Part 5

We will now go on with the story of the hive, take it up where we left it, and lift a fold of the curtain of bees which are hanging, head downwards, from the dome. A curious kind of sweat, as white as snow and airier than the down on the wing of a bird, is beginning to show itself. This is the wax that is forming; but it is unlike the wax that we know; it has no weight, it is amazingly pure, being, as it were, the soul of the honey, which is itself the essence of the flowers.

It is very difficult to follow, stage by stage, the manufacture of wax by the swarm, or even the use to which they put it, for all this comes to pass in the very blackest depth of the mass of bees all huddled together. We know that the honey in the sac of the bees that are clinging to each other turns itself into wax, but we have no idea how this is done. All we can tell is that they will stay in this position, never stirring or making the least movement, for eighteen or twenty-four hours, and that the hive becomes so hot that it is almost as though a fire had been lit. And then at last white and transparent scales show themselves at the opening of four little pockets that every bee has underneath its stomach.

When the bodies of most of the bees forming the curtain have thus been adorned with ivory tablets, we shall suddenly see one of them detach herself from the crowd, and eagerly, hurriedly, clamber over the backs of the motionless crowd till she has reached the top of the dome. To this she will fix herself firmly, banging away with her head at those of her neighbors who seem to interfere with her movements. Then, she will seize with her mouth and her claws one of the scales that hang from her body, and set to work at it like a carpenter planing a soft piece of wood. She will pull it out, flatten it, bend it and roll it, moistening it with her tongue and licking it into shape; and, when at last she has got it to be just what she wanted, she will fix it to the highest point of the dome, thus laying the stone, the foundation, of the new city; for we have here a city that is being built downwards from the sky, and not from the earth upwards, like the cities of men. To this beginning she will add other morsels of wax, which she takes from beneath her belt; and at last, with one final lick of the tongue, one last touch of her feelers, she will go, as suddenly as she came, and disappear among the crowd. Another bee will at once take her place, carry on the work from the point where the first has left it; she will go through her own carpentering, just like her sister, and add to or improve the first one's job if she thinks this is called for. And then a third will follow, a fourth and a fifth, all coming from different corners, all eager and earnest, till numbers and numbers have taken their turn, none of them finishing the work but each adding her share to the task in which all combine.

A small lump of wax, as yet quite formless, hangs down from the top of the hive. As soon as it is sufficiently thick, we shall see another bee coming out of the mass. This one is very sure of herself, puts on a little side as it were; and she is watched very closely by the eager crowd below. She is one of the sculptors or carvers; she does not make any wax herself, her job being to deal with the material which the others have provided. She marks out the first cell, settles where it shall be; digs into the block for a moment, putting the wax she has taken out from the hole on the borders around it; and then she goes, making way for another, who is impatiently waiting her turn, and will go on with the work that a third will continue, while others close by are digging away at the wax on the opposite side. And very soon we shall be able to see the outline of the new comb. In shape it will be something like our own tongue, if you can imagine this to be made up of little six-sided cells, which all lie back to back. When the first cells have been built, the architects put on the ceiling, and then start building a second row, and a third and a fourth, and so on, gallery on the top of gallery, and the dimensions so carefully worked out that there will always be ample space, when the comb is finished, for the bees to move freely between its walls.

It happens, however, sometimes that a mistake has been made; that too much space, or too little, will have been left between the combs. The bees will do the best they can to set matters right; they will slant the one comb that is too near the other, or fill up the space that has been left with a new comb specially shaped.

The bees build four different kinds of cells. There are the royal cells, rather like an acorn in shape; the large cells in which the males are reared, and provisions stored when flowers are plentiful; the small cells used as cradles for the workerbees and also as ordinary store-rooms. These last are the most common kind, and about four-fifths of the buildings will be composed of them. Then there are also a certain number of what are known as "transition-cells," irregular in shape, which connect the larger cells with the smaller.

Each cell, with the exception of the transition ones, is worked out absolutely to scale, with extraordinary accuracy. It is a kind of six-sided tube, and two layers of these tubes form the comb. It is in these tubes that the honey is stored; and to prevent it from spilling, the bees tilt the tubes slightly forward. Each cell is solidly built, and the position of one to the other has been carefully thought out and arranged. Indeed, such wonderful skill and ingenuity is shown in the construction of the cells that it is difficult to believe that instinct alone is sufficient to account for it. The wasps, for instance, also build combs with six-sided cells; but their combs have only one layer of cells, and are not only less regular, but also less substantial; further, the wasps are so wasteful in their manner of working that, to say nothing of the loss of material, they also deprive themselves of about a third of the space that they might have used. Some bees again--which are not as civilized as those in our hives--build only one row of rearing-cells and rest their combs on shapeless and extravagant columns of wax. Their provision-cells are nothing but great pots, grouped together without any system or order. You could no more compare these nests with the cities of our own honey-bees than you could a village made up of huts with a modern town.

