Yet, do bees always suspend their combs? Do they never construct a waxen storehouse, raising it tier above tier from the floor of the hive, after the system of the more intelligent creature, Man?
The first commentary on this is, that such a departure from their common methods would be no improvement, but a retrograde step. These long comb-walls of the bees have a close analogy to the modern transatlantic sky-scraper building. The trouble with all such buildings is to provide them with sufficient base for their height. If American engineers had at their disposal a material of adequate tensile strength, and there were anything in nature to hang them from, it would be, scientifically, a better plan to suspend these buildings than to erect them, because the house would then naturally tend to keep its verticality, and the base-problem would cease to exist. On the same principle the bees, having at hand a material of almost ideal tensility, and a suitable hanging-beam, wisely suspend their heavily, weighted combs from the roof, instead of erecting them, like certain kinds of ant-structures.
But it is undoubtedly long racial experience, and not inability to follow the humanly approved method, that guides them here. Rarely—so rarely that the writer, in the course of many years spent among bees, has seen only a single example of it—bees will build comb upwards, if circumstances will allow no other way. And this would seem not only to drive the last coffin-nail for the poor instinct-theory, but to carve its epitaph as well.
In the instance referred to, a glass-bottomed box had been inverted over the feed-hole of a common hive, and had there remained forgotten. As the season progressed, the hive grew great with bees and honey, and it became imperative to build additional store-comb in the box overhead. But its slippery glass roof would give no foothold to the builders. Time and again they must have tried to get upon it, with their wax-hods filled and ready, and each time failed: the ordinary way of comb-building was clearly impossible. Then the engineers of the hive, inspired by the difficulty, got to work in another way. On the wooden surface below they laid out the plan of a garner-house, not after their usual method of parallel combs, but a regular, oblong house, with cellular storerooms, and communicating passages in between. Upon this they raised storey above storey of horizontal cells, until the glass roof was nearly reached. At this stage, apparently, the honey-flow came to an end in the fields, for the cells in the store-house were never sealed, though all were nearly full of honey; and later in the season it was found and carried away by the bee-master, who still preserves it as a curiosity. He bears a well-known name, [218] and his testimony as to the making of this unique little honey-house is beyond question; but, indeed, it carries in itself infallible evidence of its authenticity. All honey-cells made by bees have a slight upward inclination, which helps, as has been already explained, to retain their contents until they can be capped over. And every cell in the storehouse clearly showed this upward slant.
CHAPTER XIII
WHERE THE BEE SUCKS
It is characteristic of those unlettered in bee-craft that they are often afraid when there is no danger, and will venture with the intrepidity that is born of ignorance where old experienced bee-keepers fear to tread.
Temper in bees is one of the most variable qualities in a creature made up of variabilities. There are times, when a summer storm is threatening and the air is charged with electricity, when to go among the bees is to court certain disaster; and there are other times, such as the full height of the honey-flow, when almost any liberties can be taken with bees, without fear of reprisals. And yet this is not always the rule. Much depends on their lineage and the purity of the strain, and, again, on the systems of the bee-master. Bees respond as readily as any other form of domestic stock to wise and considerate treatment. Handled in a firm, quiet, deliberate way, the most vicious colony can often be dealt with in perfect safety; while the mildest-natured bees will commonly meet fumbling indexterity with a prompt challenge to war.
Since the Italian bee was brought to England, some half-century ago, there is no doubt that the original English strain has been greatly modified. Some authorities, indeed, question whether there are any absolutely pure British bees left at all. The golden girdles of the Italian crop up in the most unlikely places, and the foreign blood seems to have got into the race in all but the remotest parts of the country. One must regret, although it is a vain regret now, that these undesirable aliens were ever allowed to set foot on the soil. Whatever naturally survives and thrives in a particular country, must be the most suitable thing for that country; and these southern races of the honey-bee seem to have brought back, to the detriment of our own stock, idiosyncrasies long ago bred out of the native race. Much of the nervous irritability and proneness to disease visible in the honey-bee of to-day is more or less directly traceable to the introduction of foreign blood; and the grand special advantage of the Italian bee—its much vaunted and widely advertised possession of a long tongue—has proved an entire myth. Numberless measurements undertaken by our leading scientific apiarians have proved that the Italian bee has a tongue no longer than any other, although most are willing to concede her the possession of a very long and ready sting indeed. But here we do her an injustice: a pure-bred Italian worker-bee is as good or as bad tempered as any other of her species. It is the first crosses with the native bee which display so much vindictive aggressiveness, and have given to the whole race its general bad name.
In the time of the great honey-flow—which in southern England begins in May, early or late, according to the season, and may endure for six weeks—it is a common thing in the country to see people turn back from the footpaths, running through the white-clover or sainfoin fields, because of the huge and terrifying uproar made by the foraging bees. When there is a large acreage under these crops, and the day is a fair one, this note reaches a volume hardly to be credited as a sound of work and peace. It is much more like the din of a great bee-war, and it is small wonder that the stranger, unlearned in the ways of the hives, should fear to go through what is very like a scene of battle and carnage.