So work the Honey Bees.
Creatures that by a rule in Nature, teach
The art of order to a peopled kingdom.—Shakspeare.
The above are a very accurate representations of the Queen, the Worker and the Drone. The group of bees in the title page, represents the attitude in which the bees surround their Queen or Mother as she rests upon the comb.
LANGSTROTH ON THE HIVE AND THE HONEY-BEE,
A Bee Keeper's Manual,
BY
REV. L. L. LANGSTROTH.
NORTHAMPTON: HOPKINS, BRIDGMAN & COMPANY. 1853.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by L. L. Langstroth, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts.
C. A. MIRICK, PRINTER, GREENFIELD.
PREFACE.
This Treatise on the Hive and the Honey-Bee, is respectfully submitted by the Author, to the candid consideration of those who are interested in the culture of the most useful as well as wonderful Insect, in all the range of Animated Nature. The information which it contains will be found to be greatly in advance of anything which has yet been presented to the English Reader; and, as far as facilities for practical management are concerned, it is believed to be a very material advance over anything which has hitherto been communicated to the Apiarian Public.
Debarred, by the state of his health, from the more appropriate duties of his Office, and compelled to seek an employment which would call him, as much as possible, into the open air, the Author indulges the hope that the result of his studies and observations, in an important branch of Natural History, will be found of service to the Community as well as to himself. The satisfaction which he has taken in his researches, has been such that he has felt exceedingly desirous of interesting others, in a pursuit which, (without any reference to its pecuniary profits,) is capable of exciting the delight and enthusiasm of all intelligent observers. The Creator may be seen in all the works of his hands; but in few more directly than in the wise economy of the Honey-Bee.
"What well appointed commonwealths! where each
Adds to the stock of happiness for all;
Wisdom's own forums! whose professors teach
Eloquent lessons in their vaulted hall!
Galleries of art! and schools of industry!
Stores of rich fragrance! Orchestras of song!
What marvelous seats of hidden alchemy!
How oft, when wandering far and erring long,
Man might learn truth and virtue from the BEE!"
Bowring.
The attention of Clergymen is particularly solicited to the study of this branch of Natural History. An intimate acquaintance with the wonders of the Bee-Hive, while it would benefit them in various ways, might lead them to draw their illustrations, more from natural objects and the world around them, and in this way to adapt them better to the comprehension and sympathies of their hearers. It was, we know, the constant practice of our Lord and Master, to illustrate his teachings from the birds of the air, the lilies of the field, and the common walks of life and pursuits of men. Common Sense, Experience and Religion alike dictate that we should follow his example.
L. L. LANGSTROTH.
Greenfield, Mass., May 25, 1853.
CONTENTS.
Deplorable state of bee-keeping. New era anticipated, [13]. Huber's discoveries and hives. Double hives for protection against extremes of temperature, [14]. Necessary to obtain complete control of the combs. Taming bees. Hives with movable bars. Their results important, [15]. Bee-keeping made profitable and certain. Movable frames for comb. Bees will work in glass hives exposed to the light. Dzierzon's discoveries, [16]. Wagner's letter on the merits of Dzierzon's hive and the movable comb hive, [17]. Superiority of movable comb hive, [19]. Superiority of Dzierzon's over the old mode, [20]. Success attending it, [22]. Bee-Journal to be established. Two of them in Germany. Important facts connected with bees heretofore discredited, [23]. Every thing seen in observing hives, [24].
Bees capable of Domestication. Astonishment of persons at their tameness, [25]. Bees intended for the comfort of man. Properties fitting them for domestication. Bees never attack when filled with honey, [26]. Swarming bees fill their honey bags and are peaceable. Hiving of bees safe, [27]. Bees cannot resist the temptation to fill themselves with sweets. Manageable by means of sugared water, [28]. Special aversion to certain persons. Tobacco smoke to subdue bees should not be used. Motions about a hive should be slow and gentle, [29].
The Queen Bee. The Drone. The Worker, [30]. Knowledge of facts relating to them, necessary to rear them with profit. Difficult to reason with some bee-keepers. Queen bee the mother of the colony—described, [31]. Importance of queen to the colony. Respect shown her by the other bees. Disturbance occasioned by her loss, [32]. Bee-keepers cannot fail to be interested in the habits of bees, [33]. Whoever is fond of his bees is fond of his home. Fertility of queen bees under-estimated. Fecundation of eggs of the queen bees, [34]-[36]. Huber vindicated. Francis Burnens. Huber the prince of Apiarians, [35]. Dr. Leidy's curious dissections, [37]. Wasps and hornets fertilized like queen bees. Huish's inconsistency, [38]. Retarded fecundation productive of drones only. Fertile workers produce only drones, [39]. Dzierzon's opinions on this subject, [40]. Wagner's theory. Singular fact in reference to a drone-rearing colony. Drone-laying queen on dissection, unimpregnated. Dzierzon's theory sustained, [41]. Dead drone for queen, mistake of bees, [43]. Eggs unfecundated produce drones. Fecundated produce workers; theory therefor, [44]. Aphides but once impregnated for a series of generations. Knowledge necessary for success, Queen bee, process of laying, [45]. Eggs described. Hatching, [46]. Larva, its food, its nursing. Caps of breeding and honey cells different, [47]. Nymph or pupa, working. Time of gestation. Cells contracted by cocoons sometimes become too small. Queen bee, her mode of development, [48]. Drone's development. Development of young bees slow in cool weather or weak swarms. Temperature above 70 deg. for the production of young. Thin hives, their insufficiency. Brood combs, danger of exposure to low temperature, [49]. Cocoons of drones and workers perfect. Cocoons of queens imperfect, the cause, [50]. Number of eggs dependent on the weather, &c. Supernumerary eggs, how disposed of, [51]. Queen bee, fertility diminishes after her third year. Dies in her fourth year, [52]. Drones, description of. Their proper office. Destroyed by the bees. When first appear, [53]. None in weak hives. Great number of them. Rapid increase of bees in tropical climates, [54]. How to prevent their over production. Expelled from the hive, [55]. If not expelled, hive should be examined. Provision to avoid "in and in breeding," [56]. Close breeding enfeebles colonies. Working bees, account of. Number in a hive, [58]. All females with imperfect ovaries. Fertile workers not tolerated where there are queens, [59]. Honey receptacle. Pollen basket. The sting. Sting of bees, [60]. Often lost in using. Penalty of its loss. Sting not lost by other insects. Labors of workers, [61]. Age of bees, [62]. Bees useful to the last, [63]. Cocoons not removed by the bees. Breeding cells becoming too small are reconstructed. Old comb should be removed. Brood comb not to be changed every year, [64]. Inventors of hives too often men of "one idea." Folly of large closets for bees, [65]. Reason of limited colonies. Mother wasps and hornets only survive Winter. Queen, process of rearing, [66]. Royal cells, [67]. Royal Jelly, [68]. Its effect on the larvæ, [69]. Swammerdam, [70]. Queen departs when successors are provided for. Queens, artificial rearing, [71]. Interesting experiment, [72]. Objections against the Bible illustrated, [73]. Huish against Huber, [74]. His objections puerile. Objections to the Bible ditto, [75].
Comb. Wax, how made. Formed of any saccharine substance. Huber's experiments, [76]. High temperature necessary to its composition, [77]. Heat generated in forming. Twenty pounds of honey to form one of wax. Value of empty comb in the new hive. How to free comb from eggs of the moth, [78]. Combs having bee-bread of great value. How to empty comb and replace it in the hive, [79]. Artificial comb. Experiment with wax proposed, [80]. Its results, if successful. Comb made chiefly in the night. [81]. Honey and comb made simultaneously. Wax a non-conductor of heat. Some of the brood cells uniform in size, others vary, [82]. Form of cells mathematically perfect, [83]. Honey comb a demonstration of a "Great First Cause," [84].
Propolis or Bee Glue. Whence it is obtained. Huber's experiment, [85]. Its use. Comb varnished with it. The moth deposits her eggs in it, [85]. Propolis difficult for bees to work. Curious use of it by bees, [87]. Ingenuity of bees admirable, [88].
Pollen or Bee-Bread. Whence obtained. Its use. Brood cannot be raised without it. Pollen nitrogenous. Its use discovered by Huber, [89]. Its collection by bees indicates a healthy queen. Experiment showing the importance of bee-bread to a colony, [90]. Not used in making comb. Bees prefer it fresh. Surplus in old hives to be used to supply its want to young hives. Pollen and honey both secured at the same time by bees. Mode of gathering pollen, [91]. Packing down. Bees gather one kind of pollen at a time. They aid in the impregnation of plants. History of the bee plain proof of the wisdom of the Creator. Bees made for man, [92]. Virgil's opinion of bees. Rye meal a substitute for pollen. Quantity used by each colony, [93]. Wheat flour a substitute. The improved hive facilitates feeding bees with meal. The discovery of a substitute for pollen removes an obstacle to the cultivation of honey bees, [94].
Fifty-four Advantages which ought to be found in an improved hive, [95]-[110]. Some desirable qualities the movable comb hive does not pretend to! Is the result of years of study and observation. It has been tested by experience, [111]. Not claimed as a perfect hive. Old-fashioned bee-keepers found most profit, &c. Simplest form of hive, [112]. Bee culture where it was fifty years ago. Best hives. New hive is submitted to the judgment of candid bee-keepers, [113].
Protection against extremes of Heat, Cold and Dampness. Many colonies destroyed by extremes of weather. Evils of thin hives. Bees not torpid in Winter. When frozen are killed, [114]. Take exercise to keep warm. Perish if unable to preserve suitable degree of warmth. Are often starved in the midst of plenty. Eat an extra quantity of food in thin, cold hives, [115]. Muscular exertion occasions waste of muscular fiber. Bees need less food when quiet than when excited. Experiment, wintering bees in a dry cellar, [116]. Protection must generally be given in open air. None but diseased bees discharge fæces in the hive. Moisture, its injurious effects. Free air needful in cold weather, with the common hive, [117]. Loss by their flying out in cold weather. Protection against extremes of weather of the very first importance. Honey, our country favorable to its production. Colonies in forests strong. Reasons for this, [118]. Russian and Polish bee-keepers successful. Their mode of management, [119]. Objection of want of air answered, [120]. Bees need but little air in Winter if protected. Protection in reference to the construction of hives. Double hives, preferable to plank. Made warm in Winter by packing. Double hives, inside may be of glass, [121]. Advantages of glass over wood, [122]. Advantages of double glass. Disadvantages of double hives in Spring. Avoided by the improved hive, [123]. Covered Apiaries exclude the sun in Spring. Reason for discarding them. Sun, its effect in producing early swarms in thin hives. Protected hives fall for want of sun. Enclosed Apiaries, nuisances. Thin hives ought to be given up, they are expensive in waste of honey and bees, [124]. Comparative cheapness of new and old hives, [125]. Protector against injurious weather. Proper location of bees. Preparations for setting hives, [126]. Protector should be open in Summer and banked in Winter. Cheaper than an Apiary. Summer air of Protector like forest air. In Winter uniform and mild, [127]. Bees will not be enticed out in improper weather. Secures their natural heat. Dead bees, &c., to be removed in Winter. Temperature of the Protector, [128]. Importance of the Protector. Its economy in food, [129].
Ventilation. Artificial ventilation produced by bees. Purity of air in the hive, [130]. Bad air fatal to bees, eggs and larvæ, [131]. Bees when disturbed need much air. Dysentery, how produced. Post mortem condition of suffocated bees, [132]. Great annoyance of excessive heat. Bees leave the hive to save the comb. Ventilating instinct wonderful, [133]. Should shame man for his neglect of ventilation. Comparative expense of ventilation to man and bees, [134]. Importance of ventilation to man. Its neglect induces disease, [135]. Plants cannot thrive without free air. The union of warmth and ventilation in Winter an important question. House-builder and stove-maker combine against fresh air, [136]. Run-away slave boxed up. Evil qualities of bad air aggravated by heat. Dwellings and public buildings generally deficient in ventilation. Degeneracy will ensue, [137]. Women the greatest sufferers. Necessity of reform, [138]. Public buildings should be required to have plenty of air. Improved hive, its adaptedness to secure ventilation, [139]. Nutt's hive too complicated. Ventilation independent of the entrance, [140]. Hive may be entirely closed without incommoding the bees. Ventilators should be easily removable to be cleansed. Ventilation from above injurious except when bees are to be moved, [141]. Variable size of the entrance adapts it to all seasons. Ventilators should be closed in Spring. Downing on ventilation, (note,) [142].
Swarming and Hiving. Bees swarming a beautiful sight. Poetic description by Evans. Design of swarming, [143]. The honey bee unlike other insects in its colonizing habits. It is chilled by a temperature below 50 deg. Would perish in Winter if not congregated in masses. Admirable adaptation, [144]. Swarming necessary. Circumstances in which it takes place. June the swarming month. Preparations for swarming. Old queen accompanies the first swarm. No infallible signs of 1st swarming, [145]. Fickleness of bees about swarming. Indications of swarming. Hours of swarming, [146]. Proceedings within the hive before swarming. Interesting scene. Bells and frying-pans useless, [147]. Neglected bees apt to fly away in swarming. Bees properly cared for seldom do it. Methods of arresting their flight when started, [148]. Conduct of bees in disagreeable hives, [149]. Why bees swarm before selecting a new home. They rarely cluster without the queen. Interesting experiment, [150]. Scouts to search for new abodes. Scouts sent out before and after swarming, [151]. Bees remain awhile after alighting. Curious incident stated by Mr. Zollickoffer. Necessity of scouts. Considerations confirmed, [152]. Re-population of the hive, [153]. Inability of bees to find their hive when it has been removed. After swarms, [154]. Different treatment to the cells of dead and living queens. Royal larvæ sometimes protected against the queens. Anger of the queen at such interference, [155]. Second swarming, its indications. Time, [156]. Double swarms. Third swarm. After swarms seriously reduce the strength of the hive. Wise arrangement, [157]. After-swarming avoided by the improved hive. Impregnation of queens. Dangerous for queens to mistake their own hives, [158]. Precautions against this. Proper color for hives. Time of laying eggs. None but worker eggs, the first season, [159]. Directions for hiving. Hives should be painted and well dried. Bees reluctant to enter thin warm hives in the sun, [160]. Management with the improved hives, [161]. Drone combs should never be used as guide comb. Pleasure of bees in finding comb in their new quarters. Bees never voluntarily enter empty hives. Rubbing the hive with herbs useless, [162]. Small trees or bushes in front of hives. Inexperienced Apiarian should wear a bee-dress. Moderate dispatch in hiving needful, [163]. Process of hiving particularly described, [164]. Old method of hiving should be abandoned, [166]. Importance of speedy hiving. Should be moved as soon as hived. Curious fact stated by Dr. Scudamore, (note), [167]. How to secure the queen. She does not sting. Hiving before the hives are ready, [168]. Another method of hiving. Natural swarming profitable. Objections to natural swarming. Common hive gives inadequate winter protection, [169]. With it, the bees often swarm too much. With the improved hive this is avoided. Disadvantages of returning after-swarms. Third objection, inability to strengthen small late swarms, [170]. Evils of feeble stocks. Fourth objection, loss of queen irreparable. By the new hive her loss is easily supplied, [171]. Fifth, common hives inconvenient when bees do not swarm. This objection removed by the new hive. Sixth, the ravages of the moth easily prevented by the improved hive. Seventh, the old queen, when infertile, cannot be removed or replaced. Both can be done by the new hive, [172].
(Two Chapters numbered x, by error of the Press.)
