British Bees / An Introduction into the Studies of the Natural History and Economy of the Bees Indigenous to the British Isles

by William Edward Shuckard

floralis, Kirby.

Sowerbiana, Kirby.

Beckwithella, Kirby.

Curtisella, Kirby.

Forsterella, Kirby.

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.

These, perhaps the most conspicuous of our native bees, certainly the largest, and probably the most generally known after the domestic bee, have their scientific generic name from βόμβος, an imitative word, made to indicate the sound of the hum of the insects themselves. They have many popular names such as bumble bees, dumbledors, humble-bees, and in Scotland they are called foggie bees. They consist of three sexes, males, females, and neuters, which differ considerably in size, the females being very much the largest, and the neuters the smallest. Of course, individually, like all other insects, there is much variation among them in the intensity or diversity of the colouring of their pubescence, from which it is chiefly that they derive their specific distinctions; in the relative sizes of individuals also there are great differences. It is the males, as is usual among the bees, which are the gayest in their attire, and take the widest range of variation, and sometimes so much exceed the typical specific character in their markings as to require experience to identify them, and to place them correctly with their true species, which can only be ascertained with certainty by the examination of the male organs of generation, which differ in the various species, but are undeviating in their specific uniformity. Of this character, which I was the first to discover as being of specific value for critical determination in the separation of the species of very difficult insects, I was enabled to make important use in the genus Dorylus, in a monograph on the Dorylidæ, an exotic family proximate to the ants, and which was published in Taylor’s ‘Annals of Natural History’ for May, June, and July, 1840. The females and neuters of Bombus are less subject to such extensive dissimilarity, and may be usually associated, by their pubescence, in their legitimate groups. Form also frequently lends its aid as subsidiary to their specific identification.

These and Apis mellifica are our only social bees, which live in numerous communities under a kind of municipal government which is considerably less perfectly organized in the present genus than in the domestic bee, and thence they are called “villagers,” in contradistinction to the citizenship of the hive bee, earned by its comparatively metropolitan institutions, and the centralization of its government, which wholly emanates from the pervading influence of the queen upon the labours, and, indeed, upon the existence of her subjects. But the Bombi are under much less social restraint, and admit of several co-regents in the same community, without its being productive of any disturbance of social harmony. In the account of the genus Apathus, the last described, we have seen that the Bombi are subject to bee-parasites, which in some closely resemble the species they infest, and we have also shown there how these are distributed. The hive bee is not exposed to such intrusion, although, like these, they have many enemies. In the very earliest spring months these Bombi are abroad; for as soon as the catkins of the sallow are ripe for impregnation, they are on the wing. But it is now that the large females only are at work, for they have to create their companions before they can be surrounded by them. Their fruition is the result of the previous autumn’s amours, at a period too late to form sufficient stores for the numerous brood they will produce, and accordingly, after revelling in a brief honeymoon, they resort, like staid matrons, to a temporary domicile, some cavity just large enough for themselves. In this retirement they pass the cheerless wintry months, requiring perhaps the incubation of time thoroughly to mature their fruit. Whether this be the case or not, as soon as the earth begins to feel the warmth of the sun upon its return from its far southern journey, and to respond to the renewed vitality it gives to vegetation, these bees feel its active influence and come forth. With the progress of the spring and summer most flowers are exposed to their rifling, but they revel upon the elegant flowers of the Horse-chestnut, and their hum is the music of the lime when it is in blossom. According to the species, they select a cavity for their nest, or construct it upon the surface of the ground, this being the case with the CARDER-BEES, which gather moss to construct their residence. In those which inhabit beneath the surface, the selection of an already formed cavity greatly abridges their labour, and their instinct prompts them to choose one sufficiently large for the prospective community, but the nest itself is gradually extended in size suitable to their progressive increase in numbers. All that the parent female does at first is to form a receptacle sufficiently large for her first gatherings of pollen and honey, whereon to deposit her first eggs, and to form a waxen cruse or two to contain the honey requisite for the nest operations of keeping these masses moist enough for the nurture of the larvæ. The material of these pots although called wax is not properly so, but is an agglutination of collected vegetable matter, for it is not plastic to the fingers like wax, and it burns, leaving a carbonaceous residuum very attractive to moisture. The larvæ hatched from the eggs now deposited produce the first neuters, which spin a cocoon wherein they rapidly undergo their transformations. They are, in the first instance, aided to emerge from their silken cot by the parent gnawing off its top, but subsequently this duty is performed, as the family increases, by the neuters then developed. The young bee, on emerging from its cocoon, is not thoroughly hardened in its integument, and its pubescence also acquires by degrees only its proper colouring; all this is not long in being effected, but, until they are thoroughly able to fly forth, they continue to be fed by their elder sisterhood, for the neuters are properly abortive females. Males, and further productive females are produced later in the spring, and are smaller than the normal sizes of those sexes; the autumnal brood, consisting also of males and females, again resume the full size of the complete insect, and it is these females which, after impregnation, hibernate and reappear in the following early spring to be each the parent of a new progeny. The population of these nests varies considerably in the several species: in some, as in that of Bombus terrestris, there are more than two hundred, and in that of B. senilis there are about a hundred and forty; but it is in those that construct their nests above the ground that the fewest are found. As with the general population, so with the relative proportions of the sexes, the several species vary. Of course all these numbers are approximative only, as under certain conditions they will necessarily differ, nor are the general or relative numbers identical, even in the same species, in the same season, and in the same locality. The proportions are usually somewhat like this, about double the number of neuters to females, and nearly the same number of males as of females. In some of the communities there are even as few as twenty neuters, and these, of course, comprise those species which are most rarely found by collectors. The most pugnacious of all, and the fiercest in their attacks and most painful in their stings, are those which live underground or in cavities formed of accumulations of stones, and it is these which are the least constructive in their habitations, as if their truculent nature rejected the concomitants of incipient civilization; for it is those which build moss-nests, requiring a certain amount of skill, that are the most gentle in their habits. With the increase of numbers in the habitation, the rapidity of the labours progresses, and the accumulations quickly increase; but there is always opportunity for the entire community to find employment, either in enlarging their nests, when they build them, or in securing them from the intrusion of water, or repelling enemies, or feeding the young, and accumulating stores. In collecting pollen they are often covered as if they had rolled themselves in it, and this they brush from their hairy bodies chiefly with their posterior legs; sometimes they return in this disguised condition, and free themselves from it only at home; in other cases they bring it home collected in little masses upon the corbiculum, or basket, of the posterior shanks. They may be often caught thus laden, and I once captured a large female of B. terrestris, with the shanks and plantæ of both intermediate and posterior legs covered with masses of thick clay, required doubtless at home for some domestic repairs. The instinct of these bees teaches them that where the tube of the flower is too narrow for the introduction of their body, and too long for even their long proboscis to reach the nectarium at the bottom, they may get at the honey by piercing a hole near that organ, which they know where to find, and thus they readily get at the treasure that they seek, lapping it through the aperture and carrying it off. If, in their collecting excursions, they are intercepted by heavy rains, or loiter far away too long until the twilight closes, they will pass the night away from home, and return laden with their gatherings as soon as the warmth of the sun reanimates them to activity; thus they will often sleep in flowers, and a nest therefore taken at night is not always a sure indication in those found within it, of its complete population. In their amours, the autumnal females evince considerable coquetry to attract their partners: they place themselves upon some branch in the most fervid sunshine, and here they practise their cajoleries in the vibrations of their wings, and allure them by their attractive postures. The males are simultaneously abroad, and soon perceive them. The seduction is complete, and they pounce down upon them with impetuosity, but their brief indulgence terminates in death, for with his abating vigour the female repulses him, and he falls to the ground never to take wing again. Amongst their insect enemies the Dipterous genera, Volucella and Conops, are very destructive to their larvæ,—the first of these genera in its colouring greatly resembling the species upon which it preys. Foxes, weasels, field-mice, all prey upon them, and, like schoolboys, often destroy the bee for the sake of its honey-bag, an instance of which I have before recorded as illustrative of their endurance of the loss of a considerable portion of the body without its being fatal.

