BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
Cheshire speaks of as many as thirty of these cells being constructed in succession. There is not much economy in permitting this. It keeps a large number of the bees from field labour, and the secreting of so much royal jelly necessitates the consumption of a lot of material that could be far better utilised in the rearing of brood. When there is such a superabundance of queen-cell building going on they should be destroyed after selecting three or four of the best, or as many as may be required. Of course, these remarks do not apply to nucleus swarms that are kept especially for queen-raising. In addition to the seven cells in the hive referred to, there were other cells hanging here and there in various stages of maturity. The abnormal abundance of developing queens in this hive resulted in four swarms issuing therefrom at intervals of about eight days each. No. 4 shows the vacated cells from which can be judged, approximately, the difference between the ages of its inmates as they emerged therefrom in the order leitered from \(a\) to \(d\) respectively. These cells, as before stated, are never used the second time. The thimble-like form, as seen in No. 1, is gradually reduced until it assumes the form of an acorn cup seen in the same figure.
Spring-time is the season when queen-raising is carried on most vigorously. When pollen and honey are coming in abundantly, the bees put forth the whole of their united strength to fulfil the command to be "'fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth.' It is also the season when artificial queen-raising is most successful. Nos. 5 and 6 will give some idea of how queens can be raised artificially, and the number that can be produced at one time on the same frame in nucleus hives. These frames were produced by Mr. A. A. Roberts, of Muswellbrook, and resulted in the production of upwards of twenty queens of excellent type and perfect health. No bee-keeper can expect to be successful, no matter how good the season may be, unless he pracises queen-raising.
The queen--which to the inexperienced differs in nothing but size from an ordinary worker, although in reality she is differently found in every part from that of the common herd - when she is laying, which is the only function she has to perform in,he domestic economy of bee-life, she moves slowly and gently from cell to cell, followed in her progress by a number of workers who are constantly seen to touch her with their antennae, but in no way stopping or impeding her progress or movements, always moving to one side, or backing out of her way, as the movements of the queen may require. As the queen proceeds she puts her head first into a cell, as if for the purpose of satisfying herself that it is not already occupied by an egg. Then withdraws, advances a few steps, clutches firmly the edges of some of the cells surrounding that already inspected. Lifting her body in a graceful curve, she inserts it in the cell until the abdomen is almost entirely hidden from sight. For a moment she is still, then she withdraws and proceeds to another cell in like manner, and so on, from cell to cell. If she is a good laying queen she will attend to each cell in rotation. This is one of the points in a good queen--laying evenly and regularly throughout the whole of one side of a comb. In examining a comb of hatching brood, it is frequently to be noticed that the queen appears to have selected a certain starting-point, and then laid around this common centre, enlarging her sphere of laying as the circle extends, and this process goes on in the same cells year after year.
The queen cell is frequently formed on the base of destroyed workers' cells, by enlarging the walls thereof. The egg that has been chosen from which to evolve a queen, after it is hatched and been fed for a few hours, is thus surrounded by a new building. The position the larva will occupy now differs. Instead of lying on its back horizontally, it will hang pendulously, head downwards. As the little innate increases in bulk, so the walls of its home will be enlarged to accommodate it, and large quantities of food will be placed therein. When she reaches the nymph or chrysalis stage, the young queen partly enshrouds herself in a cocoon, remaining hidden until she is ready to emerge, which is in about sixteen days.
Having completed her series of wonderful transformations--egg to larva, larva to chrysalis, chrysalis to a perfect insect--she prepares herself for exit. Six or seven days ago the workers were very anxious to make her a prisoner by enclosing her within the cell, now they are as solicitous for her escape. The innate had spun a cocoon over the entrance to the cell, and the bees had covered it with a mixture of pollen and was. Now, knowing that her departure from the cradle is at hand, they remove that covering, leaving the cocoon once more exposed. The innate, freeing herself from her last moult, exercises her powerful serrated jaws as a pair of shears, and works away cutting through the tough covering she had been at such pains to construct a short time since.
As she cuts so she turns in her cell, until she cuts a lid almost clear away, but frequently hanging by a silk hinge, then she is ready to make her escape. But, perhaps circumstances are not sufficiently ripe for her to take charge of the hive. The mother bee may not be ready to quit, the weather may not be what is desired for swarming, or there may be a sudden cessation in the honey flow. In the latter case she is executed without much ceremony, but in the two former cases she is again sealed up and fed where she is by the bees until the conditions that caused her re-imprisonment are removed; then she is permitted to enter the busy home, and ready to commence the journey from maturity to maternity.