Artificial Swarming. Numerous efforts to dispense with natural swarming. Difficulties of natural swarming. First, many swarms are lost, [173]. Second, time and labor required. Sabbath labor, [174]. Perplexities to farmers. Third, large Apiaries cannot be established, [175]. Fourth, uncertainty of swarming. Disappointments from this source, [176]. Efforts to devise a surer method, [178]. Columellas's mode of obtaining swarms. Hyginus. Small success which attended, those efforts, Schirach's discovery, [179]. Huber's directions. Not adapted to general use. Dividing hives in this country unsuitable. Bees without mature queens make no preparation to rear workers, [180]. Dividing hives to multiply colonies will not answer, [181]. Huber's hive even, inadequate. Common dividing hives unsuccessful. Multiplying by brood comb in an empty hive, vain, [182]. Multiplying by removal and substitution useless. Mortality of bees in working season, [183]. Connecting apartments a failure, [184]. Many prefer non-swarming hives, [185]. Profitable in honey but calculated to exterminate the insect. Improved hive good non-swarmer, if desired. Disadvantages of non-swarming. Queen bee becomes infertile. Remedied by the use of the improved hive, [186]. Practicable mode of artificial swarming, [187]. Bees will welcome to their hives strange bees that come loaded. Will destroy such as come empty, [188]. Forced swarming requires knowledge of the economy of the bee-hive. Common hives give no facility for learning the bee's habits. Equalizing a divided swarm, [190]. Bees in parent hive, if removed, to be confined and watered, [191]. Bees removed will return to their old place. Supplying bees with water by a straw. Water necessary to prepare food for the larvæ, [192]. New forced swarms to be returned to the place of the old one, or removed to a distance. Treatment to wont them to new place in the Apiary, [193]. Bees forget their new locations. Objection to forced swarming in common hives, [194]. Forced swarming by the new hives removes the objection. Mode of forcing swarms by the new hives, [195]. Queen to be searched for. Important that she should be in the right hive, [196]. Convenience of forced swarming in supplying extra queens. Mode of supplying them. Should be done by day light and in pleasant weather, [197]. Honey-water not to be used. Safety to the operator. Forced swarming may be performed at mid-day. Advantages of the shape of the new hive, [198]. Huber's observation on the effect of sudden light in the hive. True solution of the phenomenon. Bees at the top of the hive, less belligerent than those at the bottom, [199]. Sudden jars to be avoided. Removal of honey-board. Sprinkling with sugar-water, [200]. Loosening the frames. Removing the comb. Bees will adhere to their comb, [201]. Natural swarming imitated. How to catch the queen. Frames protected from cold and robbery by bees. Frames returned to the hive. Honey-cover, how managed. Motions of bee-keeper to be gentle. Bees must not be breathed on. Success in the operation certain, [202]. New colonies may be thus formed in ten minutes. Natural swarming wholly prevented. If attempted by the bees cannot succeed. How to remove the wings of the queens, [203]. Precaution against loss of queen by old age. Advantages of this, [204]. Certainty and ease of artificial swarming with the new hive. After-swarms prevented if desired, [205]. Large harvests of honey and after-swarming impracticable. Danger of too rapid increase of stocks. Importance of understanding his object, by the bee-keeper, [206]. The matter made plain, [207]. Apiarians dissuaded from more than tripling their stocks in a year. Tenfold increase of stocks attainable, [209]. Certain increase, not rapid, most needed. Cautions concerning experiments, [210]. Honey, largest yield obtained by doubling colonies. The process, [211]. May be done at swarming time. Bees recognize each other by smell, [213]. Importance of following these directions illustrated. Process of uniting swarms simplified by the new hive, [214]. Very rapid increase of colonies precarious. Mode of effecting the most rapid increase, [215]. Nucleus system, [217]. Can a queen be raised from any egg? Two sorts of workers, wax workers and nurses, [218]. Probable explication of a difficulty, [219]. Experimenting difficult work. Swarming season best time for artificial swarming. Amusing perplexity of bees on finding their hive changed, [220]. Perseverance of bees. Interesting incident illustrating it, [221]. Novel and successful mode of forming nuclei, [223]. Mode of managing nuclei, [225]. Danger of over-feeding. Increasing stocks by doubling hives, [229]. Important rule for multiplying stocks. How to direct the strength of a colony to the rearing of young bees, [230]. Proper dimensions of hives. Reasons therefor, [231]. Easy construction of the improved hive. Precaution of queen bees in their combats, [234]. Reluctance of bees to receive a new queen. Expedient to overcome this. Queen nursery, [235]. Mode of rearing numerous queens, [237]. Control of the comb the soul of good bee-culture. Objection against bee-keeping answered, [233]. No "royal road" to bee-keeping. A prediction, [239].
Enemies of Bees. Bee-moth, its ravages. Defiance against it, [240]. Its habits. Known to Virgil. Time of appearance. Nocturnal in habits, [241]. Their agility. Vigilance of the bees against the moth. Havoc of sin in the heart, [242]. Disgusting effects of the moth worm in a hive. Wax the food of the moth larvæ. Making their cocoons, [243]. Devices to escape the bees. Time of development, [244]. Habits of the female when laying eggs. Of the worm when hatched, [245]. Our climate favorable to the increase of the moth. Moth not a native of America, [246]. Honey, its former plenty. Present depressure of its culture. Old mode of culture described, [247]. Depredations of the moth increased by patent hives. Aim of patent hives. Sulphur or starvation, [249]. Feeble swarms a nuisance, [250]. Notion prevailing in relation to breaking up stocks. Improved hives valueless without improved system of treatment, [251]. Pretended secrets in the management of bees. Strong stocks thrive under almost any circumstances, [252]. Stocks in costly hives. Circumstances under which the moth succeeds in a hive, [253]. Signs of worms in a hive, [254]. When entrenched difficult to remove. Method of avoiding their ravages, [255]. Combs having moth eggs to be removed and smoked, [257]. Uncovered comb to be removed, [258]. Loss of the queen the most fruitful occasion of ravages by the moth. Experiments on this point, [259]. Attempts to defend a queenless swarm against the moth useless, [260]. Strong queenless colonies destroyed when feeble ones with queens are untouched. Common hives furnish no remedy for the loss of the queen. Colonies without queens will perish, if not destroyed by the moth, [261]. Strong stocks rob queenless ones. Principal reasons of protection, [262]. Small stocks should have small space. Inefficiency of various contrivances, [263]. Useful precautions when using common hives. Destroy the larvæ of the moth early. Decoy of a woolen rag, [264]. Hollow or split sticks for traps. If the queen be lost, and worms infest the colony, break it up. Provision of the improved hives against moths, [265]. Moth-traps no help to careless bee-keepers. Incorrigibly careless persons should have nothing to do with bees, [266]. Worms, how removed from an improved hive. Sweet solutions useful to catch the moths. Interesting remarks of H. K. Oliver, on the bee-moth, [267]. Ravages of mice. Birds. Observations on the king-bird, [269]. Inhumanity and injurious effects of destroying birds, [270]. Other enemies of the bee. Precautions against dysentery. Bees not to be fed on liquid honey late in the season. Foul brood of the Germans, [271]. Produced by "American Honey." Peculiar kind of dysentery, [272].
Loss of the Queen. Queen often lost. Queens of strong hives seldom perish without providing for successors. Their death commonly occurs under favorable circumstances, [273]. Young queen sometimes matured before the death of the old one. Superannuated queens incapable of laying worker eggs. Case of precocious superannuation, [274]. Signs that there is no queen in a hive. Signs of queenless hives, [275]. Exhortation to wives, [276]. Difficult in common hives, to decide on the condition of the stock. Always easy with the movable comb hive, [277]. Bees sometimes refuse to accept of aid in their queenless state. Parallel in human conduct. Young bees in such hives will at once provide for a queen. An appeal to the young, [278]. Hives should be examined early in Spring. Destitute stocks should be united to others having queens. Reasons therefor. General treatment in early Spring, [279]. Hives should be cleansed in Spring. Durability and cheapness of hives, [280]. Undue regard to mere cheapness. Various causes destructive of queens, [281]. Agitation of the bees on missing their queen, [282]. Treatment of swarms that have lost their queens, [283]. Examination of the hive needful, [284]. Examination and treatment in the Fall. Persons who cannot attend to their bees themselves, may safely entrust their care to others, [285]. Business of the Apiarian united with that of the gardner. Experiments with queen bees, [286].
Union of Stocks. Transferring Bees. Starting an Apiary. Queenless colonies should be broken up, Spring and Fall. Small colonies should be united. Animal heat necessary in a hive. Small swarms in Winter consume much honey, [287]. Colonies to be united, should stand side by side. How to effect this. Removal of an Apiary in the working season, [288]. To secure the largest quantity of honey from a given number of stocks, [289]. Non-swarming plan. Moderate increase best, [290]. Transferring bees from common, to the movable comb hive, [291]. Successful experiment. Should not be attempted in cold weather. The process of transfer, [292]. Best time. May be done at any season when the weather is warm, [294]. Precaution against robbing, [295]. Combs should be transferred with the bees, [296]. Caution on trying new hives, [297]. Thrifty old swarms. Conditions of their thrift, [298]. Procuring bees to start an Apiary. New early swarms best. Signs to guide the inexperienced buyer, [299]. Directions for removing old colonies. For removing new swarms, [300]. To procure honey the first season. Novices should begin in a small way. Neglected Apiary, [303]. Superstitions about bees. Cautions to the inexperienced, against transferring, renewed. Parallel between bees and covetous men, [304].
Robbing. Idleness a great cause of it, [305]. Colonies should be examined and supplied with food in Spring. Appearance of robber bees, [306]. Their suspicious actions. Are real "Jerry Sneaks," [308]. Highway robbers, [309]. Bee battles. Subjected bees unite with the conquerors. Cautions against robbery. Importance of guarding against robbery, [310]. Efficiency of the movable blocks to this end. Comb with honey not to be exposed, [311]. Curious case of robbery, [314].
Directions for Feeding Bees. Feeding greatly mismanaged. Condition of the bees should be ascertained in the Spring. They should be supplied if needy, [315]. Many perish from want. Connection between feeding and breeding in the hive, [316]. Caution in feeding necessary. Results of over feeding, [317]. Necessary to feed largely in multiplying stocks. How to feed weak swarms in Spring, [319]. Considerations governing the quantity of food, [320]. Main object to produce bees. Proper condition of an Apiary at close of honey season, [321]. Feeding for Winter attended to in August. Unsealed honey sours. Sour food is unwholesome to bees. Striking instance, [322]. Spare honey to be apportioned among the stocks. Swarms with overstocks of honey do not breed so well. Surplus honey in Spring to be removed, [323]. Full frames exchanged for empty ones. Feeble stocks in Fall, to be broken up. Profits all come from strong swarms. Composition of a good bee-feed, [324]. Directions for feeding with the improved hive, [325]. Feeding useless when but little comb in the hive, [326]. Top feeding. Feeder described. Importance of water to bees, [328]. Sugar candy a valuable substitute for honey. Summer feeding, [330]. Bees with proper care need but little feeding. Quantity of honey necessary to winter a stock, [331]. Feeding as a source of profit. Selling W. I. honey a cheat, [332]. Honey not a secretion of the bee. Evaporation of its water the principal change it undergoes, [334]. Folly of diluting the feed of bees too much. Feeders of cheap honey for market, deceivers or deceived, [335]. Artificial liquid honey, [336]. Improved Maple sugar, [337]. Feeding bees on artificial honey not profitable, [337]. Dangerous feeding bees without floats. Their infatuation for liquid sweets, [339]. Like that of the inebriate for his cups, [340]. Avarice in bees and men, [341].
Honey. Pasturage. Overstocking. Honey the product of flowers, [342]. Honey dew. Aphides, [343]. Qualities of honey, [345]. Poisonous honey. Innoxious by boiling. Preserving honey, [346]. Modes of taking honey from the hive. Objections to glass vessels, [347]. Pasteboard boxes preferred. Honey should be handled carefully. Pattern comb to be used in the boxes. Honey safely removed, [348]. Should not be taken from the bees in large quantities during honey harvest. Pasturage, [349]. The Willow. Sugar Maple and other honey-yielding trees, [350]. Linden tree as an ornament. White clover, [351]. Recommended by Hon. Frederick Holbrook as a grass crop, [352]. Sweet-scented clover, [363]. Hybrid clover front Sweden, [354]. Buckwheat. Raspberry, [355]. Garden flowers. Overstocking, [356]. Little danger of it. Bee-keepers and Napoleon. No overstocking in this country. Letter from Mr. Wagner on the subject, [357]. Flight of bees for food, [361]. Advantages of a good hive in saving time and honey. Energies of bees limited. Bees injured by winds, [362]. Protector saves them from harm. Estimated profits of bee-culture. Advice to the careless, [363]. Value of Dzierzon's system. Adopted by the government of Norway. Want of National encouragement to agriculture, (note), [364].
Anger of Bees. Remedy for their Sting. Bee-Dress. Instincts of Bees. Gentleness of the bee, [365]. Feats of Wildman. Interesting incident, [366]. Discovery of a universal law. Its importance and results, [367]. Cross bees diseased. Never necessary to provoke a whole colony of bees, [368]. Danger from bees when provoked. A word to females, [369]. Kindness of bees to one another. Contrast with some children, [370]. Effects of a sting. The poison, [371]. Peculiar odors offensive to bees. Precautions against animals and human robbers, [372]. Sense of smell in the bee, [373]. By this they distinguish their hive companions. Robbers repelled by odors, [374]. Stocks united by them, [375]. Warning given by bees before stinging. How to act when assaulted by bees, [376]. Remedies for the sting, [377]. Bee-dress, [380]. Instincts of bees, [381]. Distinction between instinct in animals and reason in men. Remarkable instance of sagacity in bees, [383]. Facilities afforded by the Author's Improved Observing Hive. Indebtedness of the author to S. Wagner, Esq., [384].
ADVERTISEMENT
L. L. LANGSTROTH'S MOVABLE COMB HIVE.
Patented October 5, 1862.
Each comb in this hive is attached to a separate, movable frame, and in less than five minutes they may all be taken out, without cutting or injuring them, or at all enraging the bees. Weak stocks may be quickly strengthened by helping them to honey and maturing brood from stronger ones; queenless colonies may be rescued from certain ruin by supplying them with the means of obtaining another queen; and the ravages of the moth effectually prevented, as at any time the hive may be readily examined and all the worms, &c., removed from the combs. New colonies may be formed in less time than is usually required to hive a natural swarm; or the hive may be used as a non-swarmer, or managed on the common swarming plan. The surplus honey may be taken from the interior of the hive on the frames or in upper boxes or glasses, in the most convenient, beautiful and saleable forms. Colonies may be safely transferred from any other hive to this, at any season of the year, from April to October, as the brood, combs, honey and all the contents of the hive are transferred with them, and securely fastened in the frames. That the combs can always be removed from this hive with ease and safety, and that the new system, by giving the perfect control over all the combs, effects a complete revolution in practical bee-keeping, the subscriber prefers to prove rather than assert. Practical Apiarians and all who wish to purchase rights and hives, are invited to visit his Apiary, where combs, honey and bees will be taken from the hives; colonies which may be brought to him for that purpose, transferred from any old hive; queens, and the whole process of rearing them constantly exhibited; new colonies formed, and all processes connected with the practical management of an Apiary fully illustrated and explained.
Those who have any considerable number of bees, will find it to their interest to have at least one movable comb-hive in their Apiary, from which they may, in a few minutes, supply any colony which has lost its queen, with the means of rearing another.
The hive and right will be furnished on the following terms. For an individual or farm right, five dollars. This will entitle the purchaser to use and construct for his own use on his own premises, as many hives as he chooses. The hives are manufactured by machinery, and can probably be delivered, freight included, at any Railroad Station in New England, or New York, cheaper than they could be made in small quantities on the spot. On receipt of a hive, the purchaser can decide for himself, whether he prefers to make them, or to order them of the Patentee. For one dollar, postage paid, the book will be sent free by mail. On receipt of ten dollars, a beautiful hive showing all the combs, (with glass on four sides,) will be sent with right, freight paid to any railroad station in New England or New York: a right and hive which will accommodate two colonies, with glass on each side, for twelve dollars; for seven dollars, a right and a well made hive that any one can construct who can handle the simplest tools. In all cases where the hives are sent out of New England or New York, as the freight will not be prepaid, a dollar will be deducted from the above prices. Address
L. L. LANGSTROTH.
Greenfield, Mass.
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER I.
The present condition of practical bee-keeping in this country, is known to be deplorably low. From the great mass of agriculturists, and others favorably situated for obtaining honey, it receives not the slightest attention. Notwithstanding the large number of patent hives which have been introduced, the ravages of the bee-moth have increased, and success is becoming more and more precarious. Multitudes have abandoned the pursuit in disgust, while many of the most experienced, are fast settling down into the conviction that all the so-called "Improved Hives" are delusions, and that they must return to the simple box or hollow log, and "take up" their bees with sulphur, in the old-fashioned way.
