BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
"When the queen flies abroad, the fleetest drone is more likely to succeed in his addresses than another, and thus he impresses upon postcritity some part of his own superior activity and energy. The slow and weak in the race die without heirs, so that the survival of the fittest is not an accident, but a pre-determination. In previous chapters we have considered his highly-developed eyes, meeting at the vertex of his head, his multitudinous smell-hollows, and his strong large wings, the advantage of which now appears in a clearer light; his quickness in discovering a mate, whose neighborhood is to him filled with irresistible odours, and his ability in keeping her in view during pursuit, are no less helpful to his purpose than fleetness on the wing...."--(Cheshire.)
**1S8.** The drone perishes in the act of impregnating the queen. Although, when cut into two pieces, each piece will retain its vitality for a long time, we accidentally ascertained, in the Summer of 1S52, that if his abdomen is gently pressed, and sometimes if several are closely held in the warm hand, the male organ will often be permanently extruded, with a motion very like the popping of treated pop-eorn; and the insect, with a shiver, will curl up and die, as quickly as if blasted with the lightning's stroke. This singular provision is unquestionably intended to give additional security to the queen when she leaves her hive to have intercourse with the drone. Huber first discovered that she returned with the male organ torn from the drone, and still adhering to her body. If it were not for this arrangement, her _spermatheca_ could not be filled, unless she remained so long in the air with the drone, as to incur a very great risk of being devoured by birds. In one instance, some days after the impregnation of a queen, we found the male organ, in a dried state, adhering so firmly to her body, that it could not be removed without tearing her to pieces.
**Fig. 37.**
HEAD OF DRONE.
**189**. The number of drones in a hive is often very great, amounting not merely to hundreds, but sometimes to thousands. As a single one will impregnate a queen for life, it would seem that only a few should be reared. But as sexual intercourse always takes place high up in the air, the young queens.
must necessarily leave the hive; and it is very important to their safety that they should be sure to find a drone without being compelled to make frequent excursions; for being larger than workers, and less active on the wing, "uneens are more
Fig. 38.
sexual organs of Drone.
\(a\),\(a\), testicles; \(b\),\(b\), mucous glands: c. seminal duct; \(d\), part in which the spermatophore is formed; \(c\), hollow horns and penis.
exposed to be caught by birds, or destroyed by sudden gusts of wind.
In a large Apiary, a few drones in each live, or the number usually found in one, would suffice. Under sneh circumstances bees are not in a state of nature, like a colony living in a forest, which often has no neighbors for miles.
Fig 39.
PENIS AND SPERMATOZODS.
(Much magnified, After Barbo.)A good colony, even in our climate, sometimes sends out three or more swarms, and in the tropical climates, of which the bee is probably a native, they increase with astonishing rapidity. Every new swarm, except the first, is led off by a young queen; and as she is never impregnated until she has been established as the head of a separate family, it is important that each should be accompanied by a goodly number of drones; this requires the production of a large number in the parent-hive.
**190**. This necessity no longer exists when the bee is domesticated, since several colonies are kept in the same place, and the breeding of so many drones should be discouraged. Their brood takes useful space that might as well be occupied with worker-broad. One thousand food-for-nothing drones take up as much breeding-space as fifteen hundred workers (224), and require as much food, with negative results. Some lives, in a state of nature, produce so many drones that a great part of the surplus crop is disposed of by these voracious loafers. Besides, the comparatively large volume of the male orrains, in connection with the glutony of the drones, explains why they usually void their deletions in the hive, while workers retain them till they are on the wing (73), and why the cells of the eonbs of hives which have a large quantity of these gormands, become dark and thick sooner than the others.
The importance of preventing the over-production of drones has been corroborated by the discovery of Mr. P. J. Mahan, that those _learning_ the hive have quite a large drop of honey in their stomachs\(-\)while those _returning_ from their pleasure excursions, having digested their dinners, are prepared for a new supply (600).
Aristothe ("History of Animals," Book IX, Chap. XI) speaks of the _irregular_ and _thick_ combs built by some colonies, and the superabundance of drones issuing from them. He describes their excursions as follows:
"The drones, when they go abroad, rise into the air with a circular flight, as though to take violent exercise, and when they have taken enough, return home, and gorge themselves with honey."
"The drone," says quaint old Butler (1609) "is a gross, stingless bee, that spendeth his time in gluttony and idleness. 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. He worketh not at all;.either at home or abroad, and yet spendeth as much as two laborers: you shall never find his maw without a drop of the purest neetar. 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."
