BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
"Such are the respective stages of the working-bee; those of the royal bee are as follows: she passes three days in the cegs, and is five a worm; the workers then close her cell, and she immediately begins spinning her ceocoon, which oecuples her twenty-four hours. On the tenth and eleventh days, and a part of the twelfth, as if exhausted by her labor, she remains in complete repose. Then she passes four days and a part of the fifth as a nymph. It is on the sixteenth day, therefore, that the perfect state of queen is attained.
"The drone passes three days in the egg, and six and a half as a worm, and changes into a perfect insect on the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth day after the egg is laid.
"The development of each species likewise proceeds more slowly when the colonies are weak, or the air cool. Dr. Hunter has observed that the eggs, worms, and nymphs all require a heat above 70\({}^{9}\) of Fahrenheit for their evolution. Both drones and workers, on emerging from the cell, are at first gray, soft, and comparatively helpless, so that some time elapses before they take wing.
"The workers and drones spin _complete ceocoons,_ or inclose themselves on every side, while the royal larva construct only _imperfect oocoons_, open behind, and enveloping only the head, thorax, and first ring of the abdomen; and Huber coneludes, without any hesitation, that the final cause of this is, that they may be exposed to the mortal sting of the first hatched queen, whose instant leads her instantly to seek the destruction of those who would soon become her rivals.
"If the royal larvae spun complete cocoons, the stings of the queens seeking to destroy their rivals might be so entangled in their meshes that they could not be disengaged.
"Sueh," says Huber, "is the instinctive enmity of young queens to each other, that **I** have seen one of them, immediately on its emergence from the cell, rush to those of its sisters, and tear to pieces even the imperfect larvae. Hitherto, philosophers have claimed our admiration of nature for her care in preserving and multiplying the species. But from these facts, we must now admire her precautions in exposing certain individuals to a mortal hazard.""
The cocoon of the royal larvae is very much stronger and coarser than that of the drone or worker ; its texture considerably resembling that spun by the silk-worm. The young queen does not ordinarily leave her cell until she is quite mature; and as its great size allows the free exercise of her wings, she is usually capable of flying as soon as she quits it. While still in her cell, she makes the fluttering and piping noises so familiar to observant bee-keepers.
When the eggs of the queen are fully developed, like those of the domestic hen, they must be extruded ; but some Apairians believe that she can regulate their development so that few or many are produced, according to the necessities of the colony. That this is true to a certain extent, seems highly probable ; for if a queen is taken from a feeble colony, her abdomen seldom appears greatly distended ; and yet if put in a strong one, she speedily becomes very prolific. Mr, Wagner says, "I conceive that she has the power of regulating or repressing the development of her eggs, so that _gradually_ she can diminish the number maturing, and finally cease laying and remain inactive, as long as circumstances require. The old queen appears to qualify herself for accompanying a first swarm by repressing* the development of eggs, and as this is done at the most genial season of the year, it does not seem to be the result of atmospheric influence."
It is certain that when the weather is uncongenial, or the colony too feeble to maintain sufficient heat, fewer eggsare matured, just as unfavorable circumstances diminish the number of eggs laid by the hen; and when the weather is very cold, the queen stops laying in weak colonies.
In the latitude of Northern Massachusetts, I have found that the queen ordinarily ceases to lay some time in October; and begins again, in strong stocks, in the latter part of December. On the 14th of January, 1857 (the previous month having been very cold, the thermometer sometimes sinking to 17\({}^{\circ}\) below zero), I examined three lives and found that the central combs in two contained eggs and unsealed brood; there were a few cells with sealed brood in the third. Strong stocks even in the coldest climates usually contain some brood ten months in the year.
It is 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-brend to nourish the young; or if, for any reason, she does not judge best to deposit them 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 repeatedly witnessed in observing-hives the sagacity of the queen in thus economising her necessary work, instead of depositing her eggs in cells where they are not wanted. What a difference between her and the stapid hen, which so obstinately persists in sitting upon added eggs, pieces of chalk, and often upon nothing at all!
The workers devour also all eggs which are dropped or deposited out of place by the queen; thus, even a tiny egg, instead of being wasted, is turned to good account.
One who carefully watches the habits of bees will often feel inclined to speak of his little favorites as having an intelligence almost if not quite akin to reason; and I have sometimes queried, whether the workers who are so fond
of a tit-bit in the shape of a newly laid egg, ever experience a struggle between appetite and duty; so that they must practice self-denial to refrain from breakfasting on the eggs so temptingly deposited in the cells.