In the present state of public opinion, it requires no little courage to venture upon the introduction of a new hive and system of management; but I feel confident that a new era in bee-keeping has arrived, and invite the attention of all interested, to the reasons for this belief. A perusal of this Manual, will, I trust, convince them that there is a better way than any with which they have yet been acquainted. They will here find many hitherto mysterious points in the physiology of the honey-bee, clearly explained, and much valuable information never before communicated to the public.
It is now nearly fifteen years since I first turned my attention to the cultivation of bees. The state of my health having compelled me to live more and more in the open air, I have devoted a large portion of my time, of late years, to a careful investigation of their habits, and to a series of minute and thorough experiments in the construction of hives, and the best methods of managing them, so as to secure the largest practical results.
Very early in my Apiarian studies, I procured an imported copy of the work of the celebrated Huber, and constructed a hive on his plan, which furnished me with favorable opportunities of verifying some of his most valuable discoveries; and I soon found that the prejudices existing against him, were entirely unfounded. Believing that his discoveries laid the foundation for a more extended and profitable system of bee-keeping, I began to experiment with hives of various construction.
The result of all these investigations fell far short of my expectations. I became, however, most thoroughly convinced that no hives were fit to be used, unless they furnished uncommon protection against extremes of heat and more especially of COLD. I accordingly discarded all thin hives made of inch stuff, and constructed my hives of doubled materials, enclosing a "dead air" space all around.
These hives, although more expensive in the first cost, proved to be much cheaper in the end, than those I had previously used. The bees wintered remarkably well in them, and swarmed early and with unusual regularity. My next step in advance, was, while I secured my surplus honey in the most convenient, beautiful and salable forms, so to facilitate the entrance of the bees into the honey receptacles, as to secure the largest fruits from their labors.
Although I felt confident that my hive possessed some valuable peculiarities, I still found myself unable to remedy many of the casualties to which bee-keeping is liable. I now perceived that no hive could be made to answer my expectations unless it gave me the complete control of the combs, so that I might remove any, or all of them at pleasure. The use of the Huber hive had convinced me that with proper precautions, the combs might be removed without enraging the bees, and that these insects were capable of being domesticated or tamed, to a most surprising degree. A knowledge of these facts was absolutely necessary to the further progress of my invention, for without it, I should have regarded a hive designed to allow of the removal of the combs, as too dangerous in use, to be of any practical value. At first, I used movable slats or bars placed on rabbets in the front and back of the hive. The bees were induced to build their combs upon these bars, and in carrying them down, to fasten them to the sides of the hive. By severing the attachments to the sides, I was able, at any time, to remove the combs suspended from the bars. There was nothing new in the use of movable bars; the invention being probably, at least, a hundred years old; and I had myself used such hives on Bevan's plan, very early in the commencement of my experiments. The chief peculiarity in my hives, as now constructed, was the facility with which these bars could be removed without enraging the bees, and their combination with my new mode of obtaining the surplus honey.
With hives of this construction I commenced experimenting on a larger scale than ever, and soon arrived at results which proved to be of the very first importance. I found myself able, if I wished it, to dispense entirely with natural swarming, and yet to multiply colonies with much greater rapidity and certainty than by the common methods. I could, in a short time, strengthen my feeble colonies, and furnish those which had lost their Queen with the means of obtaining another. If I suspected that any thing was the matter with a hive, I could ascertain its true condition, by making a thorough examination of every part, and if the worms had gained a lodgment, I could quickly dispossess them. In short, I could perform all the operations which will be explained in this treatise, and I now believed that bee-keeping could be made highly profitable, and as much a matter of certainty, as any other branch of rural economy.
I perceived, however, that one thing was yet wanting. The cutting of the combs from their attachments to the sides of the hive, in order to remove them, was attended with much loss of time to myself and to the bees, and in order to facilitate this operation, the construction of my hive was necessarily complicated. This led me to invent a method by which the combs were attached to MOVABLE FRAMES, and suspended in the hives, so as to touch neither the top, bottom, nor sides. By this device, I was able to remove the combs at pleasure, and if desired, I could speedily transfer them, bees and all, without any cutting, to another hive. I have experimented largely with hives of this construction, and find that they answer most admirably, all the ends proposed in their invention.
While experimenting in the summer of 1851, with some observing hives of a peculiar construction, I discovered that bees could be made to work in glass hives, exposed to the full light of day. The notice, in a Philadelphia newspaper, of this discovery, procured me the pleasure of an acquaintance with Rev. Dr. Berg, pastor of a Dutch Reformed church in that city. From him, I first learned that a Prussian clergyman, of the name of Dzierzon, (pronounced Tseertsone,) had attracted the attention of crowned heads, by his important discoveries in the management of bees. Before he communicated the particulars of these discoveries, I explained to Dr. Berg, my system of management, and showed him my hive. He expressed the greatest astonishment at the wonderful similarity in our methods of management, both of us having carried on our investigations without the slightest knowledge of each other's labors. Our hives, he found to differ in some very important respects. In the Dzierzon hive, the combs are not attached to movable frames, but to bars, so that they cannot, without cutting, be removed from the hive. In my hive, which is opened from the top, any comb may be taken out, without at all disturbing the others; whereas, in the Dzierzon hive, which is opened from one of the ends, it is often necessary to cut and remove many combs, in order to get access to a particular one; thus, if the tenth comb from the end is to be removed, nine combs must be first cut and taken out. All this consumes a large amount of time. The German hive does not furnish the surplus honey in a form which would be found most salable in our markets, or which would admit of safe transportation in the comb. Notwithstanding these disadvantages, it has achieved a great triumph in Germany, and given a new impulse to the cultivation of bees.
The following letter from Samuel Wagner, Esq., cashier of the bank in York, Pennsylvania, will show the results which have been obtained in Germany, by the new system of management, and his estimate of the superior value of my hive to those in use there.
York, Pa., Dec. 24, 1852.
Dear Sir,
The Dzierzon theory and the system of bee-management based thereon, were originally promulgated, hypothetically, in the "Eichstadt Bienenzeitung" or Bee-journal, in 1845, and at once arrested my attention. Subsequently, when in 1848, at the instance of the Prussian government, the Rev. Mr. Dzierzon published his "Theory and Practice of Bee Culture," I imported a copy, which reached me in 1849, and which I translated prior to January 1850. Before the translation was completed, I received a visit from my friend, the Rev. Dr. Berg, of Philadelphia, and in the course of conversation on bee-keeping, mentioned to him the Dzierzon theory and system, as one which I regarded as new and very superior, though I had had no opportunity for testing it practically. In February following, when in Philadelphia, I left with him the translation in manuscript—up to which period, I doubt whether any other person in this country had any knowledge of the Dzierzon theory; except to Dr. Berg I had never mentioned it to any one, save in very general terms.
In September, 1851, Dr. Berg again visited York, and stated to me your investigations, discoveries and inventions. From the account Dr. Berg gave me, I felt assured that you had devised substantially the same system as that so successfully pursued by Mr. Dzierzon; but how far your hive resembled his I was unable to judge from description alone. I inferred, however, several points of difference. The coincidence as to system, and the principles on which it was evidently founded, struck me as exceedingly singular and interesting, because I felt confident that you had no more knowledge of Mr. Dzierzon and his labors, before Dr. Berg mentioned him and his book to you, than Mr. Dzierzon had of you. These circumstances made me very anxious to examine your hives, and induced me to visit your Apiary in the village of West Philadelphia, last August. In the absence of the keeper, as I informed you, I took the liberty to explore the premises thoroughly, opening and inspecting a number of the hives, and noticing the internal arrangement of the parts. The result was, that I came away convinced that though your system was based on the same principles as Dzierzon's, yet that your hive was almost totally different from his, in construction and arrangement; that while the same objects substantially are attained by each, your hive is more simple, more convenient, and much better adapted for general introduction and use, since the mode of using it can be more easily taught. Of its ultimate and triumphant success I have no doubt. I sincerely believe that when it comes under the notice of Mr. Dzierzon, he will himself prefer it to his own. It in fact combines all the good properties which a hive ought to possess, while it is free from the complication, clumsiness, vain whims, and decidedly objectionable features, which characterize most of the inventions which profess to be at all superior to the simple box, or the common chamber hive.
You may certainly claim equal credit with Dzierzon for originality in observation and discovery in the natural history of the honey bee, and for success in deducing principles and devising a most valuable system of management from observed facts. But in invention, as far as neatness, compactness, and adaptation of means to ends are concerned, the sturdy German must yield the palm to you. You will find a case of similar coincidence detailed in the Westminster Review for October, 1852, page 267, et seq.
I send you herewith some interesting statements respecting Dzierzon, and the estimate in which his system is held in Germany.
Very truly yours,
SAMUEL WAGNER.
Rev. L. L. Langstroth.
The following are the statements to which Mr. Wagner refers.—
"As the best test of the value of Mr. Dzierzon's system, is the results which have been made to flow from it, a brief account of its rise and progress maybe found interesting. In 1835 he commenced bee-keeping in the common way, with 12 colonies—and after various mishaps, which taught him the defects of the common hives and the old mode of management, his stock was so reduced that in 1838 he had virtually to begin anew. At this period he contrived his improved hive in its ruder form, which gave him the command over all the combs, and he began to experiment on the theory which observation and study had enabled him to devise. Thenceforward his progress was as rapid as his success was complete and triumphant. Though he met with frequent reverses—about 70 colonies having been stolen from him, sixty destroyed by fire, and 24 by a flood—yet in 1846 his stock had increased to 360 colonies, and he realized from them that year six thousand pounds of honey, besides several hundred weight of wax. At the same time most of the cultivators in his vicinity who pursued the common methods, had fewer hives than they had when he commenced.
In the year 1848, a fatal pestilence, known by the name of "foul brood," prevailed among his bees, and destroyed nearly all his colonies before it could be subdued—only about ten having escaped the malady, which attacked alike the old stocks and his artificial swarms. He estimates his entire loss that year at over 500 colonies. Nevertheless he succeeded so well in multiplying by artificial swarms, the few that remained healthy, that in the fall of 1851 his stock consisted of nearly 400 colonies. He must, therefore, have multiplied his stocks more than three fold each year."
The highly prosperous condition of his colonies is attested by the Report of the Secretary of the Annual Apiarian Convention which met in his vicinity last spring. This Convention, the fourth which has been held, consisted of 112 experienced and enthusiastic bee-keepers from various districts of Germany and neighboring countries, and among them were some who when they assembled were strong opposers of his system.
They visited and personally examined the Apiaries of Mr. Dzierzon. The report speaks in the very highest terms of his success, and of the manifest superiority of his system of management. He exhibited and satisfactorily explained to his visitors his practice and principles; and they remarked, with astonishment, the singular docility of his bees, and the thorough control to which they were subjected. After a full detail of the proceedings, the Secretary goes on to say:—
"Now that I have seen Dzierzon's method practically demonstrated, I must admit that it is attended with fewer difficulties than I had supposed. With his hive and system of management it would seem that bees become at once more docile than they are in other cases. I consider his system the simplest and best means of elevating bee-culture to a profitable pursuit, and of spreading it far and wide over the land—especially as it is peculiarly adapted to districts in which the bees do not readily and regularly swarm. His eminent success in re-establishing his stock after suffering so heavily from the devastating pestilence—in short the recuperative power of the system demonstrates conclusively, that it furnishes the best, perhaps the only means of reinstating bee-culture lo a profitable branch of rural economy.
Dzierzon modestly disclaimed the idea of having attained perfection in his hive. He dwelt rather upon the truth and importance of his theory and system of management."
From the Leipzig Illustrated Almanac—Report on Agriculture for 1846.
"Bee culture is no longer regarded as of any importance in rural economy."
From the same for 1851, and 1853.
"Since Dzierzon's system has been made known an entire revolution in bee culture has been produced. A new era has been created for it, and bee-keepers are turning their attention to it with renewed zeal. The merits of his discoveries are appreciated by the government, and they recommend his system as worthy the attention of the teachers of common schools.
Mr. Dzierzon resides in a poor sandy district of Middle Silesia, which, according to the common notions of Apiarians, is unfavorable to bee-culture. Yet despite of this and of various mishaps, he has succeeded in realizing 900 dollars as the product of his bees in one season!
By his mode of management, his bees yield, even in the poorest years, from 10 to 15 per cent on the capital invested, and where the colonies are produced by the Apiarian's own skill and labor they cost him only about one-fourth the price at which they are usually valued. In ordinary seasons the profit amounts to from 30 to 50 per cent, and in very favorable seasons from 80 to 100 per cent."
In communicating these facts to the public, I have several objects in view. I freely acknowledge that I take an honest pride in establishing my claims as an independent observer; and as having matured by my own discoveries, the same system of bee-culture, as that which has excited so much interest in Germany; I desire also to have the testimony of the translator of Dzierzon to the superior merits of my hive. Mr. Wagner is extensively known as an able German scholar. He has taken all the numbers of the Bee Journal, a monthly periodical which has been published for more than fifteen years in Germany, and is probably more familiar with the state of Apiarian culture abroad, than any man in this country.
I am anxious further to show that the great importance which I attach to my system of management, is amply justified by the success of those who while pursuing the same system with inferior hives, have attained results, which to common bee-keepers, seem almost incredible. Inventors are very prone to form exaggerated estimates of the value of their labors; and the American public has been so often deluded with patent hives, devised by persons ignorant of the most important principles in the natural history of the bee, and which have utterly failed to answer their professed objects, that they are scarcely to be blamed for rejecting every new hive as unworthy of confidence.
There is now a prospect that a Bee Journal will before long, be established in this country. Such a publication has long been needed. Properly conducted, it will have a most powerful influence in disseminating information, awakening enthusiasm, and guarding the public against the miserable impositions to which it has so long been subjected.
Two such journals are now published monthly in Germany, one of which has been in existence for more than 15 years—and their wide circulation has made thousands well acquainted with those principles, which must constitute the foundation of any enlightened and profitable system of culture.
The truth is that while many of the principal facts in the physiology of the honey bee have long been familiar to scientific observers, it has unfortunately happened that some of the most important have been widely discredited. In themselves they are so wonderful, and to those who have not witnessed them, often so incredible, that it is not at all strange that they have been rejected as fanciful conceits, or bare-faced inventions.
Many persons have not the slightest idea that every thing may be seen that takes place in a bee-hive. But hives have for many years, been in use, containing only one large comb, enclosed on both sides, by glass. These hives are darkened by shutters, and when opened, the queen is exposed to observation, as well as all the other bees. Within the last two years, I have discovered that with proper precautions, colonies can be made to work in observing hives, without shutters, and exposed continually to the full light of day; so that observations may be made at all times, without in the least interrupting the ordinary operations of the bees. By the aid of such hives, some of the most intelligent citizens of Philadelphia have seen in my Apiary, the queen bee depositing her eggs in the cells, and constantly surrounded by an affectionate circle of her devoted children. They have also witnessed, with astonishment and delight, all the steps in the mysterious process of raising queens from eggs which with the ordinary development, would have produced only the common bees. For more than three months, there was not a day in which some of my colonies were not engaged in making new queens to supply the place of those taken from them, and I had the pleasure of exhibiting all the facts to bee-keepers who never before felt willing to credit them. As all my hives are so made that each comb can be taken out, and examined at pleasure, those who use them, can obtain from them all the information which they need, and, are no longer forced to take any thing upon trust.
May I be permitted to express the hope that the time is now at hand, when the number of practical observers will be so multiplied, that ignorant and designing men will neither be able to impose their conceits and falsehoods upon the public, nor be sustained in their attempts to depreciate the valuable discoveries of those who have devoted years of observation and experiment to promote the advancement of Apiarian knowledge.
CHAPTER II.
THE HONEY BEE CAPABLE OF BEING TAMED OR DOMESTICATED TO A MOST SURPRISING DEGREE.
If the bee had not such a necessary and yet formidable weapon both of offence and defence, multitudes would be induced to enter upon its cultivation, who are now afraid to have any thing to do with it. As the new system of management which I have devised, seems to add to this inherent difficulty, by taking the greatest possible liberties with so irascible an insect, I deem it important to show clearly, in the very outset, how bees may be managed, so that all necessary operations may be performed in an Apiary, without incurring any serious risk of exciting their anger.
Many persons have been unable to control their expressions of wonder and astonishment, on seeing me open hive after hive, in my experimental Apiary, in the vicinity of Philadelphia, removing the combs covered with bees, and shaking them off in front of the hives; exhibiting the queen, transferring the bees to another hive, and, in short, dealing with them as if they were as harmless as so many flies. I have sometimes been asked if the bees with which I was experimenting, had not been subjected to a long course of instruction, to prepare them for public exhibition; when in some cases, the very hives which I was opening, contained swarms which had been brought only the day before, to my establishment.
