Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/lifeofbeeOOOOmaet THE LIFE OF THE BEE By the Same Author: THE TREASURE OF THE HUMBLE. Trans¬ lated by Alfred Sutro. umo. $1.75. WISDOM AND DESTINY. Translated by Alfred Sutro. i2mo. $1.75. THE LIFE OF THE BEE. Translated by Alfred Sutro. i2mo. $1.40 net. SISTER BEATRICE AND ARDIANE AND BARBE BLEUE. Translated by Bernard Miall. i2mo. $1.2 o net. THE BURIED TEMPLE. Translated by Alfred Sutro. i2mo. $1.40 net. THOUGHTS FROM MAETERLINCK Arranged by E. S. S. i2mo. $1.20 net. THE DOUBLE GARDEN. Translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos. i2mo. $1 .40 net. a \\ The Life of the Bee BY U K MAURICE MAETERLINCK Translated by ALFRED SUTRO I NEW YORK DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY 1908 Copyright , igoi By Dodd, Mead and Company All rights reserved Published May, igoi UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON AND SON . CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. Contents Page I. On the Threshold of the Hive 3 II. The Swarm . 37 III. The Foundation of the City . 131 IV. The Life of the Bee . . . .159 V. The Young Queens .... 233 VI. The Nuptial Flight .... 295 VII. The Massacre of the Males . 347 VIII. The Progress of the Race. . . 363 Appendix . 423 003780 I ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE HIVE The Life of the Bee i ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE HIVE [i] TT is not my intention to write a trea- tise on apiculture, or on practical bee-keeping. Excellent works of the kind abound in all civilised countries, and it were useless to attempt another. France has those of Dadant, Georges de Layens and Bonnier, Bertrand, Hamet, Weber, Clement, the Abbe Collin, etc. English-speaking countries have Langs- troth, Bevan, Cook, Cheshire, Cowan, Root, etc. Germany has Dzierzon, Van Berlespoch, Pollmann, Vogel, and many others. 3 The Life of the Bee Nor is this book to be a scientific monograph on Apis Mellifica, Ligustica, Fasciata, Dorsata, etc., or a collection of new observations and studies. I shall say scarcely anything that those will not know who are somewhat familiar with bees. The notes and experiments I have made during my twenty years of bee¬ keeping I shall reserve for a more techni¬ cal work; for their interest is necessarily of a special and limited nature, and I am anxious not to over-burden this essay. I wish to speak of the bees very simply, as one speaks of a subject one knows and loves to those who know it not. I do not intend to adorn the truth, or merit the just reproach Reaumur addressed to his predecessors in the study of our honey-flies, whom he accused of substituting for the marvellous reality marvels that were imaginary and merely plausible. The fact that the hive con- 4 On the Threshold of the Hive tains so much that is wonderful does not warrant our seeking to add to its wonders. Besides, I myself have now for a long time ceased to look for anything more beautiful in this world, or more interesting, than the truth; or at least than the effort one is able to make towards the truth. I shall state nothing, therefore, that I have not verified myself, or that is not so fully accepted in the text-books as to render further verifica¬ tion superfluous. My facts shall be as accurate as though they appeared in a practical manual or scientific monograph, but I shall relate them in a somewhat livelier fashion than such works would allow, shall group them more harmoni¬ ously together, and blend them with freer and more mature reflections. The reader of this book will not learn there¬ from how to manage a hive; but he will know more or less all that can with any 5 The Life of the Bee certainty be known of the curious, pro¬ found, and intimate side of its inhabi¬ tants. Nor will this be at the cost of what still remains to be learned. I shall pass over in silence the hoary traditions that, in the country and many a book, still constitute the legend of the hive. Whenever there be doubt, disagreement, hypothesis, when I arrive at the unknown, I shall declare it loyally ; you will find that we often shall halt before the un¬ known. Beyond the appreciable facts of their life we know but little of the bees. And the closer our acquaintance becomes, the nearer is our ignorance brought to us of the depths of their real existence ; but such ignorance is better than the other kind, which is uncon¬ scious, and satisfied. Does an analogous work on the bee exist ? I believe I have read almost all that has been written on bees; but of 6 On the Threshold of the Hive kindred matter I know only Michelet’s chapter at the end of his book “ The Insect,” and Ludwig Buchner’s essay in his “ Mind in Animals.” Michelet merely hovers on the fringe of his subject ; Buch¬ ner’s treatise is comprehensive enough, but contains so many hazardous state¬ ments, so much long-discarded gossip and hearsay, that I suspect him of never having left his library, never having set forth himself to question his heroines, or opened one of the many hundreds of rustling, wing-lit hives which we must profane before our instinct can be attuned to their secret, before we can perceive the spirit and atmosphere, perfume and mys¬ tery, of these virgin daughters of toil. The book smells not of the bee, or its honey ; and has the defects of many a learned work, whose conclusions often are preconceived, and whose scientific at¬ tainment is composed of a vast array of 7 The Life of the Bee doubtful anecdotes collected on every side. But in this essay of mine we rarely shall meet each other ; for our starting- point, our aim, and our point of view are all very different. [^] The bibliography of the bee (we will begin with the books so as to get rid of them as soon as we can and go to the source of the books) is very exten¬ sive. From the beginning this strange little creatuie, that lived in a society under complicated laws and executed prodigious labours in the darkness, at¬ tracted the notice of men. Aristotle, Cato, Varro, Pliny, Columella, Palladius all studied the bees ; to say nothing of Aristomachus, who, according to Cicero, watched them for fifty-eight years, and of Phyliscus, whose writings are lost. But these dealt rather with the legend of the 8 On the Threshold of the Ilive bee ; and all that we can gather there¬ from — which indeed is exceedingly little — we may find condensed in the fourth book of Virgil’s Georgies. The real history of the bee begins in the seventeenth century, with the discov¬ eries of the great Dutch savant Swammer¬ dam. It is well, however, to add this detail, but little known : before Swam¬ merdam a Flemish naturalist named Clutius had arrived at certain important truths, such as the sole maternity of the queen and her possession of the attributes of both sexes, but he had left these un¬ proved. Swammerdam founded the true methods of scientific investigation ; he invented the microscope, contrived injec¬ tions to ward off decay, was the first to dissect the bees, and by the discovery of the ovaries and the oviduct definitely fixed the sex of the queen, hitherto looked upon as a king, and threw the whole 9 The Life of the Bee political scheme of the hive into most unexpected light by basing it upon mater¬ nity. Finally he produced woodcuts and engravings so perfect that to this day they serve to illustrate many books on apicul¬ ture. He lived in the turbulent, restless Amsterdam of those days, regretting “ Het Zoete Buiten Leve ” — The Sweet Life of the Country — and died, worn- out with work, at the age of forty-three. He wrote in a pious, formal style, with beautiful, simple outbursts of a faith that, fearful of falling away, ascribed all things to the glory of the Creator ; and em¬ bodied his observations and studies in his great work “Bybel der Natuure,” which the doctor Boerhave, a century later, caused to be translated from the Dutch into Latin under the title of “ Biblia Naturae.” (Leyden, 1737.) Then came Reaumur, who, pursuing similar methods, made a vast number of 10 On the Threshold of the Hive curious experiments and researches in his gardens at Charenton, and devoted to the bees an entire volume ot his “ Notes to Serve for a History of Insects.” One may read it with profit to-day, and with¬ out fatigue. It is clear, direct, and sin¬ cere, and possessed of a certain hard, arid charm of its own. He sought especially the destruction of ancient errors ; he him¬ self was responsible for several new ones ; he partially understood the formation of swarms and the political establishment of queens ; in a word, he discovered many difficult truths, and paved the way for the discovery of more. He fully appreciated the marvellous architecture of the hive ; and what he said on the subject has never been better said. It is to him, too, that we owe the idea of the glass hives, which, having since been perfected, enable us to follow the entire private life of these fierce insects, whose The Life of the Bee work, begun in the dazzling sunshine, receives its crown in the darkness. To be comprehensive, one should mention also the somewhat subsequent works and investigations of Charles Bonnet and Schirach (who solved the enigma of the royal egg) ; but I will keep to the broad lines, and pass at once to Francis Huber, the master and classic of contemporary apiarian science. Huber was born in Geneva in 1750, and fell blind in his earliest youth. The experiments of Reaumur interested him ; he sought to verify them, and soon be¬ coming passionately absorbed in these researches, eventually, with the assist¬ ance of an intelligent and faithful servant, Francis Burnens, devoted his entire life to the study of the bee. In the annals of human suffering and human triumph there is nothing more touching, no lesson more admirable, than the story of this 12 On the Threshold of the Hive patient collaboration, wherein the one who saw only with immaterial light guided with his spirit the eyes and hands of the other who had the real earthly vision ; where he who, as we are assured, had never with his own eyes beheld a comb of honey, was yet able, notwith¬ standing the veil on his dead eyes that rendered double the veil in which nature enwraps all things, to penetrate the pro¬ found secrets of the genius that had made this invisible comb ; as though to teach us that no condition in life can warrant our abandoning our desire and search for the truth. I will not enumerate all that apiarian science owes to Huber ; to state what it does not owe were the briefer task. His “New Observations on Bees,” of which the first volume was written in 1789, in the form of letters to Charles Bonnet, the second not appearing till twenty years later, have remained the 13 The Life of the Bee unfailing, abundant treasure into which every subsequent writer has dipped. And though a few mistakes may be found therein, a few incomplete truths ; though since his time considerable additions have been made to the micrography and prac¬ tical culture of bees, the handling of queens, etc., there is not a single one of his principal statements that has been disproved, or discovered in error; and in our actual experience they stand untouched, and indeed at its very foundation. [3] Some years of silence followed these revelations ; but soon a German clergy¬ man, Dzierzon, discovered parthenogene¬ sis, i. e. the virginal parturition of queens, and contrived the first hive with movable combs, thereby enabling the bee-keeper henceforth to take his share of the harvest 14 On the Threshold of the Hive of honey, without being forced to destroy his best colonies and in one instant annihilate the work of an entire year. This hive, still very imperfect, received masterly improvement at the hands of Langstroth, who invented the movable frame properly so called, which has been adopted in America with extraordinary suc¬ cess. Root, Quinby, Dadant, Cheshire, De Layens, Cowan, Heddon, Howard, etc., added still further and precious im¬ provement. Then it occurred to Mehring that if bees were supplied with combs that had an artificial waxen foundation, they would be spared the labour of fashioning the wax and constructing the cells, which costs them much honey and the best part of their time ; he found that the bees accepted these combs most readily, and adapted them to their requirements. MajordeHruschkainvented the Honey- *5 The Life of the Bee Extractor, which enables the honey to be withdrawn by centrifugal force without breaking the combs, etc. And thus, in a few years, the methods of apiculture underwent a radical change. The capac¬ ity and fruitfulness of the hives were trebled. Great and productive apiaries arose on every side. An end was put to the useless destruction of the most industrious cities, and to the odious selec¬ tion of the least fit which was its result. Man truly became the master of the bees, although furtively, and without their knowledge ; directing all things without giving an order, receiving obedience but not recognition. For the destiny once imposed by the seasons he has substituted his will. He repairs the injustice of the year, unites hostile republics, and equal¬ ises wealth. He restricts or augments the births, regulates the fecundity of the queen, dethrones her and instals another 16 On the Threshold of the Hive in her place, after dexterously obtaining the reluctant consent of a people who would be maddened at the mere suspicion of an inconceivable intervention. When he thinks fit, he will peacefully violate the secret of the sacred chambers, and the elaborate, tortuous policy of the palace. He will five or six times in succession de¬ prive the bees of the fruit of their labour, without harming them, without their be¬ coming discouraged or even impoverished. He proportions the store-houses and granaries of their dwellings to the harvest of flowers that the spring is spreading over the dip of the hills. He compels them to reduce the extravagant number of lovers who await the birth of the royal princesses. In a word he does with them what he will, he obtains what he will, pro¬ vided always that what he seeks be in ac¬ cordance with their laws and their virtues; for beyond all the desires of this strange 2 The Life of the Bee god who has taken possession of them, who is too vast to be seen and too alien to be understood, their eyes see further than the eyes of the god himself; and their one thought is the accomplishment, with untiring sacrifice, of the mysterious duty of their race. [ + ] Let us now, having learned from books all that they had to teach us of a very ancient history, leave the science others have acquired and look at the bees with our own eyes. An hour spent in the midst of the apiary will be less instruc¬ tive, perhaps ; but the things we shall see will be infinitely more stimulating and more actual. I have not yet forgotten the first apiary I saw, where I learned to love the bees. It was many years ago, in a large village of Dutch Flanders, the sweet and pleasant 18 On the Threshold of the Hive country whose love for brilliant colour rivals that of Zealand even, the concave mirror of Holland; a country that gladly spreads out before us, as so many pretty, thoughtful toys, her illuminated gables, and waggons, and towers ; her cupboards and clocks that gleam at the end of the passage; her little trees marshalled in line along quays and canal-banks, waiting, one almost might think, for some quiet, benef¬ icent ceremony; her boats and her barges with sculptured poops, her flower-like doors and windows, immaculate dams, and elaborate, many-coloured drawbridges ; and her little varnished houses, bright as new pottery, from which bell-shaped dames come forth, all a-glitter with silver and gold, to milk the cows in the white- hedged fields, or spread the linen on flowery lawns, cut into patterns of oval and lozenge, and most astoundingly green. 