Part 27

Francis Huber was the first to describe these duels between the queens. We quote an interesting account which he has left us of a combat which he watched on the 12th of May, 1790:--"Two young queens," says he, "came out on that day from the cells almost at the same moment, in one of our smallest hives. As soon as they saw each other they dashed one against the other with every appearance of the greatest rage, and put themselves in such a position that each one had its antennæ seized between the teeth of its rival; the head, the thorax, and abdomen of the one were opposite to the head, the thorax, and abdomen of the other; they had only to bend round the posterior extremity of their bodies, and they would reciprocally have stabbed each other with their darts, and both engaged in the combat would have been killed. But it seems as if Nature would not allow this duel to end by the death of both of the combatants. One would say that she had ordained that those queens, finding themselves in this position (that is to say, face to face and abdomen to abdomen), should retreat that very instant with the greatest precipitation. And so, as soon as the two rivals felt that their posterior parts were about to meet, they left go of each other, and each one ran away in an opposite direction.... A few minutes after they had separated from each other their fear ceased, and they recommenced looking for each other. Very soon they perceived the object of their search, and we saw them running one against the other. They seized each other, as at the first, and put themselves in exactly the same position. The result was the same; as soon as their abdomens approached each other they only thought of getting free, and ran away. The working bees were very much agitated during the whole of this time, and their tumult seemed to increase when the two adversaries separated from each other. We saw them on two different occasions stop the queens in their flight, seize them by the legs, and keep them prisoners for more than a minute. At last, in a third attack, the queen which was the most infuriated or the strongest, rushed upon her rival at a moment when she did not see her coming; seized her with her jaws by the base of her wing, then mounted on to her body, and brought the extremity of her abdomen over the last rings of her enemy, whom she was then able to pierce with her sting very easily. She then let go the wing which she held between her teeth, and drew back her dart. The vanquished queen dragged herself heavily along, lost her strength, and expired soon afterwards."[92]

[92] "Observations sur les Abeilles," tome i., pp. 174-178.

These singular combats take place between young maiden queens. Francis Huber, by introducing into a hive some queens from other hives convinced himself that the same animosity impels the females which are pregnant to fight with and destroy each other. From the moment when the young queen to whom the sovereignty has fallen is pregnant, she is anxious to destroy all the royal pupæ which still exist in the hive, and which are then given up to her without resistance by the workers.

[Greek: Ouk agathon polykoiraniê. heis koioanos hestô, Eis basileus....][93]

[93] "Many ruling together is not good: let there be one ruler, one king."--_Homer's "Iliad,"_ ii. 110.

Become a mother, the female attacks one after the other the cells which still contain females. She may be seen to throw herself with fury on the first cell she comes to. She makes an opening in it with her mandibles large enough to allow her to introduce her abdomen, and then turns herself about till she has succeeded in giving a stab with her sting to the female which it contains. She then withdraws, highly satisfied with what she has done. The working bees, who up to this moment have remained indifferent spectators of her efforts, take upon themselves the rest of the business. They set to work to enlarge the hole made by the ruling queen, and to draw out the carcase of the victim.

In the meanwhile, the fierce and jealous sovereign throws herself on another cell, and breaks into it with violence. If she does not find in it a perfect insect, but only a pupa, she does not condescend to make use of her royal weapon. The workers take on themselves to empty the cell and destroy its contents. These executions over, the queen can for the future occupy herself in laying, without having anything to fear from rivals. Let us remark, in passing, that man is not much behind these insects whose savage exploits in cruelty we have just related. Among certain tribes of Ethiopians the first care of the newly-crowned chief is to put in prison all his brothers, so as to prevent wars by pretenders to the throne. Delivered from all dread of rivals, our queen sets to work with an indefatigable zeal; and the workers, animated by the hope of a numerous progeny, heap up provisions around them.

But now a new tragedy is about to be enacted. The drones, that is to say, the males, are now no longer wanted in the colony: their mission is over. By an inexorable law of Nature they must be got rid of, and the working bees proceed to make general massacre of them. It is in the months of July and August that this frightful carnage takes place. The workers may be seen furiously giving chase to the males, and pursuing them to the extremity of the hive, where these unfortunate insects seek a place of safety. Three or four workers dash off in the pursuit after a male. They seize hold of him, pull him by his legs, by his wings, by his antennæ, and kill him with their stings. This pitiless massacre includes even the larvæ and pupæ of the males. The executioners drag them from their cells, run them through with their stings, greedily suck the liquids contained in their bodies, and then cast their remains to the winds. This slaughter goes on for many days, continuing till the males have been completely got rid of, they not being able to defend themselves, as they have no stings.