Before entering upon the natural history of the bee, I shall anticipate some principles in its management, in order to prepare my readers to receive, without the doubts which would otherwise be very natural, the statements in my book, and to convince them that almost any one favorably situated, may safely enjoy the pleasure and profit of a pursuit, which has been most appropriately styled, "the poetry of rural economy;" and that, without being made too familiar with a sharp little weapon, which can most speedily and effectually convert all the poetry into very sorry prose.
The Creator intended the bee for the comfort of man, as truly as he did the horse or the cow. In the early ages of the world, indeed until very recently, honey was almost the only natural sweet; and the promise of "a land flowing with milk and honey," had then a significance, the full force of which it is difficult for us to realize. The honey bee was, therefore, created not merely with the ability to store up its delicious nectar for its own use, but with certain properties which fitted it to be domesticated, and to labor for man, and without which, he would no more have been able to subject it to his control, than to make a useful beast of burden of a lion or a tiger.
One of the peculiarities which constitutes the very foundation, not merely of my system of management, but of the ability of man to domesticate at all so irascible an insect, has never, to my knowledge, been clearly stated as a great and controlling principle. It may be thus expressed.
A honey bee never volunteers an attack, or acts on the offensive, when it is gorged or filled with honey.
The man who first attempted to lodge a swarm of bees in an artificial hive, was doubtless agreeably surprised at the ease with which he was able to accomplish it. For when the bees are intending to swarm, they fill their honey-bags to their utmost capacity. This is wisely ordered, that they may have materials for commencing operations immediately in their new habitation; that they may not starve if several stormy days should follow their emigration; and that when they leave their hives, they may be in a suitable condition to be secured by man.
They issue from their hives in the most peaceable mood that can well be imagined; and unless they are abused, allow themselves to be treated with great familiarity. The hiving of bees by those who understand their nature, could almost always be conducted without the risk of any annoyance, if it were not the case that some improvident or unfortunate ones occasionally come forth without the soothing supply; and not being stored with honey, are filled with the gall of the bitterest hate against all mankind and animal kind in general, and any one who dares to meddle with them in particular. Such radicals are always to be dreaded, for they must vent their spleen on something, even though they lose their life in the act.
Suppose the whole colony, on sallying forth, to possess such a ferocious spirit; no one would ever dare to hive them, unless clad in a coat of mail, at least bee-proof, and not even then, until all the windows of his house were closed, his domestic animals bestowed in some safe place, and sentinels posted at suitable stations, to warn all comers to look out for something almost as much to be dreaded, as a fiery locomotive in full speed. In short, if the propensity to be exceedingly good-natured after a hearty meal, had not been given to the bee, it could never have been domesticated, and our honey would still be procured from the clefts of rocks, or the hollows of trees.
A second peculiarity in the nature of the bee, and one of which I continually avail myself with the greatest success, may be thus stated.
Bees cannot, under any circumstances, resist the temptation to fill themselves with liquid sweets.
It would be quite as easy for an inveterate miser to look with indifference upon a golden shower of double eagles, falling at his feet and soliciting his appropriation. If then we can contrive a way to call their attention to a treat of running sweets, when we wish to perform any operation which might provoke them, we may be sure they will accept it, and under its genial influence, allow us without molestation, to do what we please.
We must always be particularly careful not to handle them roughly, for they will never allow themselves to be pinched or hurt without thrusting out their sting to resent such an indignity. I always keep a small watering-pot or sprinkler, in my Apiary, and whenever I wish to operate upon a hive, as soon as the cover is taken off, and the bees exposed, I sprinkle them gently with water sweetened with sugar. They help themselves with the greatest eagerness, and in a few moments, are in a perfectly manageable state. The truth is, that bees managed on this plan are always glad to see visitors, and you cannot look in upon them too often, for they expect at every call, to receive a sugared treat by way of a peace-offering.
I can superintend a large number of hives, performing every operation that is necessary for pleasure or profit, and yet not run the risks of being stung, which must frequently be incurred in attempting to manage, in the simplest way, the common hives. Those who are timid may, at first, use a bee-dress; though they will soon discard every thing of the kind, unless they are of the number of those to whom the bees have a special aversion. Such unfortunates are sure to be stung whenever they show themselves in the vicinity of a bee-hive, and they will do well to give the bees a very wide berth.
Apiarians have, for many years, employed the smoke of tobacco for subduing their bees. It deprives them, at once, of all disposition to sting, but it ought never to be used for such a purpose. If the construction of the hives will not permit the bees to be sprinkled with sugar water, the smoke of burning paper or rags will answer every purpose, and the bees will not be likely to resent it; whereas when they recover from the effect of the tobacco, they not unfrequently remember, and in no very gentle way, the operator who administered the nauseous dose.
Let all your motions about your hives be gentle and slow. Accustom your bees to your presence; never crush or injure them in any operation; acquaint yourself fully with the principles of management detailed in this treatise, and you will find that you have but little more reason to dread the sting of a bee, than the horns of your favorite cow, or the heels of your faithful horse.
CHAPTER III.
THE QUEEN OR MOTHER-BEE, THE DRONES, AND THE WORKERS; WITH VARIOUS HIGHLY IMPORTANT FACTS IN THEIR NATURAL HISTORY.
Bees can flourish only when associated in large numbers, as a colony. In a solitary state, a single bee is almost as helpless as a new-born child; it is unable to endure even the ordinary chill of a cool summer night.
If a strong colony of bees is examined, a short time before it swarms, three different kinds of bees will be found in the hive.
1st. A bee of peculiar shape, commonly called the Queen Bee.
2d. Some hundreds, more or less, of large bees called Drones.
3d. Many thousands of a smaller kind, called Workers or common bees, and similar to those which are seen on the blossoms. A large number of the cells will be found filled with honey and bee-bread; while vast numbers contain eggs, and immature workers and drones. A few cells of unusual size, are devoted to the rearing of young queens, and are ordinarily to be found in a perfect condition, only in the swarming season.
The Queen-Bee is the only perfect female in the hive, and all the eggs are laid by her. The Drones are the males, and the Workers are females, whose ovaries or "egg-bags" are so imperfectly developed that they are incapable of breeding, and which retain the instinct of females, only so far as to give the most devoted attention to feeding and rearing the brood.
These facts have all been demonstrated repeatedly, and are as well established as the most common facts in the breeding of our domestic animals. The knowledge of them in their most important bearings, is absolutely essential to all who expect to realize large profits from an improved method of rearing bees. Those who will not acquire the necessary information, if they keep bees at all, should manage them in the old-fashioned way, which requires the smallest amount either of knowledge or skill.
I am perfectly aware how difficult it is to reason with a large class of bee-keepers, some of whom have been so often imposed upon, that they have lost all faith in the truth of any statements which may be made by any one interested in a patent hive, while others stigmatize all knowledge which does not square with their own, as "book-knowledge," and unworthy the attention of practical men.
If any such read this book, let me remind them again, that all my assertions may be put to the test. So long as the interior of a hive, was to common observers, a profound mystery, ignorant and designing men might assert what they pleased, about what passed in its dark recesses; but now, when all that takes place in it, can, in a few moments, be exposed to the full light of day, and every one who keeps bees, can see and examine for himself, the man who attempts to palm upon the community, his own conceits for facts, will speedily earn for himself, the character both of a fool and an impostor.
The Queen Bee, or as she may more properly be called the mother bee, is the common mother of the whole colony. She reigns therefore, most unquestionably, by a divine right, as every mother is, or ought to be, a queen in her own family. Her shape is entirely different from that of the other bees. While she is not near so bulky as a drone, her body is longer, and of a more tapering, or sugar-loaf form than that of a worker, so that she has somewhat of a wasp-like appearance. Her wings are much shorter, in proportion, than those of the drone, or worker; the under part of her body is of a golden color, and the upper part darker than that of the other bees. Her motions are usually slow and matronly, although she can, when she pleases, move with astonishing quickness.
No colony can long exist without the presence of this all-important insect. She is just as necessary to its welfare, as the soul is to the body, for a colony without a queen must as certainly perish, as a body without the spirit hasten to inevitable decay.
She is treated by the bees, as every mother ought to be, by her children, with the most unbounded respect and affection. A circle of her loving offspring constantly surround her, testifying, in various ways, their dutiful regard; offering her honey, from time to time, and always, most politely getting out of her way, to give her a clear path when she wishes to move over the combs. If she is taken from them, as soon as they have ascertained their loss, the whole colony is thrown into a state of the most intense agitation; all the labors of the hive are at once abandoned; the bees run wildly over the combs, and frequently, the whole of them rush forth from the hive, and exhibit all the appearance of anxious search for their beloved mother. Not being able anywhere to find her, they return to their desolate home, and by their mournful tones, reveal their deep sense of so deplorable a calamity. Their note, at such times, more especially when they first realize her loss, is of a peculiarly mournful character; it sounds something like a succession of wails on the minor key, and can no more be mistaken by the experienced bee-keeper, for their ordinary, happy hum, than the piteous moanings of a sick child can be confounded, by an anxious mother, with its joyous crowings, when overflowing with health and happiness.
I am perfectly aware that all this will sound to many, much more like romance than sober reality; but I have determined, in writing this book, to state facts, however wonderful, just as they are; confident that they will, before long, be universally received, and hoping that the many wonders in the economy of the honey bee will not only excite a wider interest in its culture, but will lead those who observe them, to adore the wisdom of Him who gave them such admirable instincts. I cannot refrain from quoting here, the forcible remarks of an English clergyman, who appears to be a very great enthusiast in bee-culture.
"Every bee-keeper, if he have only a soul to appreciate the works of God, and an intelligence of an inquisitive order, cannot fail to become deeply interested in observing the wonderful instincts, (instincts akin to reason,) of these admirable creatures; at the same time that he will learn many lessons of practical wisdom from their example. Having acquired a knowledge of their habits, not a bee will buzz in his ear, without recalling to him some of these lessons, and helping to make him a wiser and a better man. It is certain that in all my experience, I never yet met with a keeper of bees, who was not a respectable, well-conducted member of society, and a moral, if not a religious man.[1] It is evident, on reflection, that this pursuit, if well attended to, must occupy some considerable share of a man's time and thoughts. He must be often about his bees, which will help to counteract the baneful effect of the village inn. "Whoever is fond of his bees is fond of his home," is an axiom of irrefragable truth, and one which ought to kindle in every one's breast, a favorable regard for a pursuit which has the power to produce so happy an influence. The love of home is the companion of many other virtues, which, if not yet developed into actual exercise, are still only dormant, and may be roused into wakeful energy at any moment."
The fertility of the queen bee has been much under-estimated by most writers. It is truly astonishing. During the height of the breeding season, she will often, under favorable circumstances, lay from two to three thousand eggs, a day! In my observing hives, I have seen her lay, at the rate of six eggs a minute! The fecundity of the female of the white ant, is much greater than this, as she will lay as many as sixty eggs a minute! but then her eggs are simply extruded from her body, to be carried by the workers into suitable nurseries, while the queen bee herself deposits her eggs in their appropriate cells.
On the way in which the eggs of the Queen Bee are fecundated.
I come now to a subject of great practical importance, and one which, until quite recently, has been attended with apparently insuperable difficulties.
It has been noticed that the queen bee commences laying in the latter part of winter, or early in spring, and long before there are any drones or males in the hive. (See remarks on Drones.) In what way are these eggs impregnated? Huber, by a long course of the most indefatigable observations, threw much light upon this subject. Before stating his discoveries, I must pay my humble tribute of gratitude and admiration, to this wonderful man. It is mortifying to every scientific naturalist, and I might add, to every honest man acquainted with the facts, to hear such a man as Huber abused by the veriest quacks and imposters; while others who have appropriated from his labors, nearly all that is of any value in their works, to use the words of Pope,
"Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer."
Huber, in early manhood, lost the use of his eyes. His opponents imagine that in stating this fact, they have thrown merited discredit on all his pretended discoveries. But to make their case still stronger, they delight to assert that he saw every thing through the medium of his servant Francis Burnens, an ignorant peasant. Now this ignorant peasant was a man of strong native intellect, possessing that indefatigable energy and enthusiasm which are so indispensable to make a good observer. He was a noble specimen of a self-made man, and afterwards rose to be the chief magistrate in the village where he resided. Huber has paid the most admirable tribute to his intelligence, fidelity and indomitable patience, energy and skill.
It would be difficult to find, in any language, a better specimen of the true Baconian or inductive system of reasoning, than Huber's work upon bees, and it might be studied as a model of the only true way of investigating nature, so as to arrive at reliable results.
Huber was assisted in his investigations, not only by Burnens, but by his own wife, to whom he was engaged before the loss of his sight, and who nobly persisted in marrying him, notwithstanding his misfortune, and the strenuous dissuasions of her friends. They lived for more than the ordinary term of human life, in the enjoyment of uninterrupted domestic happiness, and the amiable naturalist scarcely felt, in her assiduous attentions, the loss of his sight.
Milton is believed by many, to have been a better poet, for his blindness; and it is highly probable that Huber was a better Apiarian, for the same cause. His active and yet reflective mind demanded constant employment; and he found in the study of the habits of the honey bee, full scope for all his powers. All the facts observed, and experiments tried by his faithful assistants, were daily reported to him, and many inquiries were stated and suggestions made by him, which would probably have escaped his notice, if he had possessed the use of his eyes.
Few have such a command of both time and money as to enable them to carry on, for a series of years, on a grand scale, the most costly experiments. Apiarians owe more to Huber than to any other person. I have repeatedly verified the most important of his observations, and I take the greatest delight in acknowledging my obligations to him, and in holding him up to my countrymen, as the Prince of Apiarians.
My Readers will pardon this digression. It would have been morally impossible for me to write a work on bees, without saying at least as much as this, in vindication of Huber.
I return to his discoveries on the impregnation of the Queen Bee. By a long course of experiments most carefully conducted, he ascertained that like many other insects, she is fecundated in the open air, and on the wing, and that the influence of this lasts for several years, and probably for life. He could not form any satisfactory conjecture, as to the way in which the eggs which were not yet developed in her ovaries, could be fertilized. Years ago, the celebrated Dr. John Hunter, and others, supposed that there must be a permanent receptacle for the male sperm, opening into the passage for the eggs called the oviduct. Dzierzon, who must be regarded as one of the ablest contributors of modern times, to Apiarian science, maintains this opinion, and states that he has found such a receptacle filled with a fluid, resembling the semen of the drones. He nowhere, to my knowledge, states that he ever made microscopic examinations, so as to put the matter on the footing of demonstration.
In January and February of 1852, I submitted several Queen Bees to Dr. Joseph Leidy of Philadelphia, for a scientific examination. I need hardly say to any Naturalist in this country, that Dr. Leidy has obtained the very highest reputation, both at home and abroad, as a skillful naturalist and microscopic anatomist. No man in this country or Europe, was more competent to make the investigations that I desired. He found in making his dissections, a small globular sac, not larger than a grain of mustard seed, (about 1/33 of an inch in diameter,) communicating with the oviduct, and filled with a whitish fluid, which when examined under the microscope, was found to abound in spermatozoa, or the animalculæ, which are the unmistakable characteristics of the seminal fluid. Later in the season, the same substance was compared with some taken from the drones, and found to be exactly similar to it.
These examinations have settled, on the impregnable basis of demonstration, the mode in which the eggs of the Queen are vivified. In descending the oviduct to be deposited in the cells, they pass by the mouth of this seminal sac or spermatheca, and receive a portion of its fertilizing contents. Small as it is, its contents are sufficient to impregnate hundreds of thousands of eggs. In precisely the same way, the mother wasps and hornets are fecundated. The females alone of these insects survive the winter, and they begin, single-handed, the construction of a nest, in which, at first, only a few eggs are deposited. How could these eggs hatch, if the females which laid them, had not been impregnated, the previous season? Dissection proves them to have a spermatheca, similar to that of the Queen Bee.
