I have described to you the persons of the different individuals that compose the society of the bee-hive more in detail than I should otherwise have done, in order that you may be the better able to form a judgement upon a most extraordinary circumstance in their history, which is supported by evidence that seems almost incontrovertible. The fact to which I allude is this—that if the bees are deprived of their queen, and are supplied with comb containing young worker brood only, they will select one or more to be educated as queens; which, by having a royal cell erected for their habitation, and being fed with royal jelly for not more than two days, when they emerge from the pupa state (though, if they had remained in the cells which they originally inhabited, they would have turned out workers) will come forth complete queens, with their form, instincts, and powers of generation entirely different. In order to produce this effect, the grub must not be more than three days old; and this is the age at which, according to Schirach, (the first apiarist who called the public attention to this miracle of nature,) the bees usually elect the larvæ to be royally educated; though it appears from Huber's observations, that a larva two days or even twenty-four hours old will do[142].—Having chosen a grub, they remove the inhabitants and their food from two of the cells which join that in which it resides; they next take down the partitions which separate these three cells; and, leaving the bottoms untouched, raise round the selected worm a cylindrical tube, which follows the horizontal direction of the other cells: but since at the close of the third day of its life its habitation must assume a different form and direction, they gnaw away the cells below it, and sacrifice without pity the grubs they contain, using the wax of which they were formed to construct a new pyramidal tube, which they join at right angles to the horizontal one, the diameter of the former diminishing insensibly from its base to its mouth. During the two days which the grub inhabits this cell, like the common royal cells now become vertical[143], a bee may always be observed with its head plunged into it; and when one quits it another takes its place. These bees keep lengthening the cell as the worm grows older, and duly supply it with food, which they place before its mouth, and round its body. The animal, which can only move in a spiral direction, keeps incessantly turning to take the jelly deposited before it; and thus slowly working downwards, arrives insensibly near the orifice of the cell, just at the time that it is ready to assume the pupa; when, as before described, the workers shut up its cradle with an appropriate covering[144].
When you have read this account, I fear, with the celebrated John Hunter, you will not be very ready to believe it, at least you will call upon me to bring forth my "strong reasons" in support of it. What!—you will exclaim—can a larger and warmer house (for the royal cells are affirmed to enjoy a higher temperature than those of the other bees[145]), a different and more pungent kind of food, and a vertical instead of a horizontal posture, in the first place, give a bee a differently shaped tongue and mandibles; render the surface of its posterior tibiæ flat instead of concave; deprive them of the fringe of hairs that forms the basket for carrying the masses of pollen; of the auricle and pecten which enable the workers to use these tibiæ as pincers[146]; of the brush that lines the inside of their plantæ? Can they lengthen its abdomen; alter its colour and clothing; give a curve to its sting; deprive it of its wax-pockets, and of the vessels for secreting that substance; and render its ovaries more conspicuous, and capable of yielding female as well as male eggs? Can, in the next place, the seemingly trivial circumstances just enumerated altogether alter the instinct of these creatures? Can they give to one description of animals address and industry; and to the other astonishing fecundity? Can we conceive them to change the very passions, tempers, and manners? That the very same fœtus if fed with more pungent food, in a higher temperature and in a vertical position, shall become a female destined to enjoy love, to burn with jealousy and anger, to be incited to vengeance, and to pass her time without labour—that this very same fœtus, if fed with more simple food, in a lower temperature, in a more confined and horizontal habitation, shall come forth a worker zealous for the good of the community, a defender of the public rights, enjoying an immunity from the stimulus of sexual appetite and the pains of parturition—laborious, industrious, patient, ingenious, skilful—incessantly engaged in the nurture of the young; in collecting honey and pollen; in elaborating wax; in constructing cells, and the like!—paying the most respectful and assiduous attention to objects which, had its ovaries been developed, it would have hated and pursued with the most vindictive fury till it had destroyed them! Further, that these factitious queens (I mean those that the bees elect from amongst worker brood, and educate to supply the place of a lost one in the manner just described) shall differ remarkably from the natural queens, (or those that have been wholly educated in a royal cell,) in being altogether mute[147]—. All this, you will think at first sight, so improbable, and next to impossible, that you will require the strongest and most irrefragable evidence before you will believe it.
In spite of all these powerful probabilities to the contrary, this astonishing and seemingly incredible fact rests upon strong foundations, and is established by experiments made at different times, by different persons of the highest credit, in different parts of Europe. The first who brought it before the public (as I lately observed) was M. Schirach, secretary of an Apiarian Society established at Little Bautzen in Upper Lusatia. He observed, that bees when shut up with a portion of comb, containing only worker brood, would soon erect royal cells, and thus obtain queens:—the experiment was frequently repeated, and the result was almost uniformly the same. In one instance he tried it with a single cell, and it succeeded[148]. This curious fact was communicated to the celebrated Bonnet, who, though he hesitated long before he admitted it, was at length fully convinced. M. Wilhelmi (Schirach's brother-in-law), though at first he accounted for the fact upon other principles, and objected strongly to the doctrine in question, induced by the powerful evidence in favour of it, at last gave up his former opinion, and embraced it. And, to mention no more, the great Aristomachus of modern times, M. Huber, by experiments repeated for ten years, was fully convinced of the truth of Schirach's position[149].