The most interesting part of their history is perhaps that upon which I have not yet enlarged, namely, the structure of their nests. This is particularly the case with the carder-bees, which felt and plait the filaments of moss to form its whole enclosure. Such species select a spot close to an abundant supply of the material; this they bite off and form pellets of. To these nests a moderately long arched passage is formed of the same material, of sufficient size to permit the free passage of the bees to and fro. This necessarily is shorter at first and leads to a smaller receptacle when the parent bee works alone. But as her offspring of workers increases, the passage is lengthened and the nest enlarged. To construct it, when in full activity, the bees form a chain, one behind the other, extending from the growing material to the entrance of their passage to the nest, all their heads being turned towards the moss and their backs to the nest. The first bites off the raw material, rolls it and twists it, and passes it to the second, by whom and the succeeding ones it undergoes further manipulation, and where the chain terminates at the commencement of the passage another bee receives it and conveys it along this into the interior, and then applies it itself or passes it to others thus employed where it is required. A vaulted covering and sides is thus formed or extended within the cavity by the plaiting or wreathing together of these sprigs of moss, and the inside of which is further strengthened by being plastered with a coating of the pseudo-wax, which, however, smells much like true wax, and with which the lower loose filaments of the moss are intermingled, that one cannot be separated from the other without tearing the whole to pieces. Thus ingeniously do these insects enclose their home. These nests are not always on the surface, but often cavities of the necessary size are thus lined, and then they are doubly secure. Within these nests, with the increase of the population the number of the cocoons of course increases, as they are never used twice over, excepting that when they are conveniently situated for the purpose they are converted into honey pots. Thus sometimes several layers are formed of these irregularly-placed cocoons, of which the longest diameter is, however, always perpendicular to the horizon. In this way B. muscorum, senilis, fragrans, and others build. Some use a naked cavity, and merely secure it in its crevices from the filtering intrusion of rain or other water, the closing patches being formed of the usual waxy material. This is the practice of B. terrestris, which associates the largest communities of all; and B. lapidarius seeks cavities among stones or in the earth, and forms a nest of a regular oval, but merely clothes the sides, which is done by bits of moss and grass carried carefully home. The domestic arrangements within are much the same in all, the prolific females and the neuters being the labourers, which perform all the duties of building, the collecting and caring for the young, the function of the males being limited to the perpetuation of the species.

Subsection 2. Without Spurs to the posterior Tibiæ.