19 The Life of the Bee To this spot, where life would seem more restricted than elsewhere — if it be possible for life indeed to become re¬ stricted — a sort of aged philosopher had retired ; an old man somewhat akin to Virgil’s — “ Man equal to kings, and approaching the gods ; ” whereto Lafontaine might have added, _ “And, like the gods, content and at rest.” Here had he built his refuge, being a little weary; not disgusted, for the large aversions are unknown to the sage ; but a little weary of interrogating men, whose answers to the only interesting questions one can put concerning nature and her veritable laws are far less simple than those that are given by animals and plants. His happiness, like the Scythian philosopher s, lay all in the beauties of his garden ; and best-loved and visited most often, was the apiary, composed of 20 On the Threshold of the Hive twelve domes of straw, some of which he had painted a bright pink, and some a clear yellow, but most of all a tender blue ; having noticed, long before Sir John Lubbock’s demonstrations, the bees’ fondness for this colour. These hives stood against the wall of the house, in the angle formed by one of those pleasant and graceful Dutch kit¬ chens whose earthenware dresser, all bright with copper and tin, reflected itself through the open door on to the peaceful canal. And the water, burdened with these fami¬ liar images beneath its curtain of poplars, led one’s eyes to a calm horizon of mills and of meadows. H ere, as in all places, the hives lent a new meaning to the flowers and the silence, the balm of the air and the rays of the sun. One seemed to have drawn very near to the festival spirit of nature. One was content to rest at this radiant cross- The Life of the Bee road, where the aerial ways converge and divide that the busy and tuneful bearers of all country perfumes unceasingly travel from dawn unto dusk. One heard the musical voice of the garden, whose love¬ liest hours revealed their rejoicing soul and sang of their gladness. One came hither, to the school of the bees, to be taught the preoccupations of all-powerful nature, the harmonious concord of the three kingdoms, the indefatigable organi¬ sation of life, and the lesson of ardent and disinterested work ; and another lesson too, with a moral as good, that the heroic workers taught there, and emphasised, as it were, with the fiery darts of their myriad wings, was to appreciate the somewhat vague savour of leisure, to enjoy the almost unspeakable delights of those immaculate days that revolved on themselves in the fields of space, forming merely a transparent globe, as 22 On the Threshold of the Hive void of memory as the happiness with¬ out alloy. [5l In order to follow, as simply as possible, the life of the bees through the year, we will take a hive that awakes in the spring and duly starts on its labours ; and then we shall meet, in their natural order, all the great episodes, viz. : the formation and departure of the swarm, the founda¬ tion of the new city, the birth, combat and nuptial flight of the young queens, the massacre ol the males, and finally, tne return of the sleep of winter. With each of these episodes there will go the neces¬ sary explanations as to the laws, habits, peculiarities and events that produce and accompany it; so that, when arrived at the end of the bee’s short year, which extends only from April to the last days of September, we shall have gazed upon 23 The Life of the Bee all the mysteries of the palace of honey. Before we open it, therefore, and throw a general glance around, we only need say that the hive is composed of a queen, the mother of all her people ; of thousands of workers or neuters who are incomplete and sterile females ; and lastly of some hundreds of males, from whom one shall be chosen as the sole and unfortunate consort of the queen that the workers will elect in the future, after the more or less voluntary departure of the reigning mother. [«] The first time that we open a hive there comes over us an emotion akin to that we might feel at profaning some unknown object, charged perhaps with dreadful surprise, as a tomb. A legend of menace and peril still clings to the bees. There is the distressful recollection of her sting, 24 On the Threshold of the Hive which produces a pain so characteristic that one knows not wherewith to compare it; a kind of destroying dryness, a flame of the desert rushing over the wounded limb, as though these daughters of the sun had distilled a dazzling poison from their father’s angry rays, in order more effec¬ tively to defend the treasure they gather from his beneficent hours. It is true that were some one who neither knows nor respects the customs and char¬ acter of the bee suddenly to fling open the hive, it would turn at once into a burning bush of heroism and anger ; but the slight amount of skill needed to handle it with impunity can be most readily acquired. Let but a little smoke be deftly applied, much coolness and gentleness be shown, and our well-armed workers will suffer themselves to be despoiled without dreaming of drawing their sting. It is not the fact, as some 25 The Life of the Bee have maintained, that the bees recognise their master ; nor have they any fear of man ; but at the smell of the smoke, at the large slow gestures that traverse their dwellings without threatening them, they imagine that this is not the attack of an enemy against whom defence is pos¬ sible, but that it is a force or a natural catastrophe whereto they do well to submit. Instead of vainly struggling, therefore, they do what they can to safeguard the future ; and, obeying a foresight that for once is in error, they fly to their reserves of honey, into which they eagerly dip in order to possess within themselves the wherewithal to start a new city, immedi¬ ately and no matter where, should the ancient one be destroyed or they be compelled to forsake it. 26 On the Threshold of the Hive [7] The first impression of the novice before whom an observation-hive 1 is opened will be one of some disappoint¬ ment. He had been told that this little glass case contained an unparalleled activ¬ ity, an infinite number of wise laws, and a startling amalgam of mystery, ex¬ perience, genius, calculation, science, of various industries, of certitude and pre¬ science, of intelligent habits and curious feelings and virtues. All that he sees is a confused mass of little reddish groups, 1 By observation-hive is meant a hive of glass, furnished with black curtains or shutters. The best kind have only one comb, thus permitting both faces to be studied. These hives can be placed in a draw¬ ing-room, library, etc., without inconvenience or dan¬ ger. The bees that inhabit the one I have in my study in Paris are able even in the stony desert of that great city, to find the wherewithal to nourish them¬ selves and to prosper. 27 The Life of the Bee somewhat resembling roasted coffee-ber¬ ries, or bunches of raisins piled against the glass. They look more dead than alive ; their movements are slow, inco¬ herent, and incomprehensible. Can these be the wonderful drops of light he had seen but a moment ago, unceasingly flash¬ ing and sparkling, as they darted among the pearls and the gold of a thousand wide-open calyces ? They appear to be shivering in the darkness, to be numbed, suffocated, so closely are they huddled together; one might fancy they were ailing captives, or queens dethroned, who have had their one moment of glory in the midst of their radiant garden, and are now com¬ pelled to return to the shameful squalor of their poor overcrowded home. It is with them as with all that is deeply real ; they must be studied, and one must learn how to study them. The 28 On the Threshold of the Hive inhabitant of another planet who should see men and women coming and going almost imperceptibly through our streets, crowding at certain times around certain buildings, or waiting for one knows not what, without apparent movement, in the depths of their dwellings, might conclude therefrom that they, too, were miserable and inert. It takes time to distinguish the manifold activity con¬ tained in this inertia. And indeed every one of the little almost motionless groups in the hive is incessantly working, each at a different trade. Repose is unknown to any ; and such, for instance, as seem the most tor¬ pid, as they hang in dead clusters against the glass, are intrusted with the most mysterious and fatiguing task of all : it is they who secrete and form the wax. But the details of this universal activity will be given in their place. For the mo- 29 The Life of the Bee ment we need only call attention to the essential trait in the nature of the bee which accounts for the extraordinary agglomeration of the various workers. The bee is above all, and even to a greater extent than the ant, a creature of the crowd. She can live only in the midst of a multitude. When she leaves the hive, which is so densely packed that she has to force her way with blows of her head through the living walls that enclose her, she departs from her proper element. She will dive for an instant into flower-filled space, as the swimmer will dive into the sea that is filled with pearls, but under pain of death it behoves her at regular intervals to re¬ turn and breathe the crowd as the swim¬ mer must return and breathe the air. Isolate her, and however abundant the food or favourable the temperature, she will expire in a few days not of hunger 3° On the Threshold of the Hive or cold, but of loneliness. From the crowd, from the city, she derives an invisible aliment that is as necessary to her as honey. This craving will help to explain the spirit of the laws of the hive. For in them the individual is nothing, her existence conditional only, and herself, for one indifferent moment, a winged organ of the race. Her whole life is an entire sacrifice to the manifold, everlasting being whereof she forms part. It is strange to note that it was not always so. We find even to-day, among the melliferous hymenoptera, all the stages of progressive civilisation of our own do¬ mestic bee. At the bottom of the scale we find her working alone, in wretched¬ ness, often not seeing her offspring (the Prosopis, the Colletes, etc.) ; sometimes living in the midst of the limited family that she produces annually (as in the case of the humble-bee). Then she 31 The Life of the Bee forms temporary associations (the Pan- urgi, the Dasypodce, the Hacliti, etc.) and at last we arrive, through successive stages, at the almost perfect but pitiless society of our hives, where the individual is entirely merged in the republic, and the republic in its turn invariably sacri¬ ficed to the abstract and immortal city of the future. [8] Let us not too hastily deduce from these facts conclusions that apply to man. He possesses the power of withstanding certain of nature’s laws ; and to know whether such resistance be right or wrong is the gravest and obscurest point in his morality. But it is deeply interesting to discover what the will of nature may be in a different world ; and this will is revealed with extraordinary clearness in the evolution of the hymenoptera, which, 32 On the Threshold of the Hive ot all the inhabitants of this globe, possess the highest degree of intellect after that of man. The aim of nature is manifestly the improvement of the race ; but no less manifest is her inability, or refusal, to obtain such improvement except at the cost of the liberty, the rights, and the happiness of the individual. In proportion as a society organises itself, and rises in the scale, so does a shrinkage enter the private life of each one of its members. Where there is progress, it is the result only of a more and more complete sacrifice of the individual to the general interest. Each one is com¬ pelled, first of all, to renounce his vices, which are acts of independence. For instance, at the last stage but one of apiarian civilisation, we find the humble- bees, which are like our cannibals. The adult workers are incessantly hovering around the eggs, which they seek to 3 33 The Life of the Bee devour, and the mother has to display the utmost stubbornness in their defence. Then having freed himself from his most dangerous vices, each individual has to acquire a certain number of more and more painful virtues. Among the humble- bees, for instance, the workers do not dream of renouncing love, whereas our domestic bee lives in a state of perpetual chastity. And indeed we soon shall show how much more she has to abandon, in exchange for the comfort and security of the hive, for its architectural, economic, and political perfection ; and we shall re¬ turn to the evolution of the hymenoptera in the chapter devoted to the progress of the species. 34 II THE SWARM 35 II THE SWARM [9] WE will now, so as to draw more closely to nature, consider the different episodes of the swarm as they come to pass in an ordinary hive, which is ten or twenty times more populous than an observation one, and leaves the bees entirely free and untrammelled. Here, then, they have shaken off the torpor of winter. The queen started laying again in the very first days of February, and the workers have flocked to the willows and nut-trees, gorse and violets, anemones and lungworts. Then spring invades the earth, and cellar and stream with honey and pollen, while each 37 The Life of the Bee day beholds the birth of thousands of bees. The overgrown males now all sally forth from their cells, and disport them¬ selves on the combs ; and so crowded does the too prosperous city become that hundreds of belated workers, coming back from the flowers towards evening, will vainly seek shelter within, and will be forced to spend the night on the threshold, where they will be decimated by the cold. Restlessness seizes the people, and the old queen begins to stir. She feels that a new destiny is being prepared. She has religiously fulfilled her duty as a good creatress ; and from this duty done there result only tribulation and sorrow. An invincible power menaces her tran¬ quillity ; she will soon be forced to quit this city of hers, where she has reigned. But this city is her work, it is she, her¬ self. She is not its queen in the sense in which men use the word. She issues no 33 The Swarm orders ; she obeys, as meekly as the humblest of her subjects, the masked power, sovereignly wise, that for the present, and till we attempt to locate it, we will term the “ spirit of the hive.” But she is the unique organ of love ; she is the mother of the city. She founded it amid uncertainty and poverty. She has peopled it with her own substance ; and all who move within its walls — workers, males, larvae, nymphs, and the young princesses whose approaching birth will hasten her own departure, one of them being already designed as her suc¬ cessor by the “spirit of the hive” — all these have issued from her flanks. [10] What is this “spirit of the hive” — where does it reside? It is not like the special instinct that teaches the bird to construct its well planned nest, and then 39 The Life of the Bee seek other skies when the day for mi¬ gration returns. Nor is it a kind of mechanical habit of the race, or blind craving for life, that will fling the bees upon any wild hazard the moment an unforeseen event shall derange the accus¬ tomed order of phenomena. On the contrary, be the event never so masterful, the “ spirit of the hive ” still will follow it, step by step, like an alert and quick¬ witted slave, who is able to derive ad¬ vantage even from his master’s most dangerous orders. It disposes pitilessly of the wealth and the happiness, the liberty and life, of all this winged people ; and yet with discre¬ tion, as though governed itself by some great duty. It regulates day by day the number of births, and contrives that these shall strictly accord with the number of flowers that brighten the country-side. It decrees the queen’s deposition or warns 40 The Swarm her that she must depart; it compels her to bring her own rivals into the world, and rears them royally, protecting them from their mother’s political hatred. So, too, in accordance with the generosity of the flowers, the age of the spring, and the probable dangers of the nuptial flight, will it permit or forbid the first-born of the virgin princesses to slay in their cradles her younger sisters, who are sing¬ ing the song of the queens. At other times, when the season wanes, and flowery hours grow shorter, it will command the workers themselves to slaughter the whole imperial brood, that the era of revolutions may close, and work become the sole object of all. The “spirit of the hive” is prudent and thrifty, but by no means parsimonious. And thus, aware, it would seem, that nature’s laws are somewhat wild and extravagant in all that pertains to love, it tolerates, during summer days 41 The Life of the Bee of abundance, the embarrassing presence in the hive of three or four hundred males, from whose ranks the queen about to be born shall select her lover ; three or four hundred foolish, clumsy, useless, noisy creatures, who are pretentious, glut¬ tonous, dirty, coarse, totally and scan¬ dalously idle, insatiable, and enormous. But after the queen’s impregnation, when flowers begin to close sooner, and open later, the spirit one morning will coldly decree the simultaneous and gen¬ eral massacre of every male. It regulates the workers’ labours, with due regard to their age ; it allots their task to the nurses who tend the nymphs and the larvae, the ladies of honour who wait on the queen and never allow her out of their sight ; the house-bees who air, refresh, or heat the hive by fanning their wings, and hasten the evaporation of the honey that may be too highly charged with water; 42 The Swarm the architects, masons, wax-workers, and sculptors who form the chain and con¬ struct the combs; the foragers who sally forth to the flowers in search of the nectar that turns into honey, of the pollen that feeds the nymphs and the larvae, the pro¬ polis that welds and strengthens the build¬ ings of the city, or the water and salt required by the youth of the nation. Its orders have gone to the chemists who en¬ sure the preservation of the honey by letting a drop of formic acid fall in from the end of their sting ; to the capsule- makers who seal down the cells when the treasure is ripe, to the sweepers who maintain public places and streets most irreproachably clean, to the bearers whose duty it is to remove the corpses ; and to the amazons of the guard who keep watch on the threshold by night and by day, question comers and goers, recognise the novices who return from their very 43 The Life of the Bee first flight, scare away vagabonds, ma¬ rauders and loiterers, expel all intruders, attack redoubtable foes in a body, and, if need be, barricade the entrance. Finally, it is the spirit of the hive that fixes the hour of the great annual sacrifice to the genius of the race : the hour, that is, of the swarm ; when we find a whole people, who have attained the topmost pin¬ nacle of prosperity and power, suddenly abandoning to the generation to come their wealth and their palaces, their homes and the fruits of their labour ; themselves content to encounter the hardships and perils of a new and distant country. This act, be it conscious or not, undoubtedly passes the limits of human morality. Its result will sometimes be ruin, but poverty always; and the th rice-happy city is scattered abroad in obedience to a law superior to its own happiness. Where has this law been decreed, which, 44 The Swarm as we soon shall find, is by no means as blind and inevitable as one might believe ? Where, in what assembly, what council, what intellectual and moral sphere, does this spirit reside to whom all must submit, itself being vassal to an heroic duty, to an intelligence whose eyes are persistently fixed on the future ? It comes to pass with the bees as with most of the things in this world; we remark some few of their habits ; we say they do this, they work in such and such fashion, their queens are born thus, their workers are virgin, they swarm at a certain time. And then, we imagine we know them, and ask nothing more. We watch them hasten from flower to flower, we see the constant agitation within the hive ; their life seems very simple to us, and bounded, like every life, by the instinctive cares of reproduction and nour¬ ishment. But let the eye draw near, and 45 The Life of the Bee endeavour to see ; and at once the least phenomenon of all becomes overpower- ingly complex ; we are confronted by the enigma of intellect, of destiny, will, aim, means, causes ; the incomprehensible or¬ ganisation of the most insignificant act of life. I!”] Our hive, then, is preparing to swarm ; making ready for the great immolation to the exacting gods of the race. In obe¬ dience to the order of the spirit — an order that to us may well seem incomprehen¬ sible, for it is entirely opposed to all our own instincts and feelings — 60,000 or 70,000 bees out of the 80,000 or 90,000 that form the whole population, will aban¬ don the maternal citv at the prescribed hour. They will not leave at a moment of despair ; or desert, with sudden and wild resolve, a home laid waste by famine, 46 The Swarm disease, or war. No, the exile has long been planned, and the favourable hour patiently awaited. Were the hive poor, had it suffered from pillage or storm, had misfortune befallen the royal family, the bees would not forsake it. They leave it only when it has attained the apogee of its prosperity ; at a time when, after the arduous labours of the spring, the im¬ mense palace of wax has its 120,000 well- arranged cells overflowing with new honey, and with the many-coloured flour, known as ] On the day, then, that the Spirit of the Hive has ordained, a certain part of the population will go forth, selected in ac¬ cordance with sure and immovable laws, and make way for hopes that as yet are formless. in the sleeping city there remain the males, from whose ranks the royal lover shall come, the very young bees that tend the brood-cells, and some thousands of workers who continue to forage abroad, to guard the accumu^ lated treasure, and preserve the moral traditions of the hive. For each hive 5° The Swarm has its own code of morals. There are 6ome that are very virtuous and some that are very perverse ; and a careless bee-keeper will often corrupt his people, destroy their respect for the property of others, incite them to pillage, and induce in them habits of conquest and idleness which will render them sources of danger to all the little republics around. These things result from the bee’s dis¬ covery that work among distant flowers, whereof many hundreds must be visited to form one drop of honey, is not the only or promptest method of acquiring wealth, but that it is easier to enter ill-guarded cities by stratagem, or force her way into others too weak for self-defence. Nor is it easy to restore to the paths of duty a hive that has become thus depraved. The Life of the Bee ['3] All things go to prove that it is not the queen, but the spirit of the hive, that decides on the swarm. With this queen of ours it happens as with many a chief among men, who though he ap¬ pear to give orders, is himself obliged to obey commands far more mysterious, far more inexplicable, than those he issues to his subordinates. The hour once fixed, the spirit will probably let it be known at break of dawn, or the previous night, if indeed not two nights before ; for scarcely has the sun drunk in the first drops of dew when a most unaccustomed stir, whose meaning the bee-keeper rarely will fail to grasp, is to be noticed within and around the buzzing city. At times one would al¬ most appear to detect a sign of dispute, hesitation, recoil. It will happen even 52 The Swarm that for day after day a strange emotion, apparently without cause, will appear and vanish in this transparent, golden throng. Has a cloud that we cannot see crept across the sky that the bees are watching ; or is their intellect battling with a new regret? Does a winged council debate the necessity of the departure ? Of this we know nothing ; as we know nothing of the manner in which the spirit conveys its resolution to the crowd. Certain as it may seem that the bees communicate with each other, we know not whether this be done in human fashion. It is possible even that their own refrain may be inaudible to them : the murmur that comes to us heavily laden with perfume of honey, the ecstatic whisper of fairest summer days that the bee-keeper loves so well, the festival song of labour that rises and falls around the hive in the crystal of the hour, and might almost be the 53 The Life of the Bee chant of the eager flowers, hymn of their gladness and echo of their soft fragrance, the voice of the white carnations, the marjoram, and the thyme. They have, however, a whole gamut of sounds that we can distinguish, ranging from pro¬ found delight to menace, distress, and anger ; they have the ode of the queen, the song of abundance, the psalms of grief, and, lastly, the long and mysterious war-cries the adolescent princesses send forth during the combats and massacres that precede the nuptial flight. May this be a fortuitous music that fails to attain their inward silence ? In any event they seem not the least disturbed at the noises we make near the hive ; but they regard these perhaps as not of their world, and possessed of no interest for them. It is possible that we on our side hear only a fractional part of the sounds that the bees produce, and that they have many 54 The Swarm harmonies to which our ears are not attuned. We soon shall see with what startling rapidity they are able to under¬ stand each other, and adopt concerted measures, when, for instance, the great honey thief, the huge sphinx atropos, the sinister butterfly that bears a death’s head on its back, penetrates into the hive, humming its own strange note, which acts as a kind of irresistible incantation; the news spreads quickly from group to group, and from the guards at the threshold to the workers on the furthest combs, the whole population quivers. [ H] It was for a long time believed that when these wise bees, generally so pru¬ dent, so far-sighted and economical, aban¬ doned the treasures of their kingdom and flung themselves upon the uncertainties of life, they were yielding to a kind of 55 The Life of the Bee irresistible folly, a mechanical impulse, a law of the species, a decree of nature, or to the force that for all creatures lies hid¬ den in the revolution of time. It is our habit, in the case of the bees no less than our own, to regard as fatality all that we do not as yet understand. But now that the hive has surrendered two or three of its material secrets, we have discovered that this exodus is neither instinctive nor inevitable. It is not a blind emigration, but apparently the well-considered sacrifice of the present generation in favour of the generation to come. The bee-keeper has only to destroy in their cells the young queens that still are inert, and, at the same time, if nymphs and larvae abound, to enlarge the store-houses and dormitories of the nation, for this unprofitable tumult instantaneously to subside, for work to be at once resumed, and the flowers re¬ visited ; while the old queen, who now is 56 The Swarm essential again, with no successor to hope for, or perhaps to fear, will renounce for this year her desire for the light of the sun. Reassured as to the future of the activity that will soon spring into life, she will tranquilly resume her maternal labours, which consist in the laying of two or three thousand eggs a day, as she passes, in a methodical spiral, from cell to cell, omitting none, and never pausing to rest. Where is the fatality here, save in the love of the race of to-day for the race of to-morrow ? This fatality exists in the human species also, but its extent and power seem infinitely less. Among men it never gives rise to sacrifices as great, as unanimous, or as complete. What far- seeing fatality, taking the place of this one, do we ourselves obey? We know not; as we know not the being who watches us as we watch the bees. 57 The Life of the Bee [ J5 ] But the hive that we have selected is disturbed in its history by no interference of man ; and as the beautiful day advances with radiant and tranquil steps beneath the trees, its ardour, still bathed in dew, makes the appointed hour seem laggard. Over the whole surface of the golden cor¬ ridors that divide the parallel walls the workers are busily making preparation for the journey. And each one will first of all burden herself with provision of honey sufficient for five or six days. From this honey that they bear within them they will distil, by a chemical process still unex¬ plained, the wax required for the immediate construction of buildings. They will pro¬ vide themselves also with a certain amount of propolis, a kind of resin with which they will seal all the crevices in the new dwell¬ ing, strengthen weak places, varnish the 58 The Swarm walls, and exclude the light ; for the bees love to work in almost total obscurity, guiding themselves with their many-faceted eyes, or with their antennas perhaps, the seat, it would seem, of an unknown sense that fathoms and measures the darkness. [ >6] They are not without prescience, there¬ fore, of what is to befall them on this the most dangerous day of all their existence. Absorbed by the cares, the prodigious perils of this mighty adventure, they will have no time now to visit the gardens and meadows ; and to-morrow, and after to¬ morrow, it may happen that rain may fall, or there may be wind ; that their wings may be frozen or the flowers refuse to open. Famine and death would await them were it not for this foresight of theirs. None would come to their help, nor would they seek help of any. For 59 one The Life of the Bee city knows not the other, and assist¬ ance never is given. And even though the bee-keeper deposit the hive, in which he has gathered the old queen and her attendant cluster of bees, by the side of the abode they have but this moment quitted, they would seem, be the disaster never so great that shall now have befallen them, to have wholly forgotten the peace and the happy activity that once they had known there, the abundant wealth and the safety that had then been their portion ; and all, one by one, and down to the last of them, will perish of hunger and cold around their unfortunate queen rather than return to the home of their birth, whose sweet odour of plenty, the fragrance, indeed, of their own past assiduous labour, reaches them even in their distress. 60 The Swarm C l7 ] That is a thing, some will say, that men would not do, — a proof that the bee, notwithstanding the marvels of its organisation, still is lacking in intellect and veritable consciousness. Is this so certain ? Other beings, surely, may possess an intel¬ lect that differs from ours, and produces different results, without therefore being inferior. And besides, are we, even in this little human parish of ours, such infallible judges of matters that pertain to the spirit? Can we so readily divine the thoughts that may govern the two or three people we may chance to see moving and talking behind a closed win¬ dow, when their words do not reach us ? Or let us suppose that an inhabitant of Venus or Mars were to contemplate us from the height of a mountain, and watch the little black specks that we foim in 61 The Life of the Bee space, as we come and go in the streets and squares of our towns. Would the mere sight of our movements, our build¬ ings, machines, and canals, convey to him any precise idea of our morality, intellect, our manner of thinking, and loving, and hoping, — in a word, of our real and inti¬ mate self? All he could do, like our¬ selves when we gaze at the hive, would be to take note of some facts that seem very surprising; and from these facts to deduce conclusions probably no less erroneous, no less uncertain, than those that we choose to form concerning the bee. This much at least is certain ; our “ little black specks ” would not reveal the vast moral direction, the wonderful unity, that are so apparent in the hive. “ Whither do they tend, and what is it they do ? ” he would ask, after years and centuries of patient watching. “What is the aim of their life, or its pivot ? Do they obey 62 The Swarm some God ? I can see nothing that governs their actions. The little things that one day they appear to collect and build up, the next they destroy and scatter. They come and they go, they meet and disperse, but one knows not what it is they seek. In numberless cases the spectacle they present is altogether inexplicable. There are some, for instance, who, as it were, seem scarcely to stir from their place. They are to be distinguished by their glossier coat, and often too by their more considerable bulk. They occupy buildings ten or twenty times larger than ordinary dwellings, and richer, and more ingeniously fashioned. Every day they spend many hours at their meals, which sometimes indeed are prolonged far into the night. They appear to be held in extraordinary honour by those who approach them ; men come from the neighbouring houses, bringing provisions, 63 The Life of the Bee and even from the depths of the country, laden with presents. One can only assume that these persons must be indis¬ pensable to the race, to which they render essential service, although our means of investigation have not yet enabled us to discover what the precise nature of this service may be. There are others, again, who are incessantly engaged in the most wearisome labour, whether it be in great sheds full of wheels that forever turn round and round, or close by the shipping, or in obscure hovels, or on small plots of earth that from sunrise to sunset they are con¬ stantly delving and digging. We are led to believe that this labour must be an offence, and punishable. For the persons guilty of it are housed in filthy, ruinous, squalid cabins. They are clothed in some colour¬ less hide. So great does their ardour appear for this noxious, or at any rate useless activity, that they scarcely allow 64 The Swarm themselves time to eat or to sleep. In numbers they are to the others as a thou¬ sand to one. It is remarkable that the species should have been able to survive to this day under conditions so unfavour¬ able to its development. It should be mentioned, however, that apart from this characteristic devotion to their wearisome toil, they appear inoffensive and docile ; and satisfied with the leavings of those who evidently are the guardians, if not the saviours, of the race.” [ 1 8 ] Is it not strange that the hive, which we vaguelv survey from the height of another world, should provide our first questioning glance with so sure and pro¬ found a reply? Must we not admire the manner in which the thought or the god that the bees obey is at once revealed by their edifices, wrought with such striking 65 5 The Life of the Bee conviction, by their customs and laws, their political and economical organisation, their virtues, and even their cruelties ? Nor is this god, though it be perhaps the only one to which man has as yet never offered serious worship, by any means the least reasonable or the least legitimate that we can conceive. The god of the bees is the future. When we, in our study of human history, endeavour to gauge the moral force or greatness of a people or race, we have but one standard of measurement — the dignity and perma¬ nence of their ideal, and the abnegation wherewith they pursue it. Have we often encountered an ideal more conformable to the desires of the universe, more widely manifest, more disinterested or sublime ; have we often discovered an abnegation more complete and heroic ? 