The fact in question, though the public attention was first called to it by the latter gentleman, had indeed been practically known long before he wrote. M. Vogel, in a letter to Wilhelmi, asserts that numerous experiments confirming this extraordinary fact had been made by more than a hundred different persons, in the course of more than a hundred years; and that he himself had known old cultivators of bees who had unanimously declared to him, that, when proper precautions were taken, in a practice of more than fifty years, the experiment had never failed[150]. Signor Monticelli, the Neapolitan professor before mentioned, informs us that the Greeks and Turks of the Ionian Islands know how to make artificial swarms; and that the art of producing queens at will has been practised by the inhabitants of a little Sicilian island called Favignana, from very remote antiquity; and he even brings arguments to prove that it was no secret to the Greeks and Romans[151], though had the practice been common it would surely have been noticed by Aristotle and Pliny.
Bonner, a British apiarist, asserts that he has had successful recourse to the Lusatian experiment[152]; and Mr. Payne of Shipdam in Norfolk (who for many years has been engaged in the culture of bees, and has paid particular attention to their proceedings) relates that he well remembers that the bees of one of his hives, which he discovered had lost their queen, were engaged in erecting some royal cells upon the ruins of some of the common ones. He also informs me that he has found Huber's statements, as far as he has had an opportunity of verifying them, perfectly accurate[153].
As I think you will allow that the evidence just detailed to you is abundantly sufficient to establish the fact in question, we will now see whether any satisfactory account can be given for such changes being produced by such causes. "It does not appear to me improbable," says Bonnet, "that a certain kind of nutriment, and in more than usual abundance, may cause a development in the grubs of bees, of organs which would never be developed without it. I can readily conceive also, that a habitation considerably more spacious, and differently placed, is absolutely necessary to the complete development of organs which the new nutriment may cause to grow in all directions[154]." And again, with respect to the wings of the queen bee, which do not exceed those of the workers in length, he thinks that this may arise from their being of a substance too stiff to admit of their extension. Those parts and points that were in a state to yield most easily to the action which this kind of nutriment produced, would be most prominent; and the vertical position of the grub and pupa, since nature does nothing in vain, may probably assist this action, and render the parts of the animal more capable of such extension than if it continued in a horizontal position.
We know, with respect to the human species and the larger animals, that numerous differences, both as to the form and relative proportion of parts, occur continually. The cause of these differences we cannot always ascertain; yet in many instances they may either be derived from the nutriment which the embryo receives in the womb, or from the greater or less dimensions or higher or lower temperature of that organ—a case that analogically would not be very wide of that of the grub or embryo of a bee inclosed in a cell. Some of the differences in man I now allude to, may often be caused by a particular diet in childhood; a warmer or a colder, a looser or a tighter dress, or the like. Thus, for instance, the Egyptians, who went bare-headed, had their skulls remarkably thick; while the Persians, who covered the head with a turban or mitre, were distinguished by the tenuity of theirs. Again, the inhabitants of certain districts are often remarkable for peculiarities of form, which are evidently produced by local circumstances.
The following reasoning may not be inapplicable to the development or non-development, according to their food and habitation, of the ovaries of these insects. An infant tightly swathed, as was formerly the custom, in swaddling bands, without being allowed the free play of its little limbs, fed with unwholesome food, or uncherished by genial warmth, may from these circumstances have so imperfect a development of its organs as to be in consequence devoted to sterility. When a cow brings forth two calves, and one of them is a female, it is always barren, and partakes in part of the characters of the other sex[155]. In this instance, the space and food that in ordinary cases are appropriated to one, are divided between two; so that a more contracted dwelling and a smaller share of nutriment seem to prevent the development of the ovaries.
The following observations, mostly taken from an essay of the celebrated anatomist John Hunter, in the Philosophical Transactions, since they are intimately connected with the subject that we are now considering, will not be here misplaced. In animals just born, or very young, there are no peculiarities of shape, exclusive of the primary distinctions, by which one sex may be known from the other. Thus secondary distinctive characters, such as the beard in men, and the breasts in women, are produced at a certain period of life; and these secondary characters, in some instances, are changed for those of the other sex; which does not arise from any action at the first formation, but takes place when the great command "Increase and multiply" ceases to operate. Thus women in advanced life are sometimes distinguished by beards; and after they have done laying, hen-birds occasionally assume the plumage of the cock; this has been observed more than once by ornithologists, more particularly with respect to the pheasant and the pea-hen[156].—For females to assume the secondary characters of males, seems certainly a more violent change, than for a worker bee, which may be regarded as a sterile female, in consequence of a certain process, to assume the secondary characters of a fertile female.
With respect to the variations of instinct and character which result from the different modes of rearing the young bees that we are now considering; it would not, I think, be difficult to prove, that causes at first sight equally inadequate have produced effects full as important on the habits, tempers, and characters of men and other animals: but as these will readily occur to you, I shall not now enlarge upon them.