**191.** The bee-keepers in Aristotle's time were in the habit of destroying the excess of drones. They excluded them from the h i v e - when t a k i n g their accustomed airing --by contracting the entrances with a kind of basket work. Butler recommends a similar trap, which he calls a "_drone-pot._"
One of the modern inventions to destroy them is Alley's drone-trap* improved by J. A. Batehelder; but it is much better to save the bees the labor and expense of rearing such a host of useless consumers. This can readily be done, when we have the control of the combs; for, by removing the drone-comb, and supplying its place with worker-cells, the over-production of drones may be easily prevented. Those who object to this, as interfering with nature, should remember that the bee is not in a state of nature; and that the same objection might, with equal force, be urged against killing off or castrating the supernumerary males of our domestic animals.
**192**. Soon after the harvest is over, or if there is a lull in the yield of honey, the drones are expelled from the hive. The worker-bees stingr then, or gnaw the roots of their wings, so that when driven from the hive, they cannot return. If not ejected in either of these summary ways, they are so persevented and starved, that they soon perish. At such times they often retreat from the comb, and keep by themselves upon the sides or bottom-board of the hive. The hatred of the bees extends even to the unhatched young, which are mereilessly pulled from the cells and destroyed with the rest.
_Hralthy colonies almost always destroy the drones, as soon as forage becomes scarce._ In the vicinity of Philadelphia, there were only a few days in June, 1858, when it did not rain, and in that month the drones were destroyed in most of the hives. When the weather became more propitious, others were bred to take their place. In seasons when the honey-harvest has been abundant and long protracted, we have known the drones to be retained, in Northern Massachusetts, until the 1st of November. If bees could gather honey and could swarm the whole year, the drones would probably die a natural death.
How wonderful that instinct which, when there is no longer any occasion for their services, impels the bees to destroy those members of the colony reared with such devoted attention!
**193**. It is interesting to notice the actions of the drones when they are excluded from the hive. For a while they exactly search for a wider entrance, or strive to force their bulky bodies through the narrow gateway. Finding this to be in rain, they solicit honey from the workers, and when refreshed, renew their efforts for admission, expressing, all the while, with plaintive notes, their deep sense of such a eruel exclusion. The bee-keeper, however, is deaf to their entrenties; it is better for him that they should stay without, and better for them--if they only knew it--to perish by his hands, than to be starved or butchered by the unfeeling workers. Towards dark, or early in the morning\(-\)when clustered, for warmth, in the portico\(-\)they may be brushed into a vessel of water, and given to chickens, which will soon learn to devour them.
**194**. Drones are sometimes raised in worker-cells (**150**). They are smaller in size, but apparently as perfect as the full-size drones, all their organs being well developed.
For the stages of development of drones, see the comparative table at the end of this chapter (**197**).
**195.** We have repeatedly queried, why impregnation might not have taken place _in the hive_, instead of in the open air. A few dozen drones would then have sufficed for the wants of any colony, even if it swarned, as in warm climates, half a dozen times, or oftener, in the same season; and the young queens would have incurred no risks by leaving the hive for foundation.
**196**. If a farmer persists in what is called "breeding in and in," that is, without changing the blood, the ultimate degeneracy of his stock is the consequence." This law extends, as far as we know, to all animal life, man himself not being exempt from its influence. Have we any reason to suppose that the bee is an exception? or that degeneracy would not ensue, unless some provision were made to counteract the tendency to "in-and-in breeding?" If foundation had taken place in the hive, the queen would have been impregnated by drones from a common parent; and the same result! must have taken place in each successive generation, until the whole speeies would eventually have "run out." By the present arrangement, the young queens, when they leave the hive, often find the air swarming with drones, many of which belong to other colonies, and thus, by crossing the breed, provision is constantly made to prevent deterioration.
## Chapter 2 The building of bees.\(-\)comb.
**198**. When a swarm (**106**) has found a suitable habitation, some of the bees clean it of its rubbish, if necessary, while others, at once, prepare to build the furniture, which is intended as eradles for the young bees, and as a store-room for the provisions, and is called comb.
According to Webster, this word is probably taken from the Anglo-Saxon "comb," which means a hollow; the combs being hollow structures, with exceedingly light walls.
**199**. The combs are usually begun at the highest point of the hive and built downwards, yet, when some breaking happens.
pens, or when the harvest is short and the weather is cool, the bees sometimes build them upwards; but they are far from having the usual regularity. Conbs are made of wax, a natural secretion which is produced by bees somewhat as cattle produce fat, by eating.
**200. "Wax is not chemically a fat or glyceride, yet it is nearly allied to the fats in atomic constitution, and the physiological conditions favoring the formation of one are curiously similar to those aiding in the production of the other. We put our poultry up to fat in con-
we keep warm and feed highly. Our bees, under Nature's teaching, put themselves up to yield wax under conditions so parallel, that the suitability of the fatting coops is visualized."--(Cheshire.)
Yet let it not be thought that heeswax is the fat of the bee, but its production is on similar lines.
**201.** If they remain quietly clustered together, when guyzed with honey, or any liquid sweet, the wax is selected in the shape of delicate seals in four small pouches, on such side of the abdomen, of worker-bees.