Of all who have written against Huber, no one has treated him with more unfairness, misrepresentation, and I might almost add, malignity, than Huish. He maintains that the eggs of the Queen are impregnated by the drones, after she has deposited them in the cells, and accounts for the fact that brood is produced in the Spring, long before the existence of any drones in the hive, by asserting that these eggs were deposited and impregnated late in the previous season, and have remained dormant, all winter, in the hive: and yet the same writer, while ridiculing the discoveries of Huber, advises that all the mother wasps should be killed in the Spring, to prevent them from founding families to commit depredations upon the bees! It never seems to have occurred to him, that the existence of a permanently impregnated mother wasp, was just as difficult to be accounted for, as the existence of a similarly impregnated Queen Bee.
Effect of Retarded Impregnation on the Queen Bee.
I shall now mention a fact in the physiology of the Queen Bee, more singular than any which has yet been related.
Huber, while experimenting to ascertain how the Queen was fecundated, confined some of his young Queens to their hives, by contracting the entrances, so that they were not able to go in search of the drones, until three weeks after their birth. To his amazement, these Queens whose impregnation was thus unnaturally retarded, never laid any eggs but such as produced drones!!
He tried the experiment again and again, but always with the same result. Some Bee-Keepers, long before his time, had observed that all the brood in a hive were occasionally drones, and of course, that such colonies rapidly went to ruin. Before attempting any explanation of this astonishing fact, I must call the attention of the reader, to another of the mysteries of the Bee-Hive,
Fertile Workers.
It has already been remarked, that the workers are proved by dissection to be females, all of which, under ordinary circumstances, are barren. Occasionally, some of them appear to be more fully developed than common, so as to be capable of laying eggs: these eggs, like those of Queens whose impregnation has been retarded, always produce drones! Sometimes, when a colony has lost its Queen, these drone-laying workers are exalted to her place, and treated with equal respect and affection, by the bees. Huber ascertained that these fertile workers were generally reared in the neighborhood of the young Queens, and he thought that they received some particles of the peculiar food or jelly on which the Queens are reared. (See Royal Jelly.) He did not pretend to account for the effect of retarded impregnation; and made no experiments to determine the facts, as to the fecundation of these fertile workers.
Since the publication of Huber's work, nearly 50 years ago, no light has been shed upon the mysteries of drone-laying Queens and workers, until quite recently. Dzierzon appears to have been the first to ascertain the truth on this subject; and his discovery must certainly be ranked as unfolding one of the most astonishing facts in all the range of animated nature. This fact seems, at first view, so absolutely incredible, that I should not dare to mention it, if it were not supported by the most indubitable evidence, and if I had not, (as I have already observed,) determined to state all important and well ascertained facts, without seeking, by any concealments, to pander to the prejudices of conceited, and often, very ignorant Bee-Keepers.
Dzierzon advances the opinion that impregnation is not needed in order that the eggs of the Queen may produce drones; but, that all impregnated eggs produce females, either workers or Queens; and all unimpregnated ones, males or drones! He states that he found drone-laying Queens in several of his hives, whose wings were so imperfect that they could not fly, and that on examination, they proved to be unfecundated. Hence he concluded that the eggs of the Queen Bee or fertile worker, had from the previous impregnation of the egg which produced them, sufficient vitality to produce the drone, which is a less highly organized insect, and one inferior to the Queen or workers. It had long been known, that the Queen deposits drone eggs in the large or drone cells, and worker eggs in the small or worker cells, and that she makes no mistakes. Dzierzon inferred, therefore, that there was some way in which she was able to decide as to the sex of the egg before it was laid, and that she must have a control over the mouth of the seminal sac, so as to be able to extrude her eggs, allowing them to receive or not, just as she pleased, a portion of its fertilizing contents. In this way he thought she determined the sex, according to the size of the cells in which she laid them. Mr. Samuel Wagner of York, Pa., has recently communicated to me a very original and exceedingly ingenious theory of his own, which he thinks will account for all the facts without admitting that the Queen Bee has any special knowledge or will on the subject. He supposes that when she deposits her eggs in the worker cells, her body is slightly compressed by the size of the cells, and that the eggs, as they pass the spermatheca, receive in this manner, its vivifying influence. On the contrary, when she is egg-laying in drone cells, this compression cannot take place, the mouth of the spermatheca is kept closed, and the eggs are, necessarily, unfecundated. This theory may prove to be true, but at present, it is encumbered with some difficulties and requires further investigation, before it can be considered as fully established.
Leaving then the question whether the Queen exercises any volition in this matter, for the present undecided, I shall state some facts which occurred in the summer of 1852, in my own Apiary, and shall then endeavor to relieve, as far as possible, this intricate subject from some of the difficulties which embarrass it.
In the Autumn of 1852, my assistant found, in one of my hives, a young Queen, the whole of whose progeny was drones. The colony had been formed by removing part of the combs containing bees, brood and eggs from another hive. It had only a few combs, and but a small number of bees. They raised a new Queen in the manner which will hereafter be particularly described. This Queen had laid a number of eggs in one of the combs, and the young bees from some of them were already emerging from the cells. I perceived, at the first glance, that they were drones. As there were none but worker cells in the hive, they were reared in them, and not having space for full development, they were dwarfed in size, although the bees, in order to give them more room, had pieced out the cells so as to make them larger than usual! Size excepted, they appeared as perfect as any other drones.
I was not only struck with the singularity of finding drones reared in worker cells, but with the equally singular fact that a young Queen, who at first lays only the eggs of workers, should be laying drone eggs at all; and at once conjectured that this was a case of a drone-laying, unimpregnated Queen, as sufficient time had not elapsed for her impregnation to be unnaturally retarded. I saw the great importance of taking all necessary precautions to determine this point. The Queen was removed from the hive, and carefully examined. Her wings, although they appeared to be perfect, were so paralized that she could not fly. It seemed probable, therefore, that she had never been able to leave the hive for impregnation.
To settle the question beyond the possibility of doubt, I submitted this Queen to Dr. Joseph Leidy for microscopic examination. The following is an extract from his report: "The ovaries were filled with eggs; the poison sac was full of fluid, and I took the whole of it into my mouth; the poison produced a strong metallic taste, lasting for a considerable time, and at first, it was pungent to the tip of the tongue. The spermatheca was distended with a perfectly colorless, transparent, viscid liquid, without a trace of spermatozoa."
This examination seems perfectly to sustain the theory of Dzierzon, and to demonstrate that Queens do not need to be impregnated, in order to lay the eggs of males.
I must confess that very considerable doubts rested on my mind, as to the accuracy of Dzierzon's statements on this subject, and chiefly because of his having hazarded the unfortunate conjecture that the place of the poison bag in the worker, is occupied in the Queen, by the spermatheca. Now this is so completely contrary to fact, that it was a very natural inference that this acute and thoroughly honest observer, made no microscopic dissections of the insects which he examined. I consider myself peculiarly fortunate in having enjoyed the benefit of the labors of a Naturalist, so celebrated as Dr. Leidy, for microscopic dissections. The exceeding minuteness of some of the insects which he has completely figured and described, almost passes belief.
On examining this same colony a few days later, I obtained the most satisfactory evidence that these drone eggs were laid by the Queen which had been removed. No fresh eggs had been deposited in the cells, and the bees, on missing her, had commenced the construction of royal cells, to rear if possible, another Queen, a thing which they would not have done, if a fertile worker had been present, by which the drone eggs had been laid.
Another very interesting fact proves that all the eggs laid by this Queen, were drone eggs. Two of the royal cells were, in a short time, discontinued, and were found to be empty, while a third contained a worm, which was sealed over the usual way, to undergo its changes from a worm to a perfect Queen.
I was completely at a loss to account for this, as the bees having an unimpregnated drone-laying Queen, ought not to have had a single female egg from which they could rear a Queen.
At first I imagined that they might have stolen it from another hive, but when I opened this cell, it contained, instead of a queen, a dead drone!
I then remembered that Huber has described the same mistake on the part of some of his bees. At the base of this cell, was an extraordinary quantity of the peculiar jelly or paste, which is fed to the young that are to be transformed into queens. The poor bees in their desperation, appear to have dosed the unfortunate drone to death: as though they expected by such liberal feeding, to produce some hopeful change in his sexual organization!
It appears to me that these facts constitute all the links in a perfect chain, and demonstrate beyond the possibility of doubt, that unfecundated queens are not only capable of laying eggs, (this would be no more remarkable than the same occurrence in a hen,) but that these eggs are possessed of sufficient vitality to produce drones. Aristotle, who flourished before the Christian era, had noticed that there was no difference in appearance, between the eggs producing drones and those producing workers; and he states that drones only are produced in hives which have no queen; of course the eggs producing them, were laid by fertile workers. Having now the aid of powerful microscopes, we are still unable to detect the slightest difference in size or appearance in the eggs, and this is precisely what we should expect if the same egg will produce either a worker or a drone, according as it is or is not impregnated. The theory which I propose, will, I think, perfectly harmonize with all the observed facts on this subject.
I believe that after fecundation has been delayed for about three weeks, the mouth of the spermatheca becomes permanently closed, so that impregnation can no longer be effected; just as the parts of a flower, after a certain time, wither and shut up, and the plant is incapable of fructification. The fertile drone-laying workers, are in my opinion, physically incapable of being impregnated. However strange it may appear, or even improbable, that an unimpregnated egg can give birth to a living being, or that the sex can be dependent on impregnation, we are not at liberty to reject facts, because we cannot comprehend the reasons of them. He who allows himself to be guilty of such folly, if he seeks to maintain his consistency, will be plunged, sooner or later, into the dreary gulf of atheism. Common sense, philosophy and religion alike teach us to receive all undoubted facts in the natural and the spiritual world, with becoming reverence; assured that however mysterious to us, they are all most beautifully harmonious and consistent in the sight of Him whose "understanding is infinite."
There is something analogous to these wonders in the bee, in what takes place in the aphides or green lice which infest our rose bushes and other plants. We have the most undoubted evidence that a fecundated female gives birth to other females, and they in turn to others still, all of which, without impregnation, are able to bring forth young, until at length, after a number of generations, perfect males and females are produced, and the series starts anew!
The unequaled facilities, furnished by my hives, have seemed to render it peculiarly incumbent on me, to do all in my power to clear up the difficulties in this intricate and yet highly important branch of Apiarian knowledge. All the leading facts in the breeding of bees ought to be as well known to the bee keeper, as the same class of facts in the rearing of his domestic animals. A few crude and hasty notions, but half understood and half digested, will answer only for the old fashioned bee keeper, who deals in the brimstone matches. He who expects to conduct bee keeping on a safe and profitable system, must learn that on this, as on all other subjects, "knowledge is power."
The extraordinary fertility of the queen bee has already been noticed. The process of laying has been well described by the Rev. W. Dunbar, a Scotch Apiarian.
"When the queen is about to lay, she puts her head into a cell, and remains in that position for a second or two, to ascertain its fitness for the deposit which she is about to make. She then withdraws her head, and curving her body downwards,[2] inserts the lower part of it into the cell: in a few seconds she turns half round upon herself and withdraws, leaving an egg behind her. When she lays a considerable number, she does it equally on each side of the comb, those on the one side being as exactly opposite to those on the other as the relative position of the cells will admit. The effect of this is to produce the utmost possible concentration and economy of heat for developing the various changes of the brood!"
Here as at every step in the economy of the bee our minds are filled with admiration as we witness the perfect adaptation of means to ends. Who can blame the warmest enthusiasm of the Apiarian in view of a sagacity which seems scarcely inferior to that of man.
"The eggs of bees," I quote from the admirable treatise of Bevan, "are of a lengthened oval shape, with a slight curvature, and of a bluish white color: being besmeared at the time of laying, with a glutinous substance,[3] they adhere to the bases of the cells, and remain unchanged in figure or situation for three or four days; they are then hatched, the bottom of each cell presenting to view a small white worm. On its growing so as to touch the opposite angle of the cell, it coils itself up, to use the language of Swammerdam, like a dog when going to sleep; and floats in a whitish transparent fluid, which is deposited in the cells by the nursing-bees, and by which it is probably nourished; it becomes gradually enlarged in its dimensions, till the two extremities touch one another and form a ring. In this state it is called a larva or worm. So nicely do the bees calculate the quantity of food which will be required, that none remains in the cell when it is transformed to a nymph. It is the opinion of many eminent naturalists that farina does not constitute the sole food of the larva, but that it consists of a mixture of farina, honey and water, partly digested in the stomachs of the nursing-bees."
"The larva having derived its support, in the manner above described, for four, five or six days, according to the season," (the development being retarded in cool weather, and badly protected hives,) "continues to increase during that period, till it occupies the whole breadth and nearly the length of the cell. The nursing bees now seal over the cell, with a light brown cover, externally more or less convex, (the cap of a drone cell is more convex than that of a worker,) and thus differing from that of a honey cell which is paler and somewhat concave." The cap of the brood cell appears to be made of a mixture of bee-bread and wax; it is not air tight as it would be if made of wax alone; but when examined with a microscope it appears to be reticulated, or full of fine holes through which the enclosed insect can have air for all necessary purposes. From its texture and shape it is easily thrust off by the bee when mature, whereas, if it consisted wholly of wax, the young bee would either perish for lack of air, or be unable to force its way into the world! Both the material and shape of the lids which seal up the honey cells are different, because an entirely different object was aimed at; they are of pure wax to make them air tight and thus to prevent the honey from souring or candying in the cells! They are concave or hollowed inwards to give them greater strength to resist the pressure of their contents!
To return to Bevan. "The larva is no sooner perfectly inclosed than it begins to line the cell by spinning round itself, after the manner of the silk worm, a whitish silky film or cocoon, by which it is encased, as it were, in a pod. When it has undergone this change, it has usually borne the name of nymph or pupa. The insect has now attained its full growth, and the large amount of nutriment which it has taken serves as a store for developing the perfect insect."
"The working bee nymph spins its cocoon in thirty-six hours. After passing about three days in this state of preparation for a new existence, it gradually undergoes so great a change as not to wear a vestige of its previous form, but becomes armed with a firmer mail, and with scales of a dark brown hue. On its belly six rings become distinguishable, which by slipping one over another enables the bee to shorten its body whenever it has occasion to do so.
"When it has reached the twenty-first day of its existence, counting from the moment the egg is laid, it comes forth a perfect winged insect. The cocoon is left behind, and forms a closely attached and exact lining to the cell in which it was spun; by this means the breeding cells become smaller and their partitions stronger, the oftener they change their tenants; and may become so much diminished in size as not to admit of the perfect development of full sized bees."
"Such are the respective stages of the working bee: those of the royal bee are as follows: she passes three days in the egg and is five a worm; the workers then close her cell, and she immediately begins spinning her cocoon, which occupies her twenty four hours. On the tenth and eleventh days and a part of the twelfth, as if exhausted by her labor, she remains in complete repose. Then she passes four days and a part of the fifth as a nymph. It is on the sixteenth day therefore that the perfect state of queen is attained."
"The drone passes three days in the egg, six and a half as a worm, and changes into a perfect insect on the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth day after the egg is laid."
"The development of each species likewise proceeds more slowly when the colonies are weak or the air cool, and when the weather is very cold it is entirely suspended. Dr. Hunter has observed that the eggs, worms and nymphs all require a heat above 70° of Fahrenheit for their evolution."
In the chapter on protection against extremes of heat and cold, I have dwelt, at some length, upon the importance of constructing the hives in such a manner as to enable the bees to preserve, as far as possible, a uniform temperature in their tenement. In thin hives exposed to the sun, the heat is sometimes so great as to destroy the eggs and the larvæ, even when the combs escape from being melted; and the cold is often so severe as to check the development of the brood, and sometimes to kill it outright.
In such hives, when the temperature out of doors falls suddenly and severely, the bees at once feel the unfavorable change; they are obliged in self defence to huddle together to keep warm, and thus large portions of the brood comb are often abandoned, and the brood either destroyed at once by the cold, or so enfeebled that they never recover from the shock. Let every bee keeper, in all his operations, remember that brood comb must never be exposed to a low temperature so as to become chilled: the disastrous effects are almost as certain, as when the eggs of a setting hen are left, for too long a time, by the careless mother. The brood combs are never safe when taken for any considerable time from the bees, unless the temperature is fully up to summer heat.
"[4]The young bees break their envelope with their teeth, and assisted, as soon as they come forth, by the older ones, proceed to cleanse themselves from the moisture and exuviæ with which they were surrounded. Both drones and workers on emerging from the cell are, at first grey, soft and comparatively helpless so that some time elapses before they take wing.
