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ALBERT R. MANN LIBRARY

NEW YorK STATE COLLEGES OF AGRICULTURE AND HoME ECONOMICS

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CORNELL UNIVERSITY

EVERETT FRANKLIN PHILLIPS

BEEKEEPING LIBRARY

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A SONG OF LIFE. 12mo. LIFE AND LOVE. 12mo.

THE BEE PEOPLE. 12mo. THE HONEY-MAKERS. 12mo.

$1.25. $1.25. $1.25. $1.50.

A. C. MCCLURG AND CO.

Chicago.

The

Honey-Makers

By

Margaret Warner Morley

ZUthOEROne- ean Cones otmbite,. “leite and) Move, ““cehemBees beople: 1

Qustrated bp the Author

Chicago A. C. McClurg and Company 1899

ae New | \ t a f / 55 i es | CZ 72 ‘i / CopyRIGHT

By A. C. MCCLURG AND Co.

A.D. 1899

Contents

Part I

THE HONEY-MAKERS CHAPTER PAGE

IJ. STRUCTURE, HABITS, AND PRODUCTS OF THE

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Parr ED

THE LITERATURE AND HISTORY OF THE BEE

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Vill Contents

CHAPTER Pace SQUIIE ION (CpriorelaeaKpey IGM 6 6 85 6 fp 0 8 6 5 6 Ae XVII. In GREECE AND ITALy (continued)... . . . 288

XVIII. IN CHRISTIAN AND MEDILAVAL TONGS 4 2 9 a Bile) XIX. Curious CUSTOMS AND BELIEFS IN MODERN

AON DIS Eee Coe eel re OS ee py 8 se eA etele) XX BEE CULTURE AT PRESEN Tied talc ane nen O2 A PRENDIX 9.) ste quite tou el ole cs ei oe ee er Ok

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Pan te | The Honey-Makers

I

SVC hii h aH MBS, AND) PRODUIELS OF THE HONEY-BEE

LireratuRE is filled with the Honey-makers and their in- comparable gift, which appears now as ambrosia, now as nectar, and always as the synonym of sweetness unsur- passed.

The Vedic poets sang of honey and the dawn at the same moment, and all the succeeding generations of India have chanted honey and its maker into their mythologies, their religions, and their loves.

The philosophers of Greece esteemed the bee, and with- out honey and the bee the poets of Hellas would have lacked expressions of sweetness that all succeeding ages have seized upon as consummate.

The Latin writers studied the bee not only for its use- fulness as a honey-maker, but because of its unique character for industry, for its skill as a builder, and for its wonderful sagacity in its social organization.

The writers of the middle ages were not only familiar with what had been said in the classics, but themselves knew the bee, its virtues, and its uses in literature.

Modern writers are principally concerned with the struc- ture and habits of the bee as revealed by modern science,

IO The Honey-Makers

and particularly with the part played by it as a fertilizer of the fruits and flowers.

To fertilize the flowers has always been the office of the bee, as we can see now that the processes of nature are understood. But it cannot so easily be believed that the bee once gave the world the only “sugar” it had, — that is, the only material for sweetening; yet it is but a few centuries since sugar came into use in Europe.

The first cane-sugar known in our records came from China, that wonderful secret country which has given us so many of our useful arts.

Its course was thence to India and Arabia, and between China and these countries it appears to have been for centuries an article of trade.

Alexander the Great, in that remarkable expedition — which did so much to make the West acquainted with the East, is probably responsible for the first knowledge Europe had of sugar, for it is said that his admiral, Near- chus, on the return of his army to Greece B. Cc. 324, brought with him as a rare and delectable delicacy a quantity of sugar candy.

The method of making “candy” appears to have been known and extensively practised in China from a very remote antiquity, and it was sent in large quantities to

India. Thus we find candy, so frequently condemned as vain

and frivolous, a most venerable and _ historical commodity, the forerunner of the tremendous sugar industry in the western world at the present time. ,

Nearchus’s candy was not the varied and delectable confection compounded by the artists of the present day, but probably a very simple sweet.

Theophrastus, 320 B. c., calls sugar a sort of honey ex- tracted from canes or reeds ; and Dioscorides in the second

DinUctiremmabits, ana Products 11

century informs us that a sort of concrete honey, called sugar, is found upon canes which grow in India and Arabia Felix.

This sugar, we are told, was in consistence like salt, being, like it, brittle between the teeth.

“Sugar” came to be a synonym for everything that had a sweet taste, hence the acetate of lead is called “sugar of lead.”

It was not until about the seventeenth century that sugar became an article of common use in Europe. Up to that time it was used chiefly as a medicine, or by the rich as a delicacy at feasts upon very special occasions.

At the present time sugar has superseded honey as an article of every-day use. Honey has lost most of its im- portance in the family life; but not so the bee, for we now know that it does inestimable service in perfecting the fruits of the earth, and that without it our orchards would be lean and our gardens barren.

This knowledge makes a scientific study of the bee as fascinating as is the story of honey and its maker in rela- tion to the individual life of the races of men that have preceded us.

Since the bee existed before literature and history, the true sequence in treating it is, first, its structure and habits, and then its place in song and homily.

Its structure and habits were partly known and partly guessed by the ancients, who from Hesiod down wrote about it. Aristotle gives the best summary of Greek knowl- edge upon the subject, and from him succeeding authors down to near the present time drew their materials, ampli- fying the fables and absurdities, until the earliest English books upon the bee, although written in perfect seriousness, in the light of what we know to-day, read like humorous compositions.

12 The Honey-Makers

The bee lends itself so readily to fun that at the present time it is treated as a joke almost as frequently as a sober subject for scientific research. In the present book the natural history of the bee is treated and the latest scientific results on the subject are given, yet, feeling that the general reader will enjoy the quaint and curious opinions of earlier generations, even as the present writer did, they too are set before him, not to discredit the gravity of so serious a subject, but rather as it were to warm the cold facts of science with a human glow and make them smile a little. Hence Aristotle and Pliny, Moffett and Butler, appear with their testimony concerning the structure of wings, tongue, or sting, alongside the modern scientists, instead of being kept strictly to their own side of the fence in the part entitled the Literature and History of the Bee.

In the second part of the book the bee is set up to be looked at in the light of mythology, the legend, poetry, history, and literature ; and an astonishing insect it has proved to be under this examination. The writers of In- dian literature have used it constantly, as have also the Greek and Latin writers from the earliest times to the later ones. Plato in philosophy and Plutarch in history have set it in their pages.

In medieval times the church drew some of its most useful illustrations and lessons from the habits of the bee, and everywhere its wax has been used in magic and necro- mancy as well as in religious observances.

The northern nations owe it a debt so great that we can scarcely see how they could have fought and sung without it ; certainly they could not have mingled the draught that created the saga or brewed the mead that pledged the hero, without the cloying honey.

The poetry of the present is so rich in its use of the bee that it has been necessary to pass it almost without pausing,

Structure, Habits, and Products Tg

so impossible is it to do justice to this seed in a book of reasonable length.

It has not been the object of the author to exhaust the subject of the bee in literature, — that would be a task, indeed, — but rather to show the important place it holds in the principal literatures of the world, and to share with others the pleasure derived from pursuing the bee through these extensive and very delightful pastures.

It may not be out of place to say a word here concerning the bee’s place in nature. It belongs to the branch of the animal kingdom known as Arthropoda, which contains more species than all the other branches taken together, and whose members are characterized by having the body composed of a series of more or less similar rings or segments joined together, some of the segments bearing jointed legs. To the Arthropoda belong the spiders, scorpions, centipedes, lobsters, and insects.

The insects again form the largest division of this branch, and they are distinguished as being air-breathing, with distinct head, thorax, and abdomen, possessing one pair of antenne, three pairs of legs, and usually one or two pairs of wings in the adult state.

The insects form about four-fifths of the whole animal kingdom, and about a quarter of a million species have been described and named! And this enormous number is only a fraction, some say not more than one-tenth, of those actually existing.

Insects, according to certain peculiarities in structure, have been divided into several Orders, one of which contains butterflies, another beetles, another flies, etc. ; the Order to which the bees belong being the Hymenoptera, or membrane-winged insects, though they do not alone de- serve the name, as members of other orders have also

membranous wings.

14 The Honey-Makers

The Hymenoptera form a large Order, tens of thousands of species having been described and named, and these are a comparatively small part of those still unknown.

The members of the Hymenoptera are characterized by having four membranous wings, furnished with comparatively few or no transverse veins. The hind wings are smaller than the fore wings. The mouth parts are formed for biting and sucking. The abdomen in the females is usually furnished with a sting, piercer, or saw. The metamorphosis is complete.

The Hymenoptera may be divided into two parts, — those with instruments for boring, and those with stings.

The saw-flies, gall-flies, and a host of insects that lay their eggs in the bodies or eggs of other insects belong to the boring Hymenoptera, while to those bearing stings, known as the Aculeata, belong our well-known bees, ants, and wasps.

These do not employ their piercing instruments for boring, but for quite another purpose. They are stinging insects, having a poison-bag connected with the sting. The poison was probably used originally in obtaining food for the young, as it still is among the wasps. Wasps do not kill the insects they sting, but paralyze them and keep them alive and fresh as food for their larvae. This was probably the office of the bee’s sting originally ; but if this was so, time has so modified the insect that the sting is now no longer used to provision the nest, but has been turned to account in defending it.

Some bees have no stings at all, but such as have use them in defence only.

The family of bees is a large one, and is naturally divided into two parts, —the short-tongued bees and .the long- tongued ones, or the Apidze. Among the Apidee, or honey- gathering bees, there are a number of genera, chief among which is the genus Apis, to which our honey-bee belongs.

Structure, Habits, and Products 15

So we see the honey-bees of this country have a great many near relatives; indeed, counting the short-tongued bees that do not lay up honey but feed their young on balls of pollen or pollen and honey mixed together, there are thousands of species.

Even among the honey-making bees there are several genera and many species scattered over the world. The bumble-bee alone, which has a long tongue, though it does not always store up honey, has over fifty species in this country.

But our chief concern is with those bees that have been induced to lay up stores of honey in hives by which man has profited, and which in all but tropical countries belong to the genus Apis, of which again there is a number of species.

The Hymenoptera as an Order stand high in the scale of life, and of them the bees take first rank, — the hive-bee being by some placed next to man in point of intelligence. Certainly they stand at the very top of the insect scale.

The innumerable “bees” flying about the flowers in summer are not all hive-bees. Many of them are the wild short-tongued bees searching for pollen, and these are soon recognized by their small size and slender forms.

The bumble-bees, on the other hand, which belong to the genus Bombus, are larger than the hive-bees, though some of the smaller workers occasionally approximate the hive- bee in size, but bees of this genus can always be recog- nized by their black and yellow hairy coats. Bumble-bees are covered with hairs that form a thick short fur of alter- nating black and yellow stripes or areas over their whole bedies excepting sometimes a round bald spot on top of the thorax. Hive-bees have few or no hairs on the upper rings of the abdomen, and present a very different appear- ance from their furry relatives.

16 The Honey-Makers

Many people do not know the hive-bees from the small worker bumble-bees ; but the furry coat of the latter will always identify them.

With this slight introduction we will proceed to a more - careful consideration of the organs and activities of our subject.

I] THES BEE’S: TONGUE

Boru ends of the honey-bee have always been of singular interest to us, and this for exactly opposite reasons. It is the “tongue” that supplies the combs with honey, and the sting that never fails to admonish us when we become obtrusive in the affairs of the hive.

Pater Abraham a Santa Clara feelingly describes the bee as “honey before, a lance behind,” and this has been ex- pressed in later times by one who epigrammatically de- nominates the bee ‘‘a double-ender; one end the friend, the other end the enemy, of man.”

To the humorist the sting is the chief end of the bee. So it is to the popular apprehension. It is the first thing a boy learns about a bee, and the only one he cares for, unless it comes to be a question of mingled fear and hope in robbing the store of the worker.

But we must not accept the opinion of either the humor- ist or the boy, for the tongue is mightier than the sting, just as in modern life the pen is mightier than the sword.

‘Through the soft air the busy nations fly, Cling to the bud, and with inserted tube Suck its pure essence, its ethereal soul,”

sings Thomson in his “ Spring,” recognizing that mysteri-

ous organ, the bee’s tongue, which next to the sting has from all time engaged man’s interest.

A bee’s tongue is very wonderful, and is not at all what

it appears to be.

LS)

18 The Honey-Makers

Offer a captive bee a fresh white clover-head, and of a sudden, apparently from nowhere, there appears a long brown tongue that at once finds its way into the clover nectaries, appearing and disappearing in the most aston- ishing manner as the bee crawls over the head of flowers.

One watching this rapid tongue and trying to make out whence it comes and whither it goes is reminded of the peaman’s game of “ Now you see it, and now you don’t.”

The truth is, it is not easily observable excepting when in use. At other times, it is kept discreetly folded back beneath the head, where it fits into the space between the head and thorax, and offers a satisfactory explanation for

the peculiar manner in which these (Ge two divisions of the body are at-

tached to each other. he sheadias fastened near its upper edge to the thorax by its slender “neck,” and were it otherwise, were the attachment more generous in size or lower down, when the bee folded back the sharp-pointed “tongue” it would be in danger of cut- ting its own throat, which would be inconvenient, to say the least!

When a bee is about to produce its tongue it first opens its jaws, which are where one would expect to find jaws, at the lower margin of the face.

When the bee is at rest, one looking it full in the face would get no hint of a tongue, seeing only these tightly closed jaws (/, 7) and above them the upper lip (Z), the lower edge of which is bor- dered with a row of short, stiff hairs, which are sensitive and act as feelers.

Disturb the bee a little and open fly the jaws, not to accommodate the tongue this time, but evidently to strike terror to the heart of the intruder.

The Bee’s Tongue 19

Bumble-bees are more apt to threaten with their jaws, which are large and powerful, than are honey-bees, the latter being quicker to sting. No doubt a bumble-bee can bestow a very creditable nip with these horny organs, as it will often demonstrate by biting viciously at a pencil-point when disturbed by it. It evidently knows there is no use in wasting good sting power on a pencil- point, so it expresses its feelings with its jaws.

Any bees caught in a net will bite at the meshes, and this is a very good way to watch the play of the jaws, which, as in other insects, work sideways instead of up and down, like those of the higher animals.

The jaws of the bee are somewhat sickle-shaped, are more or less toothed according to the species of bee, are hard and horny in substance, are fastened at either side of the face by a hinge-joint, and meet or overlap in front when not in use.

In this chapter, for the sake of clearness, the complex organ commonly known as the tongue will be called the

proboscis.

One approaches it with a fear which even the sting does not inspire, for probably few other organs of its size, in all the world and in all time, have been so much written about and so good- naturedly quarrelled over as has this if same little bee’s proboscis.

We will consider, at present, only the proboscis of the worker honey-bee.

When one first looks for it in a resting bee, it is found folded back under the head and out of the way. When needed, it is let down by a sort of hinge-joint,

’

The Honey-Makers

and brought forward between the jaws, which, as we have seen, open for that purpose. It now has the appearance

of a short, stout, sharp-pointed dagger (S) with two little feelers (X, X) at the tip.

Instantly there appears, reaching below the point of this dagger, a very active, tiny, thread-like tongue (Z) wriggling about in the honey or nectar and licking it up very much as a dog’s tongue licks out a dish.

The best way to watch the action of the proboscis is to place a hungry bee near a drop of honey. As long as the

honey is abundant and easily reached, the pro- boscis will probably re- main as described ; but if the bee wishes to reach a more distant point, the pro- boscis is suddenly lengthened, an inner portion (S,.S) is shot out, reminding one of the manner of lengthening of a telescope. ‘This inner part is seen to bear the feelers (.X, X), as they are car- ried with it.

The tongue itself is thrust further out of its hiding-place.

In short, with great rapidity the pro- boscis can be extended until the tongue is able to reach more than half the length of the bee’s body.

As XA

As this interesting exhibition is watched, one discovers that the proboscis is not a closed tube or tubes, but is composed of parts which separate more or less as the bee

imbibes the honey.

The Bee’s Tongue 21

In fact, the bee’s proboscis is not a tube at all, though it can perform the office of one at need. A closed tube would be an inadequate and clumsy possession to a bee, as it could not lick up nectar so quickly and could not free its proboscis without great loss of time in case that in- strument became clogged.

Any one who has watched a bumble-bee disengage a bit of honey-comb or other foreign substance that had become wedged in its proboscis will appreciate the advan- tages of an organ that can, so to speak, be taken quickly apart and cleared out.

The proboscis lies behind the upper lip and is formed of the tongue, the lower lip, and two side pieces called maxille. These organs are common to all insects, but in the bees are modified to form a long nectar-gathering instrument.

The two maxillee (J/, JZ) together form the sharp-pointed

dagger-like organ which the bee first lo—— ) lets down. They are horny in sub- Van \ stance and are two-jointed. They

4 can readily be separated from each other as shown in the illustration, though normally they lie side by side, the thin inner edges of their lower joints (2,2) overlapping adove the tongue and forming the top of the proboscis. ly They are hollowed within, thus forming an arched roof to the pro- boscis, but as they do not meet un- derneath, they fail to form a perfect tube.

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a:

22 The Honey-Makers

Beneath the maxill lies the lower lip. This is composed in part of two four-jointed organs, the labial palpi (2). Like the maxille the palpi have two large horny joints (1, 2), but they also have two short joints (3, 4), which possess sensitive hairs, and, in short, are “feelers.”

The two palpi lie side by side, their inner edges overlap- ping wnderneath the tongue, so that, like the maxillz, they form a partial tube.

Thus, where the proboscis is let down but not lengthened it is a short tube, closed above by the maxillee, below by

I Ite Ill.

SSS EZ

ice

eS

as

the palpi. When by a remarkable contrivance the labial palpi are extended beyond the maxilla, the proboscis is lengthened but is no longer a complete tube, since, de- prived of the roof formed by the maxillz, it is open above.

The Bee’s Tongue 22

This, however, does not interfere with the collecting of nectar, as the tongue, or ligula (Z’), is covered with rows of hairs which make it easy for the liquid sweets to be conveyed up to the complete tube above.

In order to examine the wonderful mechanism by which the proboscis is lengthened and shortened at will, we will now look at the under side of the proboscis with all the parts widely separated.

We have here the maxillz (JZ, AZ), or outer sheath, as before, with both joints (1, 2) plainly distinguishable.

Between them we have the lower lip (Z) with the upper cylindrical part or mentum (47/7) and below that the two labial palpi (LP, ZF), these palpi forming the inner sheath.

Between the palpi is the tongue (7) having its roots in the mentum and capable of being withdrawn partly into that portion, by the action of muscles joining tongue and mentum.

The maxille are attached to a plate under the bee’s headpatethe points: 7.7, of Hiss. I. and Ite

In Fig. I. these points are below and behind X, X, and are concealed by the overlying parts.

The proboscis in Fig. I. is not lowered, but is as short as it can be.

In Fig. II. the bee has lowered its proboscis by opening the hinges at Z, Z, which thus lowers the point 4 of Fig. I. to 4! of Fig. II., leaving the points of attachment, Z, Z, exposed to view.

In this way the whole proboscis has been lowered, the inner and outer sheaths retaining their original relative position to each other.

Now the bee desires to extend its tongue still farther, and to this end lowers the proboscis yet more, in order to do this making use of other hinges similar to those already usedyat 4 Z.

24 The Honey-Makers

These hinges are at X, X, the point 4? of Fig. II. being joined to X, X, by the stiff, horny arms 4’, X, on either side.

Certain muscles which are attached to the head as well as to the proboscis by contraction depress the arms, as seen at 4”, X, in Fig. III., and lower the point 41 to 4 7, opening the hinges at xX, X, and thus lowering the inner sheath. This now projects below the outer, and the pro- boscis has been extended to its maximum length below the jaws. ‘The final act is to lengthen the tongue to its utmost by withdrawing it as far as possible from the mentum J/z

Thus, by means of springs or hinges or levers, as one may choose to think of them, the proboscis can be quickly lengthened and shortened.

