THE BEE. 



519 



an oblong bladder. Children that live in 

 country places, are well acquainted with this 

 bladder; and destroy many bees, to come at 

 their store of honey. When a bee has suffi- 

 ciently filled its first stomach, it returns back 

 to the hive, where it disgorges the honey into 

 one of the cells. It often happens that the bee 

 delivers its store to some other, at the mouth 

 of the hive, and flies off for a fresh supply. 

 Some honeycombs are always left open for 

 common use ; but many others are stopped up, 

 till there is a necessity of opening them. Each 

 of these is covered carefully with wax ; so 

 close, that the covers seem to be made at the 

 very instant the fluid is deposited within them. 

 Having thus given a cursory description of 

 the insect, individually considered, and of the 

 habitation it forms, we next come to its social 

 habits and institutions : and, in considering 

 this little animal attentively, after the necessary 

 precautions for the immediate preservation of 

 the community, its second care is turned to the 

 continuance of posterity. How numerous 

 soever the multitude of bees may appear in 

 one swarm, yet they all owe their original to 

 a single parent, which is called the Queen-Bee. 

 It is indeed surprising that a single insect 

 shall, in one summer, give birth to above 

 twenty thousand young : but, upon opening 

 her body the wonder will cease; as the num- 

 ber of eggs appearing at one time, amounts to 

 five thousand. 1 This animal, whose existence 



1 On the conversion of the larva of a Worker into a 

 Queen. Bees, when deprived of their queen, are en- 

 dowed by nature with the power of remedying this ca- 

 lamity, by converting a worker larva into a royal one ; 

 and, by means of a cell of a larger size, and of a peculiar 

 kind of nourishment, of producing a female that shall be, 

 to all intents and purposes, a queen or mother-bee, cap- 

 able of perpetuating her kind. The discovery of this 

 singular fact is generally attributed to Schirach, and, 

 probably, with justice ; for, although the practice of mak- 

 ing artificial swarms, which can only be effected by 

 causing the production of artificial queens, is said to have 

 pervailed amongst the modern Greeks and Italians from 

 a very early period, it does not follow, nor does it appear 

 from any authentic documents, that they were aware of 

 the reason why. The manner in which Schirach made 

 the discovery is interesting: Having used a great 

 quantity of smoke in some of his operations, the bees 

 were so annoyed by it that numbers of them left the hive, 

 and, amongst them, the queen. Knowing the conse- 

 quences of her loss, he sought for her diligently, but in vain. 

 Next morning he observed a cluster of bees about the 

 size of an apple on the prop of the hive whose queen had 

 fled ; here he discovered a queen, and, having carried 

 her to the entrance of the hive which had lost its own, she 

 was immediately surrounded by the bees, and treated in 

 such a manner as plainly announced that she was their 

 queen. " What was my astonishment," he proceeds, 

 " when, wishing to introduce her among the combs, I 

 saw that the bees remaining had already planned and 

 almost finished three royal cells ! Struck with the ac- 

 tivity and sagacity of these creatures, to save themselves 

 from impending destruction, I was filled with admira- 

 tion, and adored the infinite goodness of God in the care 

 taken to perpetuate his works. Having carried away two 



is of so much importance to her subjects, may 

 easily be distinguished from the rest by her 

 size, and the shape of her body. On her 

 safety depends the whole welfare of the com- 

 monwealth ; and the attentions paid her by 

 all the rest of the swarm, evidently show the 

 dependence her subjects have upon her 

 security. If this insect be carefully observed, 



of the cells to ascertain whether the bees would continue 

 their operations, I beheld, next morning, with the utmost 

 surprise, that they had removed all the food from around 

 the third worm left behind, on purpose to prevent its 

 conversion to a queen." The fact of this power possessed 

 by the bees is so extraordinary, that its reality was at 

 first called in question by several eminent naturalists, 

 among others, by the justly celebrated Bonnet. This 

 naturalist was at last, however, convinced of its reality 

 by experiments instituted by himself, and, satisfied that 

 all the working-bees are females of imperfect organisa- 

 tion, expressed his opinion that the evolution of the germ 

 is effected by the action of the prolific matter as a stim- 

 ulant, as a substantial nutriment suitable for that pur- 

 pose ; and he supposes that a certain quality of food ad- 

 ministered more copiously than in ordinary cases, may 

 unfold those organs in the larvae of bees that never would 

 have appeared without it. He conceived, also, that a 

 habitation, like a queen-cell, considerably more spacious, 

 and differently placed, is absolutely necessary to the com- 

 plete development of organs, which the new nutriment 

 may cause to grow in all directions. It furnishes a sur- 

 prising evidence of the slow degrees by which scientific 

 facts make their way, if not essential to general utility, 

 when we consider that to this day, the knowledge of this 

 singularity in the natural history of this insect, is confined 

 almost exclusively to apiarians, and even rejected by 

 some of them. It has, however, been confirmed by so 

 many experiments instituted by many different individ- 

 uals, that no unprejudiced mind can withhold its assent 

 from its truth. 



The proceedings of the bees, in order to supply the loss 

 of their queen, are extremely interesting. In about 

 twenty-four hours they are aware of the misfortune that 

 has befallen them, and, without loss of time, they set 

 about repairing the disaster. They fix upon a worm not 

 more than three days old, demolish the three contiguous 

 cells, and raise around it a regular cylindrical inclosure. 

 At the end of three days, the workers change the direc- 

 tion of the cell, which has hitherto been horizontal, into 

 a perpendicular position, working downwards till itassume 

 the appearance of a stalactite. In due time it is sealed, 

 and the larva undergoes its metamorphosis into a royal 

 nymph. Huber gives a detail of some interesting ex- 

 periments on this head, the substance only of which we 

 can present to our readers. He deprived a hive of its 

 queen, and put into it some pieces of comb containing 

 worker eggs. The same day several cells were enlarged 

 by the bees, and converted into royal cells, and the larvae 

 supplied with a profusion of jelly. He then removed 

 these worms from the royal cells, and substituted for 

 them as many common worms from workers' cells. The 

 bees did not seem aware of the change, they watched 

 over the new worms as intently as over those chosen by 

 themselves ; they continued enlarging the cells, and 

 closed them at the usual time. At the proper time, two 

 queens were hatched, almost at the same moment, of 

 the largest size, and well formed in every respect. Noth- 

 ing could be more conclusive than this experiment. It 

 demonstrated that bees have the power of converting the 

 worms of workers into queens, since they succeeded in 

 procuring them by operating on worms not chosen by 

 themselves, but selected for them. Naturalist's Library. 

 Edin. 1840. 



