Did we know the causes of the various deviations, as to form and the like, observable in the three kingdoms of nature, and could apply them, we should be able to produce these deviations at our pleasure. This is exactly what the bees do. Their instinct teaches them that a certain kind of food, supplied to a grub inhabiting a certain dwelling, in a certain position, will produce certain effects upon it, rendering it different from what it would have been under ordinary circumstances, and fitted to answer their peculiar wants.
I trust that these arguments and probabilities will in some degree reconcile you to what at first sight seems so extraordinary and extravagant a doctrine. If not yet fully satisfied, I can only recommend your having recourse to experiments yourself. Leaving you therefore to this best mode of proof, I shall proceed to another part of my history:—but first I must mention an experiment of Reaumur's, which seems to come well in here. To ascertain whether the expectation of a queen was sufficient to keep alive the instinct and industry of the worker-bees, he placed in a glazed hive some royal cells containing both grubs and pupæ, and then introduced about 1000 or 1500 workers and some drones. These workers, which had been deprived of their queen, at first destroyed some of the grubs in these cells; but they clustered around two that were covered in, as if to impart warmth to the pupæ they contained; and on the following day they began to work upon the portions of comb with which he had supplied them, in order to fix and lengthen them. For two or three days the work went on very leisurely, but afterwards their labours assumed their usual character of indefatigable industry[157]. There is no difficulty, therefore, when a hive loses its sovereign, to supply the bees with an object that will interest them, and keep their works in progress.
There are a few other facts with respect to the larvæ and pupæ of the bees, which, before I enter upon the history of them in their perfect form, I shall now detail to you. Sixteen days is the time assigned to a queen for her existence in her preparatory states, before she is ready to emerge from her cell. Three she remains in the egg; when hatched she continues feeding five more; when covered in she begins to spin her cocoon, which occupies another day: as if exhausted by this labour, she now remains perfectly still for two days and sixteen hours; and then assumes the pupa, in which state she remains exactly four days and eight hours—making in all the period I have just named. A longer time, by four days, is required to bring the workers to perfection; their preparatory states occupying twenty days, and those of the male even twenty-four. The former consumes half a day more than the queen in spinning its cocoon,—a circumstance most probably occasioned by a singular difference in the structure and dimensions of this envelope, which I shall explain to you presently. Thus you see that the peculiar circumstances which change the form and functions of a bee, accelerate its appearance as a perfect insect; and that by choosing a grub three days old, when the bees want a queen, they actually gain six days; for in this case she is ready to come forth in ten days, instead of sixteen, which would be required, was a recently laid egg fixed upon[158].
The larvæ of bees, though without feet, are not altogether without motion. They advance from their first station at the bottom of the cell, as I before hinted, in a spiral direction. This movement, for the first three days, is so slow as to be scarcely perceptible; but after this it is more easily discerned. The animal now makes two entire revolutions in about an hour and three quarters; and when the period of its metamorphosis arrives, it is scarcely more than two lines from the mouth of the cell. Its attitude, which is always the same, is a strong curve[159]. This occasions the inhabitant of a horizontal cell to be always perpendicular to the horizon, and that of a vertical one to be parallel with it.
A most remarkable difference, as I lately observed, takes place in spinning their cocoons,—the grubs of workers and drones spinning complete cocoons, while those that are spun by the females are incomplete, or open at the lower end, and covering only the head and trunk and the first segment of the abdomen. This variation is probably occasioned by the different forms of the cells; for, if a female larva be placed in a worker's cell, it will spin a complete cocoon; and, vice versâ, if a worker larva be placed in a royal cell, its cocoon will be incomplete[160]. No provision of the Great Author of nature is in vain. In the present instance, the fact which we are considering is of great importance to the bees; for, were the females wholly covered by the thick texture of a cocoon, their destruction by their rival competitors for the throne could not so readily be accomplished; they either would not be able to reach them with their stings, or the stings might be detained by their barbs in the meshes of the cocoon, so that they would not be able to disengage them. On the use of this instinctive and murderous hatred of their rivals I shall soon enlarge.
When our young prisoners are ready to emerge, they do not, like the ants, require the assistance of the workers, but themselves eat through the cocoon and the cell that incloses it. By a wise provision, which prevents the injury or destruction of a cell, they generally make their way through the cover or lid with which the workers had shut it up; though sometimes, but not often, a female will break through the side of her prison.
Having thus shown you our little chemists in their preparatory states, and carried you from the egg to the cocoon, both of which may be deemed a kind of cradle, in which they are nursed to fit them for two very different conditions of existence, I must now introduce you to a scene more interesting and diversified; in which all their wonderful instincts are displayed in full action, and we see them exceed some of the most vaunted products of human wisdom, art, and skill.
The queen-mother here demands our first attention, as the personage upon whom, when established in her regal dignity, the welfare and happiness of the apiarian community altogether depend. I shall begin my history with the events that befall her on her quitting the royal cradle and appearing in the perfect state. And here you will find that the first moments of her life, prior to her election to lead a swarm or fill a vacant throne, are moments of the greatest uneasiness and vexation, if not of extreme peril and vindictive and mortal warfare. The Homeric maxim, that "the government of many is not good[161]," is fully adopted and rigorously adhered to in these societies. The jealous Semiramis of the hive will bear no rival near her throne. There are usually not less than sixteen, and sometimes not less than twenty, royal cells in the same nest; you may therefore conceive what a sacrifice is made when one only is suffered to live and to reign. But here a distinction obtains which should not be overlooked: in some instances a single queen only is wanted to govern her native hive; in others several are necessary to lead the swarms. In the first case, inevitable death is the lot of all but one; in the other, as many as are wanted are preserved from destruction by the precautions taken on that occasion, under the direction of an all-wise Providence, by the workers.
I shall enlarge a little on each of these cases. In the formicary, as we have seen, rival queens live together very harmoniously without molesting each other: but there is that instinctive jealousy in a queen bee, that no sooner does she discover the existence of another in the hive, than she is put into a state of the most extreme agitation, and is not easy until she has attacked and destroyed her.