The beehive and its inhabitants are like the conjurer's inexhaustible bottle, only there is no trickery about it; nevertheless, they contain a never-ending theme. Dr. Johnson said: ''I have often amused myself with thinking how different a place London is to different people,'' and I have said, if not in so many words, the same in regard to the beehive and its inhabitants. The scientist, from his standpoint, sees only the wonders of the sociality of insects and their wonderful architecture. Both of these, to the uninitiated, are mysterious adaptations to the domestic economy in bee-life. Solomon of old held up the ant as an example of industry--''Consider the ant.'' The moralist of to-day points the improvident and lazy to the thrift of the hive--''Consider the bee.'' Paterfamilias takes his text from the same source from which to reprove and improve his share of the coming generation. The commercial man looks upon bees only as a source from which financial profits may be obtained. The school-master refers his class to them (the bees) as one of Nature's greatest object lessons, teenning with incentives for the acquisition of knowledge. I venture to affirm there is not a school-teacher in the Public Service but has given an object lesson to his class on some phase or other of bee-life. If all the good things that have been said in schools about bees were gathered together, what an interesting volume they would make! Every writer on natural history, of course, must say something about bees; but how they let their fancy rove from facts! Neither is there an insect in the whole entomological catalogue that has had so much poetry written about it as the bee. And what wonder-imaginations the poets have taken into rhyme!
The most interesting point of any and everything is the centre from which radiate the facts which give knowledge. By far too many beekeepers ''have eyes and see not'' beyond the commercial centre. The axis around which revolves all the interesting facts of the bee-home is the queen. The queen is the centre of success for the commercial beekeeper; she is also the centre of failure. The whole of the domestic economy of the hive is centred in her, and all the interesting lessons given and learned on the subject are as nothing when the queen is absent.
The queen bee has been studied and written about more than any other innate of the hive, or the female of any other species of insects; nevertheless, the queens of other species of bees are full of interest.
When a young queen first emerges from the cell she does not leave the hive until she is fixed as sole head of the establishment. She remains in what is known as the queen cell till she is fully developed, and ready for all emergencies. Usually she remains in the hive perfectly contented for five or six days after she escapes from the cell. During this period she is treated only as a commoner by the worker bees. After that period she takes her marital flight. Prior to her leaving the hive for this purpose the air resounds with the deep sound produced by the numerous drones (male bees) that are on the wing. The excursions of the drones are only made on fine days, and immediately around about the hive from which they have made their exit; and the reason of these flights is in quest of queens. When these drones are on the wing, the queen, if she be sufficiently mature, soon follows. If prevented by some of the modern appliances now in use she exhibits the utmost anxiety to escape, by searching in the most anxious manner every available nook that may, perchance, afford her exit. Even if there be no impediment to prevent her from taking her marital flight, she appears to be greatly agitated, as if full of timidity or anxiety. She decks herself in no bridal costume, but, as she is about to sally forth, she is a thing of beauty. She is all aglow in her most beautiful tints. She is small--not much larger than an ordinary worker; it is true, perhaps a little more _lady-like_, but, like all brides, she puts on her most fascinating looks and graces. Among all the drones that are out awaiting her advent there is but one that will be chosen as bridgeroom; all the others are to be best men, or perhaps only second and third best, for in this case the race is to the one that is most expert and alert of wing. The bride, full of apparent coyness, advances, circles, and recedes, pursued by a number of the lords of the bee creation. With the most agile the gordian knot is tied. The final matri-inonial ceremony is completed mid-air. She that went forth as the blushing bride returns to her home in the earliest stage of maternity--not like the completion of other weddings, where the bride returns to her home on the arm of her lord, but the queen bee returns alone, leaving her lord not even to follow her. Ife, poor fellow, dies on the battlefield of love--not killed by his disappointed rivals, but dies as Nature has willed it. I have said elsewhere that all bees are posthumous. No drone that is in the hive, or that is on the wing, has ever been a father. He may become one, but he must pay the penalty his father had to pay before him.
The mother bee returns to the hive a fecundated--a complete female bee, now capable of becoming a mother. Indeed, had she never met with a consort she would nevertheless become a mother, but only to lay eggs that would produce males, and males only.