"With respect to the cocoons spun by the different larvæ, both workers and drones spin complete cocoons, or inclose themselves on every side; royal larvæ construct only imperfect cocoons, open behind, and enveloping only the head, thorax, and first ring of the abdomen; and Huber concludes, without any hesitation, that the final cause of their forming only incomplete cocoons is, that they may thus be exposed to the mortal sting of the first hatched queen, whose instinct leads her instantly to seek the destruction of those who would soon become her rivals.
"If the royal larvæ spun complete cocoons, the stings of the queens seeking to destroy their rivals might be so entangled in their meshes that they could not be disengaged. 'Such,' says Huber, 'is the instinctive enmity of young queens to each other, that I have seen one of them, immediately on its emergence from the cell, rush to those of its sisters, and tear to pieces even the imperfect larvæ. Hitherto philosophers have claimed our admiration of nature for her care in preserving and multiplying the species. But from these facts we must now admire her precautions in exposing certain individuals to a mortal hazard.'"
The cocoon of the royal larva is very much stronger and coarser than that spun by the drone or worker, its texture considerably resembling that of the silk worm's. The young queen does not come forth from her cell until she is quite mature; and as its great size gives her abundant room to exercise her wings she is capable of flying as soon as she quits it. While still in her cell she makes the fluttering and piping noises with which every observant bee keeper is so well acquainted.
Some Apiarians have supposed that the queen bee has the power to regulate the development of eggs in her ovaries, so that few or many are produced, according to the necessities of the colony. This is evidently a mistake. Her eggs, like those of the domestic hen, are formed without any volition of her own, and when fully developed, must be extruded. If the weather is unfavorable, or if the colony is too feeble to maintain sufficient heat, a smaller number of eggs are developed in her ovaries, just as unfavorable circumstances diminish the number of eggs laid by the hen; if the weather is very cold, egg-laying usually ceases altogether. In the latitude of Philadelphia, I opened one of my hives on the 5th day of February, and found an abundance of eggs and brood, although the winter had been an unusually cold one, and the temperature of the preceding month very low. The fall of 1852 was a warm one, and eggs and brood were found in a hive which I examined on the 21st of October. Powerful stocks in well protected hives contain some brood, at least ten months in the year; in warm countries, bees probably breed, every month in the year.
It is highly interesting to see in what way the supernumerary eggs of the queen are disposed of. When the number of workers is too small to take charge of all her eggs, or when there is a deficiency of bee bread to nourish the young, (See chapter on [Pollen],) or when, for any reason, she judges it not best to deposit them in cells, she stands upon a comb, and simply extrudes them from her oviduct, and the workers devour them as fast as they are laid! This I have repeatedly witnessed in my observing hives, and admired the sagacity of the queen in economizing her necessary work after this fashion, instead of laboriously depositing the eggs in cells where they are not wanted. What a difference between her wise management and the stupidity of a hen obstinately persisting to set upon addled eggs, or pieces of chalk, and often upon nothing at all.
The workers eat up also all the eggs which are dropped, or deposited out of place by the queen; in this way, nothing goes to waste, and even a tiny egg is turned to some account. Was there ever a better comment upon the maxim? "Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves."
Do the workers who appear to be so fond of a tit-bit in the shape of a new laid egg, ever experience a struggle between their appetites and the claims of duty, and does it cost them some self denial to refrain from making a breakfast on a fresh laid egg? It is really very difficult for one who has carefully watched the habits of bees, to speak of his little favorites in any other way than as though they possessed an intelligence almost, if not quite, akin to reason.
It is well known to every breeder of poultry, that the fertility of a hen decreases with age, until at length, she becomes entirely barren; it is equally certain that the fertility of the queen bee ordinarily diminishes after she has entered upon her third year. She sometimes ceases to lay Worker eggs, a considerable time before she dies of old age; the contents of the spermatheca are exhausted; the eggs can no longer be impregnated and must therefore produce drones.
The queen bee usually dies of old age, some time in her fourth year, although instances are on record of some having survived a year longer. It is highly important to the bee keeper who would receive the largest returns from his bees, to be able, as in my hives, to catch the queen and remove her, when she has passed the period of her greatest fertility. In the sequel, full directions will be given, as to the proper time and mode of effecting it.
Before proceeding farther in the natural history of the queen bee, I shall describe more particularly, the other inmates of the hive.
The Drones or Male Bees.
The drones are, unquestionably, the male bees. Dissection proves that they have the appropriate organs of generation. They are much larger and stouter than either the queen or workers; although their bodies are not quite so long as that of the queen. They have no sting with which to defend themselves; no proboscis which is suitable for gathering honey from the flowers, and no baskets on their thighs for holding the bee-bread. They are thus physically disqualified for work, even if they were ever so well disposed to it. Their proper office is to impregnate the young queens, and they are usually destroyed by the bees, soon after this is completed.
Dr. Evans the author of a beautiful poem on bees thus appropriately describes them:—
"Their short proboscis sips
No luscious nectar from the wild thyme's lips,
From the lime's leaf no amber drops they steal,
Nor bear their grooveless thighs the foodful meal:
On other's toils in pamper'd leisure thrive
The lazy fathers of the industrious hive."
The drones begin to make their appearance in April or May; earlier or later, according to climate and the forwardness of the season, and strength of the stock. They require about twenty-four days for their full development from the egg. In colonies which are too weak to swarm, none, as a general rule, are reared: they are not needed, for in such hives, as no young queens are raised, they would be only useless consumers.
The number of drones in a hive is often very great, amounting, not merely to hundreds, but sometimes to thousands. It seems, at first, very difficult to understand why there should be so many, especially since it has been ascertained that a single one will impregnate a queen for life. But as intercourse always takes place high in the air, the young queens are obliged to leave the hive for this purpose; and it is exceedingly important to their safety, that they should be sure of finding one, without being compelled to make frequent excursions. Being larger than a worker, and less quick on the wing, they are more exposed to be caught by birds, or blown down and destroyed by sudden gusts of wind.
In a large Apiary, a few drones in each hive, or the number usually found in one, might be amply sufficient. But it must be borne in mind, that under these circumstances, bees are not in a state of nature. Before they were domesticated, a colony living in a forest, often had no neighbors for miles. Now a good stock in our climate, sometimes sends out three or more swarms, and in the tropical climates, of which the bee is a native, they increase with astonishing rapidity. At Sydney, in Australia, a single colony is stated to have multiplied to 300 in three years. All the new swarms except the first, are led off by a young queen, and as she is never impregnated until after she has been established as the head of a separate family, it is important that they should all be accompanied by a goodly number of drones; and this renders it necessary that a large number should be produced in the parent hive.
As this necessity no longer exists, when the bee is domesticated, the production of so many drones should be discouraged. Traps have been invented to destroy them, but it is much better to save the bees the labor and expense of rearing such a host of useless consumers. This can readily be done by the use of my hives. The cells in which the drones are reared, are much larger than those appropriated to the raising of workers. The combs containing them may be taken out, to have their places supplied with worker's cells, and thus the over production of drones may easily be prevented. Some colonies contain so much drone comb as to be nearly worthless.
I have no doubt that some of my readers will object to this mode of management as interfering with nature: but let them remember that the bee is not in a state of nature, and that the same objection might be urged against killing off the super-numerary males of our domestic animals.
In July or August, soon after the swarming season is over, the bees expel the drones from the hive. They sometimes sting them, and sometimes gnaw the roots of their wings, so that when driven from the hive, they cannot return. If not treated in either of these summary ways, they are so persecuted and starved, that they soon perish. The hatred of the bees extends even to the young which are still unhatched: they are mercilessly pulled from the cells, and destroyed with the rest. How wonderful that instinct which teaches the bees that there is no longer any occasion for the services of the drones, and which impels them to destroy those members of the colony, which, a short time before, they reared with such devoted attention!
A colony which neglects to expel its drones at the usual season, ought always to be examined. The queen is probably either diseased or dead. In my hives, such an examination may be easily made, the true state of the case ascertained, and the proper remedies at once applied. (See Chapter on the [Loss of the Queen].)
The Production of so many Drones Necessary, in a State of Nature, to Prevent Degeneracy from "In and In Breeding."
I have often been able, by the reasons previously assigned, to account for the necessity of such a large number of drones in a state of nature, to the satisfaction of others, but never fully to my own. I have repeatedly queried, why impregnation might not just as well have been effected in the hive, as on the wing, in the open air. Two very obvious and highly important advantages would have resulted from such an arrangement. 1st. A few dozen drones would have amply sufficed for the wants of any colony, even if, (as in tropical climates,) it swarmed half a dozen times or oftener, in the same season. 2d. The young queens would have been exposed to none of those risks which they now incur, in leaving the hive for fecundation.
I was unable to show how the existing arrangement is best; although I never doubted that there must be a satisfactory reason for this seeming imperfection. To suppose otherwise, would be highly unphilosophical, since we constantly see, as the circle of our knowledge is enlarged, many mysteries in nature hitherto inexplicable, fully cleared up.
Let me here ask if the disposition which too many students of nature cherish, to reject some of the doctrines of revealed religion, is not equally unphilosophical. Neither our ignorance of all the facts necessary to their full elucidation, nor our inability to harmonize these facts in their mutual relations and dependencies, will justify us in rejecting any truth which God has seen fit to reveal, either in the book of nature, or in His holy word. The man who would substitute his own speculations for the divine teachings, has embarked, without rudder or chart, pilot or compass, upon the uncertain ocean of theory and conjecture; unless he turns his prow from its fatal course, no Sun of Righteousness will ever brighten for him the dreary expanse of waters; storms and whirlwinds will thicken in gloom, on his "voyage of life," and no favoring gales will ever waft his shattered bark to a peaceful haven.
The thoughtful reader will require no apology for the moralizing strain of many of my remarks, nor blame a clergyman, if forgetting sometimes to speak as the mere naturalist, he endeavors to find,
"Tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,
Sermons in 'bees,' and 'God' in every thing."
To return to the point from which I have digressed; a new attempt to account for the existence of so many drones. If a farmer persists in what is called "breeding in and in," that is, from the same stock without changing the blood, it is well known that a rapid degeneracy is the inevitable consequence. This law extends, as far as we know, to all animal life, and even man is not exempt from its influence. Have we any reason to suppose that the bee is an exception? or that ultimate degeneracy would not ensue, unless some provision was made to counteract the tendency to in and in breeding? If fecundation had taken place in the hive, the queen bee must of necessity, have been impregnated by drones from a common parent, and the same result must have taken place in each successive generation, until the whole species would eventually have "run out." By the present arrangement, the young females, when they leave the hive, often find the air swarming with drones, many of which belong to other colonies, and thus by crossing the breed, a provision is constantly made to prevent deterioration.
Experience has proved not only that it is unnecessary to impregnation that there should be drones in the colony of the young queen, but that this may be effected even when there are no drones in the Apiary, and none except at some considerable distance. Intercourse takes place very high in the air, (perhaps that less risk may be incurred from birds,) and this is the more favorable to the continual crossing of stocks.
I am strongly persuaded that the decay of many flourishing stocks, even when managed with great care, is to be attributed to the fact that they have become enfeebled by "close breeding," and are thus unable to resist the injurious influences which were comparatively harmless when the bees were in a state of high physical vigor. I shall, in the chapter on Artificial Swarming, explain in what way, by the use of my hives, the stock of bees may be easily crossed, when a cultivator is too remote from other Apiaries, to depend upon its being naturally effected.
The Workers or Common Bees.
The number of workers in a hive varies very much. A good swarm ought to contain 15,000 or 20,000; and in large hives, strong colonies which are not reduced by swarming, frequently number two or three times as many, during the height of the breeding season. We have well-authenticated instances of stocks much more populous than this. The Polish hives will hold several bushels, and yet we are informed by Mr. Dohiogost, that they swarm regularly, and that the swarms are so powerful that "they resemble a little cloud in the air." I shall hereafter consider how the size of the hive affects the number of bees that it may be expected to produce.
The workers, (as has been already stated,) are all females whose ovaries are too imperfectly developed to admit of their laying eggs. For a long time, they were regarded as neither males nor females, and were called Neuters; but more careful microscopic examinations have enabled us to detect the rudiments of their ovaries, and thus to determine their sex. The accuracy of these examinations has been verified by the well-known facts respecting fertile workers.
Riem, a German Apiarian, first discovered that workers sometimes lay eggs. Huber, in the course of his investigations on this subject, ascertained that such workers were raised in hives that had lost their queen, and in the vicinity of the royal cells in which young queens were being reared. He conjectured that they received accidentally, a small portion of the peculiar food of these infant queens, and in this way, he accounted for their reproductive organs being more developed than those of other workers. Workers reared in such hives, are in close proximity to the young queens, and there is certainly much probability that some of the royal jelly may be accidentally dropped into their cells; as, in these hives, the queen cells when first commenced are parallel to the horizon, instead of being perpendicular to it, as they are in other hives. I do not feel confident, however, that they are not sometimes bred in hives which have not lost their queen. The kind of eggs laid by these fertile workers, has already been noticed. Such workers are seldom tolerated in hives containing a fertile, healthy queen, though instances of this kind have been known to occur. The worker is much smaller than either the queen or the drone.[5] It is furnished with a tongue or proboscis, of the most curious and complicated structure, which, when not in use, is nicely folded under its abdomen; with this, it licks or brushes up the honey, which is thence conveyed to its honey-bag. This receptacle is not larger than a very small pea, and is so perfectly transparent, as to appear when filled, of the same color with its contents; it is properly the first stomach of the bee, and is surrounded by muscles which enable the bee to compress it, and empty its contents through her proboscis into the cells. (See Chapter on [Honey].)
The hinder legs of the worker are furnished with a spoon-shaped hollow or basket, to receive the pollen or bee bread which she gathers from the flowers. (See Chapter on [Pollen].)
Every worker is armed with a formidable sting, and when provoked, makes instant and effectual use of her natural weapon. The sting, when subjected to microscopic examination, exhibits a very curious and complicated mechanism. "It is moved[6] by muscles which, though invisible to the eye, are yet strong enough to force the sting, to the depth of one twelfth of an inch, through the thick skin of a man's hand. At its root are situated two glands by which the poison is secreted: these glands uniting in one duct, eject the venemous liquid along the groove, formed by the junction of the two piercers. There are four barbs on the outside of each piercer: when the insect is prepared to sting, one of these piercers, having its point a little longer than the other, first darts into the flesh, and being fixed by its foremost beard, the other strikes in also, and they alternately penetrate deeper and deeper, till they acquire a firm hold of the flesh with their barbed hooks, and then follows the sheath, conveying the poison into the wound. The action of the sting, says Paley, affords an example of the union of chemistry and mechanism; of chemistry in respect to the venom, which can produce such powerful effects; of mechanism as the sting is a compound instrument. The machinery would have been comparatively useless had it not been for the chemical process, by which in the insect's body honey is converted into poison; and on the other hand, the poison would have been ineffectual, without an instrument to wound, and a syringe to inject it."
"Upon examining the edge of a very keen razor by the microscope, it appears as broad as the back of a pretty thick knife, rough, uneven, and full of notches and furrows, and so far from anything like sharpness, that an instrument, as blunt as this seemed to be, would not serve even to cleave wood. An exceedingly small needle being also examined, it resembled a rough iron bar out of a smith's forge. The sting of a bee viewed through the same instrument, showed everywhere a polish amazingly beautiful, without the least flaw, blemish, or inequality, and ended in a point too fine to be discerned."
The extremity of the sting being barbed like an arrow, the bee can seldom withdraw it, if the substance into which she darts it is at all tenacious. In losing her sting she parts with a portion of her intestines, and of necessity, soon perishes.
As the loss of the sting is always fatal to the bees, they pay a dear penalty for the exercise of their patriotic instincts; but they always seem ready, (except when they have taken "a drop too much," and are gorged with honey,) to die in defence of their home and treasures; or as the poet has expressed it, they
"Deem life itself to vengeance well resign'd,
Die on the wound, and leave their sting behind."
Hornets, wasps and other stinging insects are able to withdraw their stings from the wound. I have never seen any attempt to account for the exception in the case of the honey bee. But if the Creator intended the bee for the use of man, as He most certainly did, has He not given it this peculiarity, to make it less formidable, and therefore more completely subject to human control? Without a sting, it would have stood no chance of defending its tempting sweets against a host of greedy depredators; but if it could sting a number of times, it would be much more difficult to bring it into a state of thorough domestication. A quiver full of arrows in the hand of a skilful marksman, is far more to be dreaded than a single shaft.
