The Life of the Bee Part 9

The humble-bees, the great hairy, noisy creatures that all of us know so well, so harmless for all their apparent fierceness, lead a solitary life at first. At the beginning of March the impregnated female who has survived the winter starts to construct her nest, either underground or in a bush, according to the species to which she belongs. She is alone in the world, in the midst of awakening spring. She chooses a spot, clears it, digs it and carpets it. Then she erects her somewhat shapeless waxen cells, stores these with honey and pollen, lays and hatches the eggs, tends and nourishes the larvae that spring to life, and soon is surrounded by a troop of daughters who aid her in all her labours, within the nest and without, while some of them soon begin to lay in their turn. The construction of the cells improves; the colony grows, the comfort increases. The foundress is still its soul, its princ.i.p.al mother, and finds herself now at the head of a kingdom which might be the model of that of our honeybee. But the model is still in the rough.

The prosperity of the humble-bees never exceeds a certain limit, their laws are ill-defined and ill-obeyed, primitive cannibalism and infanticide reappear at intervals, the architecture is shapeless and entails much waste of material; but the cardinal difference between the two cities is that the one is permanent, and the other ephemeral. For, indeed, that of the humble-bee will perish in the autumn; its three or four hundred inhabitants will die, leaving no trace of their pa.s.sage or their endeavours; and but a single female will survive, who, the next spring, in the same solitude and poverty as her mother before her, will recommence the same useless work. The idea, however, has now grown aware of its strength. Among the humble-bees it goes no further than we have stated, but, faithful to its habits and pursuing its usual routine, it will immediately undergo a sort of unwearying metempsychosis, and re-incarnate itself, trembling with its last triumph, rendered all-powerful now and nearly perfect, in another group, the last but one of the race, that which immediately precedes our domestic bee wherein it attains its crown; the group of the Meliponitae, which comprises the tropical Meliponae and Trigonae.

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Here the organisation is as complete as in our hives. There is an unique mother, there are sterile workers and males. Certain details even seem better devised. The males, for instance, are not wholly idle; they secrete wax. The entrance to the hive is more carefully guarded; it has a door that can be closed when nights are cold, and when these are warm a kind of curtain will admit the air.

But the republic is less strong, general life less a.s.sured, prosperity more limited, than with our bees; and wherever these are introduced, the Meliponitae tend to disappear before them. In both races the fraternal idea has undergone equal and magnificent development, save in one point alone, wherein it achieves no further advance among the Meliponitae than among the limited offspring of the humble-bees. In the mechanical organisation of distributed labour, in the precise economy of effort; briefly, in the architecture of the city, they display manifest inferiority. As to this I need only refer to what I said in section 42 of this book, while adding that, whereas in the hives of our Apitae all the cells are equally available for the rearing of the brood and the storage of provisions, and endure as long as the city itself, they serve only one of these purposes among the Meliponitae, and the cells employed as cradles for the nymphs are destroyed after these have been hatched.*

*It is not certain that the principle of unique royalty, or maternity, is strictly observed among the Meliponitae.

Blanchard remarks very justly, that as they possess no sting and are consequently less readily able than the mothers of our own bees to kill each other, several queens will probably live together in the same hive. But certainty on this point has. .h.i.therto been unattainable owing to the great resemblance that exists between queens and workers, as also to the impossibility of rearing the Meliponitae in our climate.

It is in our domestic bees, therefore, that the idea, of whose movements we have given a cursory and incomplete picture, attains its most perfect form. Are these movements definitely, and for all time, arrested in each one of these species, and does the connecting-line exist in our imagination alone? Let us not be too eager to establish a system in this ill-explored region. Let our conclusions be only provisional, and preferentially such as convey the utmost hope, for, were a choice forced upon us, occasional gleams would appear to declare that the inferences we are most desirous to draw will prove to be truest. Besides, let us not forget that our ignorance still is profound. We are only learning to open our eyes. A thousand experiments that could be made have as yet not even been tried. If the Prosopes, for instance, were imprisoned, and forced to cohabit with their kind, would they, in course of time, overstep the iron barrier of total solitude, and be satisfied to live the common life of the Dasypodae, or to put forth the fraternal effort of the Panurgi? And if we imposed abnormal conditions upon the Panurgi, would these, in their turn, progress from a general corridor to general cells? If the mothers of the humble-bees were compelled to hibernate together, would they arrive at a mutual understanding, a mutual division of labour? Have combs of foundation-wax been offered to the Meliponitae? Would they accept them, would they make use of them, would they conform their habits to this unwonted architecture? Questions, these, that we put to Very tiny creatures; and yet they contain the great word of our greatest secrets. We cannot answer them, for our experience dates but from yesterday. Starting with Reaumur, about a hundred and fifty years have elapsed since the habits of wild bees first received attention.