The very greatest ingenuity is shown in the construction of the combs, quite apart from the admirable precision of the architecture. Thus, for instance, there is a most skillful arrangement of alleys and gangways through and around the comb, which provide short cuts in every direction, allow the air to circulate, and prevent any block of the traffic. The connecting cells again, which join the large cells to the small ones, are so made that their shape can be altered with the least possible delay. There may be different reasons for desiring this alteration: an overflowing harvest may render more store-rooms necessary, or the workers may consider that the population of the hive should not be further increased, or it may be considered advisable that more males should be born. In any of these cases the bees will proceed, with unerring, unhesitating accuracy and precision to make the necessary changes, turning small cells into large, and large into small; and this without any waste of space or material, without allowing a single one of their buildings to become mis-shapen or purposeless, without in any way interfering with the neatness or general harmony of the hive.

The swarm whose movements we are following have started building their combs, which are already becoming fit for use. And although, as we look into the hive, we see little happening, there will be no pause, either by day or by night, in the creation of the wax, which will proceed with amazing quickness. The queen has been restlessly pacing to and fro on the borders that shine out gleamingly white in the darkness; and no sooner has the first row of cells been built than she eagerly takes possession, together with her servants, her guardians and counselors--though whether it be she who leads them, or they who direct her, is a matter beyond our knowledge. When the spot has been reached that she, or her retinue, regard as the proper one, she will arch her back, lean forward, and introduce the end of her long spindle-shaped body into one of the cells. Her escort form a circle around her, their enormous black eyes watching her every movement; they caress her wings, they feverishly wave their antennæ as though to encourage her, to urge her on, or perhaps to congratulate her. You can always easily tell where the queen is, because around her there will be a kind of starry cockade, something like the oval brooch that our grandmothers used to wear; of this she will be the center. And there is one curious thing that we may note here: the worker-bees never by any chance turn their back to the queen. When she approaches a group they immediately form themselves so as to face her, and walk backwards before her. It is a token of respect or reverence that they never fail to show; it is the unvarying custom.

Very soon the queen will be passing from cell to cell, busily laying her eggs. She will first peep into the cell to make sure that all is in order, and that she has not been there before. In the meanwhile two or three of her escort will have hastened into the cell which she has just left, in order to see that her work has been properly done, and to care for, and as it were tuck up, the little bluish egg she has laid. From now on right up to the first frosts of autumn the queen will never stop laying; she lays while she is being fed, she even lays in her sleep, if she ever does sleep, which may perhaps seem rather doubtful.

It will sometimes happen that the worker-bees, in their eagerness to find room for their honey, will have stored it in some of the vacant cells reserved for the queen; when she comes to these the workers frantically carry away the honey so that she may lay her eggs. If there is a shortage of cells for honey, and this is accumulating very fast, the bees will contrive, as quickly as they can, to get ready a block of large cells for the queen, as these take less time to build. But they are cells for male bees; and when the queen comes to them, she seems vexed; she will lay a few eggs, then stop, move away, and insist on being given the smaller cells that are used for the workers' eggs. Her daughters obey; they set to at once and reduce the size of the cells; and the queen, in the meantime, goes back to the cells at which she had started at the very beginning. These will be empty now, for the larvæ will have come to life, leaving their shadowy corner, and will already have spread themselves over the flowers around, glittering in the rays of the sun and quickening the smiling hours; and soon they will sacrifice themselves in their turn to the new generation that now is beginning to take their place in the cradles they have left.

The bees all obey the queen; and yet they themselves contrive to direct her movements; for the number of eggs that she lays will be in strict proportion to the food that is given her. She does not take it herself; she is fed like a child by the workers. And if flowers are abundant, so will the food be, and therefore the number of eggs. Here we find, as everywhere in life, cause and effect working together in a circle of which one part is always in darkness; the bees, like ourselves, obey the lord of the wheel that is always turning and turning.

Some little time back I was showing one of my glass hives to a friend, and he was almost startled to see the frantic activity there. Each comb seemed alive; on every side there was movement, hurry, bustle, activity; the nurses, incessantly stirring and doing, were busy around the broodcells; the wax-makers were forming their ladders and living gangways; the sculptors, the architects, cleaners, the builders, all were at work, feverishly, restlessly, never pausing for food or sleep; there was constant and pitiless effort among them all, save only in the cradles where lay the larvæ that soon themselves would be taking their turn in this chain of unending duty, which permits of no illness and accords no grave. And my friend, his curiosity soon satisfied, turned away, and in his eyes there were signs of sorrow, and almost of fear.