They are allowed to live, however, when they are fortunate enough to inhabit a hive deprived of its queen. There they even find a place of perfect safety when they have been driven out of another hive, and may be met with in this refuge until the month of January. In like manner the lives of the males are spared in those hives which, instead of a true queen, have only a female half impregnated, which lays only male eggs; but a hive of this kind, whose active population cannot be increased, ends by being abandoned by its inhabitants. The sterility or absence of the queen entails the dissolution of the society. She is, in fact, the life and soul of the hive; and without her there is no hope, no courage, no activity. The populace, abandoned to itself, falls into anarchy. Famine, pillage, ruin, and death are at its doors. Having no progeny to set their hopes on, the bees live from one day to another without a care for the morrow. They leave off working, and live entirely on theft and rapine, and at last they disappear entirely. It is a society become rotten and broken up for the want of a moral tie.

If the loss of the mother bee takes place at a period at which there still exist in the hive some larvæ of working bees of less than three days old, the nurse (as we have already said) adopt some of these larvæ, and make them into queens by means of the physical education and special nourishment which they give them. In this case, then, the evil can be repaired; the workers themselves find a remedy without assistance. But if the hive possesses a degenerate queen, which only lays male eggs, the intervention of man is necessary to save it, by the substitution of a properly impregnated queen. If, indeed, a strange queen wished to penetrate alone into a hive already containing a sovereign, she would infallibly be stopped at the door and stifled by the sentinels who guard the entrance to the hive. These would surround her immediately, and keep her captive under them till she perished, either through suffocation or hunger. They do not employ their stings against an intruding queen, except in the case of an attempt being made to deliver her from their clutches: they get rid of her by stifling.

When it is wished to introduce into a hive a stranger queen, after having removed the original sovereign, many precautions must be used before putting her into the common home. It is only after some time that the bees become aware of the disappearance of their queen; but they then manifest great emotion. They run hither and thither, as though mad, leaving off their work, and making a peculiar buzzing sound. If you return to them their original sovereign, they recognise her, and calm is immediately restored; but the substitution of a new queen for the original sovereign does not produce the same effect in every case. If you introduce the new queen half a day only after the removal of the old queen, she is very badly received, and is at once surrounded, the workers trying to suffocate her. Generally she sinks under this bad treatment. But if you allow a longer interval to elapse before you introduce the substitute, the bees, rendered more tractable by the delay, are better disposed towards her. If you allow an interregnum of twenty-four hours, the stranger queen is always received with the honours due to her rank, a general buzzing announcing the event to the whole population of the hive. They assign to their adopted queen a train of picked attendants; they draw up in line on her passing by; they caress her with the tips of their antennæ; they offer her honey. A little joyful fluttering of the escort announces that every one in the little republic is satisfied. The labours out of doors and indoors then begin anew with more activity than ever.

It is principally during stormy days, when the heat and the electricity in the air are favourable to the secretion of pollen in plants, that the bees go into the fields to make their harvest. They heap up provisions in the hive against the cold season, not forgetting, however, to watch over the eggs, their future hope, "spem gentis," as Virgil calls them.

These peaceful occupations are sometimes interrupted by the dire necessities of war. It happens that the bees of an impoverished hive, impelled by hunger, that bad counsellor, make up their mind to attack and to pillage the treasures of a neighbouring hive which is abundantly stocked with provisions. A savage fight then takes place between the two battalions. Each one precipitates itself with fury upon its adversary. Two bees press against and bite each other till one is overcome. The victor springs upon the back of the vanquished, squeezes it round the neck with its mandibles, and pierces it between the rings of its abdomen with its sting. The victorious bee places itself by the side of its fallen enemy, and resting on four of its legs, rubs its two hind ones together proudly, as a sign of supreme triumph. Réaumur relates a strange fact, which he says he often observed, and which proves that the insects we are treating of do not fight to satisfy a sanguinary and savage instinct, but (which is less reprehensible) to satisfy their hunger. Bees attacked by a superior force are in no danger of losing their lives if their enemies can induce them to give up their throats--that expression conveys the idea. Supposing three or four are furiously attacking one bee: they are pulling it by its legs and biting it on its thorax. The unfortunate object of this attack has then nothing better to do, to escape alive from such a perilous situation, than to stretch out its trunk laden with sweet-scented honey. The plunderers will come one after the other and drink the honey; then, cloyed, satisfied, having nothing more to demand, they go their way, leaving the bee to return to his dwelling-place.