66 The Swarm [ l9 ] Strange little republic, that, for all its logic and gravity, its matured conviction and prudence, still falls victim to so vast and precarious a dream ! Who shall tell us, O little people that are so profoundly in earnest, that have fed on the warmth and the light and on nature’s purest, the soul of the flowers, wherein matter foi once seems to smile, and put forth it? most wistful effort towards beauty and hap¬ piness, — who shall tell us what prob¬ lems you have resolved, but we not yet, what certitudes you have acquired that we still have to conquer? And if you have truly resolved these problems, and acquired these certitudes, by the aid of some blind and primitive impulse and not through the intellect, then to what enigma, more insoluble still, are you not urging us on ? Little city abounding 67 The Life of the Bee in faith and mystery and hope, why do your myriad virgins consent to a task that no human slave has ever accepted? Another spring might be theirs, another summer, were they only a little less waste¬ ful of strength, a little less self-forgetful in their ardour for toil ; but at the mag¬ nificent moment when the flowers all cry to them, they seem to be stricken with the fatal ecstasy of work ; and in less than five weeks they almost all perish, their wings broken, their bodies shrivelled and covered with wounds. “ Tantus amor florum, et generandi gloria mellis ! ” cries Virgil in the fourth book of the Georgies, wherein he devotes himself to the bees, and hands down to us the charming errors of the ancients, who looked on nature with eyes still dazzled by the presence of imaginary gods. 68 The Swarm O] Why do they thus renounce sleep, the delights of honey and love, and the ex¬ quisite leisure enjoyed, for instance, by their winged brother, the butterfly ? Why will they not live as he lives ? It is not hunger that urges them on. Two or three flowers suffice for their nourishment, and in one hour they wili visit two or three hundred, to collect a treasure whose sweetness they never will taste. Why all this toil and distress, and whence comes this mighty assurance ? Is it so certain, then, that the new generation whereunto you offer your lives will merit the sacrifice ; will be more beautiful, hap¬ pier, will do something you have not done? Your aim is clear to us, clearer far than our own ; you desire to live, as long as the world itself, in those that after ; but what can the aim be 69 come The Life of the Bee of this great aim ; what the mission of this existence eternally renewed ? And yet may it not be that these ques¬ tions are idle, and we who are putting them to you mere childish dreamers, hedged round with error and doubt? And, in¬ deed, had successive evolutions installed you all-powerful and supremely happy ; had you gained the last heights, whence at length you ruled over nature’s laws ; nay, were you immortal goddesses, we still should be asking you what your desires might be, your ideas of prog¬ ress ; still wondering where you imag¬ ined that at last you would rest and declare your wishes fulfilled. We are so made that nothing contents us ; that we can regard no single thing as having its aim self-contained, as simply existing, with no thought beyond existence. Has there been, to this day, one god out of all the multitude man has conceived, from 70 The Swarm the vulgarest to the most thoughtful, of whom it has not been required that he shall be active and stirring, that he shall create countless beings and things, and have mvriad aims outside himself? And j will the time ever come when we shall be resigned for a few hours tranquilly to represent in this world an interesting form of material activity ; and then, our few hours over, to assume, without sur¬ prise and without regret, that other form which is the unconscious, the unknown, the slumbering, and the eternal ? [2i ] But we are forgetting the hive wherein the swarming bees have begun to lose patience, the hive whose black and vi¬ brating waves are bubbling and overflow¬ ing, like a brazen cup beneath an ardent sun. It is noon ; and the heat so great that the assembled trees would seem al- 7i The Life of the Bee most to hold back their leaves, as a man holds his breath before something very tender but very grave. The bees give their honey and sweet-smelling wax to the man who attends them ; but more precious gift still is their summoning him to the gladness of June, to the joy of the beautiful months ; for events in which bees take part happen only when skies are pure, at the winsome hours of the year when flowers keep holiday. They are the soul of the summer, the clock whose dial records the moments of plenty ; they are the untiring wing on which delicate perfumes float; the guide of the quivering light-ray, the song of the slumberous, languid air ; and their flight is the token, the sure and melodious note, of all the myriad fragile joys that are born in the heat and dwell in the sunshine. They teach us to tune our ear to the softest, most intimate whisper of these 72 The Swarm good, natural hours. To him who has known them and loved them, a summer where there are no bees becomes as sad and as empty as one without flowers or birds. !>] The man who never before has beheld the swarm of a populous hive must re¬ gard this riotous, bewildering spectacle with some apprehension and diffidence. He will be almost afraid to draw near; he will wonder can these be the earnest, the peace-loving, hard-working bees whose movements he has hitherto followed? It was but a few moments before he had seen them troop in from all parts of the country, as pre-occupied, seemingly, as little housewives might be, with no thoughts beyond household cares. He had watched them stream into the hive, imperceptibly almost, out of breath, 73 The Life of the Bee eager, exhausted, full of discreet agita¬ tion ; and had seen the young amazons stationed at the gate salute them, as they passed by, with the slightest wave of antennas. And then, the inner court reached, they had hurriedly given their harvest of honey to the adolescent por¬ tresses always stationed within, exchang¬ ing with these at most the three or four probably indispensable words ; or perhaps they would hasten themselves to the vast magazines that encircle the brood-cells, and deposit the two heavy baskets of pollen that depend from their thighs, thereupon at once going forth once more, without giving a thought to what might be passing in the royal palace, the work-rooms, or the dormitory where the nymphs lie asleep ; without for one instant joining in the babel of the public place in front of the gate, where it is the wont of the cleaners, at 74 The Swarm time of great heat, to congregate and to gossip. C 23 ] To-day this is all changed. A certain number of workers, it is true, will peace¬ fully go to the fields, as though nothing were happening ; will come back, clean the hive, attend to the brood-cells, and hold altogether aloof from the general ecstasy. These are the ones that will not accompany the queen ; they will remain to guard the old home, feed the nine or ten thousand eggs, the eighteen thousand larvae, the thirty-six thousand nymphs and seven or eight royal prin¬ cesses, that to-day shall all be abandoned. Why they have been singled out for this austere duty, by what law, or by whom, it is not in our power to divine. To this mission of theirs they remain in¬ flexibly, tranquilly faithful ; and though 75 The Life of the Bee I have many times tried the experiment of sprinkling a colouring matter over one of these resigned Cinderellas, that are moreover easily to be distinguished in the midst of the rejoicing crowds by their serious and somewhat ponderous gait, it is rarely indeed that I have found one of them in the delirious throng of the swarm. [2+] And yet, the attraction must seem irresistible. It is the ecstasy of the per¬ haps unconscious sacrifice the god has ordained ; it is the festival of honey, the triumph of the race, the victory of the future : the one day of joy, of forgetfulness and folly ; the only Sunday known to the bees. It would appear to be also the solitary day upon which all eat their fill, and revel, to heart’s content, in the de¬ lights of the treasure themselves have 76 The Swarm amassed. It is as though they were prisoners to whom freedom at last had been given, who had suddenly been led to a land of refreshment and plenty. They exult, they cannot contain the joy that is in them. They come and go aimlessly, — they whose every movement has always its precise and useful purpose — they depart and return, sally forth once again to see if the queen be ready, to excite their sisters, to beguile the tedium of waiting. They fly much higher than is their wont, and the leaves of the mighty trees round about all quiver responsive. They have left trouble behind, and care. They no longer are meddling and fierce, aggressive, suspicious, untamable, angry. Man — the unknown master whose sway they never acknowl¬ edge, who can subdue them only by con¬ forming to their every law, to their habits of labour, and following step by step the 77 The Life of the Bee path that is traced in their life by an intellect nothing can thwart or turn from its purpose, by a spirit whose aim is always the good of the morrow — on this day man can approach them, can divide the glittering curtain they form as they fly round and round in songful circles ; he can take them up in his hand, and gather them as he would a bunch of grapes; for to-day, in their gladness, possessing nothing, but full of faith in the future, they will submit to everything and injure no one, provided only they be not separated from the queen who bears that future within her. [25] But the veritable signal has not yet been given. In the hive there is in¬ describable confusion ; and a disorder whose meaning escapes us. At ordinary times each bee, once returned to her 78 The Swarm home, would appear to forget her posses¬ sion of wings ; and will pursue her active labours, making scarcely a movement, on that particular spot in the hive that her special duties assign. But to-day they all seem bewitched ; they fly in dense circles round and round the polished walls; like a living jelly stirred by an invisible hand. The temperature within rises rapidly, — to such a degree, at times, that the wax of the buildings will soften, and twist out of shape. The queen, who ordinarily never will stir from the centre of the comb, now rushes wildly, in breath¬ less excitement, over the surface of the vehement crowd that turn and turn on themselves. Is she hastening their de¬ parture, or trying to delay it ? Does she command, or haply implore ? Does this prodigious emotion issue from her, or is she its victim ? Such knowledge as we possess of the general psychology of the 79 The Life of the Bee bee warrants the belief that the swarming always takes place against the old sov¬ ereign’s will. For indeed the ascetic workers, her daughters, regard the queen above all as the organ of love, indispen¬ sable, certainly, and sacred, but in herself somewhat unconscious, and often of feeble mind. They treat her like a mother in her dotage. Their respect for her, their tenderness, is heroic and boundless. The purest honey, specially distilled and almost entirely assimilable, is reserved for her use alone. She has an escort that watches over her by day and by night, that facilitates her maternal duties and gets ready the cells wherein the eggs shall be laid ; she has loving attendants who pet and caress her, feed her and clean her, and even absorb her excrement. Should the least accident befall her the news will spread quickly from group to group, and the whole population will rush 80 The Swarm to and fro in loud lamentation. Seize her, imprison her, take her away from the hive at a time when the bees shall have no hope of filling her place, owing, it may be, to her having left no pre¬ destined descendants, or to there being no larvas less than three days old (for a special nourishment is capable of trans¬ forming these into royal nymphs, such being the grand democratic principle of the hive, and a counterpoise to the preroga^ tives of maternal predestination), and then, her loss once known, after two or three hours, perhaps, for the city is vast, work will cease in almost every direction. The young will no longer be cared for ; part of the inhabitants will wander in every direction, seeking their mother, in quest of whom others will sally forth from the hive ; the workers engaged in construct¬ ing the comb will fall asunder and scatter, the foragers no longer will visit the 6 81 The Life of the Bee flowers, the guard at the entrance will abandon their post ; and foreign marau ¬ ders, all the parasites of honey, forever on the watch for opportunities of plunder, will freely enter and leave without any one giving a thought to the defence of the treasure that has been so laboriously gathered. And poverty, little by little, will steal into the city ; the population will dwindle ; and the wretched inhabitants soon will perish of distress and despair, though every flower of summer burst into bloom before them. But let the queen be restored before her loss has become an accomplished, jrremediable fact, before the bees have grown too profoundly demoralised, — for in this they resemble men : a prolonged regret, or misfortune, will impair their intellect and degrade their character, — let her be restored but a few hours later, and they will receive her with extraordinary, 82 The Swarm pathetic welcome. They will flock eagerly round her ; excited groups will climb over each other in their anxiety to draw near; as she passes among them they will caress her with the long antennae that contain so many organs as yet unexplained ; they will present her with honey, and escort her tumultuously back to the royal chamber. And order at once is restored, work re¬ sumed, from the central comb of the brood-cells to the furthest annex where the surplus honey is stored ; the foragers go forth, in long black files, to return, in less than three minutes sometimes, laden with nectar and pollen ; streets are swept, parasites and marauders killed or expelled ; and the hive soon resounds with the gentle, monotonous cadence of the strange hymn of rejoicing, which is, it would seem, the hymn of the royal presence. 83 The Life of the Bee [ 26 ] There are numberless instances of the absolute attachment and devotion that the workers display towards their queen. Should disaster befall the little republic; should the hive or the comb collapse, should man prove ignorant, or brutal ; should they suffer from famine, from cold or disease, and perish by thousands, it will still be almost invariably found that the queen will be safe and alive, beneath the corpses of her faithful daughters. For they will protect her, help her to escape; their bodies will provide both rampart and shelter; for her will be the last drop of honey, the wholesomest food. And be the disaster never so great, the city of virgins will not lose heart so long as the queen be alive. Break their comb twenty times in succession, take twenty times from them their young and their food, 84 The Swarm you still shall never succeed in making them doubt of the future ; and though they be starving, and their number so small that it scarcely suffices to shield their mother from the enemy’s gaze, they will set about to reorganize the laws of the colony, and to provide for what is most pressing ; they will distribute the work in accordance with the new necessities of this disastrous moment, and thereupon will immediately re-assume their labours with an ardour, a patience, a tenacity and intel¬ ligence not often to be found existing to such a degree in nature, true though it be that most of its creatures display more confidence and courage than man. But the presence of the queen is not even essential for their discouragement to vanish and their love to endure. It is enough that she should have left, at the moment of her death or departure, the very slenderest hope of descendants. “We 85 The Life of the Eee have seen a colony, says Langstroth, one of the fathers of modern apiculture, “ that had not bees sufficient to cover a comb of three inches square, and yet endeavoured to rear a queen. For two whole weeks did they cherish this hope ; finally, when their number was reduced by one-half, their queen was born, but her wings were imper¬ fect, and she was unable to fly. Impotent as she was, her bees did not treat her with the less respect. A week more, and there remained hardly a dozen bees ; yet a few days, and the queen had vanished, leaving a few wretched, inconsolable insects upon the combs.” [ 27 ] There is another instance, and one that reveals most palpably the ultimate gesture of filial love and devotion. It arises from one of the extraordinary ordeals that our recent and tyrannical intervention inflicts 86 The Swarm on these hapless, unflinching heroines. I, in common with all amateur bee-keepers, have more than once had impregnated queens sent me from Italy ; for the Italian species is more prolific, stronger, more active, and gentler than our own. It is the custom to forward them in small, perforated boxes. In these some food is placed, and the queen enclosed, together with a certain number of workers, selected as far as possible from among the oldest bees in the hive. (The age of the bee can be readily told by its body, which gradu¬ ally becomes more polished, thinner, and almost bald ; and more particularly by the wings, which hard work uses and tears.) It is their mission to feed the queen during the journey, to tend her and guard her. I would frequently find, when the box arrived, that nearly every one of the workers was dead. On one occasion, indeed, they had all perished of hunger ; 87 The Life of the Bee but in this instance as in all others the queen was alive, unharmed, and full of vigour ; and the last of her companions had probably passed away in the act of presenting the last drop of honey she held in her sac to the queen, who was symbol of a life more precious, more vast, than her own. [28] This unwavering affection having come under the notice of man, he was able to turn to his own advantage the qualities to which it gives rise, or that it perhaps con¬ tains : the admirable political sense, the passion for work, the perseverance, mag¬ nanimity, and devotion to the future. It has allowed him, in the course of the last few years, to a certain extent to domesticate these intractable insects, though without their knowledge ; for they yield to no foreign strength, and 88 The Swarm in their unconscious servitude obey only the laws of their own adoption. Man may believe, if he choose, that, possessing the queen, he holds in his hand the destiny and soul of the hive. In accord¬ ance with the manner in which he deals with her — as it were, plays with her — he can increase and hasten the swarm or restrict and retard it ; he can unite or divide colonies, and direct the emigration of kingdoms. And yet it is none the less true that the queen is essentially merely a sort of living symbol, standing, as all symbols must, for a vaster although less perceptible principle ; and this principle the apiarist will do well to take into account, if he would not expose himself to more than one unexpected reverse. For the bees are by no means deluded. The presence of the queen does not blind them to the existence of their veritable sovereign, immaterial and everlasting, which is no 89 The Life of the Bee other than their fixed idea. Why inquire as to whether this idea be conscious or not ? Such speculation can have value only if our anxiety be to determine whether we should more rightly admire the bees that have the idea, or nature that has planted it in them. Wherever it lodge, in the vast unknowable body or in the tiny ones that we see, it merits our deepest attention ; nor may it be out of place here to observe that it is the habit we have of subordinating our wonder to accidents of origin or place, that so often causes us to lose the chance of deep admiration ; which of all things in the world is the most helpful to us. [ 29 1 These conjectures may perhaps be re¬ garded as exceedingly venturesome, and possibly also as unduly human. It may be urged that the bees, in all probability. 