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

GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.

The name of this genus, Apis, adopted by Linnæus as the classical generic name of the bee, although with him it comprised the whole modern family of these insects, but which, as now restricted, in accordance with its limitation exclusively to the congeners of his adopted type, is the ancient Latin vernacular name of the honey-bee, and to which it has been ever since uniformly attached. This name, as shown by its derivative meaning, was originally imposed with direct reference to the insect’s constructive habits, as was the case with the names given to it in the more primitive languages before referred to, and which is also the origin of its Teutonic and Scandinavian appellations—Biene, Bie, and Bi, whence our own common name for it is obtained through the Saxon Beo, and we have beside Bye or bee, signifying a dwelling. From this circumstance it would seem that a very early and universal discernment existed of its ingenuity and skill, its significant name being everywhere analogous.

The habits and economy of these industrious little creatures have been a source of greater wonder and admiration the more closely and accurately they have been observed. They have attracted the thoughtful speculation of minds of the largest compass throughout all ages, which, reasoning upon the modus operandi of these insects, have endeavoured to define, and determine the differences between instinct and reason, with their precise limitations. But baffled in their attempt to settle whether these be affinities or analogies, it should rather have persuaded them to adopt the motto of Montaigne, and exclaim, Que sais-je? Into these metaphysical discussions it is not necessary to enter, and I confine myself to the natural history of the insect.

Although the description of the three sexes which comprise the population of the hive are technically given above with scientific precision, it will be as well, perhaps, to recapitulate them briefly, with their distinctive attributes, in a more popular form.

They consist of a queen, or productive female, whose function is thought to be exclusively to lay eggs, but who may perhaps have some hitherto undiscovered control over the executive of the hive, to be implied by the confusion invariably following her death or her removal from the community, and which becomes totally destructive to its organic constituency unless stayed by another monarch being improvised, or by one extraneously supplied; one monarch alone rules without a coadjutor, and without any equal being tolerated, for the presence of a second queen, or the immature larva of one, even of her own progeny, maddens her to murderous aggression, or to the impulse of emigration accompanied with a host of adherents. She never leaves the hive when once her duties have fully commenced, for by distinction of structure she is rendered incompetent to execute any of the labours that devolve upon the workers; her tongue is formed only to lap nutriment; she has no cysts for the secretion of wax, she is without the honey-bag for conveying that liquid home, and her posterior shanks are convex externally, and thus deficient in the concave basket for carrying home the stores of pollen or propolis, whilst their plantæ are without the little earlet at the top externally, or the close dense brush arranged in rows within, which aid these workers in their many manipulations. Her wings are too short to convey her ponderous body through the air, and her sting becomes stronger by being curved. Thus she is exonerated from labour by the incapacity of her structure to execute it, although her duties are quite as incessant and as arduous, being indispensable to the perpetuation of the species.

Her consort, the DRONE, is the male of the hive, and although the queen is monandrous or single-spoused, and although the hive during the season rarely throws off more than three swarms, usually restricted to the accompaniment of a single queen, and thus but three males are absolutely required, nature is so provident of the great design of perpetuation, that to provide against the possibility of its frustration, the hive usually produces about a thousand drones. A peculiarity in the structure of the drone which facilitates his discovery of the virgin queen when she issues from the hive on the bridal excursion, which she makes preliminary to her heading a swarm of emigrants, or assuming monarchy at home, consists in the vertical enlargement of his compound eyes, which meet over the brow, and in the posterior expansion of the inferior wings, which take a broad backward sweep, giving the insect larger powers of flight, but perhaps required as much by its own bulkiness and weight as for the purpose of ascending above his bride in the upper regions of the air; but that its weight cannot be the sole reason is testified by the analogous structure in the male of the genus Astata, one of the fossorial Hymenoptera, where a similar expansion of the inferior wing is concomitant with a similar development of the compound eyes, yet in which the abdomen is very small, and this power is therefore evidently given to these merely to increase the velocity or the duration of their flight. The rest of the structure of these drones disables them, like all other male bees, for any labour; and as they must be sustained as long as they may be of service, the possibility of which terminates with the last issue of a swarm from the hive, a period appreciated by the instinct of the workers, they are then driven forth, but it is in dispute whether the workers destroy them, or whether their destruction is effected by exposure and hunger, or by the natural limitation of their lives, for although their tongues are formed upon the same type as that of the worker, it is considerably less developed, and appears to be adapted only to obtain nutriment from the honey already collected in the cells, as they seem even deficient in the instinct to gather it for themselves from flowers, never being observed to visit them.

The last inhabitant of the hive is the WORKER, or abortive female, whose labour has several phases. A difference of size amongst them has been supposed to have been noticed by observers as varying with their occupation and duties, but as they are all constructed in the same manner, with precisely the same organs, which are of the same form and in the same situation, this must be a mere imaginative surmise. Their similarity of structure permits them, collectively, to apply themselves to the same occupations which the needs of the community may at any moment demand. Taking them separately with their distinctive occupations at any given time, without implying by it a permanent separation of classes, we find them to consist of wax secreters, builders or cell-sculpturers, honey collectors, pollen collectors, propolis collectors, nurses of the young, ventilators, undertakers to carry off the dead, who are perhaps also the scavengers which cleanse away any occasional dirt, sentinels to guard the hive outside and inside, and attendants upon the queen, or as the “‘Times’ Bee Master” very aptly designates them “ladies in waiting,” and at all times many slumberers are reposing from their toils. That all these duties are transferable, and consequently are transferred indifferently from one to the other, is implied by their general capacity for fulfilling them resulting from this identity of structure, which will be understood as not at all infringed by the separate capacities I unfold as devolving from their temporarily limited functions, all being simultaneously in action, but distributed amongst the several individuals.