There are also strange fights--regular duels--between the bees of the same hive. Very hot weather has the effect of irritating them, and making them boil over with rage. They are then dangerous to man, whom they attack boldly. But more often it is amongst themselves that they quarrel. One often sees two bees which meet seize each other by the neck in the air. It happens also that a bee, in a state of fury, throws itself on another who is walking quietly and unsuspiciously along the edge of its hive. When two bees are struggling in this manner they descend to the ground, for in the air they would not be able to get purchase enough to be sure of striking each other. They then engage in a hand-to-hand fight, as the gladiators used formerly to do in the circus. They are continually making stabs with their stings, but almost always the point slips over the scales with which they are covered. The combat is sometimes prolonged during an hour, before one of them has found the weak point in the other's natural cuirass, and has buried its terrible weapon in the flesh. The victor often leaves its sting in the wound which it has made, and then dies, in its moment of triumph, through the loss of this organ. Sometimes the two combatants, in spite of long and savage assaults, cannot succeed in injuring either's solid armour. In such a case they leave each other, tired of war, and fly away, despairing of obtaining a victory.

At the end of autumn, when the bees no longer find any flowers in the fields to plunder, they finish rearing their eggs on the pollen, which they keep in store, and the queen ceases to lay. Numbed by the cold of the winter, the workers cease to go out. Crowded together they mutually warm each other, and thus hold out, when the cold is not too intense, against the rigour of the frosts. Huddled up between the cakes of the honeycomb, they wait for the return of fine weather, to recommence their labours at home and abroad. After two or three years of this laborious existence the bee dies, but to live again in a numerous posterity, as Virgil says:--

"At genus immortale manet, multosque per annos Stat fortuna domus, et avi numerantur avorum!"

There has been a good deal of discussion on the question whether bees constitute monarchies or republics. According to our opinion, theirs is a true republic. As all the population is the issue of a common mother, and as each bee of the female sex can become a queen--that is to say, a mother-bee, if it receives an appropriate nourishment--it is manifest that the title of queen has been wrongly given to the mother-bee. After all, she is nothing more than president of a republic. The vice-presidents, as we have already pointed out, are all those females which at any given moment may be called by choice--that is, by popular election--to fulfil the functions of the sovereign, when death or accident has put an end to her existence. "There is no such thing as a king in Nature," said Daubenton one day, in one of his lectures at the Jardin des Plantes. The audience immediately applauded, and cried "Bravo!" The honest _savant_ stopped, quite disconcerted, and asked his assistant naturalist the cause of this applause, perhaps ironical. "I must have said something stupid," repeated poor Daubenton between his teeth, remembering the saying of Phocion under similar circumstances. "No," replied his assistant naturalist, "you have said nothing but what is quite true; but, without meaning it, you have made a political allusion. You spoke against kings, and our young republicans thought that you were alluding to Louis XVI." "Indeed," said the coadjutor of Buffon, "I had no idea that I was talking politics!" The bee republic, this little animal society, is admirably constituted, and all its citizens obey its laws with docility.

Bees have often served as an example, proving, according to some, the marvellous intelligence of certain little animals; according to others, an insect wonderfully developed. For ourselves, we have never well understood what people mean by the word _instinct_; and we frankly grant to the bee intelligence, as we do also to many animals. The greater number of the acts of their life seem to be the result of an idea, a mental deliberation, a determination come to after examination and reflection. The construction of their cells, always uniform, is, they say, the result of instinct. However, it happens that under particular circumstances, these little architects know how to abandon the beaten track of routine, reserving to themselves the power of returning, when it is useful to do so, to the traditional principles which ensure the beauty and regularity of their constructions. Bees have been seen, indeed, to deviate from their ordinary habits in order to correct certain irregularities--the result of accident or produced by the intervention of man--which had deranged their works.

Francis Huber relates that he saw bees propping up with pillars and flying buttresses of wax a piece of the honeycomb which had fallen down. At the same time, put on their guard by this sad accident, they set to work to fortify the principal framework of the other combs, and to fasten them more securely to the roof of the hive. This took place in the month of January, and therefore not during the working season, and when to provide against a distant eventuality was the only question. M. Waland has reported an analogous observation. Is there not here, in the first place, a true and excellent reasoning, then an act, an operation, a work, executed as the result of this reasoning? Now, an operation which is performed as the result of reasoning, is attributable to intelligence. Again, the bees give different sorts of food to the different sorts of larvæ. They know how to change this food when an accident has deprived the hive of its queen, and it is necessary to replace her; this is another proof of intelligence.