Reaumur was acquainted with only a few of them; we have since then observed a few more; but hundreds, thousands perhaps, have hitherto been noticed only by hasty and ignorant travellers. The habits of those that are known to us have undergone no change since the author of the "Memoirs" published his valuable work; and the humble-bees, all powdered with gold, and vibrant as the sun's delectable murmur, that in the year 1730 gorged themselves with honey in the gardens of Charenton, were absolutely identical with those that to-morrow, when April returns, will be humming in the woods of Vincennes, but a few yards away. From Reaumur's day to our own, however, is but as the twinkling of an eye; and many lives of men, placed end to end, form but a second in the history of Nature's thought.

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Although the idea that our eyes have followed attains its supreme expression in our domestic bees, it must not be inferred therefrom that the hive reveals no faults. There is one masterpiece, the hexagonal cell, that touches absolute perfection,--a perfection that all the geniuses in the world, were they to meet in conclave, could in no way enhance. No living creature, not even man, has achieved, in the centre of his sphere, what the bee has achieved in her own; and were some one from another world to descend and ask of the earth the most perfect creation of the logic of life, we should needs have to offer the humble comb of honey.

But the level of this perfection is not maintained throughout. We have already dealt with a few faults and shortcomings, evident sometimes and sometimes mysterious, such as the ruinous superabundance and idleness of the males, parthenogenesis, the perils of the nuptial flight, excessive swarming, the absence of pity, and the almost monstrous sacrifice of the individual to society. To these must be added a strange inclination to store enormous ma.s.ses of pollen, far in excess of their needs; for the pollen, soon turning rancid, and hardening, enc.u.mbers the surface of the comb; and further, the long sterile interregnum between the date of the first swarm and the impregnation of the second queen, etc., etc.

Of these faults the gravest, the only one which in our climates is invariably fatal, is the repeated swarming. But here we must bear in mind that the natural selection of the domestic bee has for thousands of years been thwarted by man. From the Egyptian of the time of Pharaoh to the peasant of our own day, the bee-keeper has always acted in opposition to the desires and advantages of the race. The most prosperous hives are those which throw only one swarm after the beginning of summer. They have fulfilled their maternal duties, a.s.sured the maintenance of the stock and the necessary renewal of queens; they have guaranteed the future of the swarm, which, being precocious and ample in numbers, has time to erect solid and well-stored dwellings before the arrival of autumn. If left to themselves, it is clear that these hives and their offshoots would have been the only ones to survive the rigours of winter, which would almost invariably have destroyed colonies animated by different instincts; and the law of restricted swarming would therefore by slow degrees have established itself in our northern races. But it is precisely these prudent, opulent, acclimatised hives that man has always destroyed in order to possess himself of their treasure. He has permitted only--he does so to this day in ordinary practice--the feeblest colonies to survive; degenerate stock, secondary or tertiary swarms, which have just barely sufficient food to subsist through the winter, or whose miserable store he will supplement perhaps with a few droppings of honey. The result is, probably, that the race has grown feebler, that the tendency to excessive swarming has been hereditarily developed, and that to-day almost all our bees, particularly the black ones, swarm too often. For some years now the new methods of "movable"

apiculture have gone some way towards correcting this dangerous habit; and when we reflect how rapidly artificial selection acts on most of our domestic animals, such as oxen, dogs, pigeons, sheep and horses, it is permissible to believe that we shall before long have a race of bees that will entirely renounce natural swarming and devote all their activity to the collection of honey and pollen.

