The genus Apis, or the Hive Bee,—which perhaps in its past and present utility to man, may successfully compete in the aggregate with the silkworm,—with true regal dignity comes the last of the series of genera. The whole array of her precursors, who marshal her way, and derive their significance and importance from the more or less direct resemblance in structure and function to her, deduce their common name of “Bees” from this relationship, and consequently from her. Long before their existence had been traced by the observer of nature or by the naturalist, the comb of the Bee had dropped in exuberant luxuriance its golden stores for the gratification of mankind. This little creature had garnered, from sources inaccessible to man, the luscious nectar concealed within the bosom of the flower, whose exquisitely beautiful varieties, in form, colour, and fragrance, had delighted his sight and his smell long before he had been led by accident to discover that these industrious little workers collected into their treasury, from those same flowers, as exquisite a luxury for his taste, as they themselves had yielded to his other senses. Thus the earliest records speak of honey, and of bees, and of wax; and the land of promise to the restored Israelites, was to be a land flowing with milk and honey.
Réaumur, whose observations upon bees had been pursued with such patient and indefatigable perseverance, combined with such minute accuracy, and then recorded so agreeably, and who conceived the possibility of establishing a standard of length, for the common use of all nations, to be derived from the length of a certain number of the honey-cells of the comb, to which notion he was doubtless led by their mathematical precision and uniform exactitude, appears to have been unaware of the existence of other species of the genus, and hence he assumed, in his ignorance of this fact, that in all countries they were alike.
Travellers had, even for more than a century before, mentioned different kinds of honey, derived from different kinds of bees, which, however, Réaumur does not, from this circumstance, seem to have known. Had he been acquainted with it, his philosophical accuracy of observation and habit of reflection would certainly have assumed the possibility of differences of size in the cells of the different bees, and he would have waited until opportunity had given him the power of determining whether this mode of admeasurement could be safely adopted as certainly being of universal prevalence. It is to be wondered at also, that he did not weigh the possibility that climatic differences in the distribution of even the Apis mellifica might have involved discrepancies, by the effects constantly seen to be produced by climate, and which would have shown that the standard which he sought to establish could not be relied on.
Collections exhibit about sixteen species of the genus Apis, whose natural occurrence is restricted to the Old World, for although the genus, especially in the species A. mellifica, has been naturalized in America, and also in Australasia, and in some of the Islands of the Pacific, these were originally conveyed thither by Europeans. Those countries possess representatives of the genus with analogous attributes and functions, in two other genera, which fulfil the same uses. It is remarkable that the Red Indians used to note the gradual absorption of their territory by the White Man, through the forward advance of his herald Apis mellifica. This species has also been carried to India, to the Isle of Timor, and to northern, western, and southern Africa, in all which countries it is thoroughly naturalized, although they all possess indigenous species, which are quite as, or perhaps more largely, tributary to their inhabitants. Observation has not hitherto confirmed the identity of the manners of these exotic species with our own, owing to the deficiency of observers with the enthusiasm requisite to follow their peculiarities with the patience of a Réaumur, a Bonnet, or a Huber. That they are quite or all but similar, exclusively of differences of size, both in their habits and their nests, may be inferred from their identity of structure. We know that they consist of three kinds of individuals—neuters, females, and males,—and that their combs are made in cakes built vertically, formed of hexagonal contiguous cells, which are placed bottom to bottom, and overlap each other in the same strengthening position as do ours; and also that the cells wherein the males are developed are oval, larger than the honey-cells, and less uniform. With all these similitudes it is fair to suppose that their economy may be the same; but their honey-cells, from their smaller size, (the bee which produces them being smaller,) have a more elegant appearance; and it is concluded from the largeness of the nest, taken conjunctively with the smallness of the cells, and of the bees constructing it, that the communities thus associated must in their collective number be considerably larger than those of our hives.
Instinct, as expressed in the habits, is as sure a line of separation, or means of combination, as structure, and is corroborative in tending to preserve generic conjunction in its inviolability. And, conversely, with certainty, is indicated that such-and-such a form, in the broad and most distinguishing features of its economy, is essentially the same in every climate. The habits, therefore, in whatever country the genus may occur, may be as surely affirmed of the species, from the knowledge we have of those at home, as if observation had industriously tracked them. This is especially the case in a genus, the species of which present such a peculiar identity of structure as does Apis, whose specific differences are derived only from colour and size, and this identity is a peculiarity, so far as I have observed, rarely found in other genera, numbering even no more species, but wherein slight differences of structure often yield a subsidiary specific character, complete structural identity being almost solely incidental to the genus Apis.
The importance of honey and wax throughout the world, as well for the ceremonies of religion, as for the service of the arts, and for medical or domestic purposes, is attested by the vigilance, care, and assiduity with which bees are tended in every country. Although sugar, since its introduction to those northern countries which have not been favoured by nature with the cane that yields it, has superseded for ordinary uses the produce of the hive, this still continues serviceable for many purposes to which sugar cannot be applied. It is used in many ways in pharmacy, and still retains in the interior of some continents, owing to the deficiency of sugar, arising from the difficulties and expenses of transit, all its primitive uses. In the East, even in countries producing sugar in abundance, honey is extensively employed for the preservation of fruits, which in their ripe state in those hot climates would rapidly lose their fulness of flavour were they not thus protected,—honey here being esteemed superior to sugar in the circumstance of its not crystallizing by reason of the heat, and also from its applicability to this use in its natural state.
This is especially the case in China, where a conserve of green ginger, and of a fragrant orange (the Cum Quat), are in high repute, and which are peculiarly grateful to Europeans on the spot. These, however, are so delicately susceptible of change of climate, that they lose some of the aroma that constitutes much of their attraction, upon transportation, and, indeed, like many kinds of Southern wines, can be appreciated only within their own country, from their extreme delicacy and tendency to spoil.
Honey is a very favourite food and medicine with the Bedouins in Northern Arabia. Bees make their hives in all the crevices of rocks in Hedscha, finding everywhere aromatic plants and flowers. At Taif, bees yield most excellent honey, and the honey at Mecca is exquisite. At Veit-el-Fakeh, wax from the mountainous country of Yemen is exchanged for European goods and for spices from the further Indies. In Syria and Palestine we find bees abound. At Ladakiah there are large exports both of honey and wax; and the honey of Ainnete, on the declivities of the Lebanon, is considered the finest of the whole of that mountain-range. Antonine the Martyr, in the seventh century, speaks of the honey of Nazareth being most excellent, and in the present day bees are extensively cultivated at Bethlehem, for the sake of the profit derived from the wax tapers supplied to the pilgrims. Some of the members of the German colony at Wadi Urtas speak of the purchase of eleven beehives at this place, and express themselves as very sanguine of an abundant harvest from the luxuriance and profusion of flowers, although they say the bees are smaller than those of Westphalia, and are of a yellowish-brown colour. The eastern side of this peninsula, especially the district of Oman, is wholly destitute of bees, contrasting thus unfavourably with its western fertility.
The enormous quantities of honey produced may be comparatively estimated by the collateral production of beeswax, which it exceeds by at least ten to one. When we reflect upon what masses of the latter are consumed in the rites of the Roman Catholic and Greek churches throughout the many and large countries where those religions prevail, we shall be able to form a general estimate of the extensiveness and universality of the cultivation of bees. Nor are those the only uses to which wax is applied, and the collective computation of its consumption will show that bees abound in numbers almost transcending belief.