494 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



December 



UNEDITED LETTERS OF HUBER 



(Continued from November) 



Causes of Swarming — Royal Cells — • 



Jealousy of the Queen — Travel 



Supplies of the Swarms 



Lausanne, June 30, 1828. 



You are a musician, my dear girl ; 

 if I had Ivnown that you had bees at 

 Bois d'Ely and swarms to expect, I 

 would have called upon your sensi- 

 tiveness and upon your ear for music 

 for an observation which I have often 

 made and which might have interested 

 you as it did me; let us hope that it is 

 not too late. 



Let us suppose that you have just 

 heard the charivari which indicates 

 everywhere the issue of a swarm; you 

 come running to witness it; there it 

 iv- above your head. I see you in the 

 midst of many bees, enjoying this fine 

 sight, without being frightened by 

 the tumultuous bustle of so many be- 

 ings which, we are told, are armed 

 with stings that are so dangerous — 

 but do not believe it. 



It has been recognized — -and those 

 who know how to care for them will 

 tell you — that bees are never milder 

 than on the days when they swarm. 

 Yet to secure their swarms people 

 treat them in a manner that might ir- 

 ritate them. Those bees, so irascible 

 and vindictive, are never thus in such 

 an occasion and when the proposition 

 is swarming, the redoubtable sting is 

 neither felt nor seen. 



Take note, I pray you, of a truly 

 balsamic odor which spreads about 

 you ; the odor of honey, which this re- 

 calls, often allays their anger. I 

 have caused many fights to end by 

 throwing a few drops of honey upon 

 bees which appeared to be furious. 

 Is honey, for them, when it is scat- 

 tered in their atmosphere, a talisman 

 which brings them back to their nat- 

 ural gentleness and keeps them from 

 becoming angry? 



Do you hear any discord in this 

 numerous concert? This soft hum- 

 ming is, to my sense of hearing, com- 

 posed only of accurate tones. This 

 aerial music goes straight to my 

 heart; I acknowledge that I never 

 heard it indifferently; is it possible 

 that what I find in it expressive, 

 touching, melancholy and even sol- 

 emn, comes only from myself or my 

 imagination? I will not deny the 

 natural exaltation which rises within 

 me through this interesting event and 

 this apparent agreement in will and 

 sentiment in beings which are placed 

 (by us it is true) almost at the foot 

 of the scale. 



Although I have not said a word to 

 you about it, I am sure that you will 

 divine at least one of the reasons 

 which cause the periodical departure 

 of swarms; that which is true, wise, 

 useful, may be often foreseen. To 

 help you a little, however, permit me 

 to use a comparison which is within 

 reach of the master and of the pupil 

 and convenient for both. 



If you had been but a simple shep- 

 herdess, would your kindness and 

 your natural reasoning allow you to 

 retain your sheep or your goats within 

 a space of pasture that could feed but 



half of them? No, doubtless you 

 would not doom them to the horrors 

 of famine. It is to preserve the bees 

 from this danger that nature has in- 

 structed them to seek, like nomad 

 tribes, a salvation in periodical mi- 

 grations. 



The queen, which you know only by 

 reputation, is the motive which directs 

 the multitude, whose mother she is. 

 They say that she can produce, in a 

 year, from sixty to eighty thousand 

 brood. This is enough to make up the 

 swarm which is, the following year 

 and perhaps sooner, to seek far away 

 the sustenance necessary to the 

 keeping of the new population. 



(Note of the translator. — Huber 

 did not yet know, as we do now, that 

 the queen lays hundreds of thousands 

 of eggs, instead of tens of thousands, 

 neither did he know that which was 

 learned later by the introduction of 

 bees of different colors, that bees live 

 only a short time in summer, an aver- 

 age of about 45 days.) 



As the substances which are suit- 

 able for the food of bees cannot be 

 increased indefinitely in a limited 

 space, they have been taught to seek 

 far away the food which is required 

 for a constantly growing population ; 

 it is for this that wings have been 

 given them, with the knowledge for 

 using them. Let us study now what 

 has been prepared to determine their 

 migration. 



