B E E. 



407 



Bee 



r.arvx. 



Eccs can 

 convert a 

 worker 

 into a 

 queen. 



the hive. When the egg is laid, the 

 bees supply the .. .-11 with the pollen of flowers, which 

 serves to feed the young worm coming frcm it. 



The eggs of all 'the three kinds of bees are hatch- 

 cd in three days ; a fact apparently of trifling import, 

 but which it is essential for the cultivator to learn. 

 A worker then remains live days in the vermicular 

 state ; a male six and a half; and a queen five. The 

 workers' worm occupies thirty-six hours in spinning 

 its silken envelope or coccoon ; in three days it 

 changes to a nymph ; and only on the twentieth day 

 of its existence does it become a complete or perfect 

 winged animal. The drones are still longer of at- 

 taining their last metamorphosis, which succeeds in 

 twenty-four days after the egg has been laid. But 

 the queen comes to perfection in sixteen days. 



Food is carried by the bees to the worms as they 

 require it : but when ready to transform to a nymph, 

 they are aware that it is no longer necessary ; on the 

 contrary, the mouth of the cell is sealed with a co- 

 vering of wax formed of concentric circles from the 

 edge, convex if including males, and flat if including 

 workers. The same cell may successively bring dif- 

 ferent workers to maturity : after one has left it, the 



lean the inside, and the mother again lays there ; 

 but the cells containing eggs which become queens 



,d no more than once. When the perfect in- 

 sect escapes, the cell is usually destroyed. 



While treating of the origin and imperfect state of 



we cannot omit observing, that although, ge- 

 nerally speaking, the queen is the parent of the 

 whole, yet there are some workers, (at least some bees 

 so much resembling workers, that there is no per- 

 ceptible difference,) which lay eggs. Their ovaries 

 are smaller, more fragile, and composed of fewer 



ts than those of queens; and the eggs, like 

 th eggs oi queens whose fecundation has been re- 

 male bees only, and neither queen3 

 nor workers. This singular fact, added to another 

 not less so, on which we shall immediately make a 

 few remarks, strongly tends to establish, that all work- 

 ing bees are originally of the female sex ; and that in 

 the ordinary case tli 11 ovaries are vitiated, and become 

 unfit for laying any eggs except those transforming 



tO 111 



M. Schirach, an eminent naturalist, discovered, that 

 in certain circumstances the animal destined to be- 

 come a worker could actually be converted into a 

 queen ; and that this conversion was in the power of 

 the bees, by means of a particular mode of treatment 

 bestowed on the worm while in an early stage. He 

 thence concluded, that every queen is originally a 

 worker, which, without the particular treatment ad- 

 minstered, would have remained a worker, but having 

 undergone this treatment, it is converted to a queen ; 

 and that the bees, to attain the conversion, selected 

 the worm when three days old. Nevertheless it is in- 

 dubitable, that specific eggs are laid in royal cells 

 and hatched into qn iich, according to the 



most credible and satisfactory experiments, never 

 would have produced workers. It is surely to avoid 

 the fatal consequences winch would attend twenty or 

 thirty thousand animals on the los3 of a single life, 

 that they have been endowed with such uncommon 

 prerogatives. 



Immediately on the loss or removal of a queen, the 

 whole hive is a scene of tumult and disorder: the ** 

 bees seem to anticipate their own destruction, by the 

 precaution they take to guard against it. Should 

 there be neither eggs nor brood in the combs, they 

 will infallibly perish ; their instinctive faculties arc 

 lost, they have no object for which their labours are 

 united, they cease to collect honey and prepare wax, 

 and in a short time they disappear and die. But if 

 there be brood in the combs, the industry of the bees 

 continues unabated; for by the proceeding which 

 they follow, they know that their loss will be repaired. 

 Having selected a worm three days old or less, they 

 sacrifice three of the contiguous cells, that the cell of 

 the worm may be formed into one adapted to breed a 

 queen. They next supply it with the necessary food, 

 which is not the common farina, pollen, or bee-bread, 

 on which the young of workers feed, but a peculiar 

 kind of paste or jelly, of a pungent taste, which is reser- 

 ved for queens alone. A cylindrical enclosure is raised 

 around the worm, whereby its cell becomes a perfect 

 tube with its original rhomboidal bottom ; for that part 

 remains untouched. Were it injured, the fabric of 

 the other three cells on the opposite side of the comb 

 would be deranged, which would be a needless waste. 

 The ceil is still horizontal like the rest in the combs, 

 and thus remains during the first three days of the 

 existence of the worm ; but the bees in prosecuting 

 its enlargement, alter its direction, and form it to 

 hang perpendicularly, as all those cells do which have 

 been inhabited by queens. In performing this essen- 

 tial part of the operation, they do not scruple to de- 

 stroy the worms surrounding the tube, and use the 

 wax of their cells in constructing the new part, which 

 they apply at right angles to the first, and work 

 downwards. The cell is then of a pyramidal figure, 

 usually near the edges of the combs ; it insensibly de- 

 creases from the base, and is closed at the top when 

 the included worm is ready to undergo its transfor- 

 mation to a nymph. When reaching maturity, the 

 seal is broken, and a queen comes forth qualified to 

 fulfil every indispensible function on which the pre- 

 servation of so many thousand lives depends. Work- 

 ing bees have therefore the power of effecting the 

 metamorphosis of one of their own species, to avert 

 the effects of a loss which would prove,the utter ruin 

 of the whole colony. 



A question extremely abstruse, and difficult in the 

 physiology of animated existence, here presents itself.. 

 Whence does it happen that bees are susceptible of so 

 great a change ? and that an animal naturally sterile, 

 and possessing certain definite habits and properties, 

 which it is death to interrupt or alter, should be con- 

 verted into a creature of different figure, uncommon 

 fertility, and endowed with instincts bearing little or no 

 resemblance in the one state compared with the other * 

 Some naturalists have endeavoured to seek the cause 

 of this singular fact in the food with which the larva 

 is supplied in its cell. That food, they affirm, is not 

 the same as what is given to the young of common 

 bees, as may easily be discovered by its taste and 

 consistency. It possesses a certain quality which af- 

 fects die organization of the insect, it enlarges the- 

 size, expands the ovaries, and operates the whole al- 

 teration. By similar reasoning they endeavour to 



Bee. 