A profile view of the tongue and its motor mechanism is interesting and makes the manner of lengthening the organ clearer.

The proboscis is slightly lowered, otherwise 4 would be applied closely to the line of the head, the whole apparatus would be tightly closed, and its mechanism concealed.

( Corresponding to the arm ZA on either A wae

IV.

side is a lower parallel arm VA, which is k visible only in the profile. This arm, like that ¢ at ZA, is tough and horny, though very slen- der, and it is evident that the parallelogram M I> ZAKYV, being jointed at each angle, can, by swinging on these joints, depress or elevate the side 4 and with it the attached inner sheath and tongue.

But this parallelogram is divided in two at points X, S, and is also movable at these points, and the parallelogram ZXSV can change its relative position without changing that of the parallelogram X4X'S as seen in Fig. V.

Thus, the whole proboscis is lowered the distance from

Of Wo

The Bee’s Tongue

45

X to X', the outer and inner sheaths retaining their relative

positions to each other.

But the parallelogram X'4XAS is capable of a similar change of relative position, as Fig. VI. shows, thus lowering

the inner sheath and with it the tongue below the point of the outer sheath, and extending the proboscis to its greatest length beyond the jaws.

This really simple and very effective ap- paratus is worked by an arrangement of mus- cles reaching from it to the head, and as simple and ingenious as the framework itself, when the work they accomplish is considered.

When not in use the proboscis is doubled back at the joints marked on Figs. I., II., andeliinrancdainO OvomlVe Ve Valerand VL

The tongue of the bee is a hairy organ, a

|

fortunate circumstance when the very imper-

fect tube of its proboscis is considered. The

hairs are arranged in rings around the tongue, the longest ones being towards the centre, and no doubt act as efficient aids in lifting the nectar through the -proboscis to the mouth when there is an abund- ance of nectar within easy reach.

The tongue in such cases licks up the nectar, and one can readily watch a bee gorge itself on a drop of honey, the parts of the proboscis quite widely separated,

Vil.

the active tongue licking in and out, and a band of honey, so to speak, extending from the drop almost to the mouth opening. The greedy little creature is fairly shovelling in

the unaccustomed abundance.

26 The Honey-Makers

An exposed drop of honey, however, is an unusual piece of good fortune for the bee; generally, it has to insert the proboscis into tubular flowers, where the nectar can- not be licked out in this easy way, and if the bee were unable to profit by the more inaccessible nectar of the flowers, starvation would stare it in the face. But the bee has a tongue of resources. When nectar is abundant it can gather it speedily and carelessly, but when distant or scarce sweets are to be reached, it is also equal to the occasion.

There is a groove running lengthwise at the back of the tongue, which is somewhat complicated in structure and which is closed into a tube by means of hairs which are so placed that they cross each other, forming a covering to the groove, but which can easily be moved aside when it is desirable to open or clear the tube.

The end of the tongue is a cylindrical disk covered with delicate hairs, which aids in licking and also in starting the nectar into the central groove.

This groove or tube is no doubt used to convey small quantities of nectar to the mouth, so by means of its com- plicated tongue the bee can gather nectar of any amount or any degree of accessibility.

The root of the tongue, as we know, is in the mentum, and when not extended for use it is withdrawn into the mentum in a manner which the accompanying illustration makes clear.

It is very easy to see the manner in which | the nectar sfavfs on its upward course, but con- x | | cerning its final method of entering the bee’s body | there is still room for a difference of opinion, — one maintaining that the upper part of the pro- boscis enlarges and contracts successively, thus pumping the nectar into the mouth ; another, that the honey stomach,

The Bee’s Tongue 27

or sac in the abdomen that receives the nectar, is a “ sucking stomach” and thus draws the nectar through the tubes. However this may be, we know for a certainty that the honey does reach the honey-sac.

In the act of taking honey, the mouth-opening at the upper front part of the proboscis is firmly closed by a flap or lip of delicate membrane that appears below the edge of the upper lip when needed.

The bee is very quick to discover honey and when con- fined in a room will soon find its way to the honey provided for it. Where there are flowers it will soon discover them and proceed to rifle them of their nectar.

It is amusing to watch a bee on a cluster of flowers new to it. Its ‘“unerring instinct ’’ does not lead it at once to the best manner of securing the nectar ; like the rest of us, it has to live and learn by experiment and gain knowledge through failure.

There is one flower concerning which a honey-bee never seems ignorant, however.

Present the captive with white clover-heads, and it instantly goes to work, putting the proboscis, or tongue, as we shall now call it, since we are done with scientific terms for the present, into flower after flower, always in the right place.

But with other flowers it is less certain.

Having been given a bunch of flat-topped flowers, whose nectary was in the form of a cushion-like disk easily reached, a honey-bee not long since made a most amusing ‘and for a time unsuccessful effort to stay her hunger from this fragrant and all too evident nectar. Like certain un- fortunate sentimentalists of the human race, she was trying to get the thing right before her face by aiming at the moon.

She was a thoroughbred bee, no doubt, accustomed to maintain her rank and find her sustenance in the aristocratic

28 The Honey-Makers

tubular flowers, and to be requested to take nourishment from a flat-topped flower with no tubes, but holding nectar galore free to the common herd of short-tongued bees, flies, and other plebeian insects, was too much for her philosophy.

She could not credit it, and the little brown tongue was repeatedly thrust defween the petals of this flower into the outer air, where it vainly waved and wriggled.

She evidently scented the honey, was hunger-distracted, and made frantic efforts to get it — by licking the air!

She persisted in trying to find tubular nectaries in mid- air for so long atime that her captor seriously meditated coming to her assistance, when finally her wayward tongue in its gyrations accidentally slid over the actual nectary.

The problem was at once solved. She licked the cushion-like nectary dry, went to another flower, and started aright.

In fact, she licked out every flower in the bunch without making another mistake, proving that though she acquired a new idea with difficulty, she kept it when she got it.

Honey-bees presented with different forms of papiliona- ceous flowers always had to find out by experiment where to find the opening to the nectary and how to get to it. Though when they had finally succeeded with one flower, they profited by their experience and quickly and dexter- ously rifled all of like form within reach.

Perhaps the most amusing of all were the bumble-bees trying to extract honey from the Iris.

This flower is so formed that the bee cannot get the nectar without creeping under the petal-like style (X), that lies curved against the true petal (Y) and acts as a spring when an insect pushes under it. Beneath this spring at 4 lies the anther; and the flower’s intention evidently is to make the bee pay for its feast of nectar by dusting its back with pollen as it crowds under the style, and carrying the

The Bee’s Tongue 29

pollen to another plant. When the bee approaches the nectary of an iris flower its hairy back first comes in contact with the stigmatic surface (S) at the outer rim of the style ; and if it has recently come from another iris, it will be pollen-dusted and will leave some of the pollen on the stigma. As it passes under the style its back will gather a fresh sup- ply of pollen to be in like manner conveyed to another plant.

The captive bumble-bee, suddenly presented with a generous supply of iris flowers, evidently had had no experience with them, or if so, it had forgotten. It had been fasting for some time and speedily made _ its way to the new offering. It landed on a hanging petal—as it ought; but instead of creeping under the style as it ought and thrusting its tongue into the longed-for nectar while it incidentally dusted its back for the benefit of the House of Iris, it clumsily climbed over the top of the style and began to lick the cen- tre of the flower, evidently with little satisfaction, for it moved constantly about as though searching for something.

Finally, it discovered the location of the nectar, though not the entrance to it, and made repeated attempts to reach it from above, clinging to the petal and putting in its tongue along the side of the style.

Its tongue was stretched to its limit, the bee stood on its tiptoes, so to speak, and the sympathetic observer could

30 The Honey-Makers

feel if not see the anxiety depicted on its countenance. But all was of no avail. It could not get the nectar that way ; it must conform to the law of the flower, or go hungry.

It tried again and again walking over and about the right opening ; but the flower, strong and stiff, met its stupidity by an equal obstinacy, until finally Madame Bombus solved the vexing rid- dle, forced her corpulent person beneath the stigmatic spring, stretched her neck and extracted nectar to her heart’s content.

Emerging from the entrance to the emptied nectary, she unhesitatingly, and no doubt with a beam of triumph in her eye, forged across the flower and into another nectary entrance. From that time for- ward she lost no precious moments when iris blossoms were

in question.

This raised in the observer’s mind the query as to whether the need of becoming acquainted with the method of ransacking a flower for nectar might not account for the well-known habit of bees in collecting exclusively from one variety of flower during a given time. ‘They find a flower which is abundant and whose nectar pleases them, they know just how to proceed, so it is a time-saving method to hasten from one flower to another like it.

Every observant bee-keeper has noticed the experimental manner in which bees search for nectar.

Their instinct as a rule leads them to seek the flowers for honey, though sometimes they do not seem even to know flowers without first investigating their little world and dis- covering them. Mr. Root says he has watched bees in the

The Bee's Tongue 2

springtime, very likely young ones, examining the “leaves, branches, and even rough wood of the trunk of the tree,” as if smelling out the nectar. But when the secret has once been discovered, all who have watched bees know how well it has been remembered. Bees, like all living creatures, control their lives through the exercise of reason.

The bumble-bee, although belonging to another genus, is very similar to the honey-bee in structure, and while it differs in many ways in its habits, still its methods of gathering nec- tar and pollen are the same, and its large size and good nature make it a pleasant house com- panion.

It is longer lived when in cap- tivity than the honey-bee, and not so likely to get lost when it has the freedom of the room. If one for- gets to put it up for the night it crawls away into some self-chosen

corner and emerges next day, making a great commotion.

The best way to discover how bees visit flowers is to give the bees a short fast, then introduce the flower to be experimented upon, with no other flowers in the room.

In this way the writer enjoyed a very amusing exhibition of the bumble-bee’s performances with the moccasin flower or pink lady’s slipper, — cypripedium acaule.

A whole afternoon spent in the dim woods with these strange and lovely growths failed to throw any light upon their method of fertilization.

It is reported that the small bumble-bees fertilize them, but at this season — June — there were no small, or worker, bombuses flying. ‘They had not yet come out.

QD The Honey-Makers

It was a New England June, one to remember, when a cool and rainy season had made the wild growths of the mountains of western Connecticut even more than usually luxuriant and beautiful.

Through the dim aisles of the hemlock and white birch trees that clothed a certain hillside the forms of the great pink orchids shone with almost unearthly effect.

The single blossom stood at the end of its long stem rising from two large leaves that looked as though they had scarcely yet been fully born from the earth beneath. They stood singly, but in small communities, little settlements of them, and occasionally two would be so close together that they looked like one plant.

It was no hardship to wander through these woods coming ever upon the magic areas where stood the orchids, giving one the feeling that they did not belong to this world, but were here for a time, brought forth by some powerful incantation.

The orchids were alone. The air was still but for the rustling of the hemlock boughs. Hours passed, and no winged messengers came to them.

By its nature the cypripedium is dependent upon winged insects. ‘There is no plant more so.

It is an extremely advanced organization, so highly developed that it is difficult to see how flowers could go much farther along the road of progress.

There is one more step it could take, that of having stamens and pistil in different individuals. But it is as secure from self-fertilization as though this were the case.

The petal forming its large inflated sac is free along the upper edges, leaving a slit the length of the sac, but this slit is not evident without actually drawing apart the two sides of the sac, so closely do the overarching lips shut together and conceal it. The essential organs are borne on the

The Bee’s Tongue a)

inner surface of the trap-door A at the topof the sac. The back of the round anther is visible in the illustration, but the stigma within cannot be seen. The space X forms an opening into the upper part of the sac.

One could not remain in that orchid-grown forest in- definitely, so there was nothing to do but to take a number of the mysterious and handsome blos- soms home. ‘They were still wonder- ful in the full daylight, and yet there is no denying they left a part of their charm in the mystery of the woods.

Their color is a beautiful pink, not like that of the rose and yet suggest- ing it. The full pink sac is adorned with bronze streamer-like sepals that heighten the color effect and increase the charm. ‘There was a large queen bombus to welcome them to their new home, —a splendid creature that may well have held the rank in the insect world that they did in the world of plants.

She flew at once to the new flowers, and although her observer had no thought of her entering the orchid, or if so, of her being able to extricate her large body through the proper opening, she scattered theories to the winds by at once introducing her head through the slit in the front part of the sac and licking the inside of the flower as far as her long and flexible tongue could reach.

Then she forced herself in a little farther to reach yet unexplored sweets. Evidently orchid nectar was entirely to her mind, for presently she crowded still farther in, and in a moment more the lips of the sac closed triumphantly over her receding form and the first act in the romantic drama of the love of the orchid had been played,

= J

34 The Honey-Makers

By holding the flower against the light, the bee could easily be seen, as, all unconcerned as to how she was to escape, she greedily licked clean the inside of the ample sac.

When her appetite was satisfied, or more probably the sweets exhausted, she wished to come forth into the wide

Disappearance of the Queen. Emergence of the Queen.

world again and tried to do so the way she went in, but orchid sacs that open to swallow up queen bombuses do not open to let them out again and her ingenuity was not sufficient to manage the combination that held her locked in prison.

Then, no doubt, casting her eye around she discovered the ray of light at the top of the flower and presently her black head appeared in the window, as one is tempted to call that interesting opening from the orchid prison.

The observer, having kindly decided not to let her die there, but to help her out after she had made a reasonable effort to extricate herself, sat and gazed at her black head with sympathy. ;

Just then she reached out a strong fore leg and firmly grasped the outside of the flower with her toes. Then she

The Bee’s Tongue Bis

reached out another leg. Then she slowly and thoughtfully emerged, whole and unharmed, with the stamp of the orchid on the top of her back in the form of a large round patch of sticky pollen which she had dragged from the anther under which she had squeezed herself.

Once out, she tried, unsuccessfully, to brush the pollen from her back, evidently feeling annoyed by it, and then buzzed her way straight to another of the orchids, insin- uated herself into its sac, and when she got ready pulled her plump person successfully through the small opening at the top.

She bore the seal of the orchid all over the top and sides of her thorax before she was through her depredations on that handful of flowers, and of course in passing under the stigma on her way out must have left enough of her gathered pollen to fertilize the flowers.

Thus was forever dissipated the fear in at least one mind that the queen bombus is incapable of fertilizing the cypripedium acaule.

Some of the honey-bees that had the run of the window screen also went into the cypripedium flowers through the slit in the sac, but they came out at the top without touch- ing the pollen masses, being too small to fill the necessary space.

As many of the flowers in the Connecticut woods set no seeds, it is probable that they are not greatly favored by insect visitors in this day and generation, or was this an off season for bumble-bees to favor cypripediums? However that may be, on that particular hillside, in that particular June, the cypripediums were slighted.

But such is the marvellous number of seeds developed in any one pod that does fulfil its destiny that a few mature pods would be sufficient to seed down the whole country

side.

36 The Honey-Makers

Although Queen Bombus was not observed to visit the cypripediums in the Connecticut woods, she was caught at it next spring in the Blue Ridge Mountains, where by the roadside was seen a splendid specimen of the cypripe- dium acaule, and from its narrow window a queen bombus triumphantly emerging.

One hears so much of the brightness of flowers as being the result of insect selection, and of the bees in particular as finding flowers by their colors, that one at first uncon- sciously looks to the showy blossoms when searching for bees. But this seems to be a mistake.

Early in the summer the huckleberries bloom, and over the rocks on the Connecticut hills may be seen clusters ot straggling bushes loaded with small, rather inconspicuous red flowers.

These flowers are always alive with bees.

Great queen bombuses, airy honey-bees, and slender black bees of solitary habits are all there busily draining these toothsome blooms, while the vivid houstonia, whiten- ing the earth like a fall of snow, seems to be quite ignored, and the buttercups, daisies, and many another showy bloom has only an occasional bee-visitor.

A little later the wild raspberry-bushes — or brambles — blossom with such an excess of delightsome nectar that they have been able almost to dispense with petals. Their narrow white petals soon fall, and at the best are very inconspicuous.

The bees adore these modest blooms, and to come at them will pass the brilliant white blackberry blossoms, or the most gorgeous garden flowers, without a moment’s hesi- tation. Bees could always be found on the brambles when they were to be seen nowhere else.

The mountain laurel, which held high carnival over the pastures and through the woods of Connecticut, piling up

dherscess) ongue aa

crisp masses of bloom in a marvellous manner, did not win the favor of the bees, fortunately for those of us who love honey and do not care to be poisoned. For the honey of the laurel is said not to be good for man.

The honey-bees ignored it entirely, and only an occa- sional bumble-bee or fly was to be seen paying homage to its opulence — always excepting the yellow papilio butterfly with black bands on its wings.

These brilliant creatures fluttered by the score about the laurels, helping them hold jubilee, and adding their winged beauty to the grace of the floral outburst.

Perhaps in a season when other nectar was scarce, the bees would have turned to the laurel as a last resource, though honey-bees in captivity preferred starvation to laurel nectar.

Bumble-bees were less fastidious, and did not disdain to gather honey from every one of a large bunch of laurel flowers placed near their window.

Wild roses, however seductive in color and fragrance, do not attract bees as do many other less showy flowers ; per- haps the bees remember, from ancestral experience, that the roses have no honey, only pollen to offer their guests.

All know how fond bees are of linden or lime tree blos- soms, the trees when in bloom sounding like a vast bee-hive from the countless honey-gatherers busy in their midst, though the greenish flowers are so inconspicuous that many a one would fail to discover that the tree was in bloom were it not advertised so loudly by its loving friends.

From remotest ages the lime has been noted as a tree beloved by bees, and Virgil does not fail to tell us that the limes of his old Corycian bee-master were the first to bloom.

A little time spent in watching the bees in summer is a good tonic for the mind, and also a valuable corrective.

38 The Honey-Makers

From learning of bees and flowers through much reading, one is apt to draw the lines too closely about the methods of nature. One thinks of flowers and bees as adapted by nature to each other, and as fitting tegether like the two parts of a machine.

While it is true that flowers no doubt are modified to suit certain insects and to attract them from afar, and the insects are modified to gather sweets from the flowers, still there are very few flowers that allow of but one insect visitor, and very few insects that visit but one species of flower. And any one who has watched a bee experiment - with a flower new to it will be filled with a saving sense of the volition of insects, and of the manifold possibilities of action in the insect world.

There is variety enough in the life of a single bee to afford entertainment to the most exacting, and to show the futility of drawing rigid conclusions concerning the habits and senses of bees without an almost infinite amount of knowledge concerning the habits of all the bees in all parts of the world.

Bees certainly possess individuality, and to foretell the actions of any one from what is known of the habits of its race would be as sensible as to predict the actions of your neighbor from what you believe yourself to know of the habits of the genus homo.

Ill EVES, ANSENNAL AND BRAIN

SoMETIMES bees fly several miles in search of flowers. Upon leaving the hive, they ascend high in the air as if to get their bearings, then they are off, zigzagging as fast as they can to the objects of their desire, for they do not fly in a straight line but continually curve from side to side. ‘There is little doubt that the eye directs these distant flights, and that the bee sees the shine of the flower fields much farther away than man could distinguish them.

Certainly the bee is abundantly supplied with visual organs. On either side of the head are the two large’ compound eyes, each, in the worker, being composed of more than six thousand simple eyes or facets.

There has been a good deal of speculation as to how this astonishing supply of eyes can be used without breed- ing confusion in the mind of their possessor. It used to be affirmed that each facet gave a separate image of that portion of the landscape directly in front of it, and that the union of these fragments made an unbroken whole ; but to-day the balance of opinion is in favor of an un- broken image for each separate facet, and the final recon- ciliation of the ensuing chaos is believed to be accomplished by the blending of all the images into one, as our own two eyes give the impression of but one image.