Accept my word, dear girl, until 

 you see it with your own eyes. I as- 

 sure you that I have not accepted 

 anything till I have secured positive 

 proof. The care with which Burnens 

 has informed his master and friend 

 has been a great help in this occasion. 



But I must ask of you here again 

 much faith and docility; for will you 

 readily believe that an insect, a sim- 

 ple bee be susceptible to jealousy? 

 You must accept this statement, for 

 nothing is truer; all you require is 

 the evidence. For this purpose a few 

 details are necessary. 



You know that a wax-comb is com- 

 posed of a greater or less number of 

 contiguous cavities which have been 

 named cells; it is in those little lodges 

 that the bees deposit their crops of 

 honey or of pollen and that the 

 queen lays her eggs when they are fit 

 to receive them. 



Have you noticed some openings 

 much larger than the cells and with 

 no regularity about them? They are 

 not the result of accident; the bees 

 have left those spaces in the thickness 

 of the combs. Through this aiTange- 

 ment, whenever they are in a hurry 

 to travel over both sides, they can do 

 it much more promptly than if they 

 had to go around the edge of the 

 comb. It is, if you please, like pub- 

 lic squares or alleys; in our cities sim- 

 ilar spaces have the same utility. 

 Among the bees they have still an- 

 other; it is there that they build the 

 royal cells of which you have prob- 

 ably heard. In their original shape, 

 those cells resemble an acorn cup, 

 later they will become, as the work 

 progresses, inverted pyramids, at first 



more or less truncated. It is when 

 the royal cell is only in the shape of 

 a cup and is not deeper than two or 

 three lines (one-fourth to one-sixth 

 inch), that it may receive the eggs 

 that the queen lays in it, perhaps in 

 passing, while she goes from one side 

 of the comb to the other. I am in- 

 clined to believe that it is a tiick de- 

 vised by the architect bees. That 

 which confirms this conjecture is that 

 the bees, being unable to build the 

 royal cells horizontally in the comb 

 and give the same direction to the 

 pyramidal part without extending it 

 too far between the parallel combs, in 

 the space reserved for passage, could 

 do nothing better than fasten the 

 royal cell cups vertically, under the 

 edge of the spaces intended for pas- 

 sage; then the pyramidal part could 

 be fastened to the cup and extended 

 vertically in the open space below. 



There is another reason which ex- 

 plains fairly well why the royal cells 

 must not be built in the thickness of 

 the comb. The queens, larger and 

 longer than the workers for whom the 

 ordinary cells are intended, would not 

 find in them a space sufficient for 

 their ulterior development. 



The queens, in a hurry for laying 

 and finding all the small cells occu- 

 pied, pass to the other side of the 

 comb through one of these passages, 

 but perceiving the orifice of the out- 

 lined cells, insert their abdomen into 

 them after having ascertained that 

 they are not already occupied ; they 

 fall thus in the snare which has been 

 prepared for them. 



As fast as the small cells are 

 emptied, through the hatching of the 

 worker bees, the queen lays in them, 

 as well as in the different cell cups 

 which she finds open and empty. Her 

 eggs will produce successively royal 

 larvae and nymphs more or less ad- 

 vanced. It is not only by supplying 

 a broader and differently located 

 lodging that the bees bring to the 

 queenly condition those which were 

 intended only for simple workers. A 

 more exquisite food, perhaps more 

 stimulating and more abundant, 

 brings about the extension of the 

 queen organs in the cradle and espe- 

 cially the development of the sexual 

 organs. Mr. Bonnet, during the visit 

 which he paid me at Pregny, saw in 

 one of my hives, from which I had re- 

 moved the queen, more than 20 royal 

 cells begun. 



A very singular and very import- 

 ant thing which has not been suffi- 

 ciently noticed and of which I under- 

 stand but now the usefulness, is the 

 perfect coincidence of the laying of 

 drone eggs, always obsei'ved in the 

 season of swarming, with the build- 

 ing of royal cells. A secret link as- 

 suredly exists between these two 

 great preparations. 



Here we are again reduced to ad- 

 miration, is it not enough? Without 

 this arrangement the young queens 

 would run the risk of never becoming 

 mothers, or of securing but imperfect 

 mating in case their fecundation 

 should be too long delayed (See next 



