In fine weather the drones, during the warmest part of the day, take their flights; and it is then that they pair with the queen in mid air, the result being invariably the death of the drone. No one has yet discovered, unless the proceedings observed by Debraw and Bonnet may be so interpreted, that when in the hive they take any share in the business of it, their great employment within doors being to eat. Their life however is of very short duration, the eggs that produce drones being laid in the course of April and May, and their destruction being usually accomplished in the months of July and August. The bees then, as M. Huber observes, chase them about, and pursue them to the bottom of the hives, where they assemble in crowds. At the same time numerous carcases of drones may be seen on the ground before the hives. Hence he conjectured, though he never could detect them engaged in this work upon the combs, that they were stung to death by the workers. To ascertain how their death was occasioned, he caused a table to be glazed, on which he placed six hives, and under this table he employed the patient and indefatigable Burnens, who was to him instead of eyes, to watch their proceedings. On the fourth of July this accurate observer saw the massacre going on in all the hives at the same time, and attended by the same circumstances. The table was crowded with workers, who, apparently in great rage, darted upon the drones as soon as they arrived at the bottom of the hive seizing them by their antennæ, their legs, and their wings; and killing them by violent strokes of their sting, which they generally inserted between the segments of the abdomen. The moment this fearful weapon entered their body, the poor helpless creatures expanded their wings and expired. After this, as if fearful that they were not sufficiently dispatched, the bees repeated their strokes, so that they often found it difficult to extricate their sting. On the following day they were equally busy in the work of slaughter; but their fury, their own having perished, was chiefly vented upon those drones, which, after having escaped from the neighbouring hives, had sought refuge with them. Not content with destroying those that were in the perfect state, they attacked also such male pupæ as were left in their cells; and then dragging them forth, sucked the fluid from their bodies and cast them out of the hive[204].
But though in hives containing a queen perfectly fertile (that is, which lays both worker and male eggs,) this is the unhappy fate of the drones; yet in those where the queen only lays male eggs, they are suffered to remain unmolested; and in hives deprived of their queen, they also find a secure asylum[205].
What it is that, in the former instance, excites the fury of the bees against the males, is not easy to discover; but some conjecture may perhaps be formed from the circumstances last related. When only males are produced by the queen, the bees seem aware that something more is wanted, and retain the males; the same is the case when they have no queen; and when one is procured, they appear to know that she would not profit them without the males. Their fury then is connected with their utility: when the queen is impregnated, which lasts for her whole life, as if they knew that the drones could be of no further use, and would only consume their winter stores of provision, they destroy them; which surely is more merciful than expelling them, in which case they must inevitably perish from hunger. But when the queen only produces males, their numbers are not sufficient to cause alarm; and the same reasoning applies to the case when there is no queen.
Having brought the males from their cradle to their untimely grave, and amused you with the little that is known of their uneventful history, I shall now, at last, call you to attend to the proceedings of the workers themselves; and here I am afraid, long as I have detained you, I must still press you to expatiate with me in a more ample field; but the spectacles you will behold during our excursion will repay, I promise you, any delay or trouble it may occasion.
When I consider the proceedings of these little creatures, both in the hive and out of it, they are so numerous and multifarious, that I scarcely know where to begin. You have already, however, heard much of their internal labours, in the care and nurture of the young; the construction of their combs[206]; and their proceedings with respect to their queens and their paramours. It will therefore change the scene a little, if we accompany them in their excursions to collect the various substances of which they have need[207]. On these occasions the principal object of the bees is to furnish themselves with three different materials:—the nectar of flowers, from which they elaborate honey and wax; the pollen or fertilizing dust of the anthers, of which they make what is called bee-bread, serving as food both to old and young; and the resinous substance called by the ancients Propolis, Pissoceros, &c. used in various ways in rendering the hive secure and giving the finish to the combs. The first of these substances is the pure fluid secreted in the nectaries of flowers, which the length of their tongue enables them to reach in most blossoms. The tongue of a bee, you are to observe, though so long and sometimes so inflated[208], is not a tube through which the honey passes, nor a pump acting by suction, but a real tongue which laps or licks the honey, and passes it down on its upper surface, as we do, to the mouth, which is at its base concealed by the mandibles[209]. It is conveyed by this orifice through the œsophagus into the first stomach, which we call the honey-bag, and which, from being very small, is swelled when full of it to a considerable size. Honey is never found in the second stomach, (which is surrounded with muscular rings, and resembles a cask covered with hoops from one end to the other,) but only in the first: in the latter and the intestines the bee-bread only is discovered. How the wax is secreted, or what vessels are appropriated to that purpose, is not yet ascertained. Huber suspects that a cellular substance, consisting of hexagons, which lines the membrane of the wax-pockets, may be concerned in this operation. This substance he also discovered in humble-bees (which though they make wax have no wax-pockets), occupying all the anterior part or base of the segments[210]. If you wish to see the wax-pockets in the hive-bee, you must press the abdomen so as to cause it to extend itself; you will then find on each of the four intermediate ventral segments, separated by the carina or elevated central part, two trapeziform whitish pockets, of a soft membranaceous texture: on these the laminæ of wax are formed, and they are found upon them in different states, so as to be more or less perceptible. I must here observe that, besides Thorley, who seems to have been the first apiarist that observed these laminæ, Wildman was not ignorant of them, nor of the wax being formed from honey[211]: we must not therefore permit foreigners to appropriate to themselves the whole credit of discoveries that have been made, or at least partially made, by our own countrymen.