And in good truth, beneath all the gladness that we find in the hive, with its memories of precious jewels of summer--of flowers, of running waters and peaceful skies--beneath all this there dwells a sadness as deep as the eye of man ever has seen. And we, who dimly gaze at these things, we who know that around us, in our own lives, among our own people, there also is sadness, we know too that this has to be, as with all things in nature. And thus it ever shall be, so long as we know not her secret; and yet there are duties all must do, and those duties suffice. And in the meantime let our heart murmur, if it will, "It is sad," but let our reason be content to add "So it must be."

THE YOUNG QUEENS

Let us now leave the new hive, which we find to be already beginning to work as before, and go back to the old one, the mother-city, which the swarm had left. Here, at the start, all looks forlorn, and dreary, and empty. Two-thirds of the population have gone, have departed forever. But thousands of bees remain; and these, whatever their feelings may be, still are faithful to the duty that lies on them, and have not forgotten what they have to do. They set to work, therefore, and try their best to fill the places of those who have joined the swarm. They start cleaning the city, look to the store-cells and put things in order there, attend to what is necessary in the hive, and despatch their bands of worker-bees to collect fresh food from the flowers.

And if the outlook at first appear rather gloomy, there still are signs of hope wherever the eye may turn. One might almost fancy oneself in one of the castles they tell of in fairy-stories, where there are millions of tiny phials along the walls containing the souls of men about to be born. For here, too, are lives that have not yet come to life. On all sides, asleep in their closely-sealed cradles, in their thousands of waxen cells, lie the larvæ, the baby bees, whiter than milk, their arms folded and their head bent forward as they wait for the hour to awake. Around them hundreds of bees are dancing and flapping their wings. The object of this seems to be to increase the temperature, and procure the heat that is needed--or perhaps there may be some reason that is still more obscure; for this dance of theirs combines some very extraordinary movements whose meaning no observer has as yet been able to understand.

In another few days the lids of these thousands of urns--of which there will be from sixty to eighty thousand in a hive--will break, and two large, earnest black eyes will peer forth, while active jaws will be busily gnawing away at the lid, to enlarge the opening. The nurses at once come running; they help the young bee out of her prison, they clean her and brush her, and with the tip of their tongue they give her the first drop of honey that ushers in the new life. But the bee that has come so strangely from another world is still trembling and pale, and stares wildly around; she has something of the look of a tiny old man who might have been buried alive, and has made his escape from his tomb. She is perfect, however, from head to foot; and she loses no time, but hastens at once to other cells that have not yet opened, and there joins in the dance and starts beating her wings with the others, so that she may help in quickening the birth of her sisters who have not yet come to life.

The most arduous labors, however, will at first be spared her. She will not leave the hive till a week has passed since the day of her birth. She will then undertake her first flight, known as the "cleansing-flight," and absorb the air into her lungs, which will fill and expand her body; and thenceforward she becomes the mistress of space. The first flight accomplished, she returns to the hive, and waits yet one week more; and then, with her sisters, who were born the same day as herself, she will for the first time sally forth and visit the flowers. A special emotion, now, will lay hold of her; a kind of shrinking, almost of fear. For it is evident that the bees are afraid; that these daughters of the crowd, of secluded darkness, shrink from the vault of blue, from the infinite loneliness of the light; and their joy is halting, and woven of terror. They cross the threshold, and pause; they depart, they return twenty times. They hover aloft in the air, their heads turned towards their home; they describe great soaring circles, their thirteen thousand eyes taking in, registering and recording, the trees and the fountain, the gate and the walls, the neighboring windows and houses, till at last the outside world becomes familiar to them, and they know that they will be able to find their way back to the hive.

It is curious how they are able to accomplish this; to return to a home that they cannot see, that is hidden perhaps by the trees, and that in any event must form so tiny a point in space. Put some of them into a box and set them free at a place that is two or three miles from their hive, they will almost invariably succeed in discovering their way home. Have they landmarks by which they guide themselves, or do they possess the instinct, the sense of direction, that is common among swallows and pigeons? Different experiments that have been made appear to show that this latter is not the case. I have, however, on more than one occasion noticed that the bees seem to pay no attention to the color or shape of the hive. It is rather the platform on which the hive rests that attracts them, the position of the entrance-gate and of the alighting-board. When the winter comes on, a hive may be taken away and put perhaps into some dark cellar where it will remain till the spring; if then it should be set a little to right or to left of its former position on the platform, all the bees, on their first return from visiting the flowers, will steer their straight, direct, unhesitating course to the precise spot which the hive had occupied in the preceding year; and it will only be after much hesitating and groping that they will find the door whose place has now been shifted. And some will be unable to do this, or will be altogether lost.