"These scales, of an irregular pentagonal shape, are so thin and light, that one hundred of them hardly weigh as much as a kernel of wheat." --(Dubini, "L'Xpc.")
**202**. In the young bees, which are endowed with a great appetite, they form, probably, without their knowledge, during the loney season; and if there is no place to use them, they are gathered in small knots here and there. This only happens when the eombs are entirely filled and sealed. It has been noticed, most especially, in hives in which a comb had been broken down by heat. (**333**.) In such cases, many of the bees gorge thenselves with the wasting honey, and
Fig. 44. THE wax-protecting organ of THE WORKER. (Magnified. After Barb0.)
cluster on the outside, until the heat has subsided, and the running honey has been gathered up. Seales of wax, in lumps, can then be found where they have clustered.
**203**. Although the faculty of producing wax is diminished in old bees, who are subject to the natural law which makes it more difficult to fatten an old animal, it is proved that they may also produce small seals of wax.
"During the active storing of the past season, especially when comb building was in rapid progress, I found that nearly every bee taken from the flowers contained wax scales of varying sizes in the wax-pockets."--(A. J. Cook.)
**201**. The first condition indispensable for bees to produce wax, is to have the stomach well filled.
It is an interesting fact that honey-gathering and comb-building go on simultaneously; so that when one stops, the other causes also. As soon as the honey harvest begins to fail, so that consumption is in advance of production, the bee cease to build new comb, even though large portions of their live are unfilled. When honey no longer abounds in the fields, it is wisely ordered that they should not consume, in comb-building, the treasures which may be needed for Winter use. What safer rule could have been given them?
It takes about twenty-four hours for a bee's food to become transformed into wax.
**205**. "Having filled themselves with honey, they gather in chains; not in a single group, but in a number of groups, hanging in a parallel curtain, in the direction of the comb to be constructed. Thus a bee elings to the ceiling with her claws, or the sticky rubber of her feet, her posterior limbs hanging down; another bee grapples the claws of these posterior feet, with the claws of her anterior limbs, letting her hind limbs hang also, to be grappled by a third, and so on, till the first chain meets another, and both united form an arch, top downward. This single chain becomes compound when several are in the same line, and grouped near one another."--(Sartori and Rauschenfels, "L'Apicoltura in Italia," Milan, 1878.)
**206**. "If we examine the bees closely during the season of comb-building und honey-gathering, we shall find many of them with the wax scales protruding between the rings that form the body, and these scales are" either picked from their bodies, or from the bottom of the hive or honey boxes in which they are building. If a bee is obliged to carry one of these wax scales but a short distance, he takes it in his mandibles, and looks as business-like with it thus, as a carpenter with a board on his shoulder. If he has to carry it from the bottom of the honey
* The constant preserving cf this rib or heavy edge of the comb while the work prc progresses, explains why old comb lengthened and scaled with new wax, sometimes retains a part of its dark color throughout. Some of the old wax is undoubtedly mixed with the new, in the constant remodeling of this heavier edge, till the comb is sealed.
* The second case is the case of a new edge of the comb while the work prc progresses, explains why old comb lengthened and scaled with new wax, sometimes retains a part of its dark color throughout. Some of the old wax is undoubtedly mixed with the new, in the constant remodeling of this heavier edge, till the comb is sealed.
bees, the Italian (**551**), for instance, often use also pieces of old combs, which may be within their reach.
The comb, thus built, is easily detected on account of its darker color. Queen-cells (**101**) seem to be always built of particles, taken from the comb on which they hang, and are never of pure wax.
"Thus, filtered through you fluterer's folded mail,
Clings the cooled wax, and hardens to a scale.
Swift, at the well-known call, the ready train
(For not a buz boon Nature breathes in vain)
Spring to each falling flake, and bear along
Their glossy burdens to the builder throng.
These with sharp sickle, or with sharper tooth,
Pare each exrescence, and caeh angle smoothe,
Till now, in finish'd pride, two radiant rows
Of snow white cells one mutual base disclose.
Six shining panels gird each polish'd round;
The door's fine rim, with waxen fllet bound;
Weak in themselves, a sure dependence find."'
**210.** The cells of bees are found to fulfill perfectly the most subtle conditions of an intricate mathematical problem.
Let it be required to find what shape a given quantity of matter must take, in order to have the greatest _capacity_ and _strength_, occupying, at the same time, the least _size_ and consuming the least _labor_ in its construction. When this problem is solved by the most refined mathematical processes, the answer is the hexagonal or six-sided cell of the honey-bee, with its three four-sided figures at the base!
The shape of these figures cannot be altered ever so little, except for the worse.
**211**. The bottom of each cell is formed of three lozenges, the latter forming one-third of the base of three opposite cells.