The defence of the colony against enemies, the construction of the cells, the storing of them with honey and bee-bread, the rearing of the young, in short, the whole work of the hive, the laying of eggs excepted, is carried on by the industrious little workers.
There may be gentlemen of leisure in the commonwealth of bees, but most assuredly there are no such ladies, whether of high or low degree. The queen herself, has her full share of duties, for it must be admitted that the royal office is no sinecure, when the mother who fills it, must superintend daily the proper deposition of several thousand eggs!
Age of Bees.
The queen bee, (as has been already stated,) will live four, and sometimes, though very rarely, five years. As the life of the drones is usually cut short by violence, it is not easy to ascertain its precise limit. Bevan, in some interesting statements on the longevity of bees, estimates it not to exceed four months. The workers are supposed by him, to live six or seven months. Their age depends, however, very much upon their greater or less exposure to injurious influences and severe labors. Those reared in the spring and early part of summer, and on whom the heaviest labors of the hive must necessarily devolve, do not appear to live more than two or three months, while those which are bred at the close of summer, and early in autumn, being able to spend a large part of their time in repose, attain a much greater age. It is very evident that "the bee," (to use the words of a quaint old writer,) "is a summer bird," and that with the exception of the queen, none live to be a year old.
Notched and ragged wings, instead of gray hairs and wrinkled faces, are the signs of old age in the bee, and indicate that its season of toil will soon be over. They appear to die rather suddenly, and often spend their last days, and sometimes even their last hours, in useful labors. Place yourself before a hive, and see the indefatigable energy of these aged veterans, toiling along with their heavy burdens, side by side with their more youthful compeers, and then say if you can, that you have done work enough, and that you will give yourself up to slothful indulgence, while the ability for useful labor still remains. Let the cheerful hum of their industrious old age inspire you with better resolutions, and teach you how much nobler it is to meet death in the path of duty, striving still, as you "have opportunity," to "do good unto all men."
The age which individual members of the community may attain, must not be confounded with that of the colony. Bees have been known to occupy the same domicile for a great number of years. I have seen flourishing colonies which were twenty years old, and the Abbe Della Rocca speaks of some over forty years old! Such cases have led to the erroneous opinion that bees are a long-lived race. But this, as Dr. Evans has observed, is just as wise as if a stranger, contemplating a populous city, and personally unacquainted with its inhabitants, should on paying it a second visit, many years afterwards, and finding it equally populous, imagine that it was peopled by the same individuals, not one of whom might then be living.
"Like leaves on trees, the race of bees is found,
Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;
Another race the Spring or Fall supplies,
They droop successive, and successive rise."
The cocoons spun by the larvæ, are never removed by the bees; they stick so closely to the sides of the cells, that the knowing bee well understands that the labor of removal would cost more than it would be worth. In process of time, the breeding cells become too small for the proper development of the young. In some cases, the bees must take down and reconstruct the old combs, for if they did not, the young issuing from them would always be dwarfs; whereas I once compared with other bees, those of a colony more than fifteen years old, and found no perceptible difference. That they do not always renew the old combs, must be admitted, as the young from some old hives are often considerably below the average size. On this account, it is very desirable to be able to remove the old combs occasionally, that their place may be supplied with new ones.
It is a great mistake to imagine that the brood combs ought to be changed every year. In my hives, they might, if it were desirable, be easily changed several times in a year: but once in five or six years is often enough; oftener than this requires a needless consumption of honey to replace them, besides being for other reasons undesirable, as the bees are always in winter, colder in new comb than in old. Inventors of hives have too often been, most emphatically "men of one idea:" and that one, instead of being a well established and important fact in the physiology of the bee, has frequently, (like the necessity for a yearly change of the brood combs,) been merely a conceit, existing nowhere but in the brain of a visionary projector. This is all harmless enough, until an effort is made to impose such miserable crudities upon an ignorant public, either in the shape of a patented hive, or worse still, of an UNPATENTED hive, the pretended RIGHT to use which, is FRAUDULENTLY sold to the cheated purchaser!!
For want of proper knowledge with regard to the age of bees, huge "bee palaces," and large closets in garrets or attics, have been constructed, and their proprietors have vainly imagined that the bees would fill them, however roomy; for they can see no reason why a colony should not continue to increase indefinitely, until at length it numbers its inhabitants by millions or billions! As the bees can never at one time equal, still less exceed the number which the queen is capable of producing in one season, these spacious dwellings have always an abundance of "spare rooms." It seems strange that men can be thus deceived, when often in their own Apiary, they have healthy stocks which have not swarmed for a year or more, and which yet in the spring are not a whit more populous than those which have regularly parted with vigorous swarms.
It is certain that the Creator, has for some wise reason, set a limit to the increase of numbers in a single colony; and I shall venture to assign what appears to me to have been one reason for His so doing. Suppose that He had given to the bee, a length of life as great as that of the horse or the cow, or had made each queen capable of laying daily, some hundreds of thousands of eggs, or had given several hundred queens to each hive, then from the Very nature of the case, a colony must have gone on increasing, until it became a scourge rather than a benefit to man. In the warm climates of which the bee is a native, they would have established themselves in some cavern or capacious cleft in the rocks, and would there have quickly become so powerful as to bid defiance to all attempts to appropriate the avails of their labors.
It has already been stated, that none, except the mother wasps and hornets, survive the winter. If these insects had been able, like the bee, to commence the season with the accumulated strength of a large colony, long before its close, they would have proved a most intolerable nuisance. If, on the contrary, the queen bee had been compelled, solitary and alone, to lay the foundations of a new commonwealth, the honey-harvest would have disappeared before she could have become the parent of a numerous family.
In the laws which regulate the increase of bees as well as in all other parts of their economy, we have the plainest proofs that the insect was formed for the special service of the human race.
The process of rearing the Queen more particularly described.
If in the early part of the season, the population of a hive becomes uncomfortably crowded, the bees usually make preparations for swarming. A number of royal cells are commenced, and they are placed almost always upon those edges of the combs which are not attached to the sides of the hive. These cells somewhat resemble a small ground-nut or pea-nut, and are about an inch deep, and one-third of an inch in diameter: they are very thick, and require a large quantity of material for their construction. They are seldom seen in a perfect state, as the bees nibble them away after the queen has hatched, leaving only their remains, in the shape of a very small acorn-cup. While the other cells open sideways, these always hang with their mouth downwards. Much speculation has arisen as to the reason for this deviation: some have conjectured that their peculiar position exerted an influence upon the development of the royal larvæ; while others, having ascertained that no injurious effect was produced by turning them upwards, or placing them in any other position, have considered this deviation as among the inscrutable mysteries of the bee-hive. So it always seemed to me, until more careful reflection enabled me to solve the problem. The queen cells open downwards, simply to save room! The distance between the parallel ranges of comb being usually less than half an inch, the bees could not have made the royal cells to open sideways, without sacrificing the cells opposite to them. In order to economize space, to the very utmost, they put them upon the unoccupied edges of the comb, as the only place where there is always plenty of room for such very large cells.
The number of royal cells varies greatly; sometimes there are only two or three, ordinarily there are five or six, and I have occasionally seen more than a dozen. They are not all commenced at once, for the bees do not intend that the young queens shall all arrive at maturity, at the same time. I do not consider it as fully settled, how the eggs are deposited in these cells. In some few instances, I have known the bees to transfer the eggs from common to queen cells, and this may be their general method of procedure. I shall hazard the conjecture that the queen deposits her eggs in cells on the edges of the comb, in a crowded state of the hive, and that some of these are afterwards enlarged and changed into royal cells by the workers. Such is the instinctive hatred of the queen to her own kind, that it does not seem to me probable, that she is intrusted with even the initiatory steps for securing a race of successors. That the eggs from which the young queens are produced, are of the same kind with those producing workers, has been repeatedly demonstrated. On examining the queen cells while they are in progress, one of the first things which excites our notice, is the very unusual amount of attention bestowed upon them by the workers. There is scarcely a second in which a bee is not peeping into them, and just as fast as one is satisfied, another pops its head in, to examine if not to report, progress. The importance of their inmates to the bee-community, might easily be inferred from their being the center of so much attraction.
Royal Jelly.
The young queens are supplied with a much larger quantity of food than is allotted to the other larvæ, so that they seem almost to float in a thick bed of jelly, and there is usually a portion of it left unconsumed at the base of the cells, after the insects have arrived at maturity. It is different from the food of either drones or workers, and in appearance, resembles a light quince jelly, having a slightly acid taste.
I submitted a portion of the royal jelly for analysis, to Dr. Charles M. Wetherill, of Philadelphia; a very interesting account of his examination may be found in the proceedings of the Phila. Academy of Nat. Sciences for July, 1852. He speaks of the substance as "truly a bread-containing, albuminous compound." I hope in the course of the coming summer to obtain from this able analytical chemist, an analysis of the food of the young drones and workers. A comparison of its elements with those of the royal jelly, may throw some light on subjects as yet involved in obscurity.
The effects produced upon the larvæ by this peculiar food and method of treatment, are very remarkable. For one, I have never considered it strange that such effects should be rejected as idle whims, by nearly all except those who have either been eye-witnesses to them, or have been well acquainted with the character and opportunities for accurate observation, of those on whose testimony they have received them. They are not only in themselves most marvelously strange, but on the face of them so entirely opposed to all common analogies, and so very improbable, that many men when asked to believe them, feel almost as though an insult were offered to their common sense. The most important of these effects, I shall now proceed to enumerate.
1st. The peculiar mode in which the worm designed to be reared as a queen, is treated, causes it to arrive at maturity, about one-third earlier than if it had been bred a worker. And yet it is to be much more fully developed, and according to ordinary analogy, ought to have had a slower growth!
2d. Its organs of reproduction are completely developed, so that it is capable of fulfilling the office of a mother.
3d. Its size, shape and color are all greatly changed. (See p. [32].) Its lower jaws are shorter, its head rounder, and its legs have neither brushes nor baskets, while its sting is more curved, and one-third longer than that of a worker.
4th. Its instincts are entirely changed. Reared as a worker, it would have been ready to thrust out its sting, upon the least provocation; whereas now, it may be pulled limb from limb, without attempting to sting. As a worker it would have treated a queen with the greatest consideration; whereas now, if placed under a glass with another queen, it rushes forthwith to mortal combat with its rival. As a worker, it would frequently have left the hive, either for labor or exercise: as a queen, after impregnation, it never leaves the hive except to accompany a new swarm.
5th. The term of its life is remarkably lengthened. As a worker, it would have lived not more than six or seven months at farthest; as a queen it may live seven or eight times as long! All these wonders rest on the impregnable basis of complete demonstration, and instead of being witnessed by only a select few, may now, by the use of my hive, be familiar sights to any bee keeper, who prefers to acquaint himself with facts, rather than to cavil and sneer at the labors of others.[7]
When provision has been made, in the manner described, for a new race of queens, the old mother always departs with the first swarm, before her successors have arrived at maturity.[8]
Artificial Rearing of Queens.
The distress of the bees when they lose their queen, has already been described. If they have the means of supplying her loss, they soon calm down, and commence forthwith, the necessary steps for rearing another. The process of rearing queens artificially, to meet some special emergency, is even more wonderful than the natural one, which has already been described. Its success depends on the bees having worker-eggs or worms not more than three days old; (if older, the larva has been too far developed as a worker to admit of any change:) the bees nibble away the partitions of two cells adjoining a third, so as to make one large cell out of the three. They destroy the eggs or worms in two of these cells, while they place before the occupant of the third, the usual food of the young queens, and build out its cell, so as to give it ample space for development. They do not confine themselves to the attempt to rear a single queen, but to guard against failure, start a considerable number, although the work on all except a few, is usually soon discontinued.
In twelve or fourteen days, they are in possession of a new queen, precisely similar to one reared in the natural way, while the eggs which were laid at the same time in the adjoining cells, and which have been developed in the usual way, are nearly a week longer in coming to maturity.
I will give in this connection a description of an interesting experiment:
A large hive which stood at a distance from any other colony, was removed in the morning of a very pleasant day, to a new place, and another hive containing only empty comb, was put upon its stand. Thousands of workers which were out in the fields, or which left the old hive after its removal, returned to the familiar spot. It was affecting to witness their grief and despair: they flew in restless circles about the place which once contained their happy home, entered and left the new hive continually, expressing, in various ways, their lamentations over their cruel bereavement. Towards evening, they ceased to take wing, and roamed in restless platoons, in and out of the hive, and over its surface, acting all the time, as though in search of some lost treasure. I now gave them a piece of brood comb, containing worker eggs and worms, taken from a second swarm which being just established with its young queen, in a new hive, could have no intention of rearing young queens that season; therefore, it cannot be contended that this piece of comb contained what some are pleased to call "royal eggs." What followed the introduction of this brood comb, took place much quicker than it can be described. The bees which first touched it, raised a peculiar note, and in a moment, the comb was covered with a dense mass; their restless motions and mournful noises ceased, and a cheerful hum at once attested their delight! Despair gave place to hope, as they recognized in this small piece of comb, the means of deliverance. Suppose a large building filled with thousands of persons, tearing their hair, beating their breasts, and by piteous cries, as well as frantic gestures, giving vent to their despair; if now some one should enter this house of mourning, and by a single word, cause all these demonstrations of agony to give place to smiles and congratulations, the change could not be more wonderful and instantaneous, than that produced when the bees received the brood comb!
The Orientals call the honey bee, Deburrah, "She that speaketh." Would that this little insect might speak, and in words more eloquent than those of man's device, to the multitudes who allow themselves to reject the doctrines of revealed religion, because, as they assert, they are, on their face so utterly improbable, that they labor under an a priori objection strong enough to be fatal to their credibility. Do not nearly all the steps in the development of a queen from a worker-egg, labor under precisely the same objection? and have they not, for this very reason, always been regarded by great numbers of bee keepers, as unworthy of credence? If the favorite argument of infidels and errorists will not stand the test when applied to the wonders of the bee-hive, can it be regarded as entitled to any serious weight, when employed in framing objections against religious truths, and arrogantly taking to task the infinite Jehovah, for what He has been pleased to do or to teach? Give me the same latitude claimed by such objectors, and I can easily prove that a man is under no obligation to receive any of the wonders in the economy of the bee-hive, although he is himself an intelligent eye-witness that they are all substantial verities.
I shall quote, in this connection, from Huish, an English Apiarian of whom I have already spoken, because his objections to the discoveries of Huber, remind me so forcibly of both the spirit and principles of the great majority of those who object to the doctrines of revealed religion.
"If an individual, with the view of acquiring some knowledge of the natural history of the bee, or of its management, consult the works of Bagster, Bevan, or any of the periodicals which casually treat upon the subject, will he not rise from the study of them with his mind surcharged with falsities and mystification? Will he not discover through the whole of them a servile acquiescence in the opinions and discoveries of one man, however at variance they may be with truth or probability; and if he enter upon the discussion with his mind free from prejudice, will he not experience that an outrage has been committed upon his reason, in calling upon him to give assent to positions and principles which at best are merely assumed, but to which he is called upon dogmatically to subscribe his acquiescence as the indubitable results of experience, skill and ability? The editors of the works above alluded to, should boldly and indignantly have declared, that from their own experience in the natural economy of the insect, they were able to pronounce the circumstances as related by Huber to be directly impossible, and the whole of them based on fiction and imposition."
Let the reader change only a few words in this extract: for "the natural history of the bee or its management," let him write, "the subject of religion;" for, "the works of Bagster, Bevan," &c., let him put, "the works of Moses, Paul," &c.; for, "their own experience in the natural economy of the insect," let him substitute, "their own experience in the nature of man;" and for, "circumstances as related by Huber," let him insert, "as related by Luke or John," and it will sound almost precisely like a passage from some infidel author.
I resume the quotation from Huish; "If we examine the account which Huber gives of his invention (!) of the royal jelly, the existence and efficacy of which are fully acquiesced in by the aforesaid editors, to what other conclusions are we necessarily driven, than that they are the dupes of a visionary enthusiast, whose greatest merit consists in his inventive powers, no matter how destitute those powers may be of all affinity with truth or probability? Before, however, these editors bestowed their unqualified assent on the existence of this royal jelly, did they stop to put to themselves the following questions? By what kind of bee is it made?[9] Whence is it procured? Is it a natural or an elaborated substance? If natural, from what source is it derived? If elaborated, in what stomach of the bee is it to be found? How is it administered? What are its constituent principles? Is its existence optional or definite? Whence does it derive its miraculous power of converting a common egg into a royal one? Will any of the aforesaid editors publicly answer these questions? and ought they not to have been able to answer them, before they so unequivocally expressed their belief in its existence, its powers and administration?"