The first important occupation of the worker is the secretion of wax for the structure of the cells, and, to effect this, honey must be collected, for it is solely from the digestion of honey that the wax is produced. This in due course passes from the first stomach or honey-pouch wherein it is collected, thence to the second stomach, and then on to the cysts or little bags which run along on each side from the second to the fifth ventral segments, and correspond and communicate with eight trapezoidal depressions placed externally upon the plates of the ventral segments—four on each side, through the concavity of which the secreted wax exudes in a liquid, transparent, hot state, forming a thin scale within each, which the air hardens into a white substance, as the pulp of paper is hardened upon the form into which it is introduced, or like salt crystallizing into flakes from sea-water in shallow salines. This, however, is not yet wax, although its essential constituent, but to become so these scales are removed by the scopulæ of the posterior plantæ and their auricle, to the intermediate feet and by these transferred to the anterior pair, which pass them to the mandibles, where they are masticated and mixed with a saliva issuing from the mouth, and thus intermingled they consolidate into a white opaque mass, which issues from the mouth like a thin strip of riband, and constitutes true wax, plastic to their manipulation. To form this secretion, the bees having collected the honey themselves in the first instance, or having consumed sufficient before leaving the hive with the swarm, but which they subsequently obtain from the supplies stored in the present hive, hang themselves in festoons in all directions about its cavity, each festoon being formed by two parallel chains of bees clinging together; the top bee on each side hangs by its anterior claws to the top of the hive, and the next in succession grasps with its fore claws the hind claws of that and so on, until the depth of the festoon they find to be sufficient, when the bottom bees of each chain swing themselves together, and cling to each other in the same manner by their hind claws only. These festoons are speedily suspended, and with a fresh swarm are in immediate active operation. The secretion requires about twenty-four hours to complete, and as this is accomplished the festoons break up, and these secreters convey it to where the sculpturer bees or builders are moulding the cells, to whom it is successively supplied by the secreters themselves as wanted, for none is stored, although the wax of old or dilapidated parts of the hive, or of the vacated cells of the new-born queens are reconverted to use. These builders are very rapid in their construction of the hexagonal cells, which, as they are progressively completed, are stored with honey, this being during the time assiduously gathered by the honey collectors, and these cells are interspersed occasionally with those wherein pollen or propolis is stored, each of which, as the bees collecting them successively return, is cast into the selected cell by the bee collecting it, who returns at once to the same employment, whilst the store thus deposited is immediately compactly pressed in and warehoused by other bees who fulfil that duty, or who cover it in when the cells are filled, with a waxen covercle formed of concentric circles; or, in the case of the honey-cells, to keep the thickened operculum deposited upon it in due position and repair, after the retiring of the bee which brought home the fresh store of honey, and which had displaced it to regurgitate her addition into the cell. This operculum or cover is of a thicker consistency than the honey itself, and prevents its oozing from the cells, which would often take place from their uniformly horizontal position, were it not for the sagacity which prompts them to introduce this preventive, and which is not removed until the cell is filled; it is then covered hermetically with its waxen top.

A sufficient number of cells being ready, and sufficient stores of honey, pollen, and propolis for the progressive labours of the hive, and a great number of empty cells all finished for the use of the queen, she begins to lay her eggs. As these are hatched the duty of the nursing-bees commences, which is to feed the young, who crave for food like young birds, and are as diligently supplied by these nurses with a material called bee-bread, which consists of masticated pollen, the pollen being exclusively stored and used for the purpose. This is mixed with some secretion from the mouth, which converts it into a sort of frothy jelly. These bees are never negligent of their duties, and with their feeding the larvæ rapidly grow.

To keep up a necessary supply of air in the hive, and to prevent suffocation from heat, a certain number of the community are employed in fanning the passages between the cakes of comb and the whole interior of the hive, by the vibration of their wings, which thoroughly ventilates it, and the accumulation of deleterious air is prevented; some, for this purpose, being posted at the aperture to the hive, where, this vibration causing a temporary vacuum, the external air rushes in, and the chain of succession of bees within becoming thus vibrating air-valves completes the ventilating arrangement. While all these operations are progressing, a certain number are acting as a militia of citizens, who have substitutes only in the succession and change of duties. These act as sentinels, who guard the entrance and patrol the interior and courageously intercept all inimical intrusion, for the bees have many enemies, but who are merely so to benefit themselves, and are not parasites of the nature of the bee-parasites of the solitary kinds; and where they cannot individually avert it, they obtain collateral aid from others of their staff. The next class is the attendants upon the queen: these vary in number from twelve to twenty; they invariably accompany her wherever she proceeds throughout the hive, for the purpose of laying her eggs; and whether their custom gave rise to the etiquette which attends human royalty, that a subject may never turn the back upon the sovereign, these attendant bees surround her with the head always turned towards her, and seem to caress her with their antennæ and pay her every kind of deferential homage, those in front moving backwards as she advances, and those on each side, laterally, so that they ever face her; and as they tire others succeed them in their duties. Another set fulfil the office of keeping the hive thoroughly clean, for the transit of such large numbers will inevitably collect occasional dirt, as will the drift of the wind at the entrance of the hive and the action of the ventilators themselves. Their duty it is also to remove any extraneous organic body that has forcibly entered and which may have succumbed to the vindictiveness of the bees. Where they are not strong enough, even collectively, to effect the removal, as in the case of a mouse or anything else as large or larger, they then call to their aid the wax workers and the repairers; these enclose the obnoxious body, which they have the judgment to know will become dangerous from putrefaction, to aid in its prevention, by a cerement of wax or propolis, which prevents any offensive exhalation, and thus secures the wholesomeness of the hive.