It is well known to breeders of poultry, that the fertility of a hen decreases with age, until at length she may become entirely barren. By the same law, the fecundity of the queen-bee ordinarily diminishes after she has entered her third year. An old queen sometimes ceases to lay worker-eggs; the contents of her spermatheca becoming exhausted, the eggs are no longer impregnated, and produce only drones.
The queen-bee usually dies of old age in her fourth year, although she has been known to live much longer. There is great advantage, therefore, in hives which allow her, when she has passed the period of her greatest fertility, to be easily removed.
Before proceeding farther in the natural history of the queen-bee, I shall describe more particularly the other inmates of the hive.
Thus Daoxes are, unquestionably, the male bees; dissection proving that they have the appropriate organs of generation. They are much larger and stouter than either the queen or workers; although their bodies are not quite so long as that of the queen. They have no sting with which to defend themselves; and no suitable probocsis for gathering honey from the flowers; no baskets on their thighs for holding bee-bread, and no pouches on their abdomens for secreting wax. They are, therefore, physically disqualified for the ordinary work of the hive. Their proper office is to impregnate the young queens, and they are longer and more than 9.
usually destroyed by the bees soon after this is accomplished.
Dr. Evans, an English physician and the author of a beautiful poem on bees, thus appropriately describes them:
"Their short proboacia ripa
No luscious nectar from the wild thymic's lipa,
From the lime's leaf no amber drops they steal,
Nor bear their grooveless thighs the foodfal meal:
On other's tolls in pamper'd leisure thrive
The lazy fathers of the industriosa hive."
The drones begin to make their appearance in April or May; earlier or later, according to the forwardness of the season, and the strength of the stock. In colonies too weak to swarm, none as a general rule are reared; for in such hives, as no young queens are raised, drones would be only useless consumers.
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 has sexual intercourse always takes place high up in the hair, 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 does active on the wing, queens are more exposed to be caught by birds, or destroyed by sudden gusts of wind.
In a large Apiary, a few drones in each hive, or the number usually found in one, would suffice. But under such circumstances bees are not in a state of nature, like a colony living in a forest, which often has no neighbors for miles. A good stock, even in our climate, sometimes sends out three or more swan elimates, 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.
As this necessity no longer exists when the bee is domesticated, the breeding of so many drones should be discouraged. Traps1 have been invented to destroy them, 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 eombs; 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 forces, be urged against killing off the supernumerary males of our domestic animals.
When a new swarm is building its combs, if the honey-harvest is abundant, the bees will frequently construct an unusual amount of drone-combs, for storing it. In a state of nature, where bees have plenty of room, as in the hollow of a tree, or cleft of a rock, this excess of drone-comb will be used another season for the same purpose, and new worker-comb made to meet the enlarged wants of the colony; but in hives of a limited capacity this cannot be done, and thus many stoeks become so crowded with drones as to be of little value to their owner.
In July or August, or soon after the swarming season is over, the bees usually expel the drones from the hive; though, when the honey-harvest is very abundant, they often allow them to remain much later. They sometimes stating them, 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 perseecuted 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 merellessly pulled from the cells and destroyed with the rest. 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 but a short time before with such devoted attention!
None of the reasons previously assigned seem fully to account for the necessity of so many drones. I have repeatedly queried, why impregnation might not have taken place _in the hive_, instead of in the open air, \(\Lambda\) few dozen drones would then have sufficed for the wants of any colony, even if it swarmed, 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.
For a long time I could not perceive the wisdom of the existing arrangement; although I never doubted that there was a satisfactory reason for this seeming imperfection. To have supposed otherwise, would have been highly unphilosophical, when we know that with the increase of knowledge many mysteries in nature, one inexplicable, have been fully cleared up.
The disposition cherished by many students of nature, to reject some of the doctrines of revealed religion, is not prompted by a true philosophy. Neither our ignorance of all the facts necessary to their full elucidation, nor our inability to harmonize these facts in their mutual relations and dependencies, will justify us in rejecting any truth which God has seen fit to reveal, either in the book of nature, or in JIs holy word. The man who would substitute his own speculations for the divine teachings, has embarked without rudder or chart, pilot or compass, on an uncertain ocean of theory and conjecture; unless he turns his prow from its fatal coarse, storms and whirlwinds will thicken in gloom on his " voyage of life;