9° The Swarm have no idea of the kind ; that their care for the future, love of the race, and many other feelings we choose to ascribe to them, are truly no more than forms as¬ sumed by the necessities of life, the fear of suffering or death, and the attraction of pleasure. Let it be so ; look on it all as a figure of speech ; it is a matter to which I attach no importance. The one thing certain here, as it is the one thing certain in all other cases, is that, under special circumstances, the bees will treat their queen in a special manner. The rest is all mystery, around which we only can weave more or less ingenious and pleasant conjecture. And yet, were we speaking of man in the manner wherein it were wise perhaps to speak of the bee, is there very much more we could say ? He too yields only to necessity, the attraction of pleasure, and the fear of suffering ; and what we call our intellect has the same The Life of the Bee origin and mission as what in animals we choose to term instinct. We do certain things, whose results we conceive to be known to us ; other things happen, and we flatter ourselves that we are better equipped than animals can be to divine their cause ; but, apart from the fact that this supposition rests on no very solid foundation, events of this nature are rare and infinitesimal, compared with the vast mass of others that elude comprehension ; and all, the pettiest and the most sublime, the best known and the most inexplicable, the nearest and the most distant, come to pass in a night so profound that our blindness may well be almost as great as that we suppose in the bee. [30 ] “All must agree,” remarks Buffon, who has a somewhat amusing prejudice against the bee, — “all must agree that 92 The Swarm these flies, individually considered, pos¬ sess far less genius than the dog, the monkey, or the majority of animals; that they display far less docility, attachment, or sentiment; that they have, in a word, less qualities that relate to our own ; and from that we may conclude that their ap¬ parent intelligence derives only from their assembled multitude ; nor does this union even argue intelligence, for it is governed by no moral considerations, it being with¬ out their consent that they find themselves gathered together. This society, there¬ fore, is no more than a physical assem¬ blage ordained by nature, and independent either of knowledge, or reason, or aim. The mother-bee produces ten thousand individuals at a time, and in the same place ; these ten thousand individuals, were they a thousand times stupider than I suppose them to be, would be com¬ pelled, for the mere purpose of existence, 93 The Life of the Bee to contrive some form of arrangement; and, assuming that they had begun by in¬ juring each other, they would, as each one possesses the same strength as its fellow, soon have ended by doing each other the least possible harm, or, in other words, by rendering assistance. They have the appearance of understanding each other, and of working for a common aim ; and the observer, therefore, is apt to endow them with reasons and intellect that they truly are far from possessing. He will pretend to account for each action, show a reason behind every move¬ ment ; and from thence the gradation is easy to proclaiming them marvels, or monsters, of innumerable ideas. Where¬ as the truth is that these ten thousand individuals, that have been produced sim¬ ultaneously, that have lived together, and undergone metamorphosis at more or less the same time, cannot fail all to do the 94 The Swarm same thing, and are compelled, however slight the sentiment within them, to adopt common habits, to live in accord and union, to busy themselves with their dwel¬ ling, to return to it after their journeys, etc., etc. And on this foundation arise the architecture, the geometry, the order, the foresight, love of country, — in a word, the republic ; all springing, as we have seen, from the admiration of the observer.’’ There we have our bees explained in a very different fashion. And if it seem more natural at first, is it not for the very simple reason that it really explains al¬ most nothing? I will not allude to the material errors this chapter contains ; I will only ask whether the mere fact of the bees accepting a common existence, while doing each other the least possible harm, does not in itself argue a certain intelli¬ gence. And does not this intelligence appear the more remarkable to us 95 as we The Life of the Bee more closely examine the fashion in which these “ten thousand individuals” avoid hurting each other, and end by giving as¬ sistance? And further, is this not the history of ourselves ; and does not all that the angry old naturalist says apply equally to every one of our human socie¬ ties ? And yet once again: if the bee is indeed to be credited with none of the feelings or ideas that we have ascribed to it, shall we not very willingly shift the ground of our wonder ? If we must not admire the bee, we will then admire nature; the moment must always come when admiration can be no longer denied us, nor shall there be loss to us through our having retreated, or waited. [3i] However these things may be, and with¬ out abandoning this conjecture of ours, that at least has the advantage of connecting 96 The Swarm in our mind certain actions that have evi¬ dent connection in fact, it is certain that the bees have far less adoration for the queen herself than for the infinite future of the race that she represents. They are not sentimental ; and should one of their number return from work so severely wounded as to be held incapable of further service, they will ruthlessly expel her from the hive. And yet it cannot be said that they are altogether incapable of a kind of personal attachment towards their mother. They will recognise her from among all. Even when she is old, crippled, and wretched, the sentinels at the door will never allow another queen to enter the hive, though she be young and fruitful. It is true that this is one of the fundamental principles of their polity, and never relaxed except at times of abundant honey, in favour of some foreign worker who shall be well laden with food. 7 97 The Life of the Bee When the queen has become com¬ pletely sterile, the bees will rear a certain number of royal princesses to fill her place. But what becomes of the old sovereign ? As to this we have no precise knowledge ; but it has happened, at times, that apia¬ rists have found a magnificent queen, in the flower of her age, on the central comb of the hive ; and in some obscure corner, right at the back, the gaunt, decrepit “ old mistress,” as they call her in Normandy. In such cases it would seem that the bees have to exercise the greatest care to pro¬ tect her from the hatred of the vigorous rival who longs for her death; for queen hates queen so fiercely that two who might happen to be under the same roof would immediately fly at each other. It would be pleasant to believe that the bees are thus providing their ancient sovereign with a humble shelter in a remote corner of the city, where she may end her days in peace. 98 The Swarm Here again we touch one of the thousand enigmas of the waxen city ; and it is once more proved to us that the habits and the policy of. the bees are by no means narrow, or rigidly predetermined ; and that their actions have motives far more complex than we are inclined to suppose. [32 ] But we are constantly tampering with what they must regard as immovable laws of nature ; constantly placing the bees in a position that may be compared to that in which we should ourselves be placed were the laws of space and gravity, of light and heat, to be suddenly sup¬ pressed around us. What are the bees to do when we, by force or by fraud, intro¬ duce a second queen into the city? It is probable that, in a state of nature, thanks to the sentinels at tiie gate, such an event has never occurred since they first came 99 The Life of the Bee into the world. But this prodigious con¬ juncture does not scatter their wits ; they still contrive to reconcile the two princi¬ ples that they appear to regard in the light of divine commands. The first is that of unique maternity, never infringed except in the case of sterility in the reigning queen, and even then only very excep¬ tionally ,* the second is more curious still, and, although never transgressed, suscepti¬ ble of what may almost be termed a Judaic evasion. It is the law that invests the person of a queen, whoever she be, with a sort of inviolability. It would be a simple matter for the bees to pierce the intruder with their myriad envenomed stings ; she would die on the spot, and they would merely have to remove the corpse from the hive. But though this sting is always held ready to strike, though they make constant use of it in their fights among themselves, they will never draw it against IOO The Swarm a queen ; nor will a queen ever draw hers on a man, an animal, or an ordinary bee. She will never unsheath her royal weapon ' curved, in scimeter fashion, instead of being straight, like that of the ordinary bee — save only in the case of her doing battle with an equal : in other words, with a sister queen. No bee, it would seem, dare take on herself the horror of direct and bloody regicide. Whenever, therefore, the good order and prosperity of the republic appear to demand that a queen shall die, they endeavour to give to her death some semblance of natural decease, and by infi¬ nite subdivision or the crime, to render it almost anonymous. They will, therefore, to use the pictur¬ esque expression of the apiarist, “ ball ” the queenly intruder ; in other words, they will entirely surround her with their innu¬ merable interlaced bodies. They will IOI The Life of the Bee thus form a sort of living prison wherein the captive is unable to move ; and in this prison they will keep her for twenty- four hours, if need be, till the victim die of suffocation or hunger. But if, at this moment, the legitimate queen draw near, and, scenting a rival, appear disposed to attack her, the living walls of the prison will at once fly open ; and the bees, forming a circle around the two enemies, will eagerly watch the strange duel that will ensue, though remaining strictly impartial, and taking no share in it. For it is written that against a mother the sting may be drawn by a mother alone ; only she who bears in her flanks close on two million lives appears to possess the right with one blow to inflict close on two million deaths. But if the combat last too long, without any result, if the circular weapons glide harmlessly over the heavy cuirasses, if one 102 The Swarm of the queens appear anxious to make her escape, then, be she the legitimate sover¬ eign or be she the stranger, she will at once be seized and lodged in the living prison until such time as she manifest once more the desire to attack her foe. It is right to add, however, that the numer¬ ous experiments that have been made on this subject have almost invariably resulted in the victory of the reigning queen, owing perhaps to the extra courage and ardour she derives from the knowledge that she is at home, with her subjects around her, or to the fact that the bees, however im¬ partial while the fight is in progress, may possibly display some favouritism in their manner of imprisoning the rivals ; for their mother would seem scarcely to suffer from the confinement, whereas the stranger almost always emerges in an appreciably bruised and enfeebled condition. The Life of the Bee [33] There is one simple experiment which proves the readiness with which the bees will recognise their queen, and the depth of the attachment they bear her. Re¬ move her from the hive, and there will soon be manifest all the phenomena of anguish and distress that I have described in a preceding chapter. Replace her, a few hours later, and all her daughters will hasten towards her, offering honey. One section will form a lane, for her to pass through ; others, with head bent low and abdomen high in the air, will describe before her great semicircles throbbing with sound; hymning, doubtless, the chant of welcome their rites dictate for moments of supreme happiness or solemn respect. But let it not be imagined that a foreign queen may with impunity be substituted for the legitimate mother. The bees will 104 The Swarm at once detect the imposture ; the intru¬ der will be seized, and immediately en¬ closed in the terrible, tumultuous prison, whose obstinate walls will be relieved, as it were, till she dies ; for in this particular instance it hardly ever occurs that the stranger emerges alive. And here it is curious to note to what diplomacy and elaborate stratagem man is compelled to resort in order to delude these little sagacious insects, and bend them to his will. In their un¬ swerving loyalty, they will accept the most unexpected events with touching courage, regarding them probably as some new and inevitable fatal caprice of nature. And, indeed, all this diplomacy notwith¬ standing, in the desperate confusion that may follow one of these hazardous ex¬ pedients, it is on the admirable good sense of the bee that man always, and almost empirically, relies ; on the inex- I05 The Life of the Bee haustible treasure of their marvellous laws and customs, on their love of peace and order, their devotion to the public weal, and fidelity to the future ; on the adroit strength, the earnest disinterestedness, of their character, and, above all, on the un¬ tiring devotion with which they fulfil their duty. But the enumeration of such procedures belongs rather to technical treatises on apiculture, and would take us too far.1 1 The stranger queen is usually brought into the hive enclosed in a little cage, with iron wires, which is hung between two combs. The cage has a door made of wax and honey, which the workers, their anger over, proceed to gnaw, thus freeing the prisoner, whom they will often receive without any ill-will. Mr. Simmins, manager of the great apiary at Rotting- dean, has recently discovered another method of intro¬ ducing a queen, which, being extremely simple and almost invariably successful, bids fair to be generally adopted by apiarists who value their art. It is the behaviour of the queen that usually makes her intro¬ duction a matter of so great difficulty. She is almost 106 The Swarm [3+] As regards this personal affection of which we have spoken, there is one word more to be said. That such affection distracted, flies to and fro, hides, and generally com¬ ports herself as an intruder, thus arousing the suspicions of the bees, which are soon confirmed by the workers’ examination. Mr. Simmins at first completely isolates the queen he intends to introduce, and lets her fast for half an hour. He then lifts a corner of the inner cover of the orphaned hive, and places the strange queen on the top of one of the combs. Her former isolation having terrified her, she is delighted to find herself in the midst of the bees ; and being famished she eagerly accepts the food they offer her. The workers, de¬ ceived by her assurance, do not examine her, but prob¬ ably imagine that their old queen has returned, and welcome her joyfully. It would seem, therefore, that, contrary to the opinion of Huber and all other inves¬ tigators, the bees are not capable of recognising their queen. In any event, the two explanations, which are both equally plausible — though the truth may lurk, perhaps, in a third, that is not yet known to us — only prove once again how complex and obscure is the psychology of the bee. And from this, as from all 107 The Life of the Bee exists is certain, but it is certain also that its memory is exceedingly short-lived. Dare to replace in her kingdom a mother whose exile has lasted some days, and her indignant daughters will receive her in such a fashion as to compel you hastily to snatch her from the deadly imprisonment reserved for unknown queens. For the bees have had time to transform a dozen workers’ habitations into royal cells, and the future of the race is no longer in danger. Their affection will increase, or dwindle, in the degree that the queen rep¬ resents the future. Thus we often find, when a virgin queen is performing the perilous ceremony known as the “ nuptial flight,” of which I will speak later, that her subjects are so fearful of losing her that they will all accompany her on this questions that deal with life, we can draw one conclu¬ sion only: that, till better obtain, curiosity still must rule in our heart. 