In the old hive thousands of cradles are stirring and the larvæ coming to life; such bustle and movement is there that the solid walls seem to shake. But the city still lacks a queen. In the center of one of the combs you may notice seven or eight curious structures, each one about three or four times as large as the ordinary worker's cell; they look something like the circles and hillocks that we see on the photographs of the moon. These dwellings are surrounded by guards who never leave them, and are always watchful and alert. They know that they are protecting the home of the queen that is to be.

In these cells eggs will have been placed by the old queen, or more probably perhaps by one of the workers, before the departure of the swarm; the eggs will have been taken from some cell that was near, and will be exactly the same as those from which the ordinary worker-bee is hatched. And yet the bee that will in due time come out is so unlike the others that she might almost belong to an entirely different race. Her life will last four or five years, instead of the six or seven weeks that are the portion of her worker-sister. Her body will be twice as long, her color clearer, and more golden; her sting will be curved, and her eyes have only seven or eight thousand facets instead of twelve or thirteen thousand. Her brain will be smaller, and she will have no brushes, no pockets in which to secrete the wax, no baskets to gather the pollen. She will not crave for air, or the light of the sun; she will die without once having sipped at a flower. She will spend her life in the darkness, in the midst of an ever-moving crowd; and her one thought, her one idea, will be the constant search for cradles in which she can lay her eggs. It is probable that she will not, twice in her life, look on the light of day; and as a rule she will only once make use of her wings.

A week has passed, let us say, since the old queen has gone, at the head of the swarm. The royal princesses who still are asleep in their cots are not all of the same age; for the bees prefer that there should be an interval between the birth of each one. The time of the eldest princess draws near; she is already astir, and has begun eagerly to gnaw at the rounded lid of her cradle, whose walls the workers have already for several hours been thinning, so as to make it easier for her to get out. And at last she thrusts her head through the lid; the workers at once rush eagerly to her, and help her to get clear; they brush her, caress her and clean her, and soon she is able to take her first trembling steps on the comb. At first, her food will be the same as that given to the ordinary workers, but after a very few days she is nourished on the choicest and purest milk, which is known as "royal jelly."

The princess, at the moment of birth, is weak and pale; but in a very few minutes she gets her strength, and then a strange restlessness comes over her; she seems to know that other princesses are near, that her kingdom has yet to be won, that close by rivals are hiding; and she eagerly paces the waxen walls in search of her enemies.

This is the gravest and most serious moment in the history of the hive. The bees have to consider how many swarms they intend to send out; at times they make mistakes, and leave the mother-city too empty, at times also the swarms themselves are not sufficiently strong. These are matters that the "spirit of the hive" has to settle; it has to decide whether another queen will be required, in addition to the young one who has just come to birth, in order that she may head a swarm in the future. On this decision rests the whole prosperity of the hive; and very rarely will the judgment of the bees go astray.

But let us assume that here the spirit of the hive has decided against a second swarm. The young princess, who has just come to life, will be allowed to destroy the rivals who are still asleep in their cradles. She will hasten towards them, and the guard will respectfully make way. She will fling herself furiously on to the first cell she comes across, strip off the wax with teeth and claws, tear away the cocoon and dart her sting into the victim whom she has laid bare. She will stab her to death and then go, with the same passionate fury, to the next cell, and then the next, again uncovering the cradle and killing her rival, till at last, breathless and exhausted, she has destroyed all her sleeping sisters.

The watchful circle of bees who surround her have stood by, inactive and calm, and have not interfered; they have merely moved out of her way and have let her indulge her fury; and no sooner has a cell been laid waste than they rush to it, drag out the body, and greedily lap up the precious royal jelly that clings to the sides of the cell. And if the queen should be too weak or too tired to carry out her dreadful purpose to the end, the bees will themselves complete this massacre of the innocent princesses, and the royal race, and their dwellings, will all disappear. This is the terrible hour of the hive.

At times it will happen that two queens will come to life together, though this occurrence is rare, as the bees take special pains to prevent it. But should such a case arise, the deadly combat would start the very moment the rivals come out of their cradles. Afraid of each other, and yet filled with fury, they attack and retreat, retreat and attack, till at last one of them succeeds in taking her less adroit, or less active, rival by surprise, and in killing her without risk to herself. For the law of the race has demanded one sacrifice only.