Whether the bee’s two compound eyes focus together, as do our two eyes, is another matter, and probably they do not, as in the honey-gatherers the eyes are well over

40 The Honey-Makers

on the side of the head, and probably each one gives an image independently of the other. In Butler’s “ Feminin Monarchi,” written in 1609, and reprinted in 1634, occurs a description of the bee’s eyes too funny to omit; and modern science will look askance at it, though the ordinary reader, unscientific but observant, after looking a bee in the face, will at least sympathize with Butler’s dilemma. For how could a man in 1634 expect to find a creature's eyes covering both sides of its head? Says Butler, —

“Her two cheeks being transparent like lanthorn, do serve, though immovable, instead of eyes; through which the secies of things visible are conveyed to the common Sense.”

When examined by the microscope, the eye of the bee is found to be constructed on a plan somewhat resembling that of our own eyes, there being lenses, rods, and nerve- ends. The outer lens found in each facet of the bee’s eye is biconvex, and this is fortified by another lens just back of it, which is long and cone-shaped.

The rods and nerve-endings back of these lenses are complex and difficult to understand, and it is enough to know that the facets of the compound eyes are very tele- scopic in action, enabling the bee by means of them to see far better at a distance than near at hand.

Its chief need of eyes is to discover flowers, and conse- quently its compound eyes are probably little more than highly trained blossom detectives. It appears to have but one idea when it goes abroad, and that is to find a nectar- flowing flower as soon as possible.

With its eyes to discover distant masses of color, and its antenne to scent the nectar as it approaches, it is very well qualified to accomplish its wishes. But these great com- pound eyes after all are not much better than a pair of telescopes pointing about in search of clover heads, and,

Eyes, Antenne, and Brain AI

when it comes to a near-at-hand object, the bee, as far as they are concerned, is very likely as blind as if it had no eyes. So these twelve or thirteen thousand facets have to be re-enforced by more eyes ; and near the top of the head, between the compound eyes, are three

other visual organs arranged in a triangle, amet: each one large as compared with a facet, hay though small as compared with the com- Rat Bi pound eyes themselves.

These three simple eyes are overhung by tufts of hairs like very shaggy eye- brows, and when one of them is dis- covered with a magnifying glass, it shines out like a bright bird’s eye, the light often focusing upon it in a way to make it simulate the eye of higher animals.

These three eyes are not on the same plane, and it is difficult to see all of them at the same time, because of the hair that covers the top of the bee’s head. ‘This hair can easily be shaved off, however, as has been done in the

illustration.

The central eye is lower than the two others, and is somewhat to the front of the face; it is directed up and out, so that while the two compound eyes are busy searching space for flowers on either side, this forward-looking eye perhaps prevents the eager worker from bumping its reckless head against obstacles close in front.

The two other eyes are over the edge, as it were, resting in slanting depressions on top of the head, and being directed upward and to the right and left respectively.

The structure of the simple eyes, or ocelli, is somewhat similar to that of the facets, but is simpler, and the lenses are shaped for near vision. ‘Though in some cases they do not seem to perform their part with remarkable success, they doubtless have their value.

42 The Honey-Makers

A bee does little credit to these three eyes when stum- bling about in search of something almost within reach. If its hive is moved only a few feet during its absence, or if it misses the alighting board and drops to the ground, it often wastes a great deal of time bustling about in what seems a very aimless manner before it finds itself again.

Between the hexagonal facets of the compound eyes, and slanting in the direction towards which the eye curves, so as not to obstruct vision, are hairs.

Why the bee should have hairs on its eyes may not be apparent until one remembers the unprotected state of

those lidless organs. And also the fact that

the eyes are constantly in danger of becom-

ing dusted over by various substances as the ve ; bee dives its head into flower-cups, explores

the waxen cells of its hive, and flies abroad on windy days.

It would not do for these eyes to be in- jured or obscured in any way, and the hairs that cover them are protective, and from their structure no doubt also sensory, so they form the body-guard of the eyes, keeping them from all harm.

Eyelids would be a great inconvenience to a bee ; eye-hairs serve every purpose and offer no inconvenience whatever.

As to what a bee sees with its eyes, and how the objects familiar to us appear to the owner of these numerous optical organs, one is not in a position to state.

It is well known that bees distinguish colors, and Sir John Lubbock goes so far as to assure us that honey-bees prefer blue, he having discovered this by alternately alluring and deceiving them with slips of colored paper upon which were — or were not — drops of honey. He found his bees investigating the blue slips before trying other colors, and following the blue about when it was moved from place-to

Section of bee’s eye.

Eyes, Antenne, and Brain 43

place, even when the honey had been transferred to some less attractive color.

Bee-keepers sometimes paint their hives different colors to enable the occupants to find their way home in a crowded apiary.

While bees undoubtedly distinguish colors, and may have their preferences, it is, as we have already seen, assuming too much to say that color is the chief factor in attracting them.

Certainly white clover heads blossoming in a meadow of overtopping grass are not conspicuous from their color, and yet here you will always find the bees. Here they will come from distant hives, if nearer clover pastures do not stay them.

How do they know? Jo they scent the clover from afar? or do they recognize the color environment of white clover heads, the green smooth meadows, the low-growing vegetation ?

And when the fragrant load is gathered, what directs their homeward course? Do they recognize the particular house, barn, or clump of trees that overlooks their hive? Some sense they have that tells them its exact location, for, mount- ing high in the air, they turn in the right direction and make a “ bee-line” for home.

Apparently their eyes deceive them at times and lead them to seek honey from the white expanse of glaciers and snow-clad mountain tops where travellers frequently speak of having seen them dead in large numbers.

The bee’s antennze are as necessary as its eyes in the search for honey, and more necessary in other walks of life.

“ And he shall sing how, once upon a time, the great chest prisoned the living goat-herd, by his lord’s infatuate and evil will, and how the Blunt-faced-Bees, as they came

AA The Honey-Makers

up from the meadow to the fragrant cedar chest, fed him with food of tender flowers, because the Muse still dropped sweet nectar on his lips.”

Thus sang Lycidas concerning the shepherd Comatas, who in his zeal to serve the Muses sacrificed to them his master’s goats, and was therefore put in a cedar chest and shut up, but, as the song relates, kept alive for the space of a year, and until his release, by the ministrations of the Blunt-faced-Bees.

Wise indeed have these insects been accounted from all time, and wonderful is the organization which enables them to accomplish their manifold and clever tasks.

Whether they fed Comatas in his cedar chest some may question ; but this cannot be questioned, that if they did feed him, they found him there not by the sense of sight or by means of any organ such as we possess, but because they were endowed with the most mysterious and remark- able of organs, the antennze or feelers.

Between the eyes of the “ Blunt-faced-Bees ”’ reach out the feelers, and these several-jointed organs, as has been intimated, are matters of importance. With them the bee hears. With them it smells, and by means of them it con- verses. Deprived of them, it becomes a stricken thing, helpless, deaf, dumb, and despairing.

Huber experimented by cutting off the. antenne. The removal of one antenna produced no observable effect. Not so the re- moval of both, for then the bee became little more than an

idiot or lunatic and, unable to perform the necessary duties of the hive, soon perished.

The queen-bee, when deprived of her antennse entirely lost her maternal instinct, moved aimlessly about, avoided

Eyes, Antenne, and Brain Aas

the bees, dropped her eggs anywhere, and did not resent the presence of another queen. The workers did not seem to recognize her ; and when finally she left the hive, they did not follow her, and she returned no more. Drones and workers behaved in a similar manner, stood idly near the door of the hive, apparently attracted by the light, and at length went away, doubtless soon to die.

Without its antennze, the bee must soon starve, being unable to find the fragrant nectar that is its food, or even to take honey that is close at hand. Huber’s queen-bees after losing their antennze thrust their tongues all about the head of the worker that was trying to feed them without being able to find its open mouth.

Watch the captive bees when honey is given them. It is the feelers that investigate the delicacy proffered under such suspicious circumstances, and it is the feelers that, moving this way and that, direct the more distant bees to the feast.

{t #8 the feelers that first lightly investigate the blossom upon which the bee is placed, and direct it to the nectary, or cause it to flee quickly from some distasteful bloom.

The feelers can be moved easily in any direction, as they are attached to the head by a convenient ball-and-socket- like arrangement. Their first joint is long and acts as an arm to turn in every direction the remainder of the organ, which is composed in the case of the worker bee of eleven short movable joints. So the outer portion of each antenna is flexible, and can be curved or moved within limits.

The eight lower joints are covered by extremely delicate sensory hairs that give to the antennz their peculiar sensi- tiveness as organs of touch, even, it is believed, enabling them to serve the purpose of extra eyes in performing the labors of the dark hive.

There are other coarser hairs, more abundant near the

46 The Honey-Makers

extremities of the antennz, which are supposed to be highly specialized feeling-organs. a

On the lower, outer part of the last six or seven joints, and more abundant towards the end of the antenne, are microscopic circular depressions which are believed to be organs of hearing, ear- openings, so to speak.

Besides the special organs already no- ticed, there are what Cheshire calls the “¢smell hollows.”

These are oval in form, larger and far more numerous than the ear-holes, and are found between the touch hairs on the front of the Jast eight joints of the antenne.

There is the amazing number of 2400 of these oval

depressions on each antenna, which well accounts for the very acute sense of smell which bees undoubtedly possess.

These little antennze are only about } of an inch long, and their lower specialized portion is only } of an inch long in the worker bee, and ;}5 of an inch in diameter, yet this lower part is possessed of thousands of highly specialized sense-organs.

That bees hear has been a matter of faith from the time of Aristotle, and, after having been denied in very scientific and learned terms in recent times, is now again an accepted belief. They do hear. Or at least they possess a sense equivalent to what in us is hearing.

They do not notice all sounds, but then, neither does any one else, and Sir John Lubbock’s tuning-forks, whistles, and violins that failed to elicit any response from his bees may, as Cheshire has so well pointed out, be due to the fact that bees are not interested in the sounds of these instruments. Cheshire says, —

“Should some alien being watch humanity during a

Eyes, Antenne, and Brain 47

thunder-storm, he might quite similarly decide that thun- der was to us inaudible. Clap might follow clap without securing any external sign of recognition; yet let a little child with tiny voice but shriek for help, and all would at once be awakened to activity. So with the bee: sounds appealing to its instincts meet with immediate response, while others evoke no wasted emotion.”

From another pen we read the following, —

“‘Kivery apiarist has noticed the effect of various sounds made by the bees upon their comrades of the hive; and how contagious is the sharp note of anger, and the pleasant tone of a new swarm as they commence to enter their new home.”

Moffett, in his ‘Theatre of Insects,” not only allows to bees the faculty of hearing, but credits them as well with musical appreciation, —

“ Neither are they altogether impatient of musical sounds, as other ruder forms of creatures are, but are very much taken. and delighted therewith; provided it be without variety, simple, and unaffected.”

It may be that Sir John’s efforts were beyond their understanding, and that what he mistook for indifference was, in reality, a condition of stupefied surprise induced by his too complex tuning-fork and violin vibrations.

But Moffett continues, —

“They are likewise very fearful of an echo, thunder and lightning, and the like sudden crackling noise; as on the contrary with a soft still whistling, or murmuring noise, and tinkling of brass they are exceedingly taken and delighted.”

Nay, he proceeds farther, and would have us believe the bees possessed of a sensitive organization that not only hears but responds actively to music, as witness the following, —

48 The Honey-Makers

“And although they cannot dance by measure ot according to the just number of paces, as the elephant is said to do, yet according as he that tinks on the brazen kettle pleaseth, so they slack or quicken their flying; if he beat fast and shrill, then they mend their motion, if dully and slowly, then they abate ity”?

One would much like to see these bees of olden time dancing to the piping —or rather ‘“tinking ”’ —of their masters.

The words of their seventeenth-century historian may not prove to the satisfaction of the exacting modern scientists that bees possess the sense of hearing, but they certainly do prove that the people of olden time believed they did.

Butler has surpassed every one in his faith in the musi- cal power of bees. He has actually written a musical score which he calls the Afe/éssomelos, or “ Bee’s Madrigal,” the swarming song which the bees sing just before leaving the hive. It is well known that the queen utters a peculiar note at that time, and that the sound of the swarm prepar- ing to issue is characteristic ; and Butler discovered, to his own satisfaction at least, that the queen and the departing “prince” sing to each other a well-defined song, of which the queen takes the bass, the young “ prince” the treble. After explaining the different notes and chords used by bees, he adds, —

‘“‘So that if music were lost, it might be found with the muses’ birds.”

The antennz are not only ears, but are nostrils to their possessors, a fact proved for the first time, as far as we know, by Huber.

“Not only do bees have a very acute sense of smell,” says he, “ but they add to this faculty the remembrance of sensations. Here is an example: We had placed some

Eyes, Antenne, and Brain 49

honey on a window. Bees soon crowded upon it. Then the honey was taken away and the outside shutters were closed and remained so the whole winter. When, in spring, the shutters were opened again, the bees came back, although there was no honey on the window. No doubt, they remembered that they got honey there before. So an interval of several months was not sufficient to efface the impression they received.”

Bees have often smelled their way down stove-pipes and through key-holes to a coveted feast of honey, and Lang- stroth’s bees got into his honey-house by coming down the chimney and through an opening made by the motion of a loose fire-place screen.

It seems that this screen moved back and forth in windy weather just enough to allow one bee to pass at a time. Down the chimney came the bees and waited their turn for a chance to crawl through when the opening appeared. When one succeeded she is said to have ex- pressed her delight by a joyful humming that led to her discovery. Having appropriated a load of honey the little trespasser waited until the honey-house door was opened, and then flew home.

There is another interesting story, told by Mr. Root, of bees visiting a honey-house and imparting to their hive- mates the joyful tidings that the door was open.

The bees, discovered in the midst of their eager labor, were expelled, and towards night all was again in order in the apiary with not a bee near the honey-house door. sinenetiembee-Keepen Gesinnen to) try a new “feeder,” placed it in front of one of the hives where the bees were clustered on the outside. It was soon discovered by some of them that filled their honey-sacs from it and went joy- fully into the hive to unload. Those inside took the hint and at once out poured the inhabitants of that hive, bent

4

ize) The Honey-Makers

on sharing the booty. But not to the feeder did they betake themselves. ‘They rushed past that without notic- ing it, and went straight to the honey-house door! Of course they thought it had been left open again, and when they found it closed, they returned to the hive.

Fond as bees are of nectar they are yet fonder of honey, and will leave the fields at any time to collect a load of ready-prepared sweets. ‘Thus bee-keepers often have trouble in handling the honey in their apiaries, for when the bees get scent of the alluring harvest they fall upon it and perform prodigious feats in conveying it quickly back to the hives. Indeed, under the intoxicating influence of ready-made honey they often become demoralized, and like a miser at the sight of gold, dream only of acquiring the largest pos- sible amount. Thus swarms sometimes fight over the honey, and finally the strong ones break into the hives of the weak ones and rob their own neighbors.

Bee-keepers understand that when honey is to be handled it must be taken into a room and the door closed, or else there is danger that the whole apiary may be seized with a frenzy for robbing, and a general scrimmage ensue.

When this happens the by-stander will do well to keep out of the way, for when the fight is on every living thing is regarded as a foe.

Perhaps the most convincing proof that bees find honey by the aid of scent alone is afforded by Huber’s experi- ment of placing honey in closed boxes with an opening covered by a hanging valve which the bees had to push aside in order to enter. This they did, entering the dark box, securing a load of honey, and finding their way out again.

All this is in great contrast to the results achieved by Sir John Lubbock, when experimenting to find whether bees returned to honey, and whether they brought or sent their

Eyes, Antenna, and Brain 51 companions. He first, as he writes, “ placed some honey in a glass, close to an open window in my sitting-room, and watched it for sixty hours of sunshine, during which no bees came to it.

“T then, at 10 a.m. on a beautiful morning in June, went to my hives, and took a bee which was just starting out, brought it in my hand up to my room (distance of some- what less than 200 yards), and gave it some honey, which it sucked with evident enjoyment. After a few minutes it flew quietly away, but did not return; nor did any other bee make its appearance.”

The following morning the same experiment was repeated with the same result, and on several other occasions. On the whole Sir John Lubbock’s bees seem to have been par- ticularly stupid, and after citing a number of experiments he concludes, —

“JT might give other similar cases, but these are, I think, sufficient to show that bees do not bring their friends to share any treasure they have discovered so invariably as might be assumed from the statements of previous observers.”

No doubt bees, like people, differ, and very likely the members of a large and flourishing apiary may have their wits sharpened by much competition— like people in a crowded community.

The ancients believed in the olfactory power of bees, and Aristotle says, —

'“Tnsects can smell from a great distance. Bees scent honey, for they perceive it from long distances, as if they discovered it by scent.”

And Pliny says, in speaking of bees when swarming, —

“Tf one of them falls in the rear from weariness oT happens to go astray, it is able to follow the others by the aid of its acuteness of smell.”

ED The Honey-Makers

The antenne, in some mysterious way, afford means of communication. By them the bee says all it feels to its friends and relatives.

Watch two bees meet on a window-frame : they instantly cross feelers, and if they come from the same hive there ensues such an outpouring of bee-talk, such a tremor of crossed antennz, such an evident condition of excitement all through their bodies as might well fill the most practised gossip with envy.

One can imagine the graphic terms in which they relate the recent awful experience of their capture, how they were suddenly and rudely jerked from a sweet blossom, and after indescribable shaking about in a strange thing made of bands too close together for them to get through and too tough for them to bite through, finally found themselves, as they supposed, free.

The joy after the fear! but alas, their happiness was of short duration ; for when they attempted to return to the clover field visible in the distance, they found themselves suddenly checked in mid-career by what seemed a wall of thickened air, a strange, hard, cold, transparent nightmare of a barrier which they could see through, but could not pass.

Poor little bees, no wonder their antennz fly in the discussion of such queer facts, and how fortunate that the ears of the ogre, their captor, are not attuned to the remarks of their antenne, as they express their opinion concerning him morally mentally, and physically ! ‘

Just what bees talk about is their secret —also just how they talk. Suffice it to know that they do talk, or at least have a method of communication which, it may be, more resembles the sign language of the human deaf mutes than the articulate speech of those able to hear.

Perhaps it is a series of touches or taps like those of the

Eyes, Antenne, and Brain EO

telegraphic code, —but what is the use in speculating about it? Whatever the method, this we may be sure of, they know each other when they meet by crossing antenne, and they know strangers in the same way, and are as eager to converse stingwise with a stranger bee as they are to gossip amicably with a friend.

When one advances a pencil or other small object towards a bee that apparently is sound asleep, long before the object is within what one would suppose to be notice- able distance, the antennze fly out. They work nervously back and forth, as though inquiring the quality and mean- ing of the approaching object.

The bee examines objects at a distance by means of these remarkable organs, and those within reach by gently tapping or touching them with the tips of the antenna, which, as we know, are best supplied with sensory organs.

MWihenmithes bee is asleep), Or resting undisturbed, the antennee droop in a seemingly helpless manner; but at the slightest hint of disturbance, these reliable sentinels are elevated and on duty.

No doubt bees recognize their queen by touching her with the antennze, as Huber performed a number of care- ful experiments to prove. He separated the queen from the bees by a wire partition, through which they could see, hear, and smell her, but could not touch her; and they soon betrayed all the symptoms of a queenless colony, and began to build cells in which to raise a new queen. But when the queen was so confined that they could touch her with their antennee, they showed no inclination to build queen cells. They knew she was there, and they were comforted. Doubtless, too, the information that the queen is missing is conveyed from bee to bee by crossing the antennee, as Huber also demonstrated.

With its antennz alone, our bee would be better en-

54 The Honey-Makers

dowed with sense power than seems to be the case with many a being having a merely human complement of eyes, ears, nose, and tongue.

One can but wonder if the bee’s joy in living is acute in proportion to the amazing sensitiveness of these wonderful organs. We should very much like to know that.

Inside the head is the motor that runs the tongue, eyes, and antennz, and gives the bee its consciousness of the outer world.

The small size of the bee’s brain makes its power seem to us the more wonderful. From it emanates such wisdom that from all time the bee has been held as a model before mankind.