_The fecundation of a queen bee.--_With nearly all other oviparous animals, it is the _ovule_ that is fecundated; but with bees it is the _animal_ herself, and she recundates the egg according to requirements, and, to a certain extent, regulates their sexuality. The number of eggs the queen bee lays in the cells is in accordance to the strength of the colony. She will not lay more in the cells than there are inmates to cover them. Ofttimes a queen will be so prolific she _will_ lay her eggs, although there are not sufficient bees in the hive to cover them. These supernumerary eggs are wasted. This should be an incentive to bee men to keep strong colonies. Langstroth says: "It is most amusing to see how the supernumerary eggs of the queen are disposed of. If the workers are too few to take charge of all her eggs, or there is a deficiency of bee-bread to nourish the young, or if, for any reason, she does not judge best to deposit then in the cells, she stands upon a comb and simply extrudes them from her oviduct, the workers devouring them as fast as they are laid. I have frequently witnessed, in observing hives, the sagacity of the queen in thus economising her necessary work, instead of depositing her eggs in the cells where they are not wanted."
On her return to the hive after her marital flight she is received by the workers, although not her own children, with all the signs of love and affection that children can bestow upon a parent. You must know there is nothing regal about the queen bee; although she is called such, she is only the mother bee. Before she went out the workers treated her as one of themselves, excepting that the nurse bees occasionally fed her. Now nothing is too good for her. Ife every want is attended to with lavish kindness. She is about to become a mother. Yet what a mother! The only maternal trait she possesses is that of egg-laying.
In two or three days after she returns to the hive the act of laying commences. So eager is she in this duty that I have frequently seen her depositing an egg in cell after cell without even taking the trouble to note if she had not made a mistake now and then--I mean a mistake in not leaving a cell empty. During the earlier months of her laying she uses the workers' cells for worker eggs only. Later on she will lay in both sized cells--drone and workers. Then I have known her make mistakes by dropping a drone egg--that is, an egg that will produce a drone--in a worker's cell; and, as far as I know, neither queen or workers discover the mistake till it is too late, when they rectify it, as far as they can, by elongating the worker cell so as to make up to the little innate what is lacking in width. Iere her motherly instinct ends. All other domestic duties are delegated to the worker. Theirs it is to attend to the egg when hatching, and to the developing larvae. What a wonderful division of maternal duties! The queen, with the power of being a mother without the power of being able to administer to the wants of her offspring. The worker, with power to attend to, care for, and nourish, even to the supplying of the earliest necessary food--bee milk--but not the power of being a mother--that is, not the power of reproducing her species.
Having taken a cursory glance of the mother bee--not from the cradle to the grave, but from maturity to the first stage in maternity; not from a scientific or a practical standpoint--but with a view to interest those outside the practical and scientific sphere of bee-life, I will now retrace the steps, and go back to the beginning--the egg that hatches out a queen. But is the egg the beginning? Which was first--the egg or the bee? The queen laid the egg and the egg produced the queen; that is a never-ending cycle--writing around and around a ring.
We know that frequently after returning from her marital flight she begins laying after two or three days' rest. Before she took that flight her ovum was surcharged with ovules; these ovules are germs of matter--(a philosopher once said matter was never mind, and mind was no matter);--but her spermatheca was empty. The spermatheca is an internal sac to receive and to retain the life-germs. The object of the flight I have referred to was to get this empty sac charged with these life-germs. You will remember I said the egg was not focundated, but the queen.
