Fig. 6.—The Queen of the Hive.
Several characteristics of a negative kind may also be noted. Her proboscis is not fitted for extracting the nectar of flowers, and she can only lap food, or take it from the tongues of her attendants. She, moreover has no expansion of the gullet for a honey-bag, since she never requires to collect and carry home the sweet liquid. She possesses no cysts for the elaboration of wax, as she takes no part in contributing to the materials of her dwelling. The last pair of legs are convex on the outside, containing no pocket for carrying pollen or propolis; and the other legs are without the brushes of the workers, which enable them to clear their bodies of the powdery discharge of the anthers of flowers, for she never visits plants. All her wants in the way of nourishment are supplied by her subjects.
Fig. 7.—Queen Surrounded by Attendants.
The Queen, or Mother-Bee, as in nature, surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting, and exhibited in a glass hive to the royal visitors at the British Bee-Keepers' Association Show at Kilburn, 1879, by Abbott Bros., Southall.
She mates once in her life, when she is a few days old, with a single drone, and on the wing. That is the only occasion of her leaving the hive, except when she leads forth a swarm. Her grand function is to lay eggs, and every part of her structure and every power she has is more or less related to this all-important duty. She is, as we have implied, freed from every other office. The hatching, the tending, the rearing, the instruction of her progeny, are entirely taken out of her hands, and it is doubtful whether she has any affection for her children. She is constantly attended by a retinue of ten or twelve "maids of honour," who all keep their heads turned towards her, clear the way for her, prevent all crowding round her, and supply her with the most nutritious food, previously half digested by themselves. They caress her with their antennæ, and seem to find a real joy in mere proximity to their monarch. Should she, by more rapid movements than usual, outstrip her retiring attendants, the bees with whom she thus unexpectedly comes in contact appear excited and alarmed, and move hastily from her path. So long as she remains sound and well in the hive, all the varied works go on peacefully and incessantly. Should she die or be removed, immediate consternation is manifested. Her subjects rush about in excitement and distress. They buzz around the neighbourhood of the hive, but all active and productive work ceases. They know that unless the disastrous loss can be repaired, their community must perish for lack of new progeny, and when despair seizes them, they seem to act upon the motto, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die."
But the skilled bee-keeper comes to the rescue when he has ascertained the death or loss of a queen, and introduces another monarch to the distressed community. Care and caution, however, have to be exercised in this operation; for, until convinced that there is no hope of the restoration of their rightful sovereign, the workers will not tolerate a substitute for her. Even when their hopes are extinguished, it is much safer to cage the new queen, for thirty-six or forty-eight hours, on a comb, so that a gradual acquaintance with one another may be formed before free intercourse is allowed. Otherwise, it will frequently happen that the introduced mother-bee will come to grief by stings or by suffocation. Cases, indeed, have occurred in which it has been found impossible to induce a hive to receive a stranger queen, and it has become necessary to amalgamate such a community with another already possessed of a monarch.
But, under certain circumstances, the bees will, in a marvellous way, provide themselves with a sovereign. If at the time of discovering their loss there are worker-eggs in the hive, and these are only two or three days old, a cell containing one such egg is selected, and enlarged by breaking down the surrounding partitions. The shape and direction of the cell are also altered, being made pyriform, or like a pear, and with its open end downwards. The royal cradle, in fact, is made to look like a small acorn-cup inverted. In this abode is deposited a certain amount of so-called "royal jelly," a more pungent and stimulating food than that supplied to other larvæ, and consisting of a mixture of honey and partially digested pollen. Under the influence of this nourishment, the grub, instead of becoming a worker-bee, as it would have done in the usual course of events, undergoes all those important modifications which distinguish the queen from her ordinary offspring; and, moreover, the necessary transformations from the larval to the perfect condition of the insect are so expedited as to take only sixteen, instead of twenty-one, days. We have said that, if newly-laid eggs exist, these are preferred by the workers for their purpose of queen manufacture; but they will, if shut up to the necessity, thus transform worker-larvæ, if not more than two or three days old. Usually, when prompted in this way to provide themselves with a hive-mother, they begin, not one only, but several, apparently to secure themselves against all danger of failure. But the first which comes to maturity assumes the sovereignty, and, unless the condition of the stock requires the speedy emission of a swarm, she will be allowed to gratify her instinctive enmity to rivals, and will destroy them as they are ready to emerge from their cells.
This hatred of equals is an extraordinary fact, when we consider that the queen knowingly lays eggs under conditions in which they will, in the ordinary course of events, become princesses. Then another circumstance of peculiar significance, and very marvellous, is that, notwithstanding the absolute authority possessed by the queen under other conditions, and in spite of the usual subjection and subservience of the workers, they will not allow their monarch complete liberty in the destruction of her royal progeny. If the crowded state of their dwelling makes it evident that the emission of a colony is necessary, the workers-in-waiting forcibly restrain their sovereign from indulging in her strong desire to slay her fully-developed daughters. She resents the interference, but no assumption of her dignity and authority will avail, and her absolutism is in this direction distinctly limited. Incensed at length beyond endurance, she quits the hive at the head of a swarm of her faithful subjects, and establishes a community where again she will have sole sway. If, on the other hand, circumstances do not necessitate a division of the population, the old queen is allowed to destroy the young ones as they issue from the pupa state.
It is said that the only other condition in which the workers rebel against their monarch is when she is growing worn out with age, and seems likely to fail in power of egg-laying. Then she is believed, in some instances, to be supplanted; but it is not known with certainty whether natural death may not account for her removal, or whether she is slain by her subjects, or by a young queen preserved by their intervention.
Should the loss of the queen take place when there is no brood-comb in the hive, from the season of the year, or from other circumstances, such as the cessation of egg-laying, the bees often manifest a series of almost frantic efforts to repair their loss. Sometimes they will try to develop a female from drone eggs. They have been known even to take a lump of pollen and surround it with a queen cell, in the absurd hope of getting a monarch so. It sometimes happens that one of the workers develops the power of laying eggs, all of which turn to drones—a marvellous fact in parthenogenesis—and the workers treat some of these to a royal abode and royal jelly, in the futile hope of thus raising a sovereign. In fact, as has been wittily but truly said, "when bees have lost their queen they lose their head." This close connection of queen and people is reciprocal, for the sovereign who is forcibly separated from her subjects refuses food, pines away, and speedily dies.