"If the little lozenge plates were square, we should have the same arrangement, but the bottom would be too sharp pointed
she wants also to make their bottom concave. The final result is that one-third of the bottom of each of three cells makes the bottom of the one cell opposite, and each one of the lozenges is flattened, so as not to encroach on the opposite cells.
**214**. The cells are not horizontal, but inclined from the orifice to the bottom (fig. 46), so as to be filled with honey more easily. The thickness of worker-brood comb is about one inch, with eelis opening on each side. The distance between combs is about 7-16 of an inch. This space is not always exact, but is never under 5-16, that being necessary for the bees to travel between the combs without interfering with one another. These distances can be a little increased without troubling the bees, and we place the combs in our hives one and a half inches from center to center, for easier manipulation.
**215**. When the combs are newly built, they are white, but they get color shortly afterwards, especially during the harvest of yellow honey. When used for breeding, the east skins and residues from the larvae (**167**) give them a dark color, which becomes nearly black with age, especially if bees have suffered with diarrhoea (**7S-1**), or raised a great many drones. (**190**.)
As wax is a bad conductor, the combs aid in keeping the bees warm, and there is less risk of the honey candying in the cells.
**216**. Is the size of the cells mathematically exact? When the first Republic of France inaugurated the decimal system of weights and measures, Reaumur proposed to take the cells of the bees as a standard to establish the basis of the system, but it was ascertained that cells are not uniform in size.
**217**. The cells in which workers are reared are the smallest. These in which the drones are reared are larger. It is generally admitted that five worker-cells measure about a linear inch, or twenty-five cells to the square inch, but this is incorrect. If five worker-cells measured exactly an inch, the number contained in a square inch would be about twenty-nine. As they are usually somewhat larger, the average number in a square inch is a trifle over twenty-seven. Drone-cells number about eighteen, in the same area.
Fig. 47.
worker comb and drone comb with cells of accommodation.
L'Abbe Collin measured the average dimensions of the cells very carefully, and the measurements given in his work (Paris, 1865) are about the same as those given above.
**218**. The queen-cells have already been described. (**104**.)
As bees, in building their cells, cannot pass immediately from one size to another, they display an admirable sagacity in making the transition by a set of irregular intermediatecells. Fig. 47 exhibits an accurate and beautiful representation of comb, drawn for this work from nature, by M. M. Tild, and engraved by D. T. Smith, both of Boston, Mass. Tlie cells are of the size of nature. The large ones are dronecells, and the small ones, worker-cells. The irregular, five-sided cells between them, show how bees pass from one size to another.
Mr. Cheshire, in his book, has criticized this engraving, on account of the aeuteness of the cells of transition, or as he terms them, of accommodation. He writes: "The head of a bee could not reach the bottom of the aeute angles as they are represented." Our first impression, on reading the criticism, was that Mr. Cheshire was right. Then the thought that Mr. Langstroth had his engraving made from nature led us to inspect some combs, when we found several cells of _accommodation_ with angles at least as acute as in the cut. But we noticed also that this acuity exists only on the rims of the cells and not inside; the bees, inside the cells, having pushed out the walls, to be enabled to reach the bottom of the angles which were thus rounded inside. Mr. Langstroth wrote to us, in regard to this criticism of Mr. Cheshire: "This piece of comb was actually copied from nature by a man of extraordinary accuracy."
**219.** The combs are built with such economy, that the entire construction of a live of a capacity of nine gallons does not yield more than two pounds of bees wax when melted.
According to Dr. Donhoff, the thickness of the sides of a cell in a new comb is only the one hundred and eightieth part of an inch! Cheshire states that he found some that measured only the four hundredth of an inch.
**220.** Most Apiarists before Huber's time supposed that wax was made from pollen, either in a crude or digested state. Confining a new swarm of bees to a live in a dark and cool room, at the end of five days he found several beautiful white combs in their tenement; these being taken from them, and the bees supplied with honey and water, new combs were again constructed. Seven times in succession their combs were removed, and were in each instance replaced, the bees being all The time prevented from ranging the fields to supply themselves with pollen. By subsequent experiments, he proved that sugar-syrup answered the same end with honey. Giving an imprisoned swarm an abundance of fruit and pollen, he found that they subsisted on the fruit, but refused to touch the pollen; and that no combs were constructed, nor any wax-seales formed in their pouehes.
Notwithstanding Huber's extreme caution and unwaeried patience in ecnducting these experiments, he did not discover the whole truth on this important subject. Though he demonstrated that bees can construct comb when fed honey or sugar, without pollen, and that they cannot make it if fed pollen without honey or sugar, he did not prove that when _permanently_ deprived of it they can continue to work in wax, or if they can, that the pollen does not aid in its elaboration. Some pollen is always found in the stomach of wax-producing workers, and they never build comb so rapidly as when they have free access to this article. It must, therefore, in some way, assist the bee in producing it.