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But for the other faults: might not an intelligence that possessed a clearer consciousness of the aim of common life emanc.i.p.ate itself from them? Much might be said concerning these faults, which emanate now from what is unknown to us in the hive, now from swarming and its resultant errors, for which we are partly to blame. But let every man judge for himself, and, having seen what has gone before, let him grant or deny intelligence to the bees, as he may think proper. I am not eager to defend them. It seems to me that in many circ.u.mstances they give proof of understanding, but my curiosity would not be less were all that they do done blindly. It is interesting to watch a brain possessed of extraordinary resources within itself wherewith it may combat cold and hunger, death, time, s.p.a.ce, and solitude, all the enemies of matter that is springing to life; but should a creature succeed in maintaining its little profound and complicated existence without overstepping the boundaries of instinct, without doing anything but what is ordinary, that would be very interesting too, and very extraordinary. Restore the ordinary and the marvellous to their veritable place in the bosom of nature, and their values shift; one equals the other. We find that their names are usurped; and that it is not they, but the things we cannot understand or explain that should arrest our attention, refresh our activity, and give a new and juster form to our thoughts and feelings and words. There is wisdom in attaching oneself to nought beside.

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And further, our intellect is not the proper tribunal before which to summon the bees, and pa.s.s their faults in review. Do we not find, among ourselves, that consciousness and intellect long will dwell in the midst of errors and faults without perceiving them, longer still without effecting a remedy? If a being exist whom his destiny calls upon most specially, almost organically, to live and to organise common life in accordance with pure reason, that being is man. And yet see what he makes of it, compare the mistakes of the hive with those of our own society. How should we marvel, for instance, were we bees observing men, as we noted the unjust, illogical distribution of work among a race of creatures that in other directions appear to manifest eminent reason! We should find the earth's surface, unique source of all common life, insufficiently, painfully cultivated by two or three tenths of the whole population; we should find another tenth absolutely idle, usurping the larger share of the products of this first labour; and the remaining seven-tenths condemned to a life of perpetual half-hunger, ceaselessly exhausting themselves in strange and sterile efforts whereby they never shall profit, but only shall render more complex and more inexplicable still the life of the idle. We should conclude that the reason and moral sense of these beings must belong to a world entirely different from our own, and that they must obey principles hopelessly beyond our comprehension. But let us carry this review of our faults no further. They are always present in our thoughts, though their presence achieves but little. From century to century only will one of them for a moment shake off its slumber, and send forth a bewildered cry; stretch the aching arm that supported its head, shift its position, and then lie down and fall asleep once more, until a new pain, born of the dreary fatigue of repose, awaken it afresh.

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The evolution of the Apiens, or at least of the Apitae, being admitted, or regarded as more probable than that they should have remained stationary, let us now consider the general, constant direction that this evolution takes. It seems to follow the same roads as with ourselves. It tends palpably to lessen the struggle, insecurity, and wretchedness of the race, to augment authority and comfort, and stimulate favourable chances. To this end it will unhesitatingly sacrifice the individual, bestowing general strength and happiness in exchange for the illusory and mournful independence of solitude. It is as though Nature were of the opinion with which Thucydides credits Pericles: viz., that individuals are happier in the bosom of a prosperous city, even though they suffer themselves, than when individually prospering in the midst of a languishing state. It protects the hardworking slave in the powerful city, while those who have no duties, whose a.s.sociation is only precarious, are abandoned to the nameless, formless enemies who dwell in the minutes of time, in the movements of the universe, and in the recesses of s.p.a.ce. This is not the moment to discuss the scheme of nature, or to ask ourselves whether it would be well for man to follow it; but it is certain that wherever the infinite ma.s.s allows us to seize the appearance of an idea, the appearance takes this road whereof we know not the end. Let it be enough that we note the persistent care with which nature preserves, and fixes in the evolving race, all that has been won from the hostile inertia of matter. She records each happy effort, and contrives we know not what special and benevolent laws to counteract the inevitable recoil. This progress, whose existence among the most intelligent species can scarcely be denied, has perhaps no aim beyond its initial impetus, and knows not whither it goes. But at least, in a world where nothing save a few facts of this kind indicates a precise will, it is significant enough that we should see certain creatures rising thus, slowly and continuously; and should the bees have revealed to us only this mysterious spiral of light in the overpowering darkness, that were enough to induce us not to regret the time we have given to their little gestures and humble habits, which seem so far away and are yet so nearly akin to our grand pa.s.sions and arrogant destinies.

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It may be that these things are all vain; and that our own spiral of light, no less than that of the bees, has been kindled for no other purpose save that of amusing the darkness. So, too, is it possible that some stupendous incident may suddenly surge from without, from another world, from a new phenomenon, and either inform this effort with definitive meaning, or definitively destroy it. But we must proceed on our way as though nothing abnormal could ever befall us.