108 The Swarm tragic and distant quest of love. This they will never do, however, if they be provided with a fragment of comb con¬ taining brood-cells, whence they shall be able to rear other queens. Indeed, their affection even may turn into fury and hatred should their sovereign fail in her duty to that sort of abstract divinity that we should call future society, which the bees would appear to regard far more seriously than we. It happens, for in¬ stance, at times, that apiarists for various reasons will prevent the queen from join¬ ing a swarm by inserting a trellis into the hive ; the nimble and slender workers will flit through it, unperceiving, but to the poor slave of love, heavier and more cor¬ pulent than her daughters, it offers an im¬ passable barrier. The bees, when they find that the queen has not followed, will return to the hive, and scold the unfortu¬ nate prisoner, hustle and ill-treat her. The Life of the Bee accusing her of laziness, probably, or sus¬ pecting her of feeble mind. On their second departure, when they find that she still has not followed, her ill-faith becomes evident to them, and their attacks grow more serious. And finally, when they shall have gone forth once more, and still with the same result, they will almost always condemn her, as being irremediably faithless to her destiny and to the future of the race, and put her to death in the royal prison. [35] It is to the future, therefore, that the bees subordinate all things ; and with a foresight, a harmonious co-operation, a skill in interpreting events and turning them to the best advantage, that must compel our heartiest admiration, particu¬ larly when we remember in how startling and supernatural a light our recent inter- no The Swarm vention must present itself to them. It may be said, perhaps, that in the last instance we have given, they place a very false construction upon the queen’s ina¬ bility to follow them. But would our powers of discernment be so very much subtler, if an intelligence of an order entirely different from our own, and served by a body so colossal that its movements were almost as imperceptible as those of a natural phenomenon, were to divert itself by laying traps of this kind for us? Has it not taken us thou¬ sands of years to invent a sufficiently plausible explanation for the thunderbolt? There is a certain feebleness that over¬ whelms every intellect the moment it emerges from its own sphere, and is brought face to face with events not of its own initiation. And, besides, it is quite possible that if this ordeal of the trellis were to obtain more regularly and The Life of the Bee generally among the bees, they would end by detecting the pitfall, and by taking steps to elude it. They have mastered the intricacies of the movable comb, of the sections that compel them to store their surplus honey in little boxes sym¬ metrically piled ; and in the case of the still more extraordinary innovation of foundation wax, where the cells are 'indi¬ cated only by a slender circumference of wax, they are able at once to grasp the advantages this new system presents ; they most carefully extend the wax, and thus, without loss of time or labour, construct perfect cells. So long as the event that confronts them appear not a snare devised by some cunning and malicious god, the bees may be trusted always to discover the best, nay, the only human, solution. Let me cite an in¬ stance ; an event, that, though occurring in nature, is still in itself wholly abnor- The Swarm mal. I refer to the manner in which the bees will dispose of a mouse or a slug that may happen to have found its way into the hive. The intruder killed, they have to deal with the body, which will very soon poison their dwelling. If it be impossible for them to expel or dismember it, they will proceed methodi¬ cally and hermetically to enclose it in a veritable sepulchre of propolis and wax, which will tower fantastically above the ordinary monuments of the city. In one of my hives last year I discovered three such tombs side by side, erected with party-walls, like the cells of the comb, so that no wax should be wasted. These tombs the prudent grave-diggers had raised over the remains of three snails that a child had introduced into the hive. As a rule, when dealing with snails, they will be content to seal up with wax the orifice of the shell. But in this case .8 IJ3 The Life of the Bee the shells were more or less cracked and broken ; and they had considered it simpler, therefore, to bury the entire snail ; and had further contrived, in order that circulation in the entrance-hall might not be impeded, a number of galleries exactly proportionate, not to their own girth, but to that of the males, which are almost twice as large as themselves. Does not this instance, and the one that follows, warrant our believing that they would in time discover the cause of the queen’s inability to follow them through the trellis ? They have a very nice sense of proportion, and of the space required for the movement of bodies. In the regions where the hideous death’s-head sphinx, the acherontia atropos, abounds, they construct little pillars of wax at the entrance of the hive, so restricting the di¬ mension as to prevent the passage of the nocturnal marauder’s enormous abdomen. 114 The Swarm [36] But enough on this point ; were I to cite every instance I should never have done. To return to the queen, whose position in the hive, and the part that she plays therein, we shall most fitly describe by declaring her to be the cap¬ tive heart of the city, and the centre around which its intelligence revolves. Unique sovereign though she be, she is also the royal servant, the responsible delegate of love, and its captive custo¬ dian. Her people serve her and vener¬ ate her; but they never forget that it is not to her person that their homage is given, but to the mission that she ful¬ fils, and the destiny she represents. It would not be easy for us to find a human republic whose scheme comprised more of the desires of our planet ; or a democ¬ racy that offered an independence more ”5 The Life of the Bee perfect and rational, combined with a sub¬ mission more logical and more complete. And nowhere, surely, should we discover more painful and absolute sacrifice. Let it not be imagined that I admire this sacrifice to the extent that I admire its results. It were evidently to be desired that these results might be obtained at the cost of less renouncement and suf¬ fering. But, the principle once accepted, — and this is needful, perhaps, in the scheme of our globe, — its organisation compels our wonder. Whatever the human truth on this point may be, life, in the hive, is not looked on as a series of more or less pleasant hours, whereof it is wise that those moments only should be soured and embittered that are essential for maintaining exist¬ ence. The bees regard it as a great common duty, impartially distributed amongst them all, and tending towards ix6 The Swarm a future that goes further and further back ever since the world began. And, for the sake of this future, each one renounces more than half of her rights and her joys. The queen bids farewell to freedom, the light of day, and the calyx of flowers ; the workers give five or six years of their life, and shall never know love, or the joys of maternity. The queen’s brain turns to pulp, that the reproductive organs may profit ; in the workers these organs atrophy, to the bene¬ fit of their intelligence. Nor would it be fair to allege that the will plays no part in all these renouncements. We have seen that each worker’s larva can be transformed into a queen if lodged and fed on the royal plan; and similarly could each royal larva be turned into worker if her food were changed and her cell reduced. These mysterious elec¬ tions take place every day in the golden The Life of the Bee shade of the hive. It is not chance that controls them, but a wisdom whose deep loyalty, gravity, and unsleeping watch¬ fulness man alone can betray : a wisdom that makes and unmakes, and keeps careful watch over all that happens within and without the city. If sudden flowers abound, or the queen grow old, or less fruitful; if population increase, and be pressed for room, you then shall find that the bees will proceed to rear royal cells. But these cells may be destroyed if the harvest fail, or the hive be en¬ larged. Often they will be retained so long as the young queen have not ac¬ complished, or succeeded in, her marriage flight, — to be at once annihilated when she returns, trailing behind her, trophy- wise, the infallible sign of her impregna¬ tion. Who shall say where the wisdom resides that can thus balance present and future, and prefer what is not yet visible 1 18 The Swarm to that which already is seen ? Where the anonymous prudence that selects and abandons, raises and lowers ; that of so many workers makes so many queens, and of so many mothers can make a people of virgins ? We have said else¬ where that it lodged in the “ Spirit of the H ive,” but where shall this spirit of the hive be looked for if not in the assembly of workers? To be convinced of its residence there, we need not per¬ haps have studied so closely the habits of this royal republic. It was enough to place under the microscope, as Dujar- din, Brandt, Girard, Vogel, and other entomologists have done, the little un¬ couth and careworn head of the virgin worker side by side with the somewhat empty skull of the queen and the male’s magnificent cranium, glistening with its twenty-six thousand eyes. Within this tiny head we should find the workings 1 :9 The Life of the Bee of the vastest and most magnificent brain of the hive : the most beautiful and com¬ plex, the most perfect, that, in another order and with a different organisation, is to be found in nature after that of man. Here again, as in every quarter where the scheme of the world is known to us, there where the brain is, are authority and victory, veritable strength and wis¬ dom. And here again it is an almost invisible atom of this mysterious sub¬ stance that organises and subjugates matter, and is able to create its own little triumphant and permanent place in the midst of the stupendous, inert forces of nothingness and death.1 1 The brain of the bee, according to the calcula¬ tion of Dujardin, constitutes the i-i74th part of the insect’s weight, and that of the ant the 1-29 6th. On tne other hand the peduncular parts, whose de¬ velopment usually keeps pace with the triumphs the intellect achieves over instinct, are somewhat less important in the bee than in the ant. It would seem 120 The Swarm [37] And now to return to our swarming hive, where the bees have already given the signal for departure, without waiting for these reflections of ours to come to an end. At the moment this signal is given, it is as though one sudden mad impulse had simultaneously flung open wide every single gate in the city ; and the black throng issues, or rather pours forth in a double, or treble, or quadruple jet, as the number of exits may be ; in a tense, direct, vibrating, uninterrupted stream that at once dissolves and melts into space, where the myriad transparent, furi¬ ous wings weave a tissue throbbing with sound. And this for some moments will to result from these estimates — which are of course hypothetical, and deal with a matter that is exceed¬ ingly obscure — that the intellectual value of the bee and the ant must be more or less equal. 121 The Life of the Bee quiver right over the hive, with prodigious rustle of gossamer silks that countless electrified hands might be ceaselessly rend¬ ing and stitching ; it floats undulating, it trembles and flutters like a veil of glad¬ ness invisible fingers support in the sky, and wave to and fro, from the flowers to the blue, expecting sublime advent or de¬ parture. And at last one angle declines another is lifted ; the radiant mantle unites its four sunlit corners ; and like the wonderful carpet the fairy-tale speaks of, that flits across space to obey its mas¬ ter’s command, it steers its straight course, bending forward a little as though to hide in its folds the sacred presence of the future, towards the willow, the pear-tree, or lime whereon the queen has alighted ; and round her each rhythmical wave comes to rest, as though on a nail of gold, and suspends its fabric of pearls and of luminous wings. The Swarm And then there is silence once more ; and, in an instant, this mighty tumult, this awful curtain apparently laden with unspeakable menace and anger, this be¬ wildering golden hail that streamed upon every object near — all these become merely a great, inoffensive, peaceful cluster of bees, composed of thousands of little motionless groups, that patiently wait, as they hang from the branch of a tree, for the scouts to return who have gone in search of a place of shelter. [38] This is the first stage of what is known as the “primary swarm” at whose head the old queen is always to be found. They will settle as a rule on the shrub or the tree that ''s nearest the hive; for the queen, besides being weighed down by her eggs, has dwelt in constant dark¬ ness ever since her marriage-flight, or the 123 The Life of the Bee swarm of the previous year ; and is natu¬ rally reluctant to venture far into space, having indeed almost forgotten the use of her wings. The bee-keeper waits till the mass be completely gathered together ; then, hav¬ ing covered his head with a large straw hat (for the most inoffensive bee will con¬ ceive itself caught in a trap if entangled in hair, and will infallibly use its sting), but, if he be experienced, wearing neither mask nor veil ; having taken the precau¬ tion only of plunging his arms in cold water up to the elbow, he proceeds to gather the swarm by vigorously shaking the bough from which the bees depend over an inverted hive. Into this hive the cluster will fall as heavily as an over-ripe fruit. Or, if the branch be too stout, he can plunge a spoon into the mass ; and deposit where he will the living spoonfuls, as though he were ladling out corn. He 124 The Swarm need have no fear of the bees that are buzzing around him, settling on his face and hands. The air resounds with their song of ecstasy, which is different far from their chant of anger. He need have no fear that the swarm will divide, or grow fierce, will scatter, or try to escape. This is a day, I repeat, when a spirit of holi¬ day would seem to animate these mys¬ terious workers, a spirit of confidence, that apparently nothing can trouble. They have detached themselves from the wealth they had to defend, and they no longer recognise their enemies. They become inoffensive because of their hap¬ piness, though why they are happy we know not, except it be because they are obeying their law. A moment of such blind happiness is accorded by nature at •times to every living thing, when she seeks to accomplish her end. Nor need we feel any surprise that here the bees are I25 The Life of the Bee her dupes ; we ourselves, who have studied her movements these centuries past, and with a brain more perfect than that of the bee, we too are her dupes, and know not even yet whether she be benevolent or indifferent, or only basely cruel. There where the queen has alighted the swarm will remain; and had she descended alone into the hive, the bees would have followed, in long black files, as soon as intelligence had reached them of the ma¬ ternal retreat. The majority will hasten to her, with utmost eagerness ; but large numbers will pause for an instant on the threshold of the unknown abode, and there will describe the circles of solemn rejoicing with which it is their habit to celebrate happy events. “ They are beat¬ ing to arms,” say the French peasants. And then the strange home will at once be accepted, and its remotest corners explored ; its position in the apiary, its 126 The Swarm form, its colour, are grasped and retained in these thousands of prudent and faithful little memories. Careful note is taken of the neighbouring landmarks, the new city is founded, and its place established in the mind and the heart of all its inhabitants ; the walls resound with the love-hymn of the royal presence, and work begins. [ 39 ] But if the swarm be not gathered by man, its history will not end here. It will remain suspended on the branch un¬ til the return of the workers, who, acting as scouts, winged quartermasters, as it were, have at the very first moment of swarming sallied forth in all directions in search of a lodging. They return one by one, and render account of their mission ; and as it is manifestly impossible for us to fathom the thought of the bees, we can only interpret in human fashion the spec- 127 The Life of the Bee tacle that they present. We may regard it as probable, therefore, that most careful attention is given to the reports of the various scouts. One of them it may be, dwells on the advantage of some hollow tree it has seen ; another is in favour of a crevice in a ruinous wall, of a cavity in a grotto, or an abandoned burrow. The assembly often will pause and deliberate until the following morning. Then at last the choice is made, and approved by all. At a given moment the entire mass stirs, disunites, sets in motion, and then, in one sustained and impetuous flight, that this time knows no obstacle, it will steer its straight course, over hedges and cornfields, over haystack and lake, over river and village, to its determined and always distant goal. It is rarely indeed that this second stage can be followed by man. The swarm returns to nature ; and we lose the track of its destiny. 