A Book of Natural History / Young Folks' Library Volume XIV.

by Unknown

Let us now lift up, so far as we may, one of the folds of this garlanded curtain in the midst of which the swarm is beginning to produce that strange exudation which is almost as white as snow, and is lighter than the down on a bird’s breast. The wax which is now being made does not resemble at all that with which we are acquainted. It is colorless, and may be said to be imponderable. It is the very soul of the honey, which in its turn is the very spirit of the flowers, evolved by the bees in a species of silent and motionless incantation....

It is very difficult to follow the various phases of the secretion and of the manner in which the wax is evolved by the swarm which is just beginning to build. The operation takes place in the midst of a dense crowd which becomes constantly more and more dense, thus producing a temperature favorable to the exudation of the wax in its first stage.

Huber, who was the first to study these operations with marvellous patience, and sometimes not without personal danger, has written more than fifty pages on the subject, but they are very confused. For myself, as I am not writing a scientific book, I shall confine myself to describing what anybody can see if he will watch the movements of a swarm in a glass hive. At the same time I shall not fail to avail myself of Huber’s studies whenever they may prove to be of service. We must admit at the very outset that the process by which the honey is transformed into wax in the bodies of this mysterious curtain of bees is still hidden in mystery. All that we know is that after about eighteen or twenty-four hours in a temperature so high that one might almost imagine there was a fire in the hive, small, white, transparent scales appear at the opening of the four little pockets which are to be found on each side of the abdomen of the bee. When the larger part of those who form the reversed cone have their abdomens decorated with these little ivory plates, one of them may be seen, as if under the influence of a sudden inspiration, to detach itself from the crowd and climb over the backs of its passive brethren until it reaches the apex of the cupola of the hive; attaching herself firmly to the top, she immediately sets to work to brush away those of her neighbors who may interfere with her movements. Then she seizes with her mouth one of the eight scales on the side of her abdomen and chews it, clips it, draws it out, steeps it in saliva, kneads it, crushes it, and makes it again into shape as dexterously as a carpenter would handle a piece of veneering. Then when the substance has been treated so as to bring it to the desired size and to the desired consistency, it is affixed to the very summit of the interior of the dome, and thus the first stone is laid of the new city, or rather the key-stone of the new city is placed in the arch, for we are considering a city turned upside down, which descends from the sky and which does not arise from the bosom of the earth as do terrestrial cities. Then she proceeds to apply to this key-stone more of the wax which she takes from her body, and having given to the whole of her part of the work one last finishing stroke, she retires as quickly as she came and is lost in the crowd; another replaces her and immediately takes up the work where she has left it off, adds her own to it, puts that right which appears to her to be not in conformity with the general plan, and disappears in her turn, while a third and a fourth and a fifth succeed her in a series of sudden and inspired apparitions, not one of whom finishes a piece of work, but all bring to it their common share.

A Bee Hive.

Now there hangs from the top of the vault a small block of wax which is yet without form. As soon as it appears to be thick enough there comes out of the group another bee bearing an entirely different aspect from that of those which have preceded it. One may well believe on seeing the certainty, the determination, with which he goes about his work and the manner in which those who stand round about him look on, that he is an expert engineer who has come to construct in space the place which the first cell shall occupy, the cell from which must mathematically depend everything which is afterwards constructed. Whatever he may be, this bee belongs to a class of the sculpturing, of chisel working bees who produce no wax and whose function seems to be to employ the materials with which the others furnish them. This bee then chooses the place of the first cell. She digs for a moment in the block of wax which has already been placed in position, and builds up the side of the cell with the wax that she picks from the cavity. Then in exactly the same way as her predecessors have done, she suddenly leaves the work she has designed; another impatient worker replaces her and carries it on another step, which is finished by a third one. In the meantime others are working round about her according to the same method of division of labor until the outer sides of each wall is finished.

It would almost seem that an essential law of the hive was that every worker should take a pride in its work, and that all the work should be done in common, and so to speak, unanimously, in order that the fraternal spirit should not be disturbed by a sense of jealousy.

Very soon the outline of the comb may be seen. In form it is still lenticular, for the little prismatic tubes of which it is composed are unequally prolonged, and they diminish as they get away from the centre towards the extremities. At this moment it might be compared, both in form and in thickness, to a human tongue hanging down from two of the sides of the hexagonal cells which are placed back to back.

As soon as the first cells are constructed, the workers add a roof to the second and so on to the third and to the fourth. These sets of cells are divided by irregular intervals, and they are calculated in such a manner that when they are made to receive their full complement, the bees always have room enough to move about between the parallel walls of the honeycombs.

It follows then that in making their original plan the different thicknesses of every honeycomb must be fixed upon, and at the same time the alley-ways which separate each must be different in turn, and this width must be twice the height of a bee since they have to pass each other between the upright combs.