The Lore of the Honey-Bee

by Tickner Edwardes

The fact that egg-laying is continued in these combs where others are not available, even though the capacity of the cells has been greatly reduced, seems to cast an added doubt on the theory that the size of the cell is responsible for the fertilisation or non-fertilisation of the egg as it is deposited by the queen. Very old drone-comb is sometimes found in use for breeding purposes where the cells have become no larger than those used for normal worker-brood. And yet the queen continues to lay in them unimpregnated eggs. The whole question is still hedged round with difficulties.

The young worker-bee, at the end of about three weeks from its first inception, breaks from its chrysalis-skin, and begins to gnaw its way through the cell-cover. The pollen, which is combined with the wax to form this capping, discharges a double office. It makes the wax porous for the admittance of air, and it renders the cell-cover edible, thus causing the young bee to effect its own release through the promptings of its appetite. The new-born worker, although fully grown, is a weak, greyish-hued, flaccid creature for some time after it leaves its cradle. Its earliest impulse seems to be to groom itself, and then to wander about on a tour of inspection of its as yet narrow world of gloom and noise and bustle. For the first day or two it does little else than crawl about unnoticed in the busy throng, gradually gaining strength and rigidity of limb.

On the second day it may be seen dipping into the open honey-vats and pollen-bins, of which a few are always scattered here and there among the brood-cells. After this it seems to waken in earnest to its duties and responsibilities, and takes its place among the nurse-bees, setting to work with the rest in the stupendous task of feeding the larvæ.

In the ordinary course, the young worker-bee will not leave the hive for about a fortnight after its emergence from the cell. In the interval, however, it has a whole policy of life to study, and several trades to learn. All the indoor work of the hive appears to be done by the young bees during these first weeks of their existence. On them the whole care and sustenance of the young brood depend. They produce the wax, and build the combs; they look after the order and cleanliness of the hive; they are the brewers of the honey, and the keepers of the stores; they feed the queen-bee on her ceaseless rounds, and also give the drones their daily rations of bee-milk, for it is certain that the male bees depend very largely on the workers in this way, drawing only a part of their diet from the common stores. The old bees are the foragers; but it is probable they are met by the younger ones soon after their return to the hive, and their burden of nectar, being regurgitated, is transferred to the pouches of the young bees, by whom it is carried to the store-combs in the upper regions of the hive. At least, if the storage-chamber of a hive be opened during the busy part of the day, hardly any old bees will be seen among the crowd, which is industriously filling the cells with the new-gathered sweets.

It is not until the beginning of the second week of their life that the young bees make their first essay in the open air, and then it is only for a few minutes during the hottest part of the day. This sudden midday uproar is a familiar experience to the bee-keeper during the late spring and summer; and although the drones at first contribute largely to the chorus, they soon fly away, while the singing cloud of bees which remains enveloping every hive at this time, is entirely composed of the young house-bees taking their daily brief allowance of exercise and air.

It is found that the glands necessary for the production of the brood-food, as also the wax-generating organs, are largely developed in bees only a few weeks old, while, after their first month of life is over, these organs are greatly reduced. The bee generally begins outdoor work as a forager soon after she has reached the age of fourteen days. It is, however, probably a week or two longer before she attempts the more serious business of nectar-gathering. Nearly all the pollen-bearers are bees in their first young strength and vigour, and therefore peculiarly adapted to the carrying of heavy burdens. But as soon as the worker-bee has settled down to the great paramount task of honey-getting, she seems to leave the pollen alone. Thus, in a normal colony, the life of the honey-bee, short as it is, is carefully planned out from beginning to end, each period having its special task for which the age of the bee is peculiarly fitted. Yet this rule is no more absolute than any other of the ways of the hive. Where the community is short-handed, and there are not enough mature workers to gather stores, the young bees will be turned out to forage at a much earlier date in their career. In the same way, if a hive has been without a queen for some time, and therefore few young bees are available to care for the brood when the new mother-bee has at last established herself, many of the old workers will stay at home and busy themselves with the nursery-work, which in the ordinary course they would have long since relinquished.

There are many such instances of ingenious makeshift, or special adaptation, in the ways of the honey-bee. She is a creature full of resource on emergencies, but it is in the provision of desperate remedies for really desperate ills that she shines at her brightest. The prime disaster in bee-life is the loss of a queen at a time when it is impossible to appoint a successor. The standard of intelligence, as well as that of character, varies among bees almost as much as it does among men. Some colonies will work harder and for longer hours than the rest. Others will ease off when they have put by what they consider a sufficiency of stores, and an idle spirit spreads visibly among them. In a few cases there is a distinct moral twist in the national character, and the bees take to robbing their neighbours’ larders instead of working to furnish their own.

Permanent queenlessness is a calamity which affects different colonies in different ways. With some it means complete despair, a cessation of all enterprise or interest in life. Work is stopped; the guards are withdrawn from the gate; the community seems to give up in a body, and to await extinction with no more hope than a batch of criminals in the condemned cell. But with others the common disaster is but a signal for a universal quickening of wits, a furbishing-up of all possible and impossible resources. To bees of this temper we should look for such episodes as the egg-purloining to supply a queen-cell, which has been already dealt with. But for supreme ingenuity, even though it be the forlornest of forlorn hopes, perhaps there is nothing to equal a device sometimes resorted to in this last emergency.

Looking through a hive which is not only without a queen, but which is without any means of raising one, certain mysterious eggs are unexpectedly discovered. These eggs are obviously quite newly laid, but not in the orthodox way. A normal queen works consistently from cell to cell, over a fairly regular patch of comb, and deposits only one egg in each cell; but these eggs in the queenless hive have been laid in a curiously haphazard way. The eggs are straggled over the comb. Two or three cells have been furnished at one spot and a few more at another, without the slightest attempt at the usual order and system. Moreover, some cells contain single eggs, but others two, or even three, apiece. It looks as if some demented mother-bee from another hive had caught her keepers napping, and had made surreptitious excursion into the queenless stock. But the most careful search through the hive will reveal no queen, nor is one to be found. The explanation of the vagary is that one of the workers has, in some extraordinary way, succeeded in rousing her atrophied nature, and has become capable of laying eggs. Yet the doom of the colony is not delayed by this, but rather hastened; for these eggs will produce only drones, and thus still more useless mouths to feed. In one well-authenticated case, the bees of a queenless colony built a queen-cell, and actually transplanted to it one of these eggs laid by a fertile worker, a dead drone being afterwards found in the cell.