128 Ill THE FOUNDATION OF THE CITY 9 129 Ill THE FOUNDATION OF THE CITY [40] gathered into his hive. And first of all let us not be forgetful of the sacrifice th^se fifty thousand virgins have made, who, as Ronsard sings, — “In a little body bear so true a heart, — ” and let us, yet once again, admire the courage with which they begin life anew in the desert whereon they have fallen. They have forgotten the splendour and wealth of their native city, where existence had been so admirably organised and 131 The Life of the Bee certain, where the essence of every flower reminiscent of sunshine had enabled them to smile at the menace of winter. There, asleep in the depths of their cradles, they have left thousands and thousands of daughters, whom they never again will see. They have abandoned, not only the enormous treasure of pollen and propolis they had gathered together, but also more than 120 pounds of honey; a quantity representing more than twelve times the entire weight of the population, and close on 600,000 times that of the individual bee. To man this would mean 42,000 tons of provisions, a vast fleet of mighty ships laden with nourishment more pre¬ cious than any known to us ; for to the bee honey is a kind of liquid life, a species of chyle that is at once assimilated, with almost no waste whatever. Here, in the new abode, there is noth¬ ing ; not a drop of honey, not a morsel of 132 The Foundation of the City- wax ; neither guiding-mark nor point of support. There is only the dreary emp¬ tiness of an enormous monument that has nothing but sides and roof. Within the smooth and rounded walls there only is darkness ; and the enormous arch above rears itself over nothingness. But useless regrets are unknown to the bee; or in any event it does not allow them to hinder its action. Far from being cast down by an ordeal before which every other courage would succumb, it displays greater ardour than ever. Scarcely has the hive been set in its place, or the disorder allayed that ensued on the bees’ tumultuous fall, when we behold the clearest, most unexpected division in that entangled mass. The greater portion, forming in solid columns, like an army obeying a definite order, will proceed to climb the vertical walls of the hive. The cupola reached, the first to arrive will cling with the claws of their '33 The Life of the Bee anterior legs, those that follow hang on to the first, and so in succession, until long chains have been formed that serve as a bridge to the crowd that rises and rises. And, by slow degrees, these chains, as their number increases, supporting each other and incessantly interweaving, be¬ come garlands which, in their turn, the uninterrupted and constant ascension transforms into a thick, triangular curtain, or rather a kind of compact and inverted cone, whose apex attains the summit of the cupola, while its widening base de¬ scends to a half, or two-thirds, of the entire height of the hive. And then, the last bee that an inward voice has impelled to form part of this group having added itself to the curtain suspended in darkness, the ascension ceases ; all movement slowly dies away in the dome ; and, for long hours, this strange inverted cone will wait, in a silence that almost seems awful, in a *34 The Foundation of the City stillness one might regard as religious, for the mystery of wax to appear. In the meantime the rest of the bees — those, that is, that remained down below in the hive — have shown not the slightest desire to join the others aloft, and pay no heed to the formation of the marvellous curtain on whose folds a magical gift is soon to descend. They are satisfied to examine the edifice and undertake the necessary labours. They carefully sweep the floor, and remove, one by one, twigs, grains of sand, and dead leaves ; for the bees are almost fanatically cleanly, and when, in the depths of winter, severe frosts retard too long what apiarists term their “ flight of cleanliness,” rather than sully the hive they will perish by thou¬ sands of a terrible bowel-disease. The males alone are incurably careless, and will impudently bestrew the surface of the comb with their droppings, which the workers i35 The Life of the Bee are obliged to sweep as they hasten behind them. The cleaning over, the bees of the pro¬ fane group that form no part of the cone suspended in a sort of ecstasy, set to work minutely to survey the lower circumference of the common dwelling. Every crevice is passed in review, and filled, covered over with propolis ; and the varnishing of the walls is begun, from top to bottom. Guards are appointed to take their stand at the gate; and very soon a certain number of workers will go to the fields and return with their burden of pollen. [ 4i ] Before raising the folds of the mysteri¬ ous curtain beneath whose shelter are laid the veritable foundations of the home, let us endeavour to form some conception of the sureness of vision, the accurate cal¬ culation and industry our little people 136 The Foundation of the City of emigrants will be called to display in order to adapt this new dwelling to their requirements. In the void round about them they must lay the plans for their city, and logically mark out the site of the edifices that must be erected as economically and quickly as possible, for the queen, eager to lay, already is scat¬ tering her eggs on the ground. And in this labyrinth of complicated buildings, so far existing only in imagination, laws of ventilation must be considered, of stability, solidity ; resistance of the wax must not be lost sight of, or the nature of the food to be stored, or the habits of the queen ; ready access must be con¬ trived to all parts, and careful attention be given to the distribution of stores and houses, passages and streets, — this how¬ ever is in some measure pre-established, the plan already arrived at being organi¬ cally the best, — and there are countless *37 The Life of the Bee problems besides, whose enumeration would take too long. Now, the form of the hive that man offers to the bee knows infinite variety, from the hollow tree or earthenware vessel still obtaining in Asia and Africa, and the familiar bell-shaped constructions of straw which we find in our farmers’ kitchen- gardens or beneath their windows, lost beneath masses of sunflowers, phlox, and hollyhock, to what may really be termed the factory of the model apiarist of to¬ day. An edifice, this, that can contain more than three hundred pounds of honey, in three or four stories of super¬ posed combs enclosed in a frame which permits of their being removed and handled, of the harvest being extracted trough centrifugal force by means of a turbine, and of their being then re¬ stored to their place like a book in a well-ordered library. 138 The Foundation of the City And one fine day the industry or caprice of man will install a docile swarm in one of these disconcerting abodes. And there the little insect is expected to learn its bearings, to find its way, to establish its home ; to modify the seemingly un¬ changeable plans dictated by the nature of things. In this unfamiliar place it is required to determine the site of the winter storehouses, that must not extend beyond the zone of heat that issues from the half-numbed inhabitants ; it must divine the exact point where the brood- cells shall concentrate, under penalty of disaster should these be too high or too low, too near to or far from the door. The swarm, it may be, has just left the trunk of a fallen tree, containing one long, narrow, depressed, horizon¬ tal gallery ; and it finds itself now in a tower-shaped edifice, whose roof is lost in gloom. Or, to take a case that r39 The Life of the Bee is more usual, perhaps, and one that will give some idea of the surprise habit¬ ually in store for the bees : after having lived for centuries past beneath the straw dome of our village hives, they are suddenly transplanted to a species of mighty cupboard, or chest, three or four times as large as the place of their birth ; and installed in the midst of a con¬ fused scaffolding of superposed frames, some running parallel to the entrance and some perpendicular ; the whole forming a bewildering network that obscures the surfaces of their dwelling. [42] And yet, for all this, there exists not a single instance of a swarm refusing its duty, or allowing itself to be baffled or discouraged by the strangeness of its sur¬ roundings, except only in the case of the new dwelling being absolutely uninhabi- 140 The Foundation of the City- table, or impregnated with evil odours. And even then the bees will not be dis¬ heartened or bewildered ; even then they will not abandon their mission. The swarm will simply forsake the inhospi¬ table abode, to seek better fortune some little distance away. And similarly it can never be said of them that they can be induced to undertake any illogical or foolish task. Their common-sense has never been known to fail them ; they have never, at a loss for definite decision, erected at haphazard structures of a wild or heterogeneous nature. Though you place the swarm in a sphere, a cube, or a pyra¬ mid, in an oval or polygonal basket, you will find, on visiting the bees a few days later, that if this strange assembly of little independent intellects has accepted the new abode, they will at once, and unhesitatingly and unanimously have known how to select the most favourable, often humanly speak- The Life of the Bee ing the only possible spot in this absurd habitation, in pursuance of a method whose principles may appear inflexible, but whose results are strikingly vivid. When installed in one of the huge fac¬ tories, bristling with frames, that we men¬ tioned just now, these frames will interest them only to the extent in which they provide them with a basis or point of departure for their combs ; and they very naturally pay not the slightest heed to the desires or intentions of man. But if the apiarist have taken the precaution of surrounding the upper lath of some of these frames with a narrow fillet of wax, they will be quick to perceive the advan¬ tage this tempting offer presents, and will carefully extract the fillet, using their own wax as solder, and will prolong the comb in accordance with the indicated plan. Similarly — and the case is frequent in modern apiculture — if all the frames of 142 The Foundation of the City the hive into which the bees have been gathered be covered from top to bottom with leaves of foundation-wax, they will not waste time in erecting buildings across or beside these, or in producing useless wax, but, finding that the work is already half finished, they will be satisfied to deepen and lengthen each of the cells designed in the leaf, carefully rectifying these where there is the slightest devia¬ tion from the strictest vertical. Proceed- ing in this fashion, therefore, they will possess in a week a city as luxurious and well-constructed as the one they have quitted; whereas, had they been thrown on their own resources, it would have taken them two or three months to con¬ struct so great a profusion of dwellings and storehouses of shining wax. The Life of the Bee [43 ] This power of appropriation may well be considered to overstep the limit of instinct ; and indeed there can be nothing more arbitrary than the distinction we draw between instinct and intelligence properly so-called. Sir John Lubbock, whose observations on ants, bees, and wasps are so interesting and so personal, is reluctant to credit the bee, from the moment it forsakes the routine of its habitual labour, with any power of discern¬ ment or reasoning, d his attitude of his may be due in some measure to an uncon¬ scious bias in favour of the ants, whose ways he has more specially noted ; for the entomologist is always inclined to regard that insect as the more intelligent to which he has more particularly devoted himself, and we have to be on our guard against this little personal predilection. As a H4 The Foundation of the City proof of his theory, Sir John cites as an instance an experiment within the reach of all. If you place in a bottle half a dozen bees and the same number of flies, and lay the bottle down horizontally, with its base to the window, you will find that the bees will persist, till they die of exhaustion or hunger, in their endeavour to discover an issue through the glass ; while the flies, in less than two minutes, will all have sallied forth through the neck on the opposite side. From this Sir John Lubbock concludes that the intelligence of the bee is exceedingly limited, and that the fly shows far greater skill in extricat¬ ing itself from a difficulty, and finding its way. This conclusion, however, would not seem altogether flawless. Turn the transparent sphere twenty times, if you will, holding now the base, now the neck, to the window, and you will find that the bees will turn twenty times with it, so as *45 IO The Life of the Bee always to face the light. It is their love of the light, it is their very intelligence, that is their undoing in this experiment of the English savant. They evidently imagine that the issue from every prison must be there where the light shines clearest ; and they act in accordance, and persist in too logical action. To them glass is a super¬ natural mystery they never have met with in nature ; they have had no ex¬ perience of this suddenly impenetrable atmosphere ; and, the greater their in¬ telligence, the more inadmissible, more incomprehensible, will the strange ob¬ stacle appear. Whereas the feather¬ brained flies, careless of logic as of the enigma of crystal, disregarding the call of the light, flutter wildly hither and thither, and, meeting here the good fortune that often waits on the simple, who find salvation there where the wiser will perish, necessarily end by discovering 146 The Foundation of the City the friendly opening that restores their liberty to them. The same naturalist cites yet another proof of the bees’ lack of intelligence, and discovers it in the following quotation from the great American apiarist, the venerable and paternal Langstroth : — “ As the fly was not intended to ban¬ quet on blossoms, but on substances in which it might easily be drowned, it cautiously alights on the edge of any vessel containing liquid food, and warily helps itself ; while the poor bee, plunging in headlong, speedily perishes. The sad fate of their unfortunate companions does not in the least deter others who approach the tempting lure from madly alighting on the bodies of the dying and the dead, to share the same miserable end. No one can understand the extent of their infatua¬ tion until he has seen a confectioner’s shop assailed by myriads of hungry bees. M7 The Life of the Bee I have seen thousands strained out from the syrups in which they had perished ; thousands more alighting even on the boiling sweets; the floors covered and win¬ dows darkened with bees, some crawling, others flying, and others still so completely besmeared as to be able neither to crawl nor to fly — not one in ten able to carry home its ill-gotten spoils, and yet the air filled with new hosts of thoughtless comers.” This, however, seems to me no more conclusive than might be the spectacle of a battlefield, or of the ravages of alcohol¬ ism, to a superhuman observer bent on establishing the limits of human under¬ standing. Indeed, less so, perhaps ; for the situation of the bee, when compared with our own, is strange in this world. It was intended to live in the midst of an indifferent and unconscious nature, and not by the side of an extraordinary being 148 The Foundation of the City who is forever disturbing the most con¬ stant laws, and producing grandiose, inex¬ plicable phenomena. In the natural order of things, in the monotonous life of the forest, the madness Langstroth describes would be possible only were some accident suddenly to destroy a hive full of honey. But in this case, even, there would be no fatal glass, no boiling sugar