As the poison of bees exhales a penetrating odour, M. Huber was curious to observe the effect it might produce upon them. Having extracted with pincers the sting of a bee and its appendages impregnated with poison, he presented it to some workers, which were settled very tranquilly before the gate of their mansion. Instantaneously the little party was alarmed; none however took flight, but two or three darted upon the poisoned instrument, and one angrily attacked the observer. When however the poison was coagulated, they were not in the least affected by it—A tube impregnated with the odour of poison recently ejected being presented to them, affected them in the same manner[271]. This circumstance may sometimes occasion battles amongst them, that are not otherwise easy to be accounted for.
Anger is no useless or hurtful passion in bees: it is necessary to them for the preservation of themselves and their property, which, besides those of their own species, are exposed to the ravages of numerous enemies. Of these I have already enumerated several of the class of insects, and also some beasts and birds that have a taste for bees and their produce[272]. The Merops Apiaster (which has been taken in England), the lark and other birds catch them as they fly. Even the frog and the toad are said to kill great numbers of bees; and many that fall into the water probably become the prey of fish. The mouse also, especially the field-mouse, in winter often commits great ravages in a hive, if the base and orifices are not well secured and stopped[273]. Thorley once lost a stock by mice, which made a nest and produced young amongst the combs[274]. The titmouse, according to the same author, will make a noise at the door of the hive, and when a bee comes out to see what is the matter, will seize and devour it. He has known them eat a dozen at a time. The swallows will assemble round the hives and devour them like grains of corn[275]. I need only mention spiders, in whose webs they sometimes meet with their end, and earwigs and ants, which creep into the hive and steal the honey[276].
Upon this subject of the enemies of bees, I cannot persuade myself to omit the account Mr. White has given of an idiot-boy, who from a child showed a strong propensity to bees. They were his food, his amusement, his sole object. In the winter he dozed away his time in his father's house, by the fire-side, in a torpid state, seldom leaving the chimney-corner: but in summer he was all alert and in quest of his game. Hive-bees, humble-bees, and wasps were his prey wherever he found them. He had no apprehension from their stings, but would seize them with naked hands, and at once disarm them of their weapons, and suck their bodies for the sake of their honey-bags. Sometimes he would fill his bosom between his shirt and skin with these animals; and sometimes he endeavoured to confine them in bottles. He was very injurious to men that kept bees; for he would glide into their bee-gardens, and sitting down before the stools, would rap with his fingers, and so take the bees as they came out. He has even been known to overturn the hives for the sake of the honey, of which he was passionately fond. Where metheglin was making, he would linger round the tubs and vessels, begging a draught of what he called bee-wine. As he ran about, he used to make a humming noise with his lips resembling the buzzing of bees. This lad was lean and sallow, and of a cadaverous complexion; and except in his favourite pursuit, in which he was wonderfully adroit, discovered no manner of understanding. Had his capacity been better, and directed to the same object, he had perhaps abated much of our wonder at the feats of a more modern exhibiter of bees; and we may justly say of him now,
"... Thou,
Had thy presiding star propitious shone,
Should'st Wildman be[277]."
The worker bees are annual insects, though the queen will sometimes live more than two years; but, as every swarm consists of old and young, this is no argument for burning them. It is a saying of bee-keepers in Holland, that the first swallow and the first bee foretell each other[278]. This perhaps may be correct there; but with us the appearance of bees considerably precedes that of the swallow; for when the early crocuses open, if the weather be warm, they may always be found busy in the blossom.
The time that bees will inhabit the same stations is wonderful. Reaumur mentions a countryman who preserved bees in the same hive for thirty years[279]. Thorley tells us that a swarm took possession of a spot under the leads of the study of Ludovicus Vives in Oxford, where they continued a hundred and ten years, from 1520 to 1630[280]. These circumstances have led authors to ascribe to bees a greater age than they can claim. Thus Mouffet, because he knew a bees-nest which had remained thirty years in the same quarters, concludes that they are very long-lived, and very sapiently doubts whether they even die of old age at all[281]!!! Which is just as wise as if a man should contend, because London had existed from before the time of Julius Cæsar, that therefore its inhabitants must be immortal.
Bees are subject to many accidents, particularly, as I have said above, they often fall or are precipitated by the wind into water; and though like the cat a bee has not nine lives, nor
"Nine times emerging from the crystal flood,
She mews to every watery god,"
yet she will bear submersion nine hours; and, if exposed to sufficient heat, be reanimated. In this case their proboscis is generally unfolded, and stretched to its full length. At the extremity of this, motion is first perceived, and then at the ends of the legs. After these symptoms appear they soon recover, fold up the tongue, and plume themselves for flight[282]. Experimentalists may therefore, without danger, submerge a hive of bees, when they want to examine them particularly, for they will all revive upon being set to the fire. Reaumur says that in winter, during frosts, the bees remain in a torpid state. He must mean severe frosts; for Huber relates an instance, when upon a sudden emergency, the bees of one of his hives set themselves to work in the middle of January; and he observes that they are so little torpid in winter, that even when the thermometer abroad is below the freezing point, it stands high in populous hives. Swammerdam, and after him the two authors last quoted, found that sometimes, even in the middle of winter, hives have young brood in them, which the bees feed and attend to[283]. In an instance of this kind, which fell under the eye of Huber, the thermometer stood in the hive at about 92°. In colder climates, however, the bees will probably be less active in the winter. They are then generally situated between the combs towards their lower part. But when the air grows milder, especially if the rays of the sun fall upon the hive and warm it, they awake from their lethargy, shake their wings, and begin to move and recover their activity; with which their wants returning, they then feed upon the stock of honey and bee-bread which they have in reserve. The lowest cells are first uncovered, and their contents consumed; the highest are reserved to the last. The honey in the lowest cells being collected in the autumn, probably will not keep so well as the vernal.
The degree of heat in a hive in winter, as I have just hinted, is great. A thermometer near one, in the open air, that stood in January at 6¾° below the freezing point, upon the insertion of the bulb a little way into the hive, rose to 22½° above it; and could it have been placed between the combs, where the bees themselves were agglomerated, the mercury, Reaumur conjectures, would have risen as high as it does abroad in the warm days in summer[284]. Huber says that it stands in frost at 86° and 88° in populous hives[285]. In May, the former author found, in a hive in which he had lodged a small swarm, that the thermometer indicated a degree of heat above that of the hottest days of summer[286]. He observes that their motion, and even the agitation of their wings, increases the heat of their atmosphere. Often, when the squares of glass in a hive appeared cold to the touch, if either by design or chance he happened to disturb the bees, and the agglomerated mass in a tumult began to move different ways, sending forth a great hum, in a very short time so considerable an accession of heat was produced, that when he touched the same squares of glass, he felt them as hot as if they had been held near a fierce fire. By teasing the bees, the heat generated was sometimes so great as to soften very much the wax of the combs, and even to cause them to fall[287]. This generation of heat in bee-hives seems to be one of those mysteries of nature that has not yet been satisfactorily accounted for. Generally speaking, insects appear to have no animal heat; the temperature of their bodies being usually that of the atmosphere in which they happen to be. But bees are an exception to this rule, and produce heat in themselves. Whether they are the only insect that can do this, as John Hunter affirms, or whether others that are gregarious, such as humble-bees, wasps, and ants, may not possess the same faculty, seems not yet clearly ascertained. The heat in the hive in the above instance was evidently occasioned by the tumult into which the bees were put; and the hum, and motions that followed it, were probably the result of their anger. But how these act physically, in an animal that has no circulation, I am unable to say; and must leave the question, like my predecessors, undecided.