Did we know that to-morrow some revelation, a message, for instance, from a more ancient, more luminous planet than ours, were to root up our nature, to suppress the laws, the pa.s.sions, and radical truths of our being, our wisest plan still would be to devote the whole of to-day to the study of these pa.s.sions, these laws, and these truths, which must blend and accord in our mind; and to remain faithful to the destiny imposed on us, which is to subdue, and to some extent raise within and around us the obscure forces of life.

None of these, perhaps, will survive the new revelation; but the soul of those who shall up to the end have fulfilled the mission that is pre-eminently the mission of man, must inevitably be in the front rank of all to welcome this revelation; and should they learn therefrom that indifference, or resignation to the unknown, is the veritable duty, they will be better equipped than the others for the comprehension of this final resignation and indifference, better able to turn these to account.

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But such speculations may well be avoided. Let not the possibility of general annihilation blur our perception of the task before us; above all, let us not count on the miraculous aid of chance.

Hitherto, the promises of our imagination notwithstanding, we have always been left to ourselves, to our own resources. It is to our humblest efforts that every useful, enduring achievement of this earth is due. It is open to us, if we choose, to await the better or worse that may follow some alien accident, but on condition that such expectation shall not hinder our human task. Here again do the bees, as Nature always, provide a most excellent lesson. In the hive there has truly been prodigious intervention. The bees are in the hands of a power capable of annihilating or modifying their race, of transforming their destinies; the bees' thraldom is far more definite than our own. Therefore none the less do they perform their profound and primitive duty. And, among them, it is precisely those whose obedience to duty is most complete who are able most fully to profit by the supernatural intervention that to-day has raised the destiny of their species. And indeed, to discover the unconquerable duty of a being is less difficult than one imagines. It is ever to be read in the distinguishing organs, whereto the others are all subordinate. And just as it is written in the tongue, the stomach, and mouth of the bee that it must make honey, so is it written in our eyes, our ears, our nerves, our marrow, in every lobe of our head, that we must make cerebral substance; nor is there need that we should divine the purpose this substance shall serve. The bees know not whether they will eat the honey they harvest, as we know not who it is shall reap the profit of the cerebral substance we shall have formed, or of the intelligent fluid that issues therefrom and spreads over the universe, perishing when our life ceases or persisting after our death. As they go from flower to flower collecting more honey than themselves and their offspring can need, let us go from reality to reality seeking food for the incomprehensible flame, and thus, certain of having fulfilled our organic duty, preparing ourselves for whatever befall. Let us nourish this flame on our feelings and pa.s.sions, on all that we see and think, that we hear and touch, on its own essence, which is the idea it derives from the discoveries, experience and observation that result from its every movement. A time then will come when all things will turn so naturally to good in a spirit that has given itself to the loyal desire of this simple human duty, that the very suspicion of the possible aimlessness of its exhausting effort will only render the duty the clearer, will only add more purity, power, disinterestedness, and freedom to the ardour wherewith it still seeks.

APPENDIX

TO give a complete bibliography of the bee were outside the scope of this book; we shall be satisfied, therefore, merely to indicate the more interesting works:--

1. The Historical Development of Apiarian Science:

(a) The ancient writers: Aristotle, "History of Animals" (Trans.

Bart. St. Hilaire); T. Varro, "De Agricultura," L. III. xvi.; Pliny, "Hist. Nat.," L. xi.; Columella, "De Re Rustica;" "Palladius, "De Re Rustica," L. I. x.x.xvii., etc.

(b) The moderns: Swammerdam, "Biblia Naturae," 1737; Maraldi, "Observations sur les Abeilles," 1712; Reaumur, "Memoires pour servir a l'Histoire des Insectes," 1740; Ch. Bonnet, "OEuvres d'Histoire Naturelle," 1779-1783; A. G. Schirach, "Physikalische Untersuchung der bisher unbekannten aber nachher entdeckten Erzeugung der Bienen-mutter," 1767; J. Hunter, "On Bees"

(Philosophical Transactions, 1732); J. A. Janscha, "Hinterla.s.sene Vollstandige Lehre von der Bienenzucht," 1773; Francois Huber, "Nouvelles Observations sur les Abeilles," 1794, etc.