Concerning it Moffett says, voicing the beliefs that had come down through the ages, —

“Whereas the Almighty hath created all things for the use and service of Man, so especially among the rest hath he made Bees, not only that they should be unto us pat- terns and presidents of political and oeconomical vertues, but even Teachers and School masters instructing us in certain divine knowledge, and like extraordinary Prophets, premonstrating the success and event of things to come.”

And again, —

“Xenophon likewise in his Oeconomicks, termeth Honey-making the Shop of vertues, and to it sendeth mothers of Housholds to be instructed. Poets gladly compare themselves with Bees, who following Nature only as a School-mistress, use Art.’

Although the bee’s brain is so small an object, it is com- plex, and can better be understood by a brief glance at the general nervous system.

In the larva, which is the undeveloped bee, there is very little differentiation of the nervous system.

The business of the larva is to eat and assimilate food

Eyes, Antenne, and Brain ss

through all parts of the body. Hence the nervous system 1s very much alike from end to end, the ganglia being but httle larger and more complex at the head end.

In the adult bee the conditions of life are very different. Instead of devoting its life to eating, it now devotes it to providing food for others, and in performing many com- plex actions requiring a high form of intellect. Consequently in our adult bee we have the nervous system centred more toward the head, and culminating in a comparatively large and well-developed brain.

So far as the nervous material of bees is con- cerned, there is no great difference between them and ourselves. ‘Their form demands a different location for nerve-trunks, but the nerves themselves, like those of the higher animals, are composed of bundles of sensory and motor fibres, and distributed along the course of some of the nerves are found ganglia. The brain is composed of gray and white matter, as in the higher animals, and is without doubt the organ of consciousness and intelligence.

Besides containing the brain, the bee’s head holds also three sets of glands, the smaller one opening within the mandible on either side, while a larger set opens at the base of the tongue.

The secretion of these two sets of glands is probably saliva, and with it must mingle any nectar entering the bee’s mouth, and thus probably is the nectar at once partly changed before it reaches the stomach.

The third set of glands within the head opens into the mouth, and is credited with very remarkable func-

56 _ The Honey-Makers

tions, first secreting the silk of which the larva spins its cocoon, and later supplying a liquid food for the young bees.

Numerous muscles, as we know, also find a resting-place and points of attachment within the head.

et Css)

IV THE WINGS

‘In the long-bodied, golden-hued Italian bee, the wings are not more than three-fourths the length of the abdomen.

Clinging to the flowers with these small and dainty gossamers vibrating above its form, the little creature seems like some tiny sprite bearing wings for beauty rather than for use.

Yet the airy wings of our pretty bee are most ‘effectual instruments of flight, carrying her many miles in the course of a summer day.

Butler quaintly tells us that “ Nature hath furnished her with four wings : which, swifter than the East-wind, carry her into all the four coasts of the world; and thence with her precious lading bear her back again, until her incessant labor hath worn them out.”

The thorax, that division of the body next back of the head, is specially devoted to the organs of progression, bearing as it does the wings and the legs. Isolate the thorax and its ap- aay pendages, and we appear to have the a principal part of the bee, certainly it is the most showy part.

The head possesses the organs of sense and the wonderful tongue ; the abdomen, which is the last division of the body, carries the complex and respected sting; but the thorax controls the usefulness of all these, since it has attached to it the means of locomotion.

58 The Honey-Makers

In dealing with the bee’s power of movement, it is right that the wings have precedence of the legs, they being the more poetical, dainty, and as well uppermost in position of all the organs of progression.

The description of bees given by Moffett that “they have four wings, being of a bright and clear color, growing to their shoulder-blades, whereof the two hindermost are the lesser, because they might not hinder their flying,” is not without its merits.

Certainly they have four wings of a bright and clear color.

One could scarcely better describe the appearance of the shining transparent gauzes that adorn the bee’s back, and if they are not attached to the shoulder-blades, at least they are attached to what doubtless would be shoulder-blades if the bee had shoulders.

They are where the shoulder- blades of the human being are located, and to speak of them in this way immediately and accurately places them, in the imaginative and unpreju- diced mind of the non-scientific observer.

It is true, too, that there are four of them, and that the hindermost are the lesser.

When flying, a bee appears to have but two wings, and practically this is true ; but when it comes to rest, these two accommodatingly resolve themselves into four, in order that the hindermost and lesser pair may be tucked away beneath the foremost and greater pair.

The smaller and lighter the wings, the less do they hamper the movements of the bee, yet they must be strong

and firm; and these wings have

INC : a a 2 stiff framework like that of a ey kite, and like that are also over-

laid with a thin light membrane against which the air can find resistance. The lines of the framework though quite complex are very constant, so that

The Wings 50

the species of a bee is determined by slight variations in them.

On either side of the thorax, at the point of the supposi- tional shoulder-blades, two wings are attached. ‘The points of attachment of the two are very close together, but when the wing is extended, the lesser and hindermost is seen to be placed a little behind the larger and foremost.

While the double wing, when closed, is a great conven- ience in exploring flowers and moving about the crowded hive, it would be extremely disastrous when set for flight if the lesser and the greater were then to separate. But this they never do, as they are locked together in a very ingenious manner.

The upper edge of the lower wing bears a row of hooks, the points of which are turned towards the inside. On the lower edge of the upper wing, opposite these hooks, is a fold forming a slender groove into which the hooks catch when the wings are raised. ‘The mere act of raising the wings CESS draws the hooks into the groove and locks them.

The greater the pressure brought to bear against the surface of these locked wings, the more firmly are they held together, so they are in no danger of coming apart in the most rapid or erratic flight.

Quickly and safely as the wings are locked into one, they can as easily be separated into two, when lowered against the back in a state of rest.

The wings do not necessarily come unlocked when lowered, however, and one often sees a captive bee with its locked wings spread over its back, as though it knew that were safe enough under the circumstances, and would not take the trouble to pack them away. But when it

enters a flower or its hive, a slight motion of the upper

60 The Honey-Makers

wings separates them from the lower, when the latter slip away out of sight under the former.

Important as it is that the bee should have ample wing expanse when flying, it is equally important that it be not hampered by outreaching wings when about its work in flowers and in the hive, where large wings would not only be inconvenient, but would be liable to become torn and broken.

The speed with which the wings move is amazing, it having been calculated that during their swiftest motion they make over four hundred vibrations a second!

Powerful muscles are necessary to sustain the bee’s flight, and its thorax is a mass of muscles, perhaps the most remarkable of any in the world.

Tiny threads they are, yet when one considers the work they do, the massive muscles that move the elephant or the ox are as nothing compared to them.

The rapidity with which the bee is borne through the air is not very well known, as it is not an easy point to deter- mine. Cheshire says, —

““My own observations lead me to suppose that the pace ranges between two and sixteen or eighteen miles per hour, depending upon the load and the nature of the errand — a bee, bearing the body of the deceased sister from the hive, taking the funereal pace, while those issuing forth on busi- ness bent go express.”

If the bee moved its small wings with the deliberation of the butterfly, they could not hold it suspended for a moment. But it has an engine that the butterfly dreams not of. At the moment of flight its thoracic muscles start the wings to moving with a rapidity that makes one think of a pair of buzz saws, and away goes the bee, merrily speeding through the air, its cheery hum an involuntary song of triumph to its own wonderful structure.

The Wings 61

With its marvellous engine run by vital force in opera- tion, it can go where it listeth ; and while the more helpless butterfly is often blown about at the mercy of the wind, its gorgeous wings even serving as sails to catch the breeze and carry it far out to sea, the bee, like a trim little steam launch, heads up against the wind, and goes where it pleases.

The exact manner in which the wings are used as organs of progression, raising the bee from the earth, speeding it in any direction, with or against the wind, taking it high in the air, or dropping it with lightness and accuracy upon a selected flower, is still a problem for philosophers to puzzle over.

There is no doubt that the flight of the bee is aided, perhaps rendered possible, by a very wonderful system of air-sacs and air-tubes.

There are large air-sacs in the upper end of the abdo- men, almost filling it when distended with air, and there are air-sacs at the bases of the wings. ‘These air-sacs open to the surface by minute orifices called spiracles, one at the base of each of the four wings, and several others open on the sides of the abdominal walls.

The bee, like the bird, is supplied with air-cavities to sus- tain it in its flight, and these air-cavities are also its “lungs.”

It pumps the air into them by a continuous motion of the abdomen when at rest, and has the power to close the spiracles, and thus shut in a large amount of air when it desires to fly.

Packard tells us that the insect can change its specific gravity by filling or emptying its air-sacs, and that increased exertion causes increased activity in breathing, while de- creased exertion has of course the opposite effect, so that in hibernating insects respiration is almost entirely sus- pended. He also says that the air rushes into the thoracic

62 The Honey-Makers

spiracles when the wings are raised, filling the air-sac the body, lessening the specific gravity of the insect and enabling it to rise in the air and remain there with but slight muscular exertion. At the first stroke of the wings the spiracles are closed and the air retained.

Girard says that inside each spiracle is a muscular valve that by opening or closing can let in or shut out the air, and that this is under the control of the insect, who can thus at will fill the air-sacs and decrease the specific gravity.

Thus we find the breathing apparatus of the bee com- plex in structure and varied in function. It serves to aérate the blood and at the same time to make effective the action of the wings.

Rapidity of respiration affects the temperature of the insect. The bumble-bee, according to Newport, raises its temperature by quickened respiration, and does this volun- tarily in order to generate heat for purposes of incubation.

Doubtless the enclosed air, which is shut at the will of the bee into the air-sacs during flight, is heated by its body, thus becoming lighter, and acting as the gas in a balloon to increase the buoyancy.

The bee cannot fly until its air-sacs are filled ; conse- quently when one which has been sleeping is suddenly roused, it cannot at once fly away, but makes a series of “hops,” or little jumps, fanning its wings rapidly the while until the air-sacs are expanded with air and its body is in a condition for flight.

The pitch of the bee’s wing music depends upon the rapidity with which the wings vibrate, and it was this pitch from the wings of an excited bee that gave foundation to the declaration that the wings sometimes move at the rate of more than four hundred times a second. As a rule, however, they move considerably slower than this, the maximum rate of vibrations soon inducing exhaustion.

s in

The Wings 63

By listening to the tone of the bee’s wings, one can soon learn the state of its mind, for the low hum of happy in- dustry is very readily distinguishable from the high-keyed note of fear or anger.

When in the fields, one can soon learn to know the species of a bee by its hum, before the bee itself has been found by the eye. The low drowsy note of the bumble-bee can be recognized at once, and the sharp, short tone of the small wild bee is easily distinguishable from the pleasant, intermittent note of the honey-bee going from flower to flower, the most agreeable of all bee-voices.

A sharp listener can even tell whether the sound pro- ceeds from the large or the small bumble-bee, and very likely one with gifted ears could tell, without seeing, just what species of the many wild bees that inhabit our land had crossed his path.

The voices of the bees are as significant to those who love and listen as are the voices of the birds to the bird- lovers. These voices are only in part dependent upon the wings, however, as it has been ascertained that there is an apparatus in the tubes or trachez leading from the spira- cles to the air-sacs, which, in a way, simulates our own vocal chords ; and that by forcing the air past these organs the bee can at will produce a humming sound.

When a bee has lost its wings, or when they have been stuck together so as to be immovable, it can still “ speak its mind” in a very shrill outcry. It is probable that the “crying” of bumble-bees caught in a net is due to the action of these vocal organs. Whoever has caught bumble-bees has been amused and even touched at the many-toned outcry they make, as though they were indeed calling for help, or imploring the mercy of their captor. The sound is very distinct from the buzzing made by the wings as the bee flies from flower to flower.

64 The Honey-Makers

There is yet another bee-voice, as the French naturalist Girard tells us, —

“The humming is not produced solely by the vibrating of the wings, as is generally admitted. Chabrier, Bur- meister, Landois, have discovered in the humming three different sounds: the first, caused by the vibrating of the wings ; the second, sharper, by the vibration of the rings of the abdomen ; the third, the most intense and acute, pro- duced by a true vocal mechanism placed at the orifices of the aerial tubes.”

The ancients often came curiously near the truth in their observations, and Aristotle, speaking of the sounds made by insects, including bees, says, —

“Insects have neither voice nor speech, but make a sound with the air within them, not with that which is external.”

He then speaks of the buzzing of bees with their wings, and of the singing of grasshoppers, —

“ All these make a noise with the membrane which is beneath the division of their body, in those which have a division.”

With such power of making various noises it would in- deed be strange if the bee were deaf, at least to the sounds made by its own kind, and there is every reason to believe it does hear and understand them.

“When something seems to irritate the bees, who are in front of a hive on the alighting board,” says a believer in the language of bees, “they emit a short sound, 2-2-2, jumping at the same time towards the hive. This is a warning, then they fly and examine the object of their fears, remaining sustained by their wings near the sus- pected object, and emitting at the same time a distinct and prolonged sound. This is a sign of great suspicion. If the object moves quickly, or otherwise shows hostile intent,

The Wings 65

the song is changed into a piercing cry for help, in a voice whistling with anger. They dash forward violently and blindly, and try to sting.

“When they are quiet and satisfied, their voice is the humming of a grave tune, or, if they do not move their wings, an allegro murmur. If they are suddenly caught er compressed, the sound is one of distress. If a hive is jarred at a time when all the bees are quiet, the mass speedily raise a hum, which ceases as suddenly. In a queenless hive, the sound is doleful, lasts longer, and at times increases in force. When bees swarm, the tune is clear and gay, showing manifest happiness.”

Langstroth adds, —

“The German pastor Stahala has published a very com- plete study on the language of bees, which has appeared in some of the bee-papers of Italy, France, and America. We do not consider it as altogether accurate; but there are some sounds described that all bee-keepers ought to study, especially the doleful wail of colonies which have lost their queen, and have no means of rearing another.”

The voice of the bee humming about the flowers has always found favor with the poets, as in Virgil’s “* Bucolics,? —

‘“‘ Happy old man! here, among well-known streams and sacred fountains, you will enjoy the cool shade. On this side, a hedge planted at the adjoining boundary, whose wil- low blossoms are ever fed on by Hybleean bees, shall often court you by its gentle hummings to indulge repose. On the other side, the pruner beneath a lofty rock shall sing to the breezes: nor meanwhile shall either the hoarse wood-pigeons, thy delight, or the turtle from his lofty elm, Cease tOicoO.

Our modern poets are still enamoured of the voice of the bee, and Rogers stops us thus, finger on lip, —

5

66 The Honey-Makers

“JTIark! the bee winds her small, but mellow horn, lithe to salute the sunny smile of morn ;”

and Hogg, in his “ Pilgrims of the Sun,” sings, —

“As they pass’d by, The angels paused, and saints that lay reposed In bowers of Paradise upraised their heads To list the passing music, for it went Swift as the wild bee’s note, that on the wing Booms like unbodied voice along the gale.”

“Hark! along the humming air Home the laden bees repair,”

says Milman in his “ Martyr of Antioch,” while the Bard of Avon, in “Troilus and Cressida,” informs us, —

“Full merrily the humble-bee doth sing, Till she hath lost her honey and her sting.”

The bee’s wings, although so tiny, are yet larger than actually necessary to the performance of very creditable flight, as is often shown by old bees with worn and ragged wings. They oftentimes continue their nectar-seeking excursions in a state of wings that is truly deplorable.

They keep going as long as the wings on both sides are equally worn, and are apparently unconscious that they are sadly in need of repairs, flying long distances and bringing home heavy loads. But if one wing gets torn much more than the other, the case is hopeless, and they can no longer maintain their balance.

When a bee flies, it appears to give itself up to that glorious occupation as though wings were all there is to life. ‘The heavy body droops a little downward, and the legs drop to their length, reminding one of the long legs that trail behind a flying heron.

A “bee-line,” popularly supposed to be the most direct

: The Wings 67

line to a given point, is in reality the most eccentric of courses ; and it is the swift curving from side to side that makes the flight of the bee so difficult for the eye to follow. Not improbably, bee-eating birds and insects experience an equal difficulty in following the course of the swift-darting morsel, that is seldom captured while thus describing its See lines

Nor does the bee dart in a straight line up into the air ; but when about to take its bearings for distant flight, it ascends to the regions above in a spiral course.

Necessity has led the bee to put its wings to another use than that of flight. Following an instinct which may have developed as a result of communal life, it purifies the air of the hive by means of its wings, as Huber first demonstrated.

The bee is much more dependent upon fresh air than we are. It is soon suffocated by foul air, and will not allow a degree of impurity within its hive which would be quite unnoticed by our senses. It lives in close quarters with many thousands of its kind, —J3in the ordinary hive from twenty to fifty thousand, —with only a small opening at the bottom of the hive.

The conditions for ventilation seem to us, therefore, the worst that could be devised. But such as they are, they must be accepted; for an opening at the top permitting a draught of air would oftentimes chill and prove fatal to the developing young. The hive must be warm within, and is kept so by the palpitating bodies of the countless inhabitants.

But bees also breathe and. exhale from their bodies poisonous vapors as we ourselves do. Unlike the air in our habitations, however, that within the hive is always as pure, or very nearly so, as the air out of doors.

68 The Honey-Makers

This is accomplished by the bees themselves, who take turns standing near the entrance and fanning with their wings. The low hum of these living ventilating fans can be heard outside the hive, and particularly on warm close days when it is more difficult to supply the needs of the crowded tenement.

So powerful is the draught from the wings of a fanning bee that it can be distinctly felt as a light cool breeze against the cheek when a captive bee performs this office. A piece of tissue-paper two inches square has been raised entirely free from the gauze covering to the little box in which bee-keepers send queen-bees by mail, by the fanning of a single bee; and when a dozen or more bees have a fanning party in the box they produce quite a little hurricane.

Captive bees will sometimes fan for a long time, appar- ently for the pure pleasure of the exercise. They seem attacked by an ecstasy of fanning, and for the time are interested in nothing else. The writer of these chronicles has frequently held a pencil between the wings of a fanning bee, which stopped operations while it remained there, but the instant the pencil was removed the wings started again as if run by machinery.

When fanning, the abdomen is raised, the head lowered, and the bee clings fast with its feet, moving slightly from side to side, or turning partly around.

It sometimes presents the appearance of performing a solemn dance, though the solemnity of the occasion is considerably marred by the wings that move so rapidly they irresistibly suggest a short gauze ballet skirt.

The bee’s method of ventilation, driving Loth pure and impure air through one opening at the bottom of the apartment, and their brilliant success in accomplishing their

The Wings 69

purpose, suggests the idea that their method might pos- sibly be used successfully by architects in ventilating public buildings, it having the advantage of economy and of gain- ing the desired object without producing the “ draught” so greatly feared by modern man.

V Wale Ia

ALTHOUGH less airy and poetical than the wings, the legs of the bee have an interest of their own. In fact, when properly understood, they do not fall far short of the wings in poetic value ; and if the ancients had known them as we do, the bee’s legs, no doubt, would have been immortal- ized in song and made the subject of innumerable graceful allusions.

As it is, the poets have done scant justice to the legs of my lady the bee, though Milton in ‘Il Penseroso”’ thus al- ludes to her pollen-laden thigh, —

“Hide me from the garish eye, While the bee with honeyed thigh, That at her flowery work doth sing, And the waters murmuring,

With such concert as they keep, Entice the dewy-feather’d sleep.”

And Shakespeare in “ Henry IV.” — using the bees in a simile — speaks of “ thighs packed with wax,” a mistake as to the office of thighs, for they never carry wax, but a tribute to the thighs themselves that we cannot afford to let pass unnoticed.

The bee’s legs perform the usual offices of legs : running, walking, jumping, climbing, and clinging, and do these things very well; but this is the prose side, for they are furnished with ingenious and beautiful instruments for per- forming offices not usually accorded to mere legs. But

vite ers val

bees’ legs are gifted organs, blessed with a versatility other- wise unknown in the realm of legs.

The bee has six of them, as is the habit among insects, three on either side of the thorax and attached to it.