The germs of life received by her in her aerial flight from one, and only one, contact must number thousands upon thousands of these germs. Once becoming fertile this fertility remains for two, three, and sometimes as long as five years, but there is never a fresh supply of life germs from the male. Every seed of a plant requires a grain of pollen to fructify it. In like manner, every ovule of matter produced by the queen requires a germ of life to fecundate it. Every germ that is discharged from the spermatheca so far exhausts the supply. The health and strength of the queen may be such that the whole supply of these life-germs may become exhausted; nevertheless, the queen will still go on laying, and the eggs will hatch out living bees. They are always drones. As the germs in the spermatheca diminish in number, so the male population of the hive is augmented. The first reproductive efforts of a queen result in a progeny of female bees--workers and queens. The final efforts produce males--drones. The line of demarcation between the queen's powers of producing males and females is not a sudden cessation of her power to produce females, but is a gradual one and at first unnoticed. As the numerical strength of workers diminishes, so that of the drones increases. How is it so? Just now I said the virgin's spermatheca was empty, and she went out to get it charged, so that she may be capable of reproduction. Then I said that when these life-germs she has received become exhausted, she still goes on laying, and produces living descendants. Does not this appear to be contradictory? Yes; but it is true, nevertheless. St. Paul said, in referring to a future life, ''Behold, I show you a mystery.'' I am doing the same now in relation to bee-life. How do I know? Because, if from any cause, natural or artificial, the queen bee is prevented from taking her marital light, the result is the same as if she were an old queen, and in the stages of reproductive decay I have mentioned. But if she be debarred from the power of flight, cannot the same results be produced on terra-firna or within the hive? No. Because the results, of a mid-air meeting, are productive of a male and female progeny; so a queen not having the power of flight, even if she be deprived of that power as soon as she emerges from the cell, produces only males, and it has always been so. ''How can these things be?'' You will remember I said it is the queen that became impregnated, and not the egg--the ovary, and not the ovum--a method of reproduction not uncommon in the insect world; but ia the higher orders of oviparous terrestrial animals this method is rare; whilst, on the other hand, aquatic animals, with the fishes especially so, it is the egg that is feecundated, and that, too, in most cases, after extrusion.
## Chapter 5 The Drone.
Drones, or male bees, as will be seen, differ very much from the queen or other inmates of the live. Indeed, so much so, as to lead unobservant people into the belief that they belong to a different variety of the same species rather than being male members of the same family in which they are found. On this account drones have been very greatly maligned and looked upon as interlopers rather than factors equal in importance to that of the queen bee. That they exert a pernicious influence in the colony to which they have uninvitedly attached themselves; are dangerous to the well-being of the swarm; militate against its increase and prosperity; and operate against the financial success of bee-keepers, are opinions still held by far too many bee-keepers. The word drone is associated with idieness, worthlessness, and a sponger on, or a vampire of society. It has been borrowed from the supposed uselessness of the drone-bee. A quaint old writer says:--''The drone is a gross, stingless bee, that spendeth his time in gluttony and idieness, for howsoever he brave it, with his round velvet cap, his side gown, his full paunch, and his loud voice, yet is he but an idle companion, living by the sweat of others' brows. I'e worketh not at all, either at home or abroad, and spendeth as much as two labourers; you shall never find his law without a drop of the purest nectar. In the heat of the day he flieth abroad, aloft, and about, and that with no small noise, as though he would do some great act, but it is only for his pleasure, and to get him a stomach, and then returns he presently to his cheer.''
That drones have ''loud voices,'' and that in the heat of the day they fly ''abroad, aloft, and about,'' is a part of the economy of their nature, and is a factor in the perpetuating of the fitest of their race.
The external anatomy of the male bee (drone) differs very greatly from that of the females (queen or workers). In cell accommodation he occupies a greater space. Drone-cells are only four to the lineal inch, whilst the worker-cells go five to that measurement.
The cappiings of drones'-cells are more convex than those of workers, and as in the case of both queen and worker, are porous. They contain not nearly so many pores as those of the former, but far more than that of the latter. When the inmates of these cells have completed their larval stage and are entering upon that of the chrysalides, they are sealed or capped over with a mixture of wax and pollen. The shape and texture of theappings are such that they are easily thrust off by the mature innate. The inmates of the cells spin the cocoon by which they are enclosed, but the construction of the cappings is the work of nurse bees. The cappings of brood-cells differ greatly from those of honey cells: these latter are not nearly so convex--in fact, are in the centre slightly concave, so as to more easily resist the pressure of the honey within; they are, moreover, formed entirely of wax, and are therefore air-tight.
In developing, the drone goes through the same metamorphoses as the other inmates, but the time occupied: 'tecrin is longer. From the laying of the egg to its hatching occ_ipes three days, he remains six and a-half days in a larval form, then changes into a chrysalis and becomes a perfect insect in from twenty-four to twenty-five days. During his larval stage he is fed for about the first four days on 55.91 albumen, 11.9 fatty substances, and sugar 9.57 parts, but as the larva advances in age the two former are decreased and the sugar increased, the average being 43.79, 8.32, and 24.03 respectively.
In the wing he is more expansive, as the following measurements of Cheshire will show:
\begin{tabular}{l c c c} & Length of Anterior Wing Wing & Length of Posterior Wing & Ratioa of United Area, \\ Worker & 38 & 28 & 5 \\ Queen & 41 & 29 & 6 \\ Drone & 49 & 35 & 9 \\ \end{tabular}