2. Practical Apiculture:

Dzierzon, "Theorie und Praxis des neuen Bienenfreundes;" Langstroth, "The Honeybee"(translated into French by Ch. Dadant: "L'Abeille et la Ruche," which corrects and completes the original); Georges de Layens and Bonnier, "Cours Complet d'Apiculture;" Frank Cheshire, "Bees and Bee-keeping" (vol. ii.--Practical); Dr. E. Bevan, "The Honey-bee;" T. W. Cowan, "The British Bee-keeper's Guidebook;" A.

Root, "The A B C of Bee-Culture;" Henry Alien, "The Bee-keeper's Handy-book;" L'Abbe Collin, "Guide du Proprietaire des Abeilles;"

Ch. Dadant, "Pet.i.t Cours d'Apiculture Pratique;" Ed. Bertrand, "Conduite du Rucher;" Weber, "Manuel pratique d'Apiulture;" Hamet, "Cours Complet d'Api-culture;" De Bauvoys, "Guide de l'Apiculteur;"

Pollmann, "Die Biene und ihre Zucht;" Jeker, Kramer, and Theiler, "Der Schweizerische Bienenvater;" S. Simmins, "A Modern Bee Farm;"

F. W. Vogel, "Die Honigbiene und die Vermehrung der Bienvolker;"

Baron A. Von Berlepsch, "Die Biene und ihre Frucht," etc.

3. General Monographs:

F. Cheshire, "Bees and Bee-keeping" (vol. i.--Scientific); T. W.

Cowan, "The Honey-bee;" J. Perez, "Les Abeilles;" Girard, "Manuel d'Apiculture" (Les Abeilles, Organes et Fonctions); Schuckard, "British Bees;" Kirby and Spence, "Introduction to Entomology;"

Girdwoyn, "Anatomie et Physiologic de l'Abeille;" F. Cheshire, "Diagrams on the Anatomy of the Honeybee;" Gunderach, "Die Naturgeschichte der Honigbiene;" L. Buchner, "Geistes-leben der Thiere;" O. Butschli, "Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte der Biene;" J. D.

Haviland, "The Social Instincts of Bees, their Origin and Natural Selection."

4. Special Monographs (Organs, Functions, Undertakings, etc.):

F. Dujardin, "Memoires sur le Systeme nerveux des Insectes;" Dumas and Milne Edwards, "Sur la Production de la Cire des Abeilles;" E.

Blanchard, "Recherches anatomiques sur le Systeme nerveux des Insectes;" L. R. D. Brougham, "Observations, Demonstrations, and Experiences upon the Structure of the Cells of Bees;" P. Cameron, "On Parthenogenesis in the Hymenoptera" (Transactions Natural Society of Glasgow, 1888); Erichson, "De Fabrica et Usu Antennarum in Insectis;" B. T. Lowne, "On the Simple and Compound Eyes of Insects "(Philosophical Transactions, 1879); G. K. Waterhouse, "On the Formation of the Cells of Bees and Wasps;" Dr. C. T. E. von Siebold, "On a True Parthenogenesis in Moths and Bees;" F. Leydig, "Das Auge der Gliederthiere;" Pastor Schonfeld, "Bienen-Zeitung,"

1854--1883; "Ill.u.s.trierte Bienen-Zeitung," 1885-1890; a.s.smuss, "Die Parasiten der Honig-biene."

5. Notes on Melliferous Hymenoptera:

E. Blanchard, "Metamorphoses, Moeurs et Instincts des Insectes;"

Vid: "Histoire des Insectes;" Darwin, "Origin of Species;" Fabre, "Souvenirs Entomologiques" (3d series); Romanes, "Mental Evolution in Animals;" id., "Animal Intelligence;" Lepeletier et Fargeau, "Histoire Naturelle des Hymenopteres;" V. Mayet, "Memoire sur les Moeurs et sur les Metamorphoses d'une Nouvelle Espece de la Famille des Vesicants" (Ann. Soc. Entom. de France, 1875); H. Muller, "Ein Beitrag zur Lebensgeschichte der Dasypoda Hirtipes;" E. Hoffer, "Biologische Beobachtungen an Hummeln und Schmarotzerhummeln;"

Jesse, "Gleanings in Natural History;" Sir John Lubbock, "Ants, Bees, and Wasps;" id., "The Senses, Instincts, and Intelligence of Animals;" Walkenaer, "Les Hac.l.i.tes;" Westwood, "Introduction to the Study of Insects;" V. Rendu, "De l'Intelligence des Betes;" Espinas, "Animal Communities," etc.