The workers, which are the first fruits of the queen-mother's vernal parturition, assist her, as soon as they are excluded from the pupa, in her various labours. To them also is committed the construction of the waxen vault that covers and defends the nest. When any individual larva has spun its cocoon and assumed the pupa, the workers remove all the wax from it; and as soon as it has attained to its perfect state, which takes place in about five days, the cocoons are used to hold honey or pollen. When the bees discharge the honey into them upon their return from their excursions, they open their mouths and contract their bodies, which occasions the honey to fall into the reservoir. Sixty of these honey-pots are occasionally found in a single nest, and more than forty are sometimes filled in a day. In collecting honey, humble-bees, if they cannot get at that contained in any flower by its natural opening, will often make an aperture at the base of the corolla, or even in the calyx, that they may insert their proboscis in the very place where nature has stored up her nectar[122]. M. Huber relates a singular anecdote of some hive-bees paying a visit to a nest of humble-bees placed under a box not far from their hive, in order to steal or beg their honey; which places in a strong light the good temper of the latter. This happened in a time of scarcity. The hive-bees, after pillaging, had taken almost entire possession of the nest. Some humble-bees which remained in spite of this disaster, went out to collect provisions; and bringing home the surplus after they had supplied their own immediate wants, the hive-bees followed them, and did not quit them till they had obtained the fruit of their labours. They licked them, presented to them their proboscis, surrounded them, and thus at last persuaded them to part with the contents of their honey-bags. The humble-bees after this flew away to collect a fresh supply. The hive-bees did them no harm, and never once showed their stings;—so that it seems to have been persuasion rather than force that produced this singular instance of self-denial. This remarkable manœuvre was practised for more than three weeks; when the wasps being attracted by the same cause, the humble-bees entirely forsook the nest[123].
The workers are the most numerous part of the community, but are nothing when compared with the numbers to be found in a vespiary or a beehive:—two or three hundred is a large population for a humble-bees nest; in some species it not being more than fifty or sixty.—They may more easily be studied than either wasps or hive-bees, as they seem not to be disturbed or interrupted in their works by the eye of an observer[124].
I am, &c.
[LETTER XIX.]
SOCIETIES OF INSECTS.
PERFECT SOCIETIES CONTINUED. (The Hive-bee[125].)
The glory of an all-wise and omnipotent Creator, you will acknowledge, is wonderfully manifested by the varied proceedings of those social tribes of which I have lately treated: but it shines forth with a brightness still more intense in the instincts that actuate the common hive-bee (Apis mellifica), and which I am next to lay before you. Indeed, of all the insect associations, there are none that have more excited the attention and admiration of mankind in every age, or been more universally interesting, than the colonies of these little useful creatures. Both Greek and Roman writers are loud in their praise; nay, some philosophers were so enamoured of them, that, as I observed before[126], they devoted a large portion of their time to the study of their history. Whether the knowledge they acquired was at all equivalent to the years that were spent in the attainment of it, may be doubted: for, were it so, it is probable that Aristotle and Pliny would have given a clearer and more consistent account of the inhabitants of the hive than they have done. Indeed had their discoveries borne any proportion to the long tract of time asserted to have been employed by some in the study of these insects, they ought to have rivalled, and even exceeded, those of the Reaumurs and Hubers of our own age.
Numerous, and wonderful for their absurdity, were the errors and fables which many of the ancients adopted and circulated with respect to the generation and propagation of these busy insects. For instance,—that they were sometimes produced from the putrid bodies of oxen and lions; the kings and leaders from the brain, and the vulgar herd from the flesh—a fable derived probably from swarms of bees having been observed, as in the case of Samson[127], to take possession of the dried carcases of these animals, or perhaps from the myriads of flies (for the vulgar do not readily distinguish flies from bees) often generated in their putrescent flesh. They adopted another notion equally absurd; that these insects collect their young progeny from the blossoms and foliage of certain plants. Amongst others, the Cerinthus, the reed, and the olive-tree, had this virtue of generating infant bees attributed to them[128]. These specimens of ancient credulity will suffice.