How puerile does all this sound to one who has seen and tasted the royal jelly! And permit me to add, how equally unmeaning do the objections of infidels seem, to those who have an experimental acquaintance with the divine hopes and consolations of the Gospel of Christ.
CHAPTER IV.
COMB.
Wax is a natural secretion of the bees; it may be called their oil or fat. If they are gorged with honey, or any liquid sweet, and remain quietly clustered together, it is formed in small wax pouches on their abdomen, and comes out in the shape of very delicate scales. Soon after a swarm is hived, the bottom board will be covered with these scales.
"Thus, filtered through yon flutterer's folded mail,
Clings the cooled wax, and hardens to a scale.
Swift, at the well known call, the ready train,
(For not a buz boon Nature breathes in vain,)
Spring to each falling flake, and bear along
Their glossy burdens to the builder throng.
These with sharp sickle or with sharper tooth,
Pare each excrescence, and each angle smooth,
Till now, in finish'd pride, two radiant rows
Of snow white cells one mutual base disclose.
Six shining panels gird each polish'd round,
The door's fine rim, with waxen fillet bound,
While walls so thin, with sister walls combined,
Weak in themselves, a sure dependence find."
Evans.
Huber was the first to demonstrate that wax is a natural secretion of the bee, when fed on honey or any saccharine substance. Most Apiarians before his time, supposed that it was made from pollen or bee-bread, either in a crude or digested state. He confined a new swarm of bees in a hive placed in a dark and cool room, and on examining them, at the end of five days, found several beautiful white combs in their tenement: these were taken from them, and they were again confined and supplied with honey and water, and a second time new combs were constructed. Five times in succession their combs were removed, and were in each instance replaced, the bees being all the time prevented from ranging the fields, to supply themselves with bee-bread. By subsequent experiments he proved that sugar answered the same end with honey.
He then confined a swarm, giving them no honey, but an abundance of fruit and pollen. They subsisted on the fruit, but refused to touch the pollen; and no combs were constructed, nor any wax scales formed in their pouches. These experiments are conclusive; and are interesting, not merely as proving that wax is secreted from honey or saccharine substances, but because they show in what a thorough manner the experiments of Huber were conducted. Confident assertions are easily made, requiring only a little breath or a drop of ink; and the men who deal most in them, have often a profound contempt for observation and experiment. To establish even a simple truth, on the solid foundation of demonstrated facts, often requires the most patient and protracted toil.
A high temperature is necessary for comb-building, in order that the wax may be soft enough to be moulded into shape. The very process of its secretion helps to furnish the amount of heat which is required to work it. This is a very interesting fact which seems never before to have been noticed.
Honey or sugar is found to contain by weight, about eight pounds of oxygen to one of carbon and hydrogen. When changed into wax, the proportions are entirely reversed: the wax contains only one pound of oxygen to more than sixteen pounds of hydrogen and carbon. Now as oxygen is the grand supporter of animal heat, the consumption of so large a quantity of it, aids in producing the extraordinary heat which always accompanies comb-building, and which is necessary to keep the wax in the soft and plastic state requisite to enable the bees to mould it into such exquisitely delicate and beautiful shapes! Who can fail to admire the wisdom of the Creator in this beautiful instance of adaptation?
The most careful experiments have clearly established the fact, that at least twenty pounds of honey are consumed in making a single pound of wax. If any think that this is incredible, let them bear in mind that wax is an animal oil secreted from honey, and let them consider how many pounds of corn or hay they must feed to their stock, in order to have them gain a single pound of fat.
Many Apiarians are entirely ignorant of the great value of empty comb. Suppose the honey to be worth only 15 cts. per lb., and the comb when rendered into wax, to be worth 30 cts. per lb., the bee-master who melts a pound of comb, loses nearly three dollars by the operation, and this, without estimating the time which the bees have consumed in building the comb. Unfortunately, in the ordinary hives, but little use can be made of empty comb, unless it is new, and can be put into the surplus honey-boxes: but by the use of my movable frames, every piece of good worker-comb may be used to the best advantage, as it can be given to the bees, to aid them in their labors.
It has been found very difficult to preserve comb from the bee-moth, when it is taken from the bees. If it contains only a few of the eggs of this destroyer, these, in due time, will produce a progeny sufficient to devour it. The comb, if it is attached to my frames, may be suspended in a box or empty hive, and thoroughly smoked with sulphur; this will kill any worms which it may contain. When the weather is warm enough to hatch the eggs of the moth, this process must be repeated a few times, at intervals of about a week, so as to insure the destruction of the worms as they hatch, for the sulphur does not seem always to destroy the vitality of the eggs. The combs may now be kept in a tight box or hive, with perfect safety.
Combs containing bee-bread, are of great value, and if given to young colonies, which in spring are frequently destitute of this article, they will materially assist them in early breeding.
Honey may be taken from my hives in the frames, and the covers of the cells sliced off with a sharp knife; the honey can then be drained out, and the empty combs returned to be filled again. A strong stock of bees, in the height of the honey harvest, will fill empty combs with wonderful rapidity. I lay it down, as one of my first principles in bee culture, that no good comb should ever be melted; it should all be carefully preserved and given to the bees. If it is new, it may be easily attached to the frames, or the honey-receptacles, by dipping the edge into melted wax, pressing it gently until it stiffens, and then allowing it to cool. If the comb is old, or the pieces large and full of bee-bread, it will be best to dip them into melted rosin, which, besides costing much less than wax, will secure a much firmer adhesion. When comb is put into tumblers or other small vessels, the bees will begin to work upon it the sooner, if it is simply crowded in, so as to be held in place by being supported against the sides. It would seem as though they were disgusted with such unworkmanlike proceedings, and that they cannot rest until they have taken it into hand, and endeavored to "make a job of it."
If the bee-keeper in using his choicest honey will be satisfied to dispense with looks, and will carefully drain it from the beautiful comb, he may use all such comb again to great advantage; not only saving its intrinsic value, but greatly encouraging his bees to occupy and fill all receptacles in which a portion of it is put. Bees seem to fancy a good start in life, about as well as their more intelligent owners. To this use all suitable drone comb should be put, as soon as it is removed from the main hive. (See remarks on Drones.)
Ingenious efforts have been made, of late years, to construct artificial honey combs of porcelain, to be used for feeding bees. No one, to my knowledge, has ever attempted to imitate the delicate mechanism of the bee so closely, as to construct artificial combs for the ordinary uses of the hive; although for a long time I have entertained the idea as very desirable, and yet as barely possible. I am at present engaged in a course of experiments on this subject, the results of which, in due time, I shall communicate to the public.
While writing this treatise, it has occurred to me that bees might be induced to use old wax for the construction of their combs. Very fine parings may be shaved off with glass, and if given to the bees, under favorable circumstances, it seems to me very probable that they would use them, just as they do the scales which are formed in their wax pouches. Let strong colonies be deprived of some of their combs, after the honey harvest is over, and supplied abundantly with these parings of wax. Whether "nature abhors a vacuum," or not, bees certainly do, when it occurs among the combs of their main hive. They will not use the honey stored up for winter use to replace the combs taken from them; they can gather none from the flowers; and I have strong hopes that necessity will with bees as well as men, prove the mother of invention, and lead them to use the wax, as readily as they do the substitutes offered them for pollen. (See Chapter on [Pollen].)
If this conjecture should be verified by actual results, it would exert a most powerful influence in the cheap and rapid multiplication of colonies, and would enable the bees to store up most prodigious quantities of honey. A pound of bees wax might then be made to store up twenty pounds of honey, and the gain to the bee keeper would be the difference in price between the pound of wax, and the twenty pounds of honey, which the bees would have consumed in making the same amount of comb. Strong stocks might thus during the dull season, when no honey can be procured, be most profitably employed in building spare comb, to be used in strengthening feeble stocks, and for a great variety of purposes. Give me the means of cheaply obtaining large amounts of comb, and I have almost found the philosopher's stone in bee keeping.
The building of comb is carried on with the greatest activity in the night, while the honey is gathered by day. Thus no time is lost. If the weather is too forbidding to allow the bees to go abroad, the combs are very rapidly constructed, as the labor is carried on both by day and by night. On the return of a fair day, the bees gather unusual quantities of honey, as they have plenty of room for its storage. Thus it often happens, that by their wise economy of time, they actually lose nothing, even if confined, for several days, to their hive.
"How doth the little busy bee, improve each shining hour!"
The poet might with equal truth have described her, as improving the gloomy days, and the dark nights, in her useful labors.
It is an interesting fact, which I do not remember ever to have seen particularly noticed by any writer, that honey gathering, and comb building, go on simultaneously; so that when one stops, the other ceases also. I have repeatedly observed, that as soon as the honey harvest fails, the bees intermit their labors in building new comb, even when large portions of their hive are unfilled. They might enlarge their combs by using some of their stores; but then they would incur the risk of perishing in the winter, by starvation. When honey no longer abounds in the fields, it is wisely ordered, that they should not consume their hoarded treasures, in expectation of further supplies, which may never come. I do not believe, that any other safe rule could have been given them; and if honey gathering was our business, with all our boasted reason, we should be obliged to adopt the very same course.
Wax is one of the best non-conductors of heat, so that when it is warmed by the animal heat of the bees, it can more easily be worked, than if it parted with its heat too readily. By this property, the combs serve also to keep the bees warm, and there is not so much risk of the honey candying in the cells, or the combs cracking with frost. If wax was a good conductor of heat, the combs would often be icy cold, moisture would condense and freeze upon them, and they would fail to answer the ends for which they are intended.
The size of the cells, in which workers are reared, never varies: the same may substantially be said of the drone cells which are very considerably larger; the cells in which honey is stored, often vary exceedingly in depth, while in diameter, they are of all sizes from that of the worker cells to that of the drones.
The cells of the bees are found perfectly to answer all the most refined conditions of a very intricate mathematical problem! Let it be required to find what shape a given quantity of matter must take, in order to have the greatest capacity, and the greatest strength, requiring at the same time, the least space, and the least labor in its construction. This problem has been solved by the most refined processes of the higher mathematics, and the result is the hexagonal or six-sided cell of the honey bee, with its three four-sided figures at the base!
The shape of these figures cannot be altered, ever so little, except for the worse. Besides possessing the desirable qualities already described, they answer as nurseries for the rearing of the young, and as small air-tight vessels in which the honey is preserved from souring or candying. Every prudent housewife who puts up her preserves in tumblers, or small glass jars, and carefully pastes them over, to keep out the air, will understand the value of such an arrangement.
"There are only three possible figures of the cells," says Dr. Reid, "which can make them all equal and similar, without any useless spaces between them. These are the equilateral triangle, the square and the regular hexagon. It is well known to mathematicians that there is not a fourth way possible, in which a plane may be cut into little spaces that shall be equal, similar and regular, without leaving any interstices."
An equilateral triangle would have made an uncomfortable tenement for an insect with a round body; and a square would not have been much better. At first sight a circle would seem to be the best shape for the development of the larvæ: but such a figure would have caused a needless sacrifice of space, materials and strength; while the honey which now adheres so admirably to the many angles or corners of the six-sided cell, would have been much more liable to run out! I will venture to assign a new reason for the hexagonal form. The body of the immature insect as it undergoes its changes, is charged with a super-abundance of moisture which passes off through the reticulated cover which the bees build over its cell: a hexagon while it approaches so nearly the shape of a circle as not to incommode the young bee, furnishes in its six corners the necessary vacancies for its more thorough ventilation!
So invariably uniform in size, as well as perfect in other respects, are the cells in which the workers are bred, that some mathematicians have proposed their adoption, as the best unit for measures of capacity to serve for universal use.
Can we believe that these little insects unite so many requisites in the construction of their cells, either by chance, or because they are profoundly versed in the most intricate mathematics? Are we not compelled to acknowledge that the mathematics must be referred to the Creator, and not to His puny creature? To an intelligent, candid mind, a piece of honey comb is a complete demonstration that there is a "GREAT FIRST CAUSE:" for on no other supposition can we account for so complicated a shape, and yet the only one which can possibly unite so many desirable requisites.
"On books deep poring, ye pale sons of toil,
Who waste in studious trance the midnight oil,
Say, can ye emulate with all your rules,
Drawn or from Grecian or from Gothic schools,
This artless frame? Instinct her simple guide,
A heaven-taught Insect baffles all your pride.
Not all yon marshall'd orbs, that ride so high,
Proclaim more loud a present Deity,
Than the nice symmetry of these small cells,
Where on each angle genuine science dwells."
Evans.
CHAPTER V.
PROPOLIS, OR "BEE-GLUE."
This substance is obtained by the bees from the resinous buds and limbs of trees; and when first gathered, it is usually of a bright golden color, and is exceedingly sticky. The different kinds of poplars furnish a rich supply. The bees bring it on their thighs just as they do bee bread; and I have caught them as they were entering with a load, and taken it from them. It adheres so firmly that it is difficult to remove it.
"Huber planted in Spring some branches of the wild poplar, before the leaves were developed, and placed them in pots near his Apiary; the bees alighting on them, separated the folds of the largest buds with their forceps, extracted the varnish in threads, and loaded with it, first one thigh and then the other; for they convey it like pollen, transferring it by the first pair of legs to the second, by which it is lodged in the hollow of the third." The smell of the propolis is often precisely similar to that of the resin from the poplar, and chemical analysis proves the identity of the two substances. It is frequently gathered from the alder, horse-chestnut, birch, and willow; and as some think, from pines and other trees of the fir kind. I have often known bees to enter the shops where varnishing was being carried on, attracted evidently by the smell: and Bevan mentions the fact of their carrying off a composition of wax and turpentine, from trees to which it had been applied. Dr. Evans says that he has seen them collect the balsamic varnish which coats the young blossom buds of the hollyhock, and has known them to rest at least ten minutes on the same bud, moulding the balsam with their fore feet, and transferring it to the hinder legs, as described by Huber.
"With merry hum the Willow's copse they scale,
The Fir's dark pyramid, or Poplar pale,
Scoop from the Aider's leaf its oozy flood,
Or strip the Chestnut's resin-coated bud,
Skim the light tear that tips Narcissus' ray,
Or round the Hollyhock's hoar fragrance play.
Soon temper'd to their will through eve's low beam,
And link'd in airy bands the viscous stream,
They waft their nut-brown loads exulting home,
That form a fret-work for the future comb;
Caulk every chink where rushing winds may roar,
And seal their circling ramparts to the floor."
Evans.
A mixture of wax and propolis is used by the bees to strengthen the attachments of the combs to the top and sides of the hive, and serves most admirably for this purpose, as it is much more adhesive than wax alone. If the combs, as soon as they are built, are not filled with honey or brood, they are beautifully varnished with a most delicate coating of this material, which adds exceedingly to their strength: but as this natural varnish impairs their delicate whiteness, they ought not to be allowed to remain in the surplus honey receptacles, accessible to the bees, unless when they are actively engaged in storing them with honey.
The bees make a very liberal use of this substance to fill up all the crevices about their premises: and as the natural summer heat of the hive keeps it soft, the bee moth selects it as a proper place of deposit for her eggs. For this reason, the hive should be made of sound lumber, entirely free from cracks, and thoroughly painted on the inside as well as outside. When glass is used, there is no risk that the bed moth will find a place in which she can insert her ovi-positor and lay her eggs. The corners of the hive, which the bees always fill with propolis, should have a melted mixture of three parts rosin, and one part bees-wax run into them, which remains hard during the hottest weather, and bids defiance to the moth. The inside of the hive may be coated with the same mixture, put on hot with a brush.
The bees find it difficult to gather the propolis, and equally so to remove from their thighs, and to work so sticky a material. For this reason, it is doubly important to save them all unnecessary labor in amassing it. To men, time is money; to bees, it is honey; and all the arrangements of the hive should be such as to economize it to the very utmost.
Propolis is sometimes put to a very curious use by the bees. "A snail[10] having crept into one of M. Reaumur's hives early in the morning, after crawling about for some time, adhered by means of its own slime to one of the glass panes. The bees having discovered the snail, surrounded it and formed a border of propolis round the verge of its shell, and fastened it so securely to the glass that it became immovable."