Each leg consists of ten joints ; a small compact joint (1) next the body, called by naturalists the coxa. This is much alike in all the legs, and serves the useful purpose of at- taching the remainder of the leg to the body by a highly movable joint.

Next comes another short joint (2), the trochanter, which serves chiefly to give to the leg freedom of motion.

The third joint (3), or femur, is long and rigid ; and these three joints are densely clothed with long-branched hairs that have an important office.

The fourth joint (4), or tibia, is long and more or less covered with hairs. It is remarkably modified in the different pairs of legs, and is as interesting as anything we have yet seen about this very interesting insect.

The fifth joint (5), or metatarsus, is also long and curious.

The remaining five joints are short and triangular, fitting together so as to give them great flexibility in moving. They are sometimes called the “foot,” and the last joint of these consists of the “toes” or “ hooks.”

The legs gain much freedom of motion from the nu- merous joints, while the design of the different divisions allows them to be folded up close to the body when not needed. |

As organs of walking and running, the legs are efficient enough for the purpose of the bee, who travels only short

72 The Honey-Makers

distances by means of her legs, and who, unlike the spider, the daddy-long-legs, and other long-legged folk, has no necessity for leg speed.

The usual gait of the bee is a rather slow walk, and when she runs she usually evokes the aid of the wings, as the hen does when she attempts to run.

A bee does not jump much excepting when frightened or angry —then she goes along by little hops that make her ladyship appear rather ridiculous — as angry folk are wont to appear. If a captive bee is annoyed by a pencil placed in front of her to cause her to go in a certain direc- tion, instead of travelling as desired, she will often jump at the pencil with open jaws, and give it a good biting for troubling her. She seems to know there is no use in sting- ing a senseless thing like a pencil, and does not make the slightest attempt to do so. ‘Try to persuade her to change her course against her will with the end of your finger, however, and you will soon discover whether she knows the difference between that and a pencil.

The “foot” of the bee, being extremely flexible, enables its owner to gather flower-petals in her grasp, so to speak, and to curl her foot about the edge of a stalk or a cell of honey-comb. The final joint is particularly movable, and consists of two pairs of curved and pointed hooks, or “toes,” a tuft of long, strong hairs between them, and a curious, soft, and flexible disk .X, also lying between the pairs of hooks, and enabling the bee to climb upon smooth and upright surfaces.

This little white disk can be seen with the naked eye when the bee is ascending a window-pane, and like the foot of the fly it exudes a liquid that enables the owner to cling to the glass.

By a certain motion of the foot the disk is peeled up andethe bee wireed:

alpine Legs os

When walking on rough surfaces, the disk, or pilvilla, is folded together and turned back out of the way, the toes clinging to the irregularities.

The toes can be turned up so as to form veritable hooks from which the bee can suspend itself. The strength of these hooks is remarkable, they being able to maintain their position hours at a time, and bearing several thousand times the weight of the bee, as in the case of swarming, where the upper bees are hooked fast to the tree branch or other support, and the rest of the swarm suspended from them.

sites sixcteet earceallealicer but while the legs share equally in the labors of walk- ing, running, jumping, clinging, and climbing, each pair has its own individual duties, different from all the rest; and to aid in the performance of these duties, each has its own special and peculiar implements with which to accom- plish its designs.

The foremost pair of legs is the smallest and shortest, being attached to the thorax as close to the head as pos- sible. These legs are indeed the servants of the head, keeping it and its important organs free from disturbing

substances. One prime function of the legs is to keep the bee clean. A cat does not make as elaborate a toilet nor keep itself as neat as a bee, the cleanliness of the little creature having been noticed and commented upon from Aristotle down. Butler says, — “‘ For cleanliness and neatness they may be a mirror to the finest dames.”

74, The Honey-Makers

To watch a bee at its toilet is as edifying as it is amus- ing. One does not need to arrive at a certain hour nor wait at all for the performance to begin.

It is only necessary to catch your bee —and let it free on the window —and it will at once commence upon its elaborate and endless toilet. If it is sulky, or perchance considers itself clean enough for the present company, it can at once be brought to another mind by breathing upon it, when it will fall into a very justifiable rage and after venting its feelings in strong bee language will fall vehe- mently to work freeing every part of its diminutive person from the obnoxious exhalations. Or, dust it ever so lightly with a bit of fine flour.

No matter how dusty it is, or how badly stuck up from having been cruelly smeared with honey or syrup, it will cause itself to shine like a new bee in a few minutes, unless its spiracles have been smeared over and closed, when it will perish from suffocation.

First of all, its front legs will clean its precious antenneze.

Since the antennze bear the principal sensory organs it is very important that they be kept perfectly clean at all times, and this is accomplished by an almost ceaseless applying of comb and brush to these wonderful organs.

It is the duty of the front legs to clean the antennz and they are always ready —and nearly always doing it. In the midst of honey-gathering after every dip into a pollen-dusted flower the bee stops for a second to clean the dust from its feelers. This can be done very quickly, though a thorough cleaning takes more time, and a bee may often be seen apparently resting from its labor on a clover-head. But it is not resting —it is cleaning its antenne. Whenever a bee appears to be resting in the midst of its work you may be pretty sure it is doing nothing of the sort but on the contrary is as busy as a bee can be

The Legs UES

removing every pollen grain and particle of dust from its ear-holes, smell-hollows, and sensory hairs.

This it does by a very ingenious apparatus in the bend of the foreleg between the tibia and the metatarsus, — that is, between the fourth and fifth joints.

On the upper inner edge of the meta- tarsus is a semicircular groove just large enough to hold the antenna and sur- rounded on the outside edge by an out- ward pointing comb of very fine teeth.

Hanging from the lower inside edge of the tibia is a curious valve-like structure X, which, when the leg is flexed (Fig. 2) covers the opening to the semi-circular groove.

Seen from above this lid or valve somewhat resembles a slightly irregular curved fish scale with a keel running through the centre.

The antenna, when the leg is SS raised above it and then low- ered, slips into the groove, the leg joint is then flexed, bringing the valve down so that the an- tenna is caught as in a trap. The leg

being moved outward, the antenna is

Big. 2. drawn through, the comb on one side and the thin edge of the valve on the other scraping it clean.

This apparatus is evidently designed specially for clean- ing the antenna and is a remarkable illustration of the development of an organ for a special purpose.

It is used very quickly and very frequently, aud one watching a bee will surely see it draw its feelers through the cleaners. .

The cleaning apparatus can be seen with the naked eye,

76 The Honey-Makers

particularly on a large bumble-bee, and very beautifully seen through an ordinary magnifying lens.

Along the back of the joint containing the groove is a row of stiff strong hairs, as can be seen in the illustration, and these serve the purpose of an ordinary hair-brush, combing or brushing out the dust and pollen from the hairs on the bee’s head, and particularly from the eye hairs.

Almost as often as the bee cleans its antennee it brushes its head and

eyes.

There is another important brush on the forelegs, oppo- site the hanging valve, used to sweep out the teeth of the groove on the opposite leg and to clean off the pollen from the long branched hairs that grow upon the four upper joints of the leg.

The stiff hairs on the short foot joints are also toilet brushes.

Instruments that do so much cleaning for other parts must themselves be kept clean, and this office the forelegs pertorm) for each other.) ney bees may voitenmipemscem standing on its four hindermost legs apparently washing its hands with invisible soap in invisible water. Then it crosses its arms thus bringing the outside of one against the brush of stiff hairs on the outside of the other, and moves the two up and down until both are thoroughly cleaned.

The proboscis does not escape in the general cleaning up but is lowered, grasped by both forelegs at once, and vigorously polished.

It is amusing ‘to watch a bee standing on its four remain- ing legs and holding fast to its tongue with both hands as it

The Legs a7

were, though occasionally when needing its forefoot for Support it will have but one with which to rub its tongue.

Butler treats us to the following : —

“Her rough and dew-clawed feet, apt to take hold at the first touch, are in number six: that she may stand fast upon four, while she useth the other two to wipe her eyes, her wings, her tongue, or any other part.”

Neither are the jaws neglected, but occasionally are opened and polished by their tidy owner. The top of the bee’s head, the thorax above and below and the upper joints of

all the legs are clothed with long branched hairs for collecting pollen. These “ gath- ering hairs” are admirably planned to catch and hold the pollen grains that touch them, and are found on all pollen- gathering bees. The pollen that adheres to the legs and body of the bee is a valuable part of its food, and is by it brushed together and saved.

The second pair of legs is larger and longer than the first pair. These legs have no antennee cleaners, but at nearly the same place on the tibia is a long stout spur used in cleaning the wings and body as well as to push out the contents of the pollen baskets that are located on the third pair of legs. The metatarsus of this leg is covered with a coarse brush and the bee can often be seen with one of its middle legs over its back ener-

S getically rubbing the pollen from the

branched hairs there and frequently

lowering the leg so employed to rub it between the back legs and relieve it of the accumulated load.

78 The Honey-Makers

The bee is also frequently seen with one of its middle legs doubled under it, in the act of rubbing the pollen from the hairs of the breast.

The last or third pair of legs is perhaps the most curious and interesting of all.

Upon them are the baskets for storing and carrying home the pollen; these are borne by all the workers but not by the

yirp queen and drones.

The pollen-basket, or corbiculum, is the hollowed outer side of the tibia bordered by stiff hairs. The hairs along the edges curve in, thus forming the sides of the “basket” and preventing the contents from falling out. Every one has noticed the “honeyed thigh ”’ of the bee, as laden with yellow, white, red, or brown pollen it scrambles over the flowers adding to the load.

In order to bring its branched hairs in contact with the pollen

grains the bee rushes about over a

bed of flowers as if looking for

tein dae. Died something it had lost, scampering

ae pollen back and forth and turning about in a dazed manner.

When on a single flower it gathers the pollen from the anthers with the legs, scraping them back and forth against each other to good purpose as the rapidly enlarging ball of pollen on the “thigh” proves. The pollen is made sufficiently adhesive by being occasionally moistened with honey.

Sometimes bees gather honey and pollen at the same

The Legs 79

time, sometimes nothing but honey as the bare thighs tes- tify, and sometimes nothing but pollen.

At the joint between the tibia and metatarsus, and best seen on the inside of the leg, is a curious modification known as the wax-jaws. This in reality is a pair of pincers by which the bee grasps and removes the scales of wax from the abdominal plates. The end of the tibia (#) is curved and fringed with stiff hairs that shut down against a plate (P) on the metatarsus, thus forming the “jaws.”

The metatarsus on the inner side bears a beautiful shining golden-brown comb (C) of several rows of stiff bristle-like hairs. These comb pollen from the breast of the bee, comb down the wings, clean the middle pair of legs, clean the abdomen above and below and clean each other. With the exception of the an- tenn cleaners they are the most often used of all the implements of the toilet.

The wing is cleaned by being caught be- tween the body and these combs ; the upper wing by itself, first one side and then the Seren other, and the lower one in the same way.

These combs also make the final gathering of pollen and deliver the load to the basket of the opposite leg.

On all the legs cleaning hairs are mingled with the gath- ering hairs in order to keep the pollen-dusted little creature free;

Bees will clean each other of honey, though they do not take equal pains to restore to purity a sister distressed by other substances.

When disturbed slightly bees have a curious habit of raising the middle and last legs on one side of the body, as

So The Honey-Makers

if they meant to strike, or give warning to the intruder to stand back.

Bumble-bees are particularly given to this habit, and it is very amusing to see the warning legs fly up when one comes too close.

The legs are always used in this way when a stranger bee comes too near and the intruder thus repulsed generally takes the hint, unless it happens to be out of temper, when a fight ensues, a fight that always leaves the wounded in the throes of death.

It may be that these elevated legs are useful in catching hold of an enemy, for in this position the body can easily be jerked around and the fatal sting inserted.

a Oe

VI HONEY-SAC AND WAX-POCKETS

THE bees are chemists, transforming the thin crude nectar of the blossoms into honey, delicious to the taste and differing from nectar in several particulars.

When nectar is drawn up into the mouth of the bee it there mingles with a certain digestive fluid or saliva and in company with this pursues its course through the thread- like cesophagus to the honey-sac, which is located in the front blunt end of the abdomen.

This little sac has delicate, transparent walls and looks like a bubble when removed unbroken. It contains less than a drop of nectar, which shines through the body-wall when the bee is seen against the light, giving the little creature an airy appearance that is particularly marked in the golden-bodied Italian bee.

Butler thus describes the honey-sac : —

“The nectar or liquid honey, the bees gather*with their tongues ; whence they let it down into their bottles, which are within them, like unto bladders; each of them will hold but a drop at once.

“You may see their little bellies strut withal.”

Nectar contains cane sugar; honey, grape sugar, the change being effected by the saliva, or it may be partly by that and partly by digestive fluids in the honey-sac.

Nectar is neutral while honey has an acid reaction, the

formic acid, present in honey, probably being secreted by )

8 2 The Honey-Makers

glands in the bee’s head, and doubtless acting as a pre- servative against fermentation.

Honey is generally thin and watery when first taken to the hive, but as it is deposited in the cells less than a drop at a time much of the extra water evaporates, and further to facilitate evaporation the bees leave the cells uncapped for several days when nearly full. Sometimes the bees accelerate this “ripening”? process by a vigorous fanning which may continue all night when honey is coming in fast.

The more thoroughly the honey is ripened the less liable it is to ferment, a fact in chemistry with which the bees seem to be acquainted.

The consistency of new honey depends somewhat upon the source from which it was gathered and also upon the haste with which it was stored.

The relative amount of cane and grape sugar seems also to depend upon the haste with which the honey was gath- ered and stored, the best honey containing but from one to three per cent of cane sugar, while poor honey, that probably gathered quickly from abundant nectar close to the hive and disgorged before the digestive juices have completed their work, may contain as much as sixteen per cent of cane sugar.

The walls of the honey-sac are surrounded by delicate muscles that by contraction are able to force the contents back to the mouth, whence it is conveyed to the cells of the honey-comb.

If a bee is teased after a full meal, or suddenly fright- ened, it will sometimes regurgitate the honey, which then may be seen hanging to the proboscis.

Since pollen must pass through the honey-sac into the true stomach beyond, the question arises as to how the bee is able to fill the combs with clear honey containing but the

Honey-Sac and Wax-Pockets 8 3

shghtest trace of pollen. To answer this it is necessary

to examine the honey-sac with a magnifying glass or a

low-power microscope, when a curious organ, the “ honey-

mouth,” is discovered.

This little “‘ honey-mouth,” placed at the back

opening of the honey-sac, is firm and resisting

in substance and looks not unlike a closed-up

sea-anemone, or an unopened lilac bud. It is

closed by four valves fringed by short, stiff hairs

pointing out. It has been observed that by the

muscular contraction of the walls of the honey-sac the pollen grains which have been swallowed with the honey are collected together and finally passed through this ‘mouth,’ whose valves

ki open to accommodate them.

Whatever extra honey escapes with the pollen eae through the mouth can readily be restored to the honey-sac by contraction of the muscles be-

low the mouth, when the hairs prevent the pollen a from also returning. In short, the “honey- mouth” is a cleverly devised strainer to free the honey in the sac from pollen grains. Although nectar is changed by the bee it still retains a trace of its origin, and an expert honey taster can often tell by the flavor from what flowers the honey was gathered, as the flavor, color, and quality of honey depend to a great degree upon the blossoms whence it came. Besides the aroma and flavor it retains from the flowers, however, all honey has a characteristic taste and odor ; it is “like honey,” no matter what its source. This honey odor is always discernible about the bee, the hive it inhab- its, and the wax it secretes. The nectar of flowers does not as arule give forth the odor of honey. Indeed, nectar taken from the honey-sac

84 The Honey-Makers

of a bee, even after having been there an hour or more, often has no odor or flavor of honey. ‘This is true, not only of a bee kept in confinement and fed upon sugar syrup, but of bees gathering nectar in the fields. But after the honey has been stored in the hive redolent of bees it nearly always has the characteristic honey flavor and fragrance.

Everything about a bee smells of honey ; even the poison of the sting, though unpleasantly strong, suggests it.

Is not this the “race-odor” of the bee?

Every creature has its own peculiar race-odor, by which, as we know, it is often discovered by others of its kind.

Plants too have their race-odor by which we distinguish a lily from a rose.

Fortunately for us the honey-maker is an animated _ blos- som that distils a delightful fragrance.

Of course a part of the honey gathered is consumed by the bee itself and this passes with the pollen into the true stomach where it is digested and then assimilated.

The waste is always ejected from the body of the workers outside the hive during flight.

This fact was noted by the ancients, and is another cause of the bee’s reputation for purity and cleanliness. This is not the result of volition on the part of the bee, however, as the structure of the worker is such that in a state of health the excrementitious matter cannot be voided except- ing in the act of flight.

Honey from all time has been esteemed for its curative properties, and is to-day valued for coughs and as Butler says, “ cleareth the obstructions of the body.”

Moffett recommends giving infants honey for “ breeding teeth,” and a modern writer says, —

“Honey promotes the excretions and dissolves the gluti- nous and starchy impedimenta of the body.”

Honey-Sac and Wax-Pockets 85

Honey was in ancient times believed to have the power of procuring clearness of vision, which may be one reason for its reputation in giving the power of divination, the clearness of the physical vision being referred to the mental power of seeing.

“The honey pure and neat wherein the Bees are dead, let that drop into the eyes; or honey mixt with the ashes of the heads of Bees, makes the eyes very clear,” is Marcellus’ opinion according to Moffett. Galen recom- mends mingling one part of the gall of the sea-tortoise with four parts of honey.

Galen also gives another prescription, —

“Take Bees dead in combs, and when they are through dry make them into powder, mingle them with the honey in which they died, and anoint the parts of the Head that are bald and thin haired, and you shall see them grow again.”’

This prescription does not appear to be in general use at the present time !

Moffett would have us believe that their ashes “ beaten with Oyl” are good to make the hair white.

Bees and honey are put to many other medicinal uses ; indeed in the opinion of Moffett ‘‘ Honey wherein is found dead Bees, is a very wholesome medicine, serving for all diseases.”

The value of honey is not confined to its effect upon the human body, and at the present time it is used as well in manufacturing to stiffen certain cotton fabrics ; and in the arts it is used in forming adhesive compounds as well as for other purposes.

According to Bevan the Jews of Moldavia and the Okraine prepare from honey a sort of sugar, which is solid and as white as snow, and which is sent to the distilleries at Dantzic. The honey is placed in a vessel which is a

86 The Honey-Makers

bad conductor of heat, and exposed to frost, protected from sun and snow, for three weeks. Asaresult of this treat- ment the honey becomes clear and hard like sugar.

The French chemist M. Cadet of Vaux gives the following method of purifying honey as a substitute for sugar. Boil honey and water with charcoal. Strain, boil, and skim until it hardens when dropped in water.

Honey is used for preserving fruits and also for envelop- ing and thereby preserving grafts, birds’ eggs, and valuable seeds which have to be transmitted from one climate to another, and it is said to keep them available for a con- siderable time.

Besides the honey-sac the abdomen of the bee contains the remarkable “ wax-pocket.”

Aristotle tells us ‘wax is made from flowers; ” and Pliny says : “Bees form wax from the blossoms of all trees and plants, with the sole exception of the rumex (sorrel, or monk’s rhubarb) and the echinopodes (a kind of broom).”

For long it was believed that the bees collected wax from flowers and brought it home on their thighs like pollen.

Even Butler says : —

“The matter thereof [to make cells] they gather from flowers with their fangs; which being kept soft in their mouths, with the heat of their little bodies, of the air, and of their hives, is wrought into combs.”

Later it was believed that pollen was changed into wax in the stomach of the bee.

It is now known that wax is a product of honey, which is eaten by the bee, altered into a fluid secretion by glands beneath the abdominal walls, and exuded as wax.