Long before Linné had discovered the nectary of flowers, our industrious creatures had made themselves intimate with every form and variety of them; and no botanist, even in this enlightened era of botanical science, can compare with a bee in this respect. The station of these reservoirs, even where the armed sight of science cannot discover it, is in a moment detected by the microscopic eye of this animal.
She has to attend to a double task—to collect materials for bee-bread as well as for honey and wax. Observe a bee that has alighted upon an open flower. The hum produced by the motion of her wings ceases, and her employment begins. In an instant she unfolds her tongue, which before was rolled up under her head. With what rapidity does she dart this organ between the petals and the stamina! At one time she extends it to its full length, then she contracts it; she moves it about in all directions, so that it may be applied both to the concave and convex surface of a petal, and wipe them both; and thus by a virtuous theft robs it of all its nectar. All the while this is going on, she keeps herself in a constant vibratory motion. The object of the industrious animal is not, like the more selfish butterfly, to appropriate this treasure to herself. It goes into the honey-bag as into a laboratory, where it is transformed into pure honey; and when she returns to the hive, she regurgitates it in this form into one of the cells appropriated to that purpose; in order that, after tribute is paid from it to the queen, it may constitute a supply of food for the rest of the community.
In collecting honey, bees do not solely confine themselves to flowers, they will sometimes very greedily absorb the sweet juices of fruits: this I have frequently observed with respect to the raspberries in my garden, and have noticed it, as you may recollect, in a former letter[212]. They will also eat sugar, and produce wax from it; but from Huber's observations, it appears not calculated to supply the place of honey in the jelly with which the larvæ are fed[213]. Though the great mass of the food of bees is collected from flowers, they do not wholly confine themselves to a vegetable diet; for, besides the honeyed secretion of the Aphides, the possession of which they will sometimes dispute with the ants[214], upon particular occasions they will eat the eggs of the queen. They are very fond also of the fluid that oozes from the cells of the pupæ, and will suck eagerly all that is fluid in their abdomen after they are destroyed by their rivals[215].—Several flowers that produce much honey they pass by; in some instances, from inability to get at it. Thus, for this reason probably, they do not attempt those of the trumpet-honey-suckle, (Lonicera sempervirens,) which, if separated from the germen after they are open, will yield two or three drops of the purest nectar. So that were this shrub cultivated with that view, much honey in its original state might be obtained from a small number of plants. In other cases, it appears to be the poisonous quality of their honey that induces bees to neglect certain flowers. You have doubtless observed the conspicuous white nectaries of the crown imperial, (Fritillaria imperialis,) and that they secrete abundance of this fluid. It tempts in vain the passing bee, probably aware of some noxious quality that it possesses. The oleander (Nerium Oleander,) yields a honey that proves fatal to thousands of imprudent flies; but our bees, more wise and cautious, avoid it. Occasionally, perhaps, in particular seasons, when flowers are less numerous than common, this instinct of the bees appears to fail them, or to be overpowered by their desire to collect a sufficient store of honey for their purposes, and they suffer for their want of self-denial. Sometimes whole swarms have been destroyed by merely alighting upon poisonous trees. This happened to one in the county of West Chester in the province of New York, which settled upon the branches of the poison-ash (Rhus Vernix). In the following morning the imprudent animals were all found dead, and swelled to more than double their usual size[216]. Whether the honey extracted from the species of the genus Kalmia, Andromeda, Rhododendrum, &c. be hurtful to the bees themselves, is not ascertained; but, as has been before observed, it is often poisonous to man[217]. The Greeks, as you probably recollect, in their celebrated retreat after the death of the younger Cyrus, found a kind of honey at Trebisond on the Euxine coast, which, though it produced no fatal effects upon them, rendered those who ate but little, like men very drunk, and those who ate much, like mad men or dying persons; and numbers lay upon the ground as if there had been a defeat. Pliny, who mentions this honey, calls it Mænomenon, and observes that it is said to be collected from a kind of Rhododendrum, of which Tournefort noticed two species there[218].
When the stomach of a bee is filled with nectar, it next, by means of the feathered hairs[219] with which its body is covered, pilfers from the flowers the fertilizing dust of the anthers, the pollen; which is equally necessary to the society with the honey, and may be named the ambrosia of the hive, since from it the bee-bread is made. Sometimes a bee is so discoloured with this powder as to look like a different insect, becoming white, yellow, or orange, according to the flowers in which it has been busy. Reaumur was urged to visit the hives of a gentleman, who on this account thought his bees were different from the common kind[220]. He suspected, and it proved, that the circumstance just mentioned occasioned the mistaken notion. When the body of the bee is covered with farina, with the brushes of its legs, especially of the hind ones, it wipes it off: not, as we do with our dusty clothes, to dissipate and disperse it in the air, but to collect every particle of it, and then to knead it and form it into two little masses, which she places, one in each, in the baskets formed by hairs[221] on her hind legs.