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

Here is completed, with the enumeration of those which successively repose from their toil, the several labours of the community which inhabits the hive.

The structure of the workers, which enables them to carry on all these operations with the requisite facility, is very different from that of the two sexes we have just described. As before said, they are abortive females, but, as I shall have occasion to explain lower down, capable of having this special incapacity removed, if the necessary process requisite to be adopted for the purpose be applied within three days of their being hatched into the larva state. The acquisition of the faculty of fertility entails, however, the loss of all power of pursuing any of the other occupations of the hive practised exclusively by the workers in general. The nurture that gives it them converts them into queens, and moulds them to the structure of this sex described above. As a remarkable and rare exception, some one or other of these workers will occasionally have power of laying a few eggs, but which are always those of drones. The other peculiarities of their structure are its adaptation to the secretion of wax above described; and their power of throwing up the honey they have collected in the first stomach or honey-bag, before it passes on by digestion, somewhat in the way the ruminant quadrupeds bring up the cud, of course by muscular action, without the convulsion of vomiting. Their next distinction is that their mandibles are edentate and more like spoons, and are often so used, or as the plastering-trowel of masons is for smoothing surfaces. Their legs remarkably differ from those of the other sexes, all of their limbs being somewhat adapted to the collection and conveyance of pollen and its manipulation, as well as that of propolis; but it is the posterior shanks which are specially constructed for the conveyance of these materials, by being framed externally like a little basket; being hollowed longitudinally and their lateral edges fringed with recurved hair, which retains whatever may be placed within the smooth and hollow surface, and the apical extreme edge has a pecten or comb of short stiff bristles. The first joint of the posterior feet have also their distinctive form, adapted to special branches of their economy. These are oblong, wider than the shank, and about two-thirds its length, and consequently powerful limbs; at the outer angle of the edge, nearest the shank, is a little projection called the auricle or earlet, the inner surface is clothed with ten parallel transverse rows of close dense hair, and its apical edge has along its whole width a pecten similar to that of the apex of the shank. This shank being without spurs, which only the domestic bee is deficient in, gives the pecten a freedom of action it would not otherwise have, and enables it to be used together with the earlet opposite to it on the foot, as an instrument for laying hold of the thin flakes of wax upon the venter, and to bring them forward to the intermediate legs to be passed on to the mouth, and there to be converted into wax. The pecten of the foot and also its brush aid in their removal in case of need, and help as well both in the manipulation and the storing the materials collected. Thus, this whole structure, exclusively possessed by the worker, is pre-eminently designed for the manifold operations of the hive; and the bee itself and its works are but one closely linked chain of wonderful contrivances.

The entire economy of the hive seems to emanate exclusively from the two most prominent attributes of instinct, that of self-preservation, and that other more important axis of the vast wheel of creation, the secured perpetuation of the kind by the conservative στοργὴ, or absorbing love of the offspring. The latter is more eminently developed in the social bees than in any other group of the family of these insects. In the solitary bees it presents itself as a blind impulse, unconscious of its object; for did we admit the consciousness of the purpose of their labours, we should evidently endow them with reason. How could they know, without reflection, that the food they store in the receptacle they form for the egg they will deposit, and which receptacle is exactly adapted to the size that the larva which will be hatched from it will take, is to nurture a creature they will never see, and whose wonderful transformations they will not therefore witness? In the hive bee the maternal instinct exhibits itself as an energy diffused through a multitude of individuals, but these witness the results of their solicitude, and exclusively promote its successful issue; and in these also the instinct of self-preservation is a diffused impulse, which likewise includes the preservation of the society.

As male and female conjunctively make up the species, thus do the queen-bee and the neuters collectively make up one sex,—the mother,—for the functions performed by the female alone in the case of the solitary kinds of bees are, in the genus Apis, separately executed. The cares and labours of maternity devolve upon these neuters, while the queen-bee’s maternal function is limited to merely laying the eggs with which she is replete, with the instinctive power of selecting for them their proper depository,—each of which is adapted in size to that of the sex which will be produced. Her maternal instinct stops abruptly here, without the development of an afterthought or care for their future thriving. The instinct of the neuters, like the anticipative promptings of the human mother, to prepare the clothing and other necessaries for her expected infant, has forecast the queen’s needs in its intermittent urgency, by progressively constructing cells fitted severally in size for the growth and nurture of neuters, the first developed; of drones, the next produced; and lastly, of queens, which soon afterwards appear; she instinctively knowing the proper time and the suitable use of them, having the faculty of distinguishing them with a view to the deposit of the particular kind of eggs of which she is for the moment parturient.