The abdomen of the bee is formed of rings held to- gether by a flexible membrane so that they can overlap each other or be drawn apart somewhat like a telescope

Honey-Sac and Wax-Pockets 87

The worker-bee has six abdominal rings, each composed of several pieces, one being on the under side and forming a broad curved plate. The part of each plate on the sec- ond, third, fourth and fifth rings overlapped by the pre- ceding ring is smooth and light colored, and a little sunken so that it forms a shallow well ; and when overlapped by the edge of the plate above is the so-called wax-pocket. The tissue inside the bee, beneath these depressions, is glandular in structure and secretes a liquid which exudes through the plate to the outer surface, where it hardens into a thin transparent scale of wax. These tiny scales are sometimes pushed down by exudations of the wax fluid above, and during the period of most active secretion may often be seen extending partly over the plate below. As the wax forms it is taken as needed from the pockets by the wax-jaws on the last pair of legs and conveyed to the mouth, where it is moulded and mixed with saliva to a consistency and form suitable to comb building. Bee- keepers have often tried to find a substitute for wax, but their artificial products have never been successful, the paraffine and other materials used lacking the necessary consistency and power to resist heat and breaking down in the hive, even when the bees can be induced to use

them.

The bee consumes vast quantities of honey at certain seasons ; but instead of growing fat thereon, it gives forth wax. Wax is a very costly product, the bees using from ten to sixteen pounds of honey to produce one pound of it.

Honey and wax have been used as medicine from the earliest times, and wax was the foundation of plasters in

past ages.

88 The Honey-Makers

It was also used in many other ways, some of which Moffett explains : —

“The rich, sick, or great men, desire their candles to be made of it, by reason of the sweet smell. Also the use of wax is not small in stopping the chinks in vessels, for tents in the camp to keep out rain, for bed-ticks that the feathers fly not out, to joyn pipes made of reeds, as Ovid sang concerning the shepherds of old.

“And with the Reed well waxed they play’d and sang.

“ Also the most excellent Painters painted with wax, as Pliny reports, and they adorned ships with it. This kinde of painting, though it were not hurt by salt, nor by sun, nor by the winde, yet it was lost we know not how, when Apelles, Protogenes, and Zeuxis died. Also the Ancients were wont to smear over their writing-tables with wax before that paper was invented, as /uvezaZ describes it.”

Butler informs us that an oil of marvellous virtue in curing disease was distilled from wax.

Sealing-wax for letters and documents was also made of beeswax, which was of different colors in different coun- tries, and Moffett informs us that the bees of America gathered black wax. Either the Americans at that time were very careless in preparing their wax, or else the “ American” wax came from Mexico or South America, where the tropical bees build a very dark-colored comb.

Shakespeare alludes to the use of wax in sealing docu- ments in “ Henry VI.” where the rebels under Jack Cade meet on Blackheath, and one says, “ The first thing we do, let ’s kill all the lawyers.”

To which Cade replies, —

“Nay, that I mean to do. Is not this a lamentable thing, that of the skin of an innocent lamb should be made parchment? that parchment being scribbled o’er,

should undo a man? Some say the bee stings: but I say

Honey-Sac and Wax-Pockets 8g

*t is the bee’s wax; for I did but seal once to a thing, and I was never mine own man since.”

Again in “ King Lear,” where Edgar, son of Gloucester, kills the steward and takes letters from his pocket, he says while breaking the seal, —

“ Leave, gentle wax; and, manners, blame us not: To know our enemies’ minds, we’d rip their hearts ; Their papers, is more lawful.”

In “ Cymbeline” where Imogen receives a letter from her husband Leonatus she exclaims, —

“Good wax, thy leave : —bless’d be, You bees, that make these locks of counsel! Lovers And men in dangerous bonds pray not alike : Though forfeiters you cast in prison, yet You clasp young Cupid’s tables.”

VII

EES UNG,

THE ancients were as familiar with the stings of bees from a practical point of view as we are, but they were more concerned in discovering a moral than a scientific reason for these inflictions, as were their successors, and even as late as the seventeenth century we find Moffett as puzzled over it as are a certain class of people to-day over the use of the mosquito to man, he and they believing that every living thing was created specially and wholly for the benefit of the gezus homo.

After searching long for some good use in the sting of the bee Moffett was reduced to the following statement :

“The Ancients (that we may prove the sting of bees to be converted to some good use) were wont to punish cheaters with them on this manner: They stripped the malefactor stark naked, and besmeared his body all over with honey, which done, and his hands and feet being bound, they exposed him to the heat of the scorching sun, that what with the piercing raies beating upon his body, what with the stinging of the bees and flies, and their often stabbing and wounding him, he did at length suffer a death answerable to his life. But if you would indeed resolve to go sting-free, or at least heal yourself being stung ; expel out of your minde, idleness, impiety, theft, malice ; for those that are defil’d with those vices, they set upon to chuse as it were, and out of natural instinct.’

The Sting gI

According to this pious sentiment a visit to a bee-hive would be a simple and final test of character, but one which few of us sceptical moderns would have fortitude enough to try, no matter how good of heart we might know ourselves to be.

We feel assured that bees discriminate, and while savage towards one are friendly towards another. But if theirs is a moral standard it is different from ours, for in these days they are as prone to attack the most inoffensive of the human race — according to our estimation —as they are to grant immunity to the greatest rascal. It is to be feared that manner of moving, texture of skin, or exhala- tions from the body influence modern bees more surely than goodness or badness of heart.

Other uses of bee stings are recorded, a knowledge of which no doubt would have filled the mind of our historian with satisfaction.

We learn from L’Abbé Della Rocca, who resided at one time in the islands of the Grecian Archipelago, that: “A small corsair, equipped with forty or fifty men, and having on board some bees, purposely taken from a neighboring island, and confined in earthen hives, was pur- sued by a Turkish galley. As the latter boarded her, the sailors threw the hives from the masts down into the galley. The earthen hives broke into fragments and the bees dis- persed all over the boat. The Turks, who had looked on the small corsair with contempt, as an easy prey, did not expect so singular an attack. Finding themselves defence- less against the stings, they were so frightened, that the men of the corsair, who had provided themselves with masks and gloves, took possession of the galley, almost without resistance.”

And again : —

“ Amurat, Emperor of Turkey, having besieged Alba [in

92 The Honey-Makers

Greece] and made a breach in the walls, found the breach defended by bees, whose hives had been brought on the tuins. The Janissaries, the bravest militia of the Ottoman Empire, refused to clear the obstacle.”

Various strongholds in Germany are reported to have borrowed the weapon of the bee in time of need, and these mercenaries could always be depended upon to fight — and also to conquer.

Friedrich tells a story of a man who in time of war made his bees protect him from plunderers.

He had before his door six bee-hives, to each of which he fastened a string, taking the other end to his room. As soon as he saw soldiers approaching he pulled the strings until the hives were thoroughly shaken up, whereupon the angry bees fell upon the intruders in such numbers that they at once took to flight.

“Sesser tells us that in 1525, during the confusion occa- sioned by a time of war, a mob of peasants assembling in Hohnstein (in Thuringia) attempted to pillage the house of the minister of Elende ; who having in vain employed all his eloquence to dissuade them from their design, ordered his domestics to fetch his bee-hives, and throw them in the middle of this furious mob. The effect was what might be expected; they were immediately put to flight, and happy if they escaped unstung.”

“QOlearius relates in the description of his celebrated Travels in Persia that his whole travelling escort was once driven out of a Russian village by a swarm of bees. The peasants themselves had excited the bees to this to be rid of their unwelcome guests, and they often used this device upon similar occasions.”

‘““Pigneron relates that the Spaniards experienced the fury of the bees at the siege of Tanly. When they were preparing to make the assault, the besieged placed a num-

The Sting 93

ber of hives in the breaches, which attacked the besiegers so furiously that they were obliged to retire.”

Sometimes the bees fell upon people on their own account instead of taking part in human warfare, and Menzel tells us that whole cities were attacked by bees and the inhabitants driven forth and armies put to rout as is often related by the ancients, and that Bochart has gathered together these incidents in his Hierozoikon, to which the curious reader is referred. Only it must not be overlooked, that the Cretan bees, living on Mt. Ida, and no doubt descendants of the sacred bees of Zeus, according to Antenor, long retained their fierce disposition and fell upon and stung every one who came that way.

“The bees which are called Chalcoides, which are of the color of brass, and somewhat long, which are said to live in the Island of Cree, are implacable, great fighters and quarrellers, excelling all others in their stings, and more cruel than any others, so that with their stings they have chased the Inhabitants out of their cities.”

According to Kohl there is a rock on the Black Sea whose clefts are so well defended by their armed inhabi- tants that no one is able to approach, and Menzel quotes Herodotus as saying that the bees would allow no one to cross the Danube at a certain point.

There are also tales of a district in California where exceeding fierce bees have taken possession of certain caverns and allow no one to approach within a considerable distance.

During his travels in Africa Mungo Park in May, 1805, came near being wholly undone by the bees which the people of his guide Isaaco had infuriated.

Park says : —

“On the 26th, when the party had come up to a place called Bee Creek, a curious accident befell them. Some of

94 The Honey-Makers

Isaaco’s people, being in search of honey, disturbed a large swarm of bees, which attacked the men and beasts of the company with such violence as to send them flying in every direction for safety. The severity of this assault may be conceived from the fact, that six asses and one horse were lost — two, if not three, of the asses being literally stung to death, and the other animals being never recovered after their dispersion. Many of the people were seriously stung about the face and hands.” Sometimes bees war with each other, two swarms taking . a fancy to the same hive, or one swarm attacking another in order to steal its honey. ‘These battles are at times ter rific, lasting several hours or even days, the slain strewing the field of battle in great numbers. In itself the sting of a bee is a small enough object, and does mischief out of all proportion to its size or appearance. It would seem as though the anger of the bee was some- how conveyed to that organ and not only was the offender pierced by a pointed instrument but also by the bursting rage, rancor and hatred that at the moment possesses the little termagant. And this in a sense is true, for in a sac oblong, white in appearance, and not much larger than a pin head is stored up a vile fluid composed largely of formic acid, and an organic poisonous principle. This sac communicates with the hollow sting, and into the wound made by that weapon the acrid poison is viciously pumped. The sting is located at the extremity of the abdomen, - and the bee’s abdomen, like that of rae TITY other insects, is, as we know, com- ON oe posed of horny rings, each ring made of several parts. These rings are joined to each other by flexible membranes, and fit together so that they may be drawn out and retracted some- thing like the parts of a telescope.

The Sting 95

It is this many-jointed abdomen with its flexibility, allow- ing movement in every direction, that makes the sting such an exceedingly effective weapon, the bee being able to twist its abdomen about and plunge its convenient dagger where it pleases.

Hidden within the hinder- most rings of the abdomen is the sting, which is not at all what it seems, for it appears to the naked eye as a smooth, i slightly curved needle point, F # while in reality it is a complex and cruel weapon armed with lances and conveying a virulent poison.

When the bee desires to inflict a sting the spot is first investigated by a pair of delicate feelers (/) placed just behind the sting and pretty enough, one would think, to be put to a pleasanter use. These little feelers work with lightning- like rapidity, and when a spot has been selected the sting (.S) is thrust home, all in the twinkling of an eye.

fihtes stung, slike tie sbees tongue, is not a simple tube, but is composed of several parts. With a good deal of care these parts can be sepa- rated and there is found to be an inner sheath bearing a groove along its under side, and into this groove are ac- curately fitted two lances. ‘The sheath is large at the top

Af ese

ZF Xe es Aes LSE

AL.

= pics ALE <

96 The Honey-Makers

where it widens into an oblong hollow pouch 4, and it has two rows of microscopic backward-pointing teeth at its tip, although but one row can be seen at a time. The two lances are very slender, very sharp, and lie side by side in the groove on the under side of the sheath, fitting closely in their place. These lances can be pulled out of the groove as has been done at Z, Z. As they are hollow within, they and the sheath together form a tube. They are not stationary, however, but play up and down.

In order to prevent the lances from slipping out of place each is grooved along its outer edge, the grooves. slid- ing over a corresponding projection that runs along either side of the sheath. Thus the lances ride up and down in the sheath, held safely in place no matter how quickly or violently they may move.

Each lance is viciously barbed at its point with ten stout hook-like projections that point backwards like the barbs on a fish-hook.

The poison-sac opens into the pouch A and on each lance where it lies in this pouch is a curiously constructed valve (X) which acts like the piston in a pump and pushes the poison through the tube in the sting as the lances are thrust down.

The poison is supplied by a long, slender white gland which at length branches into two and lies coiled up like a white thread in the abdomen, ending near the stomach in flattened knobs and opening be- low into the poison-sac.

When the bee stings, the end of the sheath is first driven into the skin and held fast by the barbs at the end. It now acts as a guiding rail as one after the other the lances are forced down, at each thrust going deeper into the victim. The poison escapes from the in- terior tube through openings on the lower barbs of the lances,

The Sting 97

The wound inflicted by the sting of the honey-bee is very minute, being not more than one twelfth or one fif- teenth of an inch deep and only one five hundredth of an inch in diameter. So far as the mere puncture is con- cerned it does no more harm than a prick from the finest cambric needle, but when into these little wounds the sting- ing poison is pumped that is another story. As soon as the sting enters, the poison is pressed out of the poison-sac by muscles provided for the purpose, and ejected into the wound with spirit and precision.

The method of working the lances is very ingenious, three horny plates on either side, A, &, Z, acting as levers to move the long curved rods V, 4, S. The sheath separates at 4, A, one half curving to the right, the other to the left, the dark line bordering the inner edge of the curve on either side rep- resenting the guiding rails in which the lances ride, for the lances also curve away from each other at 4, 4, following the divisions of the sheath. The lances reach beyond the sheath, and at V on either side are articulated to the horny plate B, which in turn is articulated to the plate Z.

These plates act as levers and when they raise the point V the tip of the lance is lowered; when they depress the point V the tip is raised.

The plate A attached to the upper termination of the sheath acts in a similar manner, lowering and raising the

tip of the sheath.

Muscles attach the plates B, K, Z, to the inner side of the abdominal walls and by contraction move them, when, as has been described, they act as levers upon the long

98 The Honey-Makers

curved rods, moving sting and sheath up and down inde- pendently of each other.

In the illustration on page 97 the sting is entirely with- drawn ; in the following one it is forced out to its full extent,

and it will be noticed that the left-hand lance is a little the lower.

The foregoing illustrations are taken from a sting, the upper parts of which have been flattened out somewhat, in order to get an unobstructed view of the working appara- tus ; in nature the two sides of the sting are folded towards each other so that the plates Z, Z, for instance, are more nearly parallel instead of, as in the picture, standing on the same plane.

A side view of the sting in its natural position in the bee makes the working of the mechanism clearer. =

Bee-poison expresses the concentrated anger of the bee, and to that is generally added more or less anger of our own, which probably assists the action of the other.

The Sting 99

Bee-poison, composed largely of formic acid and an organic poison, is a most harmless-looking, colorless liquid, which may be seen hanging to the sting of an angry bee like a sweet and pearly dew-drop. But be not deceived,

Side view of the sting.

it is no dew-drop, but the very essence of wrath, a most active and virulent poison, more pervading even than the venom of the serpent or the poison of hydrophobia, for those may be taken into the stomach with impunity, while this is as vicious there as when received into the blood through the skin.

When the poison is placed upon the tongue there, ised

100 The Honey-Makers

slight burning sensation, quickly followed by an agonizing, acrid, metallic taste and a sharp stinging impression.

Curiosity may tempt many to taste bee-poison once, but few will voluntarily repeat the experiment. It can be quickly washed from the tongue with cold water and should not be swallowed as it may give rise, even in this smali quantity, to very grievous sensations !

Bees show a diabolical aptitude for selecting sensitive parts, and Butler says : —

“When they are angry, their aim is most commonly at the head, and chiefly about the eyes, as knowing that there they may do most harm, for that part swelleth most and longest ; and yet I never heard that any ever stung the very eye: as if they were forbidden to touch that tender part.”

Bee-keepers occasionally get a jet of poison in the eye, however, it being thrown out by an angry bee; the feel- ings of the victim upon such occasions may be left to the imagination.

When one is stung, the part swells and burns, and if the sting is about the face the head aches considerably for awhile.

But on the whole it is soon over with most people, though some are so sensitive to this particular poison that even one sting is dangerous to them.

Cicero considers inability to endure a bee-sting a mark of very great effeminacy, as he tells us in “The Tusculan Questions ” : —

“We, if the toe pain us, or the tooth, if a stitch is felt in the body, are unable to bear it; for there is a certain effeminate and light opinion in currency, not more in regard to pain than to pleasure, which, when it has melted us, and we flow with softness, we cannot withstand the sting of a bee without exclamation.”

Bee-poison seems to be derived, by some strange alchem- ical process, from the nectar and pollen of flowers, and

The Sting 101

bee-stings are most virulent in the summertime when the honey-flow is at its height; while in the winter they are comparatively harmless.

The ancients did not know what to do for bee-stings. Pliny frankly admitted that he knew of no remedy, and we of to-day are little better off, as application proves most of the remedies recommended to be useless or worse than useless.

Butler’s advice is doubtless as good as any : —

““When you are stung, instantly wipe out the bee, sting and all, and wash the place with your spittle ; so shall you prevent both pain and swelling, which otherwise nothing but time can cure: for the poison is so subtle that it quickly penetrateth the flesh and the wound so small that no antidote can follow after.”

Probably cold water very gently applied is as good as anything, for this reduces the inflammation, and very likely the use of mud so commonly recommended for stings is valuable because when once put on it precludes rubbing or other irritation and cools the inflamed part.

Above all things the wound should not be rubbed.

But first of all the sting should be taken out. For the pity of it is that the poor passion-blinded little morsel jabs it in and as a rule cannot get it out again!

Those numerous barbs hold too well.

In her fright, assisted by an agonized brush from your hand, she tears loose —and goes off minus her sting, help- less and wounded, for she leaves both sting and poison- sac behind her.

It is said that if one is patient and strong-minded he will stand perfectly still and let her work it out again, walk- ing around and around the wound as a man twists a cork- screw out of a cork, and that then she will not lose it, and the sting will not hurt as much as when it is left in.

102 The Honey-Makers

But few of us are self-controlled enough for that — and moreover what guarantee have we that she would not, find- ing herself free, angry and still potent, turn about and reward our forbearance with another stab? We prefer her death to our own pain, so we hasten her movements and shorten her life.

For the wages of anger in this case are death. Deprived of her sting and poison-sac and incidentally torn and wounded internally she soon dies — a sadder and a wiser bee —— but as is often the case with those who learn wisdom by experience, acquiring that valuable attribute too late to profit by it.

When she thus leaves her sting as a legacy in the wound the poison continues to be forced out by the involuntary action of the muscles surrounding the poison-sac and of those driving the sting, which is the reason the sting should be extracted at once, a matter very easily accomplished.

The sting should not be grasped between the fingers, as this squeezes the poison out of the sac into the wound, but it should be brushed or scraped out in a direction opposite to that in which it entered, or lifted out by inserting the blade of a knife or the finger-nail beneath it, as one with- draws a tack.

The ancients knew the fatal consequences to the bee of using the-sting, and Aristotle says : —

“When they have stung anything they perish, for they cannot withdraw their sting from the wound without tearing their own entrails; but they are frequently saved, if the person stung will take care to press the sting from the wound ; but when its sting is lost, the bee must perish.”

And Pliny gives us the following : —

‘Nature has provided bees with a sting, which is in- serted in the abdomen of the insect. There are some who think that at the first blow which they inflict with this

The Sting 103

weapon they will instantly die ; while others, again, are of opinion that such is not the case, unless the animal drives it so deep as to cause a portion of the intestines to follow ; and they assert, also, that after they have thus lost their sting they become drones, and make no honey.”

It is true, oh, ancient and respected naturalist, that, hav- ing lost its sting, our bee makes no more honey, but that it thereby becomes a drone is too much for a scientific age to credit.

Bees appear to be ever conscious of their stings. They never forget to use them, no matter how frightened they are or how suddenly attacked.

liieay beeadeliherates testes. 1f it loses presences of mind, it stings; if it happens to think of it without any provocation at all, it stings.

