The Lore of the Honey-Bee

by Tickner Edwardes

Such a condition of affairs, even in a community of human beings, would imply a very high state of mental, if not of moral, development in the individual. It would mean entire negation of self in the interest of the common good. Even with all the forces of heredity at work, it would need stern ascetic training for the young, and for the transgressing adult a swift and merciless retribution, if the last dream of communism—the abolition of all law and penalty, and the establishment of a natural autonomy of well-doing—were ever to be realised in fact. And yet some such state of things appears to exist in the bee-commonwealth: the individual worker-bee seems to be the product of some such system carried on through an indefinite space of time. Order is preserved, public works go diligently forward, the clock of the national progress keeps time to the second, not because there is a central wisdom-force to plan, to govern, to awe recalcitrants, but because every worker-bee is herself the State in miniature, all propensities alien to the pure collective spirit having been long ago bred out of her by the sheer necessities of her case.

The worker-bee, as we see her in the hive to-day, although evolution must have been busy through the ages determining her present mind-power and bodily conformation, is nevertheless as much a product of direct artifice as she is of original nature. We have seen how the egg containing the feminine germ, if given full scope and opportunity, develops into what may be taken as the complete aboriginal type of female bee, differing from the worker in a dozen essential ways. The queen also is probably, in one respect at least—her amazing fecundity—a deliberate creation of the hive-people, as her over-production is brought about by over-stimulation to meet an artificial state of affairs. Left to herself, under pristine conditions, she would certainly lay on a much more moderate scale. But the worker-bee owes her unique structure and mental constitution almost entirely to the intervention of her nurses from the moment of the hatching of the egg. Careful experiment has proved that the queen-larva and the worker-larva are identical up to the third day of their life in the cell, except that the queen has made more rapid growth owing to more generous and more ample fare. After the third day, the genital system of each larva will begin to develop, if this rich nitrogenous diet is maintained. In the case of the queen, this pre-digested food, well called bee-milk, is lavished on the favoured grub up to the last moment of its larval existence, no other food being given. But in the case of the worker-grub, not only has its supply of bee-milk been restricted in both quantity and quality from the day of its birth, but now—just before the development of the ovaries might be expected—an important change is made. The allowance of bee milk is greatly reduced, while plain honey is given in addition, but on the same parsimonious scale, to the end of its five days’ larval life.

What other influences, if any, are brought to bear on the young worker-bee at this portentous stage of her career, it is impossible to say. But at least the change in the food is well ascertained, and the results—whether of this alone, or in combination with other treatment—are more than astounding. Not only is the development of the sex-organs so completely arrested that hardly a trace of them can be discovered in the adult worker-bee, but, from that moment, the larva seems to become an essentially different creature, reflecting more and more the attributes of her nurses, and showing wider and wider departure from those of the mother-bee. As soon as the worker changes into the pupa state, organs appear of which the queen has not the faintest rudiments. She receives her special equipment for field-work in a pair of baskets for carrying pollen. Her tongue is lengthened, so that it may reach the nectar hidden deep down in the clover-bells. She is to become a builder, and therefore is provided with half a dozen crucibles wherein to prepare the wax. Her useless ovipositor is changed into a weapon: it is straightened, shortened; the barbs upon it are multiplied and strengthened; a gland, with which it is furnished, and which, in the queen, contains an all but harmless fluid, is now filled with an active poison. Above all, she develops a brain-power far in excess of that of the normal female bee, her mother; and she acquires a whole new set of impulses and aspirations from beginning to end.

While the queen-bee’s natural element is the obscurity of the hive, and she would seem both to hate and fear the sunshine, the worker is essentially an outdoor creature, revelling in the light and air. While the queen, though obedient to the destiny that has made her over-fruitful, displays nevertheless not the slightest joy of motherhood nor interest in her children, the worker, doomed to eternal spinsterhood, yet constitutes herself the true mother and nurse and instructress of all the young in the hive. And the price exacted for the authority and power which she usurps, or was usurped for her by those remote ancestors of hers who first invented the sexless honey-bee, must be paid in the hardest coin—that of life itself. Instead of the years that nature allotted to her kind in the beginning, she is to endure hardly as many months. Destiny, and her own vaulting ambitions, have given her too arduous a part to play. Her stunted, yet over-elaborated body and over-developed brain, cannot long hold out against the wear and tear of the life she is born to. At best a few months see her dead at her work, or using the last pulsations of her worn-out, ragged wings to carry her away to the traditional burial-place of the hive; or her end may be to fall under the stroke of the State executioners. For the old-age problem has long ago discovered its effective solution in the bee-republic. Justice that is capable of being tempered with mercy carries its own mark of imperfection indelibly upon it. When the principle of all for the common good has been driven to its last resort in logic, mercy to the individual can only be another name for robbing Peter to pay Paul. In bee-communism the sole title to life is utility, and so the old worn-out, useless workers must go.

The development of the worker-egg through its various stages of growth, until the perfectly formed insect emerges from the cell, makes a curious study. The egg itself is remarkable, for it is covered with an hexagonal pattern. The large compound eyes of the fully grown bee also show this form. Each eye consists of about four thousand separate lenses, and each lens is a regular hexagon. Wonder has often been expressed at the ingenuity of the comb-builders in making the cells six-sided, and thus crowding into a given space more compartments than could be secured by the same amount of material wrought into any other shape. The ancient writers explained this choice of the hexagonal cell by the supposed fact that the six legs of the bee were simultaneously employed in comb-building, each leg constructing its own portion of the cell. A more modern idea is that the particular shape of the cell is accidental, or rather the outcome of compelling circumstance, mutual pressure causing the cells to assume the hexagonal form.