or cloying syrup ; no death or danger, therefore, other than that to which every animal is exposed while seeking its prey. Should we be more successful than they in preserving our presence of mind if some strange power were at every step to ensnare our reason? Let us not be too hasty in condemning the bees for the folly whereof we are the authors, or in de¬ riding their intellect, which is as poorly equipped to foil our artifices as our own would be to foil those of some superior creature unknown to us to-day, but on 149 The Life of the Bee that account not impossible. None such being known at present, we conclude that we stand on the topmost pinnacle of life on this earth ; but this belief, after all, is by no means infallible. I am not assuming that when our actions are un¬ reasonable, or contemptible, we merely fall into tlm snares that such a creature has laid ; though it is not inconceivable that this should one day be proved true. On the other hand, it cannot be wise to deny intelligence to the bee because it has not yet succeeded in distinguishing us from the great ape or the bear. It is certain that there are, in us and about us, influences and powers no less dis¬ similar whose distinction escapes us as readily. And finally, to end this apology, where¬ in I seem somewhat to have fallen into the error I laid to Sir John Lubbock’s charge, does not the capacity for folly so I5° The Foundation of the City great in itself argue intelligence? For thus it is ever in the uncertain domain of the intellect, apparently the most vacillat¬ ing and precarious condition of matter. The same light that falls on the intellect falls also on passion, whereof none can tell whether it be the smoke of the flame or the wick. In the case above it has not been mere animal desire to gorge them¬ selves with honey that has urged on the bees. They could do this at their leisure in the store-rooms at home. Watch them in an analogous circumstance; follow them ; you will see that, as soon as their sac is filled, they will return to the hive and add their spoil to the general store ; and visit the marvellous vintage, and leave it, perhaps thirty times in an hour. Their admirable labours, therefore, are inspired by a single desire : zeal to bring as much wealth as they can to the home of their sisters, which is also the home of the The Life of the Bee future. When we discover a cause as disinterested for the follies of men, we are apt to call them by another name. [44] However, the whole truth must be told. In the midst of the marvels of their indus¬ try, their policy, their sacrifice, one thing exists that must always check and weaken our admiration ; and this is the indifference with which they regard the misfortunes or death of their comrades. There is a strange duality in the character of the bee. In the heart of the hive all help and love each other. They are as united as the good thoughts that dwell in the same soul. Wound one of them, and a thousand will sacrifice themselves to avenge its injury. But outside the hive they no longer recognise each other. Mutilate them, crush them, — or rather, do nothing of the kind ; it would be 152 a The Foundation of the City useless cruelty, for the fact is established beyond any doubt, — but were you to mutilate, or crush, on a piece of comb placed a few steps from their dwelling, twenty or thirty bees that have all issued from the same hive, those you have left untouched will not even turn their heads. With their tongue, fantastic as a Chinese weapon, they will tranquilly continue to absorb the liquid they hold more precious than life, heedless of the agony whose last gestures almost are touching them, of the cries of distress that arise all around. And when the comb is empty, so great is their anxiety that nothing shall be lost, that their eagerness to gather the honey which clings to the victims will in¬ duce them tranquilly to climb over dead and dying, unmoved by the presence of the first and never dreaming of helping the others. In this case, therefore, they have no notion of the danger they run, J53 The Life of the Bee seeing that they are wholly untroubled by the death that is scattered about them, and they have not the slightest sense of soli¬ darity or pity. As regards the danger, the explanation lies ready to hand ; the bees know not the meaning of fear, and, with the exception only of smoke, are afraid of nothing in the world. Outside the hive, they display extreme condescen¬ sion and forbearance. They will avoid whatever disturbs them, and affect to ig¬ nore its existence, so long as it come not too close ; as though aware that this uni¬ verse belongs to all, that each one has his place there, and must needs be discreet and peaceful. But beneath this indulgence is quietly hidden a heart so sure of itself that it never dreams of protesting. If they are threatened, they will alter their course, but never attempt to escape. In the hive, however, they will not confine themselves to this passive ignoring of peril. They i54 The Foundation of the City will spring with incredible fury on any living thing, ant or lion or man, that dares to profane the sacred ark. This we may term anger, ridiculous obsti¬ nacy, or heroism, according as our mind be disposed. But of their want of solidarity outside the hive, and even of sympathy within it, I can find nothing to say. Are we to believe that each form of intellect possesses its own strange limitation, and that the tiny flame which with so much difficulty at last burns its way through inert matter and issues forth from the brain, is still so uncertain that if it illumine one point more strongly the others are forced into blacker darkness ? Here we find that the bees (or nature acting within them) have organised work in common, the love and cult of the future, in a manner more perfect than can elsewhere be discovered. Is it for this reason that they have lost sight of all the *55 The Life of the Bee rest ? They give their love to what lies ahead of them ; we bestow ours on what is around. And we who love here, perhaps, have no love left for what is beyond. Nothing varies so much as the direction of pity or charity. We ourselves should formerly have been far less shocked than we are to-day at the insensibility of the bees ; and to many an ancient people such conduct would not have seemed blame¬ worthy. And further, can we tell how many of the things that we do would shock a being who might be watching us as we watch the bees ? IV THE LIFE OF THE BEE i57 IV THE LIFE OF THE BEE C 45 ] ET us now, in order to form a clearer conception of the bees’ in¬ tellectual power, proceed to consider their methods of inter-communication. There can be no doubting that they understand each other; and indeed it were surely impossible for a republic so considerable, wherein the labours are so varied and so marvellously combined, to subsist amid the silence and spiritual isolation of so many thousand creatures. They must be able, therefore, to give expression to thoughts and feelings, by means either of a phonetic vocabulary or more prob- IS9 The Life of the Bee ably of some kind of tactile language or magnetic intuition, corresponding per¬ haps to senses and properties of matter wholly unknown to ourselves. And such intuition well might lodge in the myste¬ rious antennae — containing, in the case of the workers, according to Cheshire’s calculation, twelve thousand tactile hairs and five thousand “ smell-hollows,” where¬ with they probe and fathom the darkness. For the mutual understanding of the bees is not confined to their habitual labours ; the extraordinary also has a name and place in their language ; as is proved by the manner in which news, good or bad, normal or supernatural, will at once spread in the hive ; the loss or return of the mother, for instance, the entrance of an enemy, the intrusion of a strange queen, the approach of a band of marauders, the discovery of treasure, etc. And so char¬ acteristic is their attitude, so essentially 160 The Life of the Bee different their murmur at each of these special events, that the experienced apia¬ rist can without difficulty tell what is troubling the crowd that moves dis¬ tractedly to and fro in the shadow. If you desire a more definite proof, you have but to watch a bee that shall just have discovered a few drops of honey on your window-sill or the corner of your table. She will immediately gorge herself with it ; and so eagerly, that you will have time, without fear of disturbing her, to mark her tiny belt with a touch of paint. But this gluttony of hers is all on the surface ; the honey will not pass into the stomach proper, into what we might call her personal stomach, but remains in the sac, the first stomach, — that of the com¬ munity, if one may so express it. This reservoir full, the bee will depart, but not with the free and thoughtless motion of the fly or butterfly ; she, on the contrary, will 161 II The Life of the Bee for some moments fly backwards, hovering eagerly about the table or window, with her head turned toward the room. She is reconnoitring, fixing in her memory the exact position of the treasure. Thereupon she will go to the hive, dis¬ gorge her plunder into one of the provi¬ sion-cells, and in three or four minutes return, and resume operations at the providential window. And thus, while the honey lasts, will she come and go, at intervals of every five minutes, till evening, if need be ; without interruption or rest ; pursuing her regular journeys from the hive to the window, from the window back to the hive. [46] Many of those who have written on bees have thought fit to adorn the truth; I myself have no such desire. For studies of this description to possess 162 The Life of the Bee any interest, it is essential that they should remain absolutely sincere. Had the conclusion been forced upon me that bees are incapable of communicating to each other news of an event occurring outside the hive, I should, I imagine, as a set-off against the slight disappoint¬ ment this discovery would have entailed, have derived some degree of satisfaction in recognising once more that man, after all, is the only truly intelligent being who inhabits our globe. And there comes too a period of life when we have more joy in saying the thing that is true than in saying the thing that merely is wonder¬ ful. Here as in every case the principle holds that, should the naked truth appear at the moment less interesting, less great and noble than the imaginary embellish¬ ment it lies in our power to bestow, the fault must rest with ourselves who still are unable to perceive the astonishing 163 The Life of the Bee relation in which this truth always must stand to our being, and to universal law; and in that case it is not the truth, but our intellect, that needs embellishment and ennoblement. I will frankly confess, therefore, that the marked bee often returns alone. Shall we believe that in bees there exists the same difference of character as in men; that of them too some are gossips, and others prone to silence ? A friend who stood by and watched my experi¬ ment, declared that it was evidently mere selfishness or vanity that caused so many of the bees to refrain from revealing the source of their wealth, and from sharing with others the glory of an achievement that must seem miraculous to the hive. These were sad vices indeed, which give not forth the sweet odour, so fragrant and loyal, that springs from the home of the many thousand sisters. But, what- 164 The Life of the Bee ever the cause, it often will also happen that the bee whom fortune has favoured will return to the honey accompanied by two or three friends. I am aware that Sir John Lubbock, in the appendix to his book on “Ants, Bees, and Wasps,” records the results of his investigations in long and minute tables ; and from these we are led to infer that it is a matter of rarest occurrence for a single bee to follow the one who has made the dis¬ covery. The learned naturalist does not name the race of bees which he selected for his experiments, or tell us whether the conditions were especially unfavour¬ able. As for myself I only can say that my own tables, compiled with great care, — and every possible precaution having been taken that the bees should not be directly attracted by the odour of the honey, — establish that on an average one bee will bring others four times out of ten. i65 The Life of the Bee I even one day came across an extraor¬ dinary little Italian bee, whose belt I bad marked with a touch of blue paint. In her second trip she brought two of her sisters, whom I imprisoned, without in¬ terfering with her. She departed once more, and this time returned with three friends, whom I again confined, and so till the end of the afternoon, when, count¬ ing my prisoners, I found that she had told the news to no less than eighteen bees. In fact you will find, if you make this experiment yourself, that communication, if not general, at least is frequent. The possession of this faculty is so well known to American bee-hunters that they trade upon it when engaged in searching for nests. Mr. Josiah Emery remarks on this head (quoted by Romanes in his “Intellect of Animals”): “Going to a field or wood at a distance from 166 The Life of the Bee tame bees with their box of honey, they gather up from the flowers and imprison one or more bees, and after they have become sufficiently gorged, let them out to return to their home with their easily gotten load. Waiting patiently a longer or shorter time, according to the distance of the bee-tree, the hunter scarcely ever fails to see the bee or bees return accom¬ panied by other bees, which are in like manner imprisoned till they in turn are filled ; then one or more are let out at places distant from each other, and the direction in which the bee flies noted ; and thus, by a kind of triangulation, the position of the bee-tree proximately ascertained.” [47] You will notice too in your experi¬ ments that the friends who appear to obey the behests of good fortune do not 167 The Life of the Bee always fly together, and that there will often be an interval of several seconds be¬ tween the different arrivals. As regards these communications, therefore, we must ask ourselves the question that Sir John Lubbock has solved as far as the ants are concerned. Do the comrades who flock to the treas¬ ure only follow the bee that first made the discovery, or have they been sent on by her, and do they find it through following her indications, her description of the place where it lies ? Between these two hypotheses, that refer directly to the extent and working of the bee’s intellect, there is obviously an enormous difference. The English savant has succeeded, by means of an elaborate and ingenious arrangement of gangways, corridors, moats full of water, and flying bridges, in establishing that the ants in such cases do no more than follow in the track of the pioneering 168 The Life of the Bee insect. With ants, that can be made to pass where one will, such experiments are possible; but for the bee, whose wings throw every avenue open, some other ex¬ pedient must of necessity be contrived. I imagined the following, which, though it gave no definite result, might yet, under more favourable conditions, and if organised more carefully, give rise to defi¬ nite and satisfactory conclusions. My study in the country is on the first floor, above a somewhat lofty room ; suf¬ ficiently high, therefore, to be out of the ordinary range of the bees’ flight, except at times when the chestnuts and lime trees are in bloom. And for more than a week before I started this experiment I had kept on my table an open comb of honey, without the perfume having at¬ tracted, or induced the visit of, a single bee. Then I went to a glass hive that close to the house, took an Italian 169 was The Life of the Bee bee, brought her to my study, set her on the comb, and marked her while she was feeding. When satisfied, she flew away and re¬ turned to the hive. I followed, saw her pass over the surface of the crowd, plunge her head into an empty cell, disgorge her honey, and prepare to set forth again. At the door of the hive I had placed a glass box, divided by a trap into two compart¬ ments. The bee flew into this box; and as she was alone, and no other bee seemed to accompany or follow her, I imprisoned her and left her there. I then repeated the experiment on twenty different bees in succession. When the marked bee reappeared alone, I imprisoned her as I had imprisoned the first. But eight of them came to the threshold of the hive and entered the box accompanied by two or three friends. By means of the trap I was able to separate the marked bee 1 70 The Life of the Bee from her companions, and to keep her a prisoner in the first compartment. Then, having marked her companions with a different colour, I threw open the second compartment and set them at liberty, myself returning quickly to my study to await their arrival. Now it is evi¬ dent that if a verbal or magnetic commu¬ nication had passed, indicating the place, describing the way, etc., a certain num¬ ber of the bees, having been furnished with this information, should have found their way to my room. I am compelled to admit that there came but a single one. Was this mere chance, or had she followed instructions received ? The experiment was insufficient, but circumstances pre¬ vented me from carrying it further. I released the