Their reputation in olden time was as bad as it is to-day, and Virgil says of them, —

“They are wrathful above measure, and when provoked breathe venom into their stings and leave their hidden darts fixed in the veins and lay down their lives in the wound.”

While Seneca feelingly remarks, —

“ Bees are the most angriest and fellest creatures that be, according to the capacitie of their bodies, and leave their stings in the wound.”

It is only fair to say that bees differ in disposition, and that while some varieties are extremely ‘“ handy with their weapons,” and not at all slow to anger, other kinds are much less easily provoked.

The Italian bee has an enviable reputation for temper, though occasionally a hive of Italians is ugly enough, and one would do well to think twice before going too near, and then not go.

Concerning the dispositions of bees, Moffett says : —

104 The Honey-Makers

“ Bees, even by nature, are much different: for some are most domestical and tame, and other again are altogether wilde, uplandish and agrestial. Those former are much de- lighted with the familiar friendship, custom and company of men, but these can in no wise brook or endure them, but rather keep their trade of Honey-making in old trees, caves, holes, and in the ruders and rubbish of old walls and houses.”

Doubtless, Columella was right where, speaking of differ- ent kinds of bees, he says : —

‘But, nevertheless, the angry disposition of bees of a better character is easily mitigated and softened by the continual intervention of those who take care of the bee- hives ; for they grow quickly tame when they are often handled.”

One going among bees should be slow and deliberate, making no quick motion; and there is no doubt that bees tolerate some people and will not be approached by others. It has been suggested that the emanations of the body are the cause of their dislike, which the following story told by Bevan would seem to prove.

““M.de Hofer, Conseilleur d’Etat du Grand Duc de Baden, had for years been a proprietor and admirer of bees and rivalled Wildman in the power he possessed of approaching them with impunity. He would at any time search for the queen, and taking hold of her gently, place her on his hand. But he was unfortunately attacked with a violent fever and long confined by it. On his recovery, he attempted to resume his favorite amuse- ment among the bees, returning to them with all that confidence and pleasure which he had felt on former occasions ; when, to his great surprise and disappointment, he discovered that he was no longer in possession of their favor ; and that instead of being received by them as an

The Sting 105

old friend, he was treated as a trespasser ; nor was he ever able after this period to perform any operation with them, or to approach their precincts, without exciting their anger. Here then it is pretty evident that some change had taken place in the Counsellor’s secretions in consequence of the fever, which, though not noticeable by his friends, was offensive to the olfactory nerves of the bees.”

There is no mistaking a bee’s intentions when it has made up its mind to sting.

It leaves the even tenor of its way, flies straight at you, buzzes angrily about your head for a moment, and then grips you. It clings fast with its feet in a most disagreeable and suggestive manner. and if you succeed in brushing it off before it stings, it is immediately felt in another place, and before you can strike it there in all probability it has struck you, and you dash it away; and if you are wise instantly follow the advice of Butler, which, though given in 1609, is still timely : —

“When you are stung, or any in the company, yea, though a bee have stricken but your clothes, especially in hot weather, you were best be packing as fast as you can: for the other bees smelling the rank savor of the poison cast out with the sting, will come about you as thick as hail.”

And further he adds : —

“Then is there no way to appease them but flight: the more you resist, the fiercer they are. ‘They are like unto incorrigible shrews: there is no dealing with them but by patience, though when they sting they are sure to have the worst. For the wound endangereth neither life nor limb: two nights’ sleep will take away the swelling, and two min- utes the pain, unless it be in very rheumatic bodies: of which sort I have known some so swollen and disfigured with that little stroke that you could scarce know them by their favour in five or six days after.”

106 The Honey-Makers

Individual bees differ as much as colonies in the quality of their temper, and while one may be altogether “ram- bunctious ” others from the same hive may not be so at all.

When one entertains bees on the window-pane there is good opportunity to observe the readiness with which they resent a fancied menace.

Of all bees honey-bees seem the most irascible. Touch one and quick as a flash out comes its sting.

They even gather bees they meet on their prison pane in a deadly embrace, the two strangers locking arms, so to speak, and politely driving at each other with their stings. But when this little neighborly greeting has been exchanged, if one does not succeed in piercing the other they frequently part friends, like men after a duel, one feeding the other in the most hospitable manner.

All the wickedness in a bee seems to be concentrated in its sting end ; its heart may be good, but its sting is utterly bad and will fulfil its vengeful desires even when separated from the bee.

If a sting which has been newly extracted, either by the bee itself in a destructive paroxysm of anger, or by the operator after her ladyship the bee has been duly and mer- cifully chloroformed, be placed upon the finger, a very curious result follows.

Watching the organ through a magnifying lens one is interested in the involuntary muscular movements, but presently a very suggestive prick calls attention to the pointed end, and lo! this isolated sting is at work upon its own account. It has managed to insert the barbs into your skin and, with all its powers rallied for one last act of requital, is driving the weapon home!

This is amusing until you undertake to extract the venom- ous atom in time to avoid the poisoning scene in the last act, when you find the barbs have done their work also, and

The Sting 107

before you can get free you have received a copiously pois- oned sting, as fine a one as ever was administered by a living bee.

There is something almost uncanny in the way this un- connected thing moves about and wreaks its vengeance.

It “continues on life,” as the “Arabian Nights” would say, apparently for the sole purpose of hurting somebody.

It will not attempt to enter a hard object, but the touch of your finger seems to arouse its old passion, and rallying its dying forces it “ gives it to you” once again.

These ‘“ posthumous works of the bee,” as they have been called, surpass all other posthumous works in the

vividness of impressions they create.

While bee-poison is volatile and easily soluble in water, it is preserved by honey, and one occasionally has the unique, if not pleasant experience of a sting in the mouth from having partaken of honey in which a bee had been accidentally incarcerated and its sting left behind.

In spite of her very effective weapon, the skilful bee- keeper can handle my lady, the bee, bare handed and with perfect safety, human intelligence having circumvented the wise little bee, no doubt persuading her it is for her own good that man manipulates her hives and carries off her honey.

Who can blame the bees for using their weapons when occasion requires? No other insect has such treasure to defend, no other possesses a hoard of sweets so abundant and so greatly desired by other creatures. Their stings are their one means of self-defence, and no wonder they understand and profit by them.

While an occasional bee-sting is a matter of no conse- quence to most people, to be stung many times at once may be a very serious affair.

Thorley tells an affecting tale of a man who undertook to remove a swarm of bees from a tree.

108 The Honey-Makers

He climbed to the hole, swept the bees out with a brush of weeds, and stopped up the hole so they could not return.

“This done,” continues Thorley, “down he came sur- rounded with the enemy, resolved to revenge so great an injury, though with the loss of their lives. ‘They fell upon him with the greatest fury imaginable, indeed affecting to behold, but I durst not offer him any assistance or relief. They charged him in flank, front and rear; clung to him, like ivy to the tree ; got under his covering, into his hair, and under his clothes ; and stung him from head to foot: he in like manner defended himself to the utmost of his power, fighting gallantly and slaying without mercy; but having no second, suffered extremely.

“Tt was a considerable time before the battle was ended, and he had entirely disengaged himself, at which time I suffered him to come to me, when hundreds of stings stuck in his hat, mittens, etc., besides a considerable number left in his body, the poison of which presently inflamed his blood and threw him into a violent fever which threatened his life. ‘To bed he went; the fever increasing, his life hung in suspense for at least two entire days. ‘Toward the close of the third day it began to abate ; and being a man of a strong and vigorous constitution he recovered, and in a few days more was perfectly well, to the great joy of his family, and other friends.”

Thorley believed that about a third of the bees were destroyed in this engagement.

There are many cases on record of people being stung to death, and Aristotle and Pliny mention that animals as large as horses have been known to be set upon and killed by bees.

Mules are apt to suffer greatly from bees, being of a natural disposition which forbids them to run when set upon. When stung by a bee a mule kicks, and if it chances

The Sting 109g

to kick over a hive every bee in it is eager to give the mule a touching proof of its feelings towards the destroyer of homes.

It once happened that a hapless donkey kicked over a whole apiary when it soon swelled to proportions never attained by a donkey in an equal length of time under any other circumstances, and perished on the spot.

The best remedy when attacked by a number of bees is to go into the house, as bees will seldom follow one indoors.

Too much bee-poison may prove as fatal as any other poison, to say nothing of the frightful nervous excitement caused by such a terrible event.

While many stings received at one time may be the cause of great suffering, or even loss of life, it is well known that a few stings received at intervals give most people immunity from the poison, and that one who handles bees and has been stung a number of times sometimes comes to mind it little more than a mosquito bite.

One bee-keeper is said to have advised his pupils to allow themselves to be stung!

Just how many inoculations are necessary to the produc- tion of this convenient immunity is not stated, and whether a “virus” of bee-poison can be made for common use remains to be seen.

There is a story current of a noted bee-keeper who being ornamented with a bald head, a most inconvenient blessing for a bee-keeper, one should suppose, in the height of the fray when many swarms had to be hived and handled in a limited time, was seen going placidly about with the top of his head plentifully adorned with bee stings, he not having troubled himself even to remove them!

As prevention is better than cure —particularly in the case of bee-stings — those needing to handle bees some-

LG) The Honey-Makers

times cover their hands with certain aromatic substances, one of the most popular of which is oil of wintergreen ; when for some reason best known to themselves the irate little insects discovering the foreign substance with their sensitive feelers decline to add their own aroma to it.

But better even than wintergreen oil is the advice given bysbuter

“Tf thou wilt have the favor of thy bees, that they sting thee not, thou must avoid such things as offend them: thou must not be unchaste or uncleanly ; for impurity and sluttiness (themselves being most chaste and neat) they utterly abhor ; thou must not come among them smelling of sweat, or having a stinking breath, caused either through eating of leeks, onions, garlick, and the like, or by any other means, the noisesomeness whereof is corrected by a cup of beer; thou must not be given to surfeiting or drunkenness ; thou must not come puffing or blowing unto them, neither hastily stir among them, nor resolutely defend thyself when they seem to threaten thee ; but softly mov- ing thy hand before thy face, gently put them by; and lastly, thou must be no stranger unto them. In a word, thou must be chaste, cleanly, sweet, sober, quiet, and familiar ; so will they love thee, and know thee from all others. When nothing hath angered them, one may safely walk along by them; but if he stand still before them in the heat of the day, it is a marvel but one or other spying him, will have a cast at him.”

The advantage of following the above advice is that whether it has the desired effect upon the bees or not, it cannot fail, in most parts, to be of benefit to the one who practises it.

Further, Cotton thus quaintly and kindly advises us con- cerning the handling of bees : —

“If you want to do anything to a single bee, catch him

The Sting rasiey|

‘as if you loved him,’ between your finger and thumb, where the tail joins on to the body, and he cannot hurt you.”

If you want to do anything to your whole hive of bees, however, it is impossible to follow Cotton’s advice, and instead you would do well to wear a bee hat, which has a broad brim and a veil fitting over the shoulders.

And unless your bees love you as well as you them, it would be well to put on gloves and tie them over the ends of your sleeves above the wrists.

Although bee-poison produces such an unpleasant effect upon healthy people it is known to possess valuable medi- cinal properties, and in an early number of the ‘“ Bienenzei- tung ’’ we read of a man who discovered a use for bee-stings that would have delighted Moffett and his predecessors, who were so puzzled to find a good use for these weapons. The man in question had rheumatism, and while handling his bees was stung upon the rheumatic member, when, greatly to his surprise, all traces of rheumatism disappeared. Profiting by his discovery he repaired to the apiary upon the next appearance of the disease and induced his bees to sting him into health again.

Others have testified to a similar experience, and more- over bee-poison has a recognized place in medicine, being used in diphtheria, eye diseases, hydrocephalus in young children, erysipelas, cholera, certain fevers, and other diseases.

Constantine Hering says : —

“ Among all our drugs this is the one of which we have the most preparations. There is but one right kind. It is the pure poison, which is obtained by grasping the bee with a small forceps, and catching the minute drop of virus suspended from the point of the sting, in a vial or watch crystal.”

ee The Honey-Makers

From the Homceopathic Pharmacopoeia we get the following : —

“ Draw out the sting together with the poison-bag from — bees freshly killed. Taking hold of the bag, insert the point of the sting into a small glass tube and squeeze the poison into it. Or take a live bee with a pair of pincers and allow it to take hold of a small lump of sugar. It will immediately sting into the sugar which will absorb the poison. Repeat this process until enough is accumulated to start a trituration.”’

Sometimes whole bees are used ; in which case, the “live bees, put into a bottle, are irritated by shaking, and then drenched with five times their weight of dilute alcohol, and allowed to remain eight days, being shaken twice a day. The tincture is then poured off, strained, and filtered.”

Sometimes the bee-keeper is requested to supply bee- stings, instead of bees or honey, not for the pleasure but for the cure of ailing man.

a — pe

WABUL THE FAMILY

The Queen

Eacu hive has long been known to possess one bee different from the others, and which received special care and attention from them.

This the ancients called a king.

Says Pliny : —

“The kings have always a peculiar form of their own, and are double the size of any of the rest; their wings are shorter than those of the others, their legs are straight, their walk more upright, and they have a white spot on the forehead, which bears some resemblance to a diadem: they differ, too, very much from the rest of the community, in their bright and shining appearance.

“The obedience which his subjects manifest in his presence is quite surprising. When he goes forth, the whole swarm attends him, throngs about him, surrounds him, protects him, and will not allow him to be seen. At other times, when the swarm is at work within, the king is seen to visit the works, and appears to be giving his encouragement, being himself the only one that is exempt from work: around him are certain other bees which act as body-guards and lictors, and careful guardians of his anthority.

“When they are on the wing, every one is anxious to be near him, and takes a pleasure in being seen in the per- formance of its duty. When he is weary, they support him

8

114 The Honey-Makers

on their shoulders ; and when he is quite tired, they carry him outright.” .

Even as late as the time of Shakespeare the monarchical character of life in the hive was a matter of faith as we learn from “ Henry V.,” where the Archbishop of Canter- bury, in talking to the king, uses the bees in illustration, —

“ For so work the honey-bees, Creatures that by a rule in nature teach The act of order to a peopled kingdom: They have a king, and officers of sorts ; Where some, like magistrates, correct at home, Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad, Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings, Make boot upon the summer’s velvet buds; Which pillage they with merry march bring home To the tent-royal of their emperor, Who, busied in his majesty, surveys The singing masons building roofs of gold, The civil citizens kneading up the honey, The poor mechanic porters crowding in Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate, The sad-ey’d justice, with his surly hum, Delivering o’er to executors pale The lazy yawning drone.”

The bee which the old writers called the king is to-day called the queen. itis) known) to be ay female sthesonly, perfect female in the hive. It is also known that she is not a queen. She is a mother, the mother voi ~allethe colony.

The great mass of bees are the workers, which are im- perfect — that is, undeveloped — females, unable as a rule to produce eggs.

The drones, comparatively few in number, are males.

The sex of the worker-bees, which are the ones we see flying about, is now well-known ; but in poetry and litera- ture the conventional masculine pronoun is always applied

The Family ITs

to them, as, for instance, in Gay’s “ Rural Sports” we read, —

“The careful insect midst his works I view, Now from the flowers exhaust the fragrant dew, With golden treasures load his little thighs, And steer his distant journey through the skies.”

Butler in 1609 knew the sex of the so-called king and says :—

“‘ Aristotle entreating of the breeding of bees professeth himself uncertain of their sex: and therefore, (willing, in this uncertainty, to grace so worthy a creature with the worthier title) he everywhere calleth their governor, Rex. As many as followed him, (searching no further than he did) were content to say as he said. So that I am en- forced (unless I will choose rather to offend in rebws, than in vocibus) by their leave and thine (learned Reader) to strain the ordinary signification of the word Rex; and, in such places, to translate it Queen: since the males here bear no sway at all; this being an Amazonian or Feminine kingdom.”

It is true that Aristotle was puzzled about the sex of bees, and that it was nearly two thousand years after his time before the matter was indisputably settled, and yet in his “History of Animals” we read this very re- markable statement. Speaking of the “ kings,” or “rulers,” he says: “ By some they are called the mother-bees, as if they were the parents of ‘the rest; and they argue that unless the ruler is present, drones only are produced, and no bees. Others affirm that drones are males, and the bees females.”

Thus in Aristotle’s time was guessed the truth that the scientists of another age were to demonstrate.

Young bees are produced from eggs laid by the so-called queen, — a fact not known to the ancients, who had various

1 16 The Honey-Makers

theories concerning the origin of bees, the most popular of which we will let Aristotle state.

“ All persons are not agreed as to the generation of bees, for some say that they collect them from the flowers of the honeysuckle, and others from the flowers of the calamus. Others again say that they are found in the flowers of the olive, and produce this proof, that the swarms are most abundant when the olives are fertile. Other persons affirm that they collect the young of the drones from any of the substances we have named, but that the rulers produce the young of the bees.”

Virgil has the bees gather their young from leaves.

“Chiefly will you marvel at this custom peculiar to bees, — they themselves cull their progeny with their mouths from leaves and fragrant herbs; they themselves raise up a new king and little subjects, and build new palaces and waxen realms.”

The pretty fancy that the bees gathered their young from flowers and leaves lingered for centuries, opposed, as we know, by the less pleasing theory that bees were bred spontaneously from carcasses.

Moffett in his ‘‘ Theatre of Insects” gives us the seven- teenth-century idea on the subject, from which we learn that some at least, still believed in the theory of the carcass, which had not suffered for want of elaboration as time passed.

‘“Forasmuch as Philosophers have given out that bees (for the first sin of mankinde. are begotten of putrefaction ; there are not wanting those that deny they were created in the first week of the world.

‘Of the first generation of Bees Aristotle hath a long dis- course. The Philosophers following him have rightly deter- mined in my opinion, that their generation doth proceed from the corruption of some other body: as of a Bull, Oxe, Cow, Calf, very excellent and profitable beasts: the which

The Family Gy

not only worthy men and without all exception do report ; but even rustical and common experience doth confirm. They say that out of the brains of these beasts are bred the Kings and Nobility, and of their flesh the common sort of ordinary Bees. ‘There are likewise kings that are bred out of the marrow of the chine-bone, but then those that come of the brains do far excell the other in feature or comli- nesse, in largenesse, in prudence, and in strength of body.”

Shakespeare alludes to the common superstition of the origin of bees from dead matter in “Henry IV.” The king is railing against the prince, when Warwick defends him, saying he will in time forsake his evil companions, to which the king replies, —

“°T is seldom when the bee doth leave her comb In the dead carrion.”

The modern queen-bee certainly has no spot, like a diadem, glittering on her brow, as Pliny relates, but she is fairly entitled to the pleasant praise of Butler, who informs us, —

“The queen is a fair and stately bee, differing from the vulgar both in shape and color: her back is all over of a bright brown; her belly, even from the top of her fangs to the tip of her train, is of a sad yellow, somewhat deeper than the richest gold,” and the remainder of Butler’s description of the queen is as accurate and far more pictur- esque than can be found in the modern bee-

books.

“She is longer than a honey bee, by one third part, that is, almost an inch long: she is also bigger than a honey bee; but not so big as a drone, although somewhat longer: her head proportionable, but that is more round than the little bees, by reason her fangs

Queen-bee.

[ele The Honey-Makers

be shorter: her tongue not half so long as theirs: for whereas they gather with the one nectar, with the other ambrosia; she hath no need to use either, being to be maintained, as other princes, by the labor of her subjects : her wings of the same size with a small bee’s, and therefore with respect of her body long, they seem very short, re- sembling rather a cloak than a gown; for they reach but to the middle of her train or nether part: her legs pro- portionable, and of the colour of her belly, but her two hind legs more yellow; her nether part so long and half so long as her upper part.”’

We know that the queen does receive peculiar attention from the other members of the hive ; as Langstroth says, —

“The queen is treated with the greatest respect and affec- tion by the bees. A circle of her loving offspring often sur- round her, testifying in various ways their dutiful regard : some gently embracing her with their antennee, others offer- ing her food from time to time, and all of them politely backing out of her way, to give her a clear path when she moves over the combs.”