Now, it is quite true that soaked peas in a bottle will take this shape in swelling, but the analogy will not hold good in respect of comb-building. In the work of the bees there is no pressure or constriction of any kind. Each cell is made separately, being joined on to those above it; and the comb expands steadily downward and sideways through an empty space until the desired limit is reached. A much more probable explanation of the hexagonal form of the cell is that it was arrived at by experience. The first combs may have been built with round cells, the interstices being filled in with wax. But the bee, who is an expert in the science of economy, would quickly see the disadvantage of this plan. And with the hexagonal principle, an old familiar thing in the hive—witness the pattern on the egg-surfaces, and the compound eye-construction—it would not be long before she hit upon the better, more scientific way.

There is, however, another reason, and almost as potent a one, for the adoption of the six-sided cell both for brood-raising and the storing of honey. It must be remembered that the present system of vertical walls parallel and close together, made up of numberless small horizontal chambers placed back to back, is not an ideal arrangement either for the raising of the young or the storing of food. Yet it is the best possible contrivance under the circumstances, which are forced upon the bee by the necessity of leading a close, crowded, communal life. Air is a prime need for all operations in the hive, but for none more than the development of the young bees. When a queen is to be raised, a full supply of fresh air is given her, but only at the expense of valuable space. With the common kind, of which perhaps ten or fifteen thousand may be maturing in the brood-nest at one and the same time, it is obviously impossible to make any such concession. The young worker- or drone-larva must secure what air it can through the narrow cell-top. Now, the bee breathes at all stages of its career not through the mouth, but by means of air-holes or spiracles in the sides of its body. If the cell were round, the larva, when fairly grown, would fill the space, and the air would reach the spiracles only with difficulty. But, no matter what the size of the young grub may be, the angles of the hexagon cell are never quite filled. They form half a dozen by-passes for the air, arranged on all sides, and extending right to the base of the cell; and thus the larva has the full benefit of the available air-supply, even though it be necessarily scanty.

With the store-combs the six angles of the cell fulfil an equally important office. The ideal honey-cell would be one with its mouth opening upwards, so that it could be filled in an ordinary rational way. But under the strict economical principles ruling in the hive such an arrangement would be impracticable. The honey-vats must be stacked one over the other in a horizontal position, and therefore must be chargeable from the end. All cells in the comb have a slight upward tilt, but not enough to retain the fluid contents if the cell were a round one. The effect of the angles in the hexagon is to increase the retentive property of the cell, and experience has taught the bees how to supplement this natural holding power of the angles by just that slight cant of the cell which is necessary to prevent the nectar running out.

The worker-bee, during her period of larval life, at first lies coiled up at the bottom of the cell, but as her size increases she takes up a position lengthways, with her head towards the cell-mouth. This, however, is not a constant attitude, for she seems at intervals to make a series of slow gyrations or somersaults, probably to facilitate the casting of her skin, which she accomplishes several times during her five days’ life as a grub. At the end of this time the nurse-bees stop the feeding process and seal up the cell. Now the larva sets to work, first to spin herself a silken shroud before entering on her long sleep as a chrysalis, and then to change her skin for the last time. In the case of the worker these fine-wrought sleeping-clothes envelop her whole body, forming a continuous cocoon. But the queen-larva weaves herself only a scanty sort of cloak, covering her head and thorax, but leaving her nether portions bare. The theory usually advanced in explanation of this is, that when the surplus queens are slaughtered in their cells by the accepted mother-bee after her fertilisation, the fell work is rendered easier by the absence of the tough material of the cocoon over the parts generally attacked. It seems to be well substantiated that in a battle of queens the stings are not used haphazard, as with the workers, but each queen tries to thrust her weapon into one of her enemy’s spiracles or breathing-holes, of which she possesses fourteen, seven on each side. And a stroke dealt in this way appears to be always fatal.

But, in all likelihood, the true reason why the queen sleeps in a short gown made of tough, coarse fibre must be looked for somewhere back in the old ancestral history of the honey-bee. It is probably safe to consider the complete worker cocoon as a comparatively recent introduction, evolved to meet some necessity arising since the bee-people became a civilised race. But what its true origin was appears to be out of the reach of all conjecture. A curious fact is that these cocoons are never removed from the cell. They remain fixed to its sides throughout, and though the cell is otherwise carefully cleaned after the young bee has vacated it, the cocoon is never interfered with, but continues as a permanent lining to the cell. The same thing occurs with all successive generations, each bee leaving her swaddling-clothes behind her, until so great an accumulation occurs that the cell becomes too small for breeding any but a puny, undersized race. With wild bees, where the nest has been constructed in a tree-hollow, and there is usually plenty of surplus room, the old brood-combs may be eventually abandoned and fresh ones built farther on. Thus the stock generally shifts its station from year to year. These natural bee-nests, or bee-bikes, as country people call them, often reach a great age. Sometimes a swarm will get under the rafters in a house-roof, and may be left undisturbed for generations. In one case bees were traditionally supposed to have inhabited a blind loft in a farmhouse continuously for forty or fifty years. A legend rife in the village credited them with having stored many tons of honey, but when the stock was sulphured little more than a vast accumulation of comb was discovered. This comb was of all ages, from a few weeks old to an unconjecturable number of years. Much of it was perfectly black, and the cells choked up with pupa cocoons.