But it is, above all, in the face of an enemy that the intellectual faculties of these insects show themselves. There are always at the entrance of every hive three or four bees, which have nothing else to do but to guard the door, to keep a watch over incomers and outgoers, and to prevent an enemy or an intruder from slipping into the community. When one of them perceives an enemy on the borders of the hive, it dashes forwards towards it, and by a menacing and significant buzzing warns it to retire. If it does not understand the warning, which is a rare occurrence--for men, horses, dogs, and animals of all kinds know perfectly well the danger to which they expose themselves by approaching too near a hive in full operation[94]--the bee gets a reinforcement, and very soon returns to the combat with a determined battalion. All this is, it seems to us, intelligence.

[94] The bee's sting may lead to very serious consequences. It often happens that large animals, such as horses or oxen, tied up in the neighbourhood of a beehive, and which have disturbed the bees, die in consequence of stings received from them.

We have just said that there are sentinels at the entrance of every hive. They touch with their antennæ each individual that wishes to penetrate into the house. Hornets, the Death's-head Sphinx, slugs, &c., often try to introduce themselves into the hive. In that case, on the appeal of the watchful porters, all the bees combine their efforts to defend the entrance to their habitation. It would be impossible for them, in fact, to stop the ravages of their enemies when once entered into the interior. When a sphinx has succeeded in introducing itself into a hive, it sits down and drinks the honey in great bumpers, devouring all the provisions: and the unfortunate proprietors of the house are obliged to emigrate. To stop the entrance of moths which fly by night, the bees contract, and sometimes barricade, their door with a mixture of wax and propolis. When a slug or any other large animal has managed to introduce itself into the interior, they kill it and wrap it up in a shroud of propolis, as we have already related.

However, they are quite helpless against certain microscopic parasites which sometimes attack them. The bee-louse, which has been described and drawn by Réaumur in one of his Memoirs,[95] and the parasite which was described in 1866 by M. Duchemin, the _Sugar Acarus_, which is found in the liquid honey of those hives which are attacked by the disease called the rot (_pourriture_), are the most serious enemies of the bee. The _Gallerias_ are also terrible enemies to them. Every hive thus attacked is ruined. These destructive insects attack also the wild bees, drive them from their nests, and destroy the wax of the cakes forming the comb. The _Galleria_ impudently makes his home in the houses of bees, wild as well as domesticated.

[95] Tome v., planche 36.

The habits of bees in their wild state, which make their nests in the trunks of trees and other cavities, do not differ from those of domesticated bees. Only the latter become tame with man, getting used to those who look after them, and becoming less aggressive towards strangers.

Apiculture, or bee-keeping, is still at the present day an important business, although honey has lost a great deal of its utility since the introduction of sugar into Europe. Without entering into many details on apiculture, that is to say, on the attention it is necessary to pay to bees, we will mention the principal duties of the bee-keeper.

When, in the spring, the bees _font la barbe_ (as the French say), that is, when they are getting ready to swarm, one must watch narrowly, so as not to lose them. As soon as a swarm has settled on a tree or on any artificial resting-place prepared on purpose in the neighbourhood, it is approached, after having covered one's face with a piece of transparent linen or canvas, or with a hood, and the cluster is caused to fall into a hive turned upside down. The hive is then turned up and again put in its place; or else, if it is only to serve for the conveyance of the swarm to another place, shaken about before the door of the hive which the swarm is destined to occupy. The bees then beat to arms, and set to work to enter their new habitation in a compact column. Fig. 324 represents the manner in which one ought to proceed in order to gather a swarm of bees, which is fixed on a branch of a tree, and introduce it into the hive prepared for it. Let us listen on this subject to an experienced bee-keeper, M. Hamet: "As soon as a swarm has fixed itself anywhere, and there are only a few bees fluttering round the cluster, you must make your preparations for lodging them in a hive you have got ready for the purpose. Some people rub the hive on the inside with aromatic plants or honey, with the object of making the bees fix themselves there more surely. This precaution is not indispensable. What is essential is, that the hive should be clean, and free from any bad smell. It is a good thing to pass it beforehand over the flame of a straw fire, which destroys the eggs of insects and insects themselves which may have lodged in it.