The drones, or male bees, appear to receive life for one substantial purpose only, which is soon accomplished, but during the short space of time its successive performance requires, it is incidentally accompanied with assistance to the general community whilst they remain permitted occupants of the hive, by aiding in heating and ventilating it,—a labour repaid by the food, which they obtain from the stores kept open for daily consumption. Although uncontributive to the acquisition of the riches of the hive, yet are they indispensable to the perpetuation of the species, and their murder as supposed by some apiarians, or their expulsion as thought by others, in either case equally terminating in their destruction, seems an unworthy return for the important service performed, although this is restricted to the number of individuals required by the equal number of queens that may be produced. To this number their production might be limited, but for the chance of either or all of these queens failing by some casualty to obtain a prince consort. To baffle the possibility of this mischance, a very superfluous number of these drones is hatched, as above stated, which are on the alert, when each queen successively issues forth upon her bridal morn, to catch her favouring glances, and be the accepted groom. That they are not further conducive to the well-being of the hive is the fault of their structure and of their instinct, which are correlative, they being as little fitted either in their tongue or their legs for the uses of the hive as the queen herself. The physiology of their intercourse is a mystery of mysteries, and would seem to partake of the principle, modified, of that developed in the aphides, where the vital power passes on through successive generations by the efficiency of the energy of one ancestral intercourse. In the hive bee this is not the case, but in these the one espousal fertilizes eggs to the number of often a hundred thousand, yet undeveloped and even indiscernible by the aid of the microscope in the ovaries of the queen, and which become bees progressively in the course of a couple of years, the supposed duration of her existence, during the whole of which time she is laying. The accepted male is destroyed by the effects of the amour, and when all the queens which are to be the heads of independent communities are successively fertilized, and have led forth their colonies, the remaining drones issue compulsively from the hive and are lost in the wideness of nature, and die by the natural limitation of their existence, or become the prey of their numerous enemies.

The neuters or workers are, as it were, emanations of the queen, or the organs whereby her several functions as a mother are performed, considering the species as restricted to two sexes, and thus they comprise with her, collectively, one organic whole. That this is a consistent view of their condition is further proved by the circumstance that from their larvæ, upon the failure of a queen, a new queen is produced upon one being supplied with a certain nutriment that developes the capacity that would remain inert and abortive, were it not thus promoted from its primary state. It may be questioned whether the eggs deposited by the queen in the royal cells are other than neuter eggs, their subsequent nature being changed by the different quality of the sustenance they are fed with when hatched, as is the case in the above noticed defection of a queen. This then would limit the queen’s eggs to the eggs of neuters and of drones, thus further corroborating the idea of the existence of but two sexes.

I have stated above the supposition that the queen’s office may be restricted to the laying of eggs, but it must be inferred that it has a wider compass, and possibly comprises some administrative function in the regulation of the hive, from the circumstance that with her loss the entire community loses its self-possession and self-control. Labour then ceases and the hive becomes the scene of turmoil and confusion, and unless the loss be repaired in the way named above, which their instinct teaches them to adopt, if any eggs have been already deposited, or if supplied by the surreptitious introduction of another queen which they immediately raise to their superintendency, paying her the same deference they had done to their lost monarch, or would do to a legitimately native birth, it disperses and destroys the community. Such a loss in its natural course must necessarily, to be effectively repaired, take place in the interval after the laying of the drones’ eggs, and before those of the queens are deposited, for otherwise she would remain unimpregnated. Having thus shown reasons for supposing that the hive actually contains but two sexes, and having also shown that the first phase exhibited of this distributed maternal instinct by which the neuters form conjunctively with the queen a many-headed and many-hearted mother, is their preparation of the cells for all the purposes required,—the next and most important, and the one perhaps which elevates them vastly higher in the scale of social intelligence and affection, is the absolute development in them only of maternal solicitude for the well-being of the offspring. This certainly proves the existence of the diffused maternity urged, for they feed the hatched young as the bird does its callow, from hour to hour, and which, when full grown, they enclose in its formative cell, to undergo its changes and become one amongst themselves. It is not absolutely determined whether the functions performed within the hive are restricted to distinct sets of the workers, but it may be presumed that the duties are transferable, for the most plausible supposition is, that all the offices are interchangeably performed by the entire population, possibly merely limited to daily alternation of individuals taled off each morning for the day’s duties. That an administrative regulation must exist under some executive authority, emanating doubtless from the centralization of all in the queen, and communicated to the rest by her relays of attendants, may be conclusively inferred, otherwise all might similarly employ themselves from day to day, and thus overwhelm with one work the multiplicity of labours required for the well-being of the hive. For whilst some are secreting the wax from the honey they have consumed, others are moulding it into shape, others are harvesting the bee-bread to feed the voracious larvæ, others are gleaning the propolis for the security of the domicile, others are collecting honey to store as needful supplies, others are either ventilating or heating the interior, others act as sentinels and guard the approaches or patrol the passages within, and will die in that defence like genuine patriots, and others are in attendance upon the queen in her progresses through her dominions, and who may individually act as aides-de-camp to convey her commands to the rest. All these are not fanciful embellishments of the narrative, but substantial and well-authenticated facts, supported by the repetition on many sides of careful observations, but perplexing to human intelligence, for not the least wonder of this conventicle of wonders—the hive—is that it confounds the astute reason of man to comprehend it in all its significancies.

