful note of the weather for their next official report. And all through the hours of sunshine, in unnumbered thousands, the foragers are charging to and fro, some bringing nectar, some staggering in under mighty loads of pollen, others with full water-sacs, still more dragging behind them lumps of the curious cement called by the ancients Propolis, and used for so many different purposes in the daily work of the hive.
And it all goes on with the regularity of a well ordered human settlement. There is complexity, yet no confusion; there is speed without hurry Each busy gang of labourers has apparently a distinct and definite task allotted to it by the central hive-authority; co-operation and progress are, to all appearances, deified cause and effect in all the affairs of the hive.
It is easy—nay, inevitable—in any close study of bee-life with the help of the modern observation-hive, to overset the ancient idea of absolute bee-monarchy under a single king or queen. But it is not so easy to determine how the general government of the colony is actually carried on. Innumerable small consultations on minor matters are seen to take place on every side during each moment of the busy day; but nothing like general communication is ever visible. And yet, how are the great national movements, such as the despatch of a swarm or the supersedure of an old queen, brought about; how are the various common crises of the State met, and provided for? The only rational inference seems to be that each worker is in herself the perfect evolved presentment of republicanism, in whom all imaginable difficulties in collective life have their best solution, tried and proved through the ages, and resorted to unerringly as a matter of course. Thus a common need is felt, and met instantaneously by a common, recognised expedient. The judgment of one is necessarily the judgment of all. Every problem of daily life, however intricate, is solved by the one device, brought to the fine point of perfection through the experience of countless generations, and applied by each individual to the common want, just as hunger impels all mankind to eat.