So strong is the feeling of the workers for the queen that if for any reason she is removed, the whole hive is filled with consternation and dismay, and speedily falls a victim to despair. Her death, when it is too late in the season to raise another queen, means the final extinction of the colony. The bees know that a terrible calamity has befallen them, their family is doomed, and they lose all heart and all their eagerness to work.

Huber experimented upon his bees by carefully remov- ing their queen, and he tells us, —

“Bees are not immediately aware of the removal of their queen: their labors are uninterrupted; they watch over the young, and perform the whole of their ordinary all

occupations. But, ina few hours, agitation ensues,

The Family 256) appears a scene of tumult in the hive. A singular hum- ming is heard ; the bees desert their young and rush over the surface of the combs with delirious impetuosity. Then they discover that their queen is no longer among them. But how do they ascertain it? How do the bees on the surface of one comb discover that the queen is or is not One the next comb

“T cannot doubt that the agitation arises from the work- ers having lost their queen, for, on restoring her, tranquil- lity is instantly regained among them; and, what is very singular, they recognize her—you must interpret this expression strictly. Substitution of another queen is not attended with the same effect, if she is introduced into the hive within the first twelve hours after removal of the reign- ing one. Here the agitation continues, and the bees treat the stranger just as they do when the presence of their own leaves them nothing to desire. They surround, seize, and keep her a very long time captive, in an impenetrable cluster, and she commonly dies either from hunger or privation of air.”

Virgil gives us this pleasant picture of the love of the bees for their queen : —

“Besides, not Egypt’s self, nor great Lydia, nor the nation of the Parthians, nor Median Hydaspes, are so observant of their king. Whilst the king is safe, there is one mind among all: when he is dead, they sever their allegiance ; they themselves tear to pieces the fabric of their honey, and demolish the structure of their combs. He is the guardian of their works: him they admire, and all encircle him with thick humming, and guard him ina numerous body ; often they lift him up on their shoulders, expose their bodies in war, and through wounds seek a glorious death.”

Although the facts do not sustain this romantic descrip-

120 The Honey-Makers

tion, there is no doubt that the queen owes her reputation for royalty to the peculiar conduct of the bees about her and yet she is in no sense aruler. She does not issue commands nor examine the work done with a view either to criticise or to advise, nor does she indulge in royal idleness.

On the contrary, no bee in the hive performs so stupen- dous a task as she.

There may be over a hundred thousand bees hatched in one season, and of all these she alone is the mother.

A good queen will sometimes lay three thousand five hundred eggs a day, or nearly double the weight of her own body, and continue doing it for several weeks in succession.

What enables her to perform this apparent miracle ?

Two things, —her advantageous physical start in life, for she is the best nourished of all the bees, and the great care she receives from the workers.

She is in reality from the time she begins her maternal task little more than an egg-laving machine.

As she has no responsibility of finding nectar or build- ing waxen cells, or even of caring for her own wants, she has no use for the highly developed nervous organization that distinguishes the worker bees, and we find this mother of the hive possessed of a small head, a small brain, and a simple understanding. Her antennz contain but two-thirds as many sense organs as those of the workers, and her com- pound eyes have each somewhat less than five thousand facets, while the workers’ contain over six thousand.

Her digestive power is so imperfect that the worker bees are obliged to eat and digest the pollen for her, secreting a rich nutritious fluid which the queen obtains by putting her short tongue into the open mouths of the workers.

Fed thus upon extremely nutritious and already digested

The Family 2a

food, the queen is able to maintain the necessary heat of the body and produce an enormous number of eggs.

We are not surprised to learn that no pollen baskets have developed upon her legs, and that her hairs are but slightly branched.

If carefully prepared food is necessary to the usefulness of the queen as an egg-producer, it is no less necessary to her formation in the first place, and she has the best of the good things to eat from the time she leaves the egg.

The worker bees build sheets of honey-comb, which are suspended from the top of the hive. As we buy the honey- comb to-day in small boxes weighing a pound or two, we see only one kind of comb, that in which honey is stored. These honey cells are the same as those in which the drone eggs are laid, and the young drones reared. The honey- comb becomes a cradle for bees or a store-house for honey at the will of the bee. But in every hive at the beginning of the season there are built combs of cells like the honey cells, but one-fifth smaller.

There are often a great many of these, and they are the cradles of the young worker bees.

Later the bees build a number of large thimble-shaped cells, generally on the edges of the comb, and with their mouths opening downward. ‘These are queen cells, con- cerning which Pliny says, —

“In the lower part of the hive they construct for their future sovereign a palatial abode, spacious and grand, sepa- rated from the rest, and surmounted by a sort of dome.”

At the beginning of the season the queen lays fertilized eggs in the worker cells. She walks over the combs, puts her head into each open cell as she comes to it, as though to discover whether it was occupied already or was in fit condition to become the cradle of a bee. Satisfied with the state of the cell, she deposits in it a tiny oblong shining

The Honey-Makers

lued to the bottom of the cell by one lying a secretion for

EZ IZ white egg, which is g end, the ovipositor of the queen supp

the purpose. Later in the season the workers construct the large

queen cells into each of which the queen deposits a fer- tilized egg in all respects like those laid in the worker cells.

Meantime the queen deposits unfertilized eggs in cells like those of the honey-comb, and these hatch into drones, for curiously enough the drone is the product of an unfer- tilized egg. If for any reason the queen fails to mate suc- | cessfully, after a time she begins to lay eggs, but these all hatch into drones, —a calamity as great as the loss of the queen.

In about three days the eggs hatch into legless, maggot- like creatures, the larve, or “worms,” as the bee-keepers call them, which are now supplied with food by the workers.

It is the food which makes the difference between the queen and the worker bees, notwithstanding Pliny’s roman- tic statement on the subject : —

“The king, however, from the earliest moment, is of the color of honey, just as though he were made of the choic- est flowers, nor has he at any time the form of a grub, but from the very first is provided with wings.”

This tribute to royalty is more poetical than true, for the “king,” like common folk, comes from an egg, and is a “grub”? like the others, owing his ultimate superiority to his superior opportunities for gormandizing, royalty in this instance being a product of high feeding.

The bees feed the queen larva upon a very nutritious food called “royal jelly” secreted by them, giving it to her

unstinted abundance during the whole period of larva- hood.

Concerning it Benton says : —

The Family 1 ae

‘The composition of this food has been the subject of much attention and more theorizing. It may be consid- ered as pretty certain that during the first three days of the life of the larva its food is a secretion from glands located in the heads of the adult workers, —a sort of bee milk, to which, after the third day, honey is added in the case of the worker larvae, and honey and pollen in the case of drone larva. As this weaning proceeds, both worker and drone larvee receive pollen, and in constantly increas- ing proportions, in place of the secretion. But this rich albuminous substance is continued to the queen larvee throughout their whole period of feeding.”

This highly nutritious food supplied unsparingly causes the queen larva in its roomy cell to develop into the large perfect female or queen-bee.

If the queen of the hive dies or disappears before the new queen cells are started, the workers, as soon as they have recovered from their agitation at missing her, go to a worker cell in which lies a fertilized egg, or to one in which is a worker larva not more than three days old, and enlarge it to about the size of the queen cell by breaking away the walls of the surrounding cells.

They carry away the eggs and larve contained in the broken cells, feed the favored infant on “royal jelly,” and, presto! the obscure worker is become a queen.

Schirach proved by experiment that worker eggs could be transferred to queen cells and developed into queens, by receiving the queen’s food.

Huber repeated Schirach’s experiments, and numerous bee-keepers and naturalists since that time have verified the conclusion they reached, which, naturally enough, was at first regarded with scepticism.

The ‘royal jelly,” with which all the larvee are at first fed, is semi-fluid in consistency, and the young bees are

124 The Honey-Makers

surrounded by it as soon as they hatch ; indeed, they are partly suspended in it, probably absorbing it through the skin as well as taking it through the mouth.

The queen larva feeds upon “ royal jelly” for about five and a half days, while the worker larva receives its less nutritious food for only five days, and the drone larva feeds for about six days.

During this time the bee grows from a tiny egg to about its full size, increasing from twelve to fifteen hundred times its weight, and consuming an amount of food that leaves no opportunity for idleness to the nurse-bees that supply these ravenous infants.

During the period of growth the larval bee, in common with the larvze of other insects, finds its skin too small for its body and consequently sheds or casts off the uncomfort- able covering half-a-dozen times. These cast-off skins are so extremely fine and delicate that for ages they escaped observation, and until very recent times it was believed the bee-larva did not shed its skin.

Finally, the nurse-bees put a porous cap or cover of wax and bee-bread over the cradle cells, and leave the occupants to their own devices.

Evidently they know the difference between the worker- bee and the drone, as they put flat caps over the worker cells and convex ones over the drones.

As soon as they are capped over, the imprisoned infants proceed to spin a delicate cocoon about the upper part of the cell, covering the head and extending partly over the body, the silk for it being supplied by certain glands in the head, and first appearing in the form of a liquid, which, being drawn out through an opening in the lip like thin threads of saliva, hardens into a tough, fine silk. The glands that yield the silk disappear in the adult queen and drone, but in the worker are transformed into the secreting

The Family Qe

glands by which the larvee and the queen and drones are supplied with food.

When the cocoon is finished the bee passes into the pupa stage, where it undergoes those marvellous transfor- mations that change it from a legless, wingless, helpless “worm” to a perfect bee with its wonderful sense organs, its highly developed nervous system, its gossamer wings, and other organs.

At the end of the pupa stage the bees bite through the caps to their cells, and come forth to take their share in the outer world.

The whole period from the laying of the egg to maturity in the queen is about fifteen and a half days, in the worker twenty-one, while the drone requires twenty-four days to complete his metamorphosis.

When about to come forth the young queen begins to “pipe,” —a sound that greatly agitates the queen-mother, who thus recognizes a rival.

Only one queen is tolerated in the hive at a time, and when a young one hatches the old queen kills it or else the bees “swarm;” that is, the old queen departs with the greater part of the older bees, leaving her daughter to assume the responsibilities of future generations.

As soon as this daughter finds herself free from her cradle cell, her first impulse is to dispose of possible rivals, and she deliberately uncaps any remaining queen cells and demolishes the innocent occupants by stinging them.

If two queens come forth at the same time, there is trouble indeed, and a duel immediately ensues which ends only with the death of one.

The queen stings only queens, and seeks to penetrate her rival between the rings of the abdomen, as the parts there are so soft that she can readily withdraw her sting uninjured. She may be handled and teased to any extent without being

126 The Honey-Makers

provoked to use her weapon, which is as well her ovipositor, or egg-laying instrument, and which she will not run the tisk of losing. It is larger than that of the worker, but is straight instead of curved, and but slightly barbed. Her poison-sac is small and less developed.

Aristotle knew of the queen’s sting and tells us, — “ the kings and rulers have a sting which they do not make use of, and some persons suppose they have none.”

Butler says 7——

“The spear she has is borne rather for show and author- ity than for any other use. For it belongeth to her subjects as well to fight for her as to provide for her.”

Seneca, on the contrary, informs us that “ their king hath no sting,’ and proceeds gravely to give us the reason: “Nature would not have him cruel nor to seek revenge that might hazard his life, therefore took away his weapon and disarmed his wrath.”

He moralizes further : —

“All kings aad princes ought to consider this excellent example.” And would have a man’s wrath, like a worker- bee’s, ‘broken with his own weapon and have no more means to hurt than once in his life.”

Virgil’s account of a battle in the kingdom of bees is more spirited than true, as in reality the bees do not help the queen, but stand eager spectators, ready to carry out the body of the slain and pay homage to the victor.

‘““A voice is heard resembling the broken sounds of trum- pets. Then in a hurry they assemble, quiver with their wings, sharpen their stings upon their beaks, prepare their sinews, crowd thick around their king and to his pavilion, and with loud hummings challenge the foe.”

“The kings themselves, amidst the hosts, distinguished by their wings, exert mighty souls in little bodies, obstinately determined not to yield till the dread victor has compelled either these or those to turn their backs in flight.”

The Family Hey

The young queen, having established her right by battle, flies abroad and high in the air, mates, receiving from the drone a supply of fertilizing material which is stored in a small pouch designed for the purpose and the contents of which she is apparently able to use at will, fertilizing some eggs and leaving others unfertilized.

Browning, in his poem entitled ‘“ Popularity,” refers to the flight of the queen, where Solomon in his robe of gold, sitting upon the throne in a room hung with tapestries of Tyrian blue, is

“ Most like the centre-spike of gold Which burns deep in the blue-bell’s womb What time, with ardors manifold,

The bee goes singing to her groom Drunken and overbold.”

A new race of bees can be formed in an apiary by removing the queen and introducing another impreg- nated queen of the desired breed. Since the new queen has power to fertilize her own eggs, her progeny will be pure ; and since the workers and drones live but a few months, while the queen lives several years, after one season the hive will be peopled by the new stock. A bee- hive remains tenanted year after year by apparently the same bees, but as a matter of fact the workers and drones are constantly dying and constantly being renewed. Brief life is here their portion, and they live their few weeks or months and then, dying, make room for the new-comers that are ready to take their places and pass through the same brief period of life on earth.

The queen-bee has great tenacity of life, as well as longevity. She resists the effects of chloroform much longer than either worker or drone, and will often continue alive in conditions that have proved fatal to the workers confined with her.

128 The Honey-Makers

The Italian bee has been introduced into this country by sending queen-bees from Italy, and this variety of bee is now very common here. It is a pretty bee, with the upper rings of the abdomen of a light tan color, a mark which distinguishes it at once from the common brown or German bee.

Queen-bees are raised in large numbers for exportation by Italian bee-keepers. By removing the queen the bees can be set to building queen cells and raising queens, and if the “brood” is watched and the young queens pre- vented from killing each other, large numbers can some- times be taken from a hive in the course of a season.

The queen-bee, shut in a small box with a wire gauze covering, supplied with food and accompanied by two or three dozen workers for comfort and consolation, can be sent through the mails in safety for very long distances.

In a Texan bee journal we read the following interesting advertisement, —

“We will receive next month a fresh supply of the finest imported Italian queens to be had in Italy, also some Holylands from Jerusalem, in June, and Cyprians from Cyprus, in May. All direct from their native lands.”

Bees have been sent by mail from Germany to California, to Australia, and to Calcutta, India.

IX THE DRONE

Tue drone occupies a position that is unique, but not enviable. He has been obliged to endure the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune in his own family, and also, from all time, the disapproval of the human race. This last misfortune, however, he is said to bear with extreme fortitude.

We find him abused in Greek and Latin as well as in all the modern tongues.

Aristotle and Pliny call him a thief.

Virgil says he is zgnavum fucos pecus, while modern writers brand him as lazy and good-for-nothing.

““T would be loath To be a burden, or feed like a drone On the industrious labor of the bee,”

say Beaumont and Fletcher in their “ Honest Man’s For- tune.” And Butler joins the hue and cry, saying, — ‘‘The drone is a gross stingless bee, that spendeth his time in gluttony and idleness. For howsoever he brave it with his round velvet cap, his side gown, his full paunch, and his loud voice, yet is he but an idle companion, living by the sweat of others’ brows. He worketh not at all, either at home or abroad, and yet spendeth as much as two labourers: you shall never find his maw without a drop of the purest nectar. In the heat of the day he flieth abroad, aloft and about, and that with no small noise, as though 9

130 The Honey-Makers

he would do some great act ; but it is only for his pleasure, and to get him a stomach, and then returns he presently to Insvelieer:

Moffett uses the time-honored privilege of abusing the drone, to whip, at the same time, his Roman Catholic brethren.

‘Some have stings (as all true Bees have :) others again are without a sting, as counterfeit and bastardly Bees, which (even like the idle, sluggish, lither, and ravenous cloystered Monks, thrice worse than theeves) you shall see to be more gorbellied, having larger throats, and bigger bodies, yet neither excellent or markable, either for any good behaviour and conditions, or gifts of the minde. Men call them unprofitable cattle, and good for nothing, Fuci, that is, Drones; either because they would seem to be labourers, when indeed they are not: or because that under the colour and pretence of labour (for you shall sometime have them to carry wax, and to be very busie in forming and working Honey-combs,) they may eat up all the Honey.”

The ancients sometimes speak of the drone as if it were not a bee at all, but some other insect that made its nest with the bees. Some believed that it laid its own eggs and made its own cells, using the hive only as a convenient resting-place where it could get food at others’ expense.

The following is Pliny’s opinion of it : —

“The drones have no sting, and would seem to be a kind of imperfect bee, formed the very last of all; the expiring effort, as it were, of worn-out and exhausted old age, a late and tardy offspring, and doomed, in a measure, to be the slaves of the genuine bees. Hence it is that the bees exercise over them a vigorous authority, compel them to take the foremost rank in their labours, and if

The Drone ga

they show any sluggishness, punish them without mercy. If you deprive a drone of its wings, and then replace it in the hive, it will pull off the wings of the other drones.”

Needless to say, it will not pull off the wings of the other drones if reduced to that unpleasant condition. Neither will it labor, no matter how mercilessly it may be punished.

After ages of scorn and contumely, it is time for some one to break a lance in the service of the drone.

It is time for some one to proclaim him for what he is, next to the queen the most important bee in the hive, and to demand that he be recognized as such by the old and the young, by the wise and by the foolish.

His destiny is a hard one, but he is not ignoble. He merits the crown of martyrdom, though he is the most cheerful martyr imaginable. He is the male bee; and if in other creatures his sex is pre-eminent, in him the tables are indeed turned, and he finds himself wholly at the mercy of the worker-bee, who has no mercy.

He is carefully nurtured in infancy, being, like the queen, fed on royal jelly.

He comes forth an innocent and happy bee, capable of enjoying life, but unfitted to share in the labor of the hive.

By no fault of his own he has a very short tongue, too short to gather honey from the flowers ; he has also small weak jaws quite incapable of working in wax or performing any other difficult task. He has no wax glands, no honey- sac in which to convey sweets to the hive; no pollen baskets on his legs, and no well-developed gathering hairs on his body. So far as work is concerned, he is by destiny an aristocrat and suffers the fate of the aristocrat born into a communistic society.

He is large, being more bulky than the queen, though

132 The Honey-Makers

not so long in the abdomen. His wings are large and powerful, though he does not use them often.

He has a large round head with particularly fine eyes, his great compound orbs covering the sides of his head and meeting on top, thus crowding the three simple eyes out of their places to a lower position between the compound eyes. Each eye contains the enormous number of more than thirteen thousand facets, the worker having i only half that many.

eee rove: He has thirteen joints to his antennze instead of twelve, and these remarkable organs each contain nearly thirty-eight thousand smell-hollows.

Thus magnificently equipped with sense organs, he forms a striking contrast to his mother, the queen.

He is a handsome creature with his sheeny wings droop- ing about his bright form, making what Butler calls his “side gown.”’ His back is covered by a soft golden-brown down as though he were clad in a jacket of fine velvet, and his legs are long, strong, and beautiful. He is less hairy than his sisters, the workers, though the end of his abdomen is fringed with rows of bright brown hairs. He is also less intelligent, for although his head is large, his brain is small.

On the whole, with his big eyes, velvety body, and gos- samer wings, he is as pretty a bee as any in the hive, when regarded without prejudice, and he is certainly pleasanter to handle, as he never under any circumstances stings, one of his masculine peculiarities being the total absence of a sting.

If teased, he will sometimes go through all the motions of stinging, perhaps as an inherited remembrance of his mother’s original power in that direction. And he will also threaten with his tiny jaws, showing plenty of mascu-

The Drone 133

line courage, even though he lacks weapons to make it effective.

He will thrust his short tongue into a drop of honey given him, though he much prefers running to one of his sisters and getting her to feed him, which she is usually perfectly willing to do.

Like the queen, he is devoid of pollen-digesting glands,