Insect Stories

by Vernon L. Kellogg

I leaped to my feet; that is, if an elderly professor, who has certain twinges in his joints occasionally, can really leap. Anyway I knocked over my chair—and precious near my microscope—in getting up, and started for the bees. And that shows the high degree of my excitement. But never before in all the years I had played with bees had I heard the trumpet challenges of queen bees to the death duel. Inside the cell was the new queen shut up in darkness, but ready and eager to come out, and piping her challenge. And outside, brave and fearless, if old and worn, was the mother queen trumpeting back her defiance. It was the spirit of the Amazons.

And what excitement in the hive! Simply frantic were the thousands of workers. We watched them racing about wildly; up, down, across, back; but mostly clustering in the bottom near the queen cell. And working industriously at the cell itself, a group of builders, strengthening and thickening the cell's walls especially at the closed lower end. They seemed to be, yes, they were, preventing the new queen inside from coming out. She was probably gnawing away with her trowel-like jaws at the soft wax from the inside, while they were putting on more wax and keeping her a prisoner.

This went on for two or three days. The piping and trumpeting kept up intermittently, and the thickening of the cell constantly. Until the time came!

And now I am going to disappoint you dreadfully. But much less than Mary and I were disappointed. We were not there when the time came!

The bees were excited, I have said. Mary and I were excited, I have said. The bees put in all their time being excited and watching the queen cell. We put in most of ours. But we had to eat and we had to sleep. The bees didn't seem to. And so we missed the coming out. What a pity! How unfair to us! And to you.

As there is by immemorial honey-bee tradition but one queen in a community at one time, when new queens issue from the great cells, something has to happen. This may be one of three things: either the old and new queens battle to death, and it is believed that in such battles only does a queen bee ever use her sting, or the workers interfere and kill either the old or new queen by "balling" her (gathering in a tight suffocating mass about her), or either the old (usually old) or new queen leaves the hive with a swarm, and a new community is founded. In Fuzzy's community this last thing happened when the new queen came out.

Mary and I were on hand very early the morning of the third day after the piping and trumpeting had begun. As we jerked the black cloth jacket off the hive to see how things were, we were astonished at the new excitement that was apparent in the hive; the bees seemed to be in a perfect frenzy and had suspended all other operations except racing about in apparent utter dementia. We could find neither the old queen nor the new queen in the seething mass, nor could we even see whether the queen cell was open or still sealed up.

Another curious thing was that the taking off of the black cloth jacket seemed to affect the bees very strongly. They had suddenly become very sensitive to light, and while, when the jacket was on, they all seemed to be making towards the bottom and especially towards the exit corner, which was the lower corner next to the window, as soon as we lifted off the jacket they seemed all to rush up to the top where the light was strongest. So nearly simultaneous and uniform were the turning and rushing up that the whole mass of bees seemed to flow like some thick mottled liquid.

It was evident that all this was the excitement and frenzy of swarming. And it was also evident that the bees, in their great excitement, were finding their way to the outlet by the light that came in through it. And when we removed the cloth jacket we confused them because the light now came into the hive from both sides and was especially strong at the top, which was nearest the greatest expanse of the outer window. So we finally let the jacket stay on, and after a considerable time of violent exertion, the bees began to issue pell-mell from the door of the house. The first comers waited for the others, and there was pretty soon formed a great mass of excited bees around the doorway, and clustered on the stone window-sill just outside. Then suddenly the whole mass took wing and flew away together. And pretty soon all was quiet in the hive.

Mary and I had been nearly as excited as the bees, and we were glad to sit and rest a little and get breath again. Soon it was luncheon time and we went off to Mary's house without looking into the hive. We had had just about all the bee observing we needed for one forenoon. But almost the first thing that Mary did at the table was to straighten up suddenly and cry out, "I wonder if Fuzzy swarmed!" And thereafter that was all we thought of, and we made a very hasty meal of it. And the moment we got up we hurried back to Fuzzy's home and jerked off the black jacket.