The first necessity of a new colony is the selection of a locality for habitation, which is usually effected by preliminary trustworthy intelligencers determining upon a site suitable from its concurrent conveniences. A sufficient supply of sustenance must be conveyed by the emigrants to accompany the preparatory construction of the settlement, until land can be cleared, grain grown, etc., and a year at least will pass, even under the most favourable circumstances of the exertion of the greatest industry, concurrently with the most propitious succession of the seasons, before it can become self-sustaining. But when once the wheel is fairly on the move, round it spins without interruption or relaxation. The colony thrives, increasing rapidly in its population; and where all have put the shoulder to the wheel it climbs the steep and rugged hill of prosperity, whilst those who are carried onward by its evolutions, from each of the many successive terraces of this noble height, survey a broad, cheerful, and fertile landscape, extending itself with their elevation, spread out to a distant horizon, which many of the more venturous spirits amongst them, urged by the teeming increase of their compatriots, have already traversed, and who themselves are now rejoicing in the establishment of offshoots, which speedily rival, in successful fruitfulness, the wide-branched productiveness of the parent stock.

This is strictly the history of the hive, and the parallelism is complete, even to the conveyance with them of the preliminary needful stores. Before a swarm issues from the hive, some fly forth to select a dwelling-place, and return, it is presumed, to make their report.

The population of the hive becoming so dense that there is no longer room for the free and unrestrained circulation of the ordinary processes of the community, and so hot from the inconvenient accumulation of such numbers,—for they extend sometimes to as many as fifty thousand,—instinct prompts a portion of the community to migrate. This disposition is further promoted by the progressive, or completed development of some of the young queens. The inveterate and internecine animosity of these—anticipated rivalry, suggesting, it is surmised, the murderous desire, but being prevented from its indulgence by the defensive guardianship of several of the workers—urges the old queen to abandon at this conjuncture her royal metropolis. The inclination to do so, it would appear, is already foreseen by a very large body of her subjects, for if her departure be delayed by her successor’s protracted incapacity for undertaking the sovereign rule, the intending emigrants, having already abandoned all the labours of their old domicile preparatory to their issuing forth, will cluster in groups about the bee board until she is ready to emerge. This condition will sometimes last a day or two, and thence of course all is confusion both within and without the hive, for her subjects have suspended their labours and she has suspended her egg-laying, and roams wildly about within, striving, whenever she approaches a royal cell, or a fully developed young queen, to attack the latter, and destroy her by stinging her to death, or, to tear the former to pieces to get at the imago within, which indicates its apprehension by a shrill piping sound. But she is forcibly dragged back from this apicidal purpose by the working bees which surround each, and who now intermit their usual deference to prevent this destruction, and bite her and drag her back. The future queen of the abdicated throne having, during this turmoil, returned from her wedding tour, and being still protected from slaughterous aggression, the old queen indignantly issues forth. This exodus takes place usually on a brilliant and warm day, between twelve and three,—accordingly during the hottest hours. This is the first swarm of the year, and if the season be very genial it will take place in May. In this migration she is accompanied by all her most faithful lieges, which comprise, to the honour of beehood, by very much the largest majority of the inhabitants, to the number usually, in a well-stocked hive, of several thousands,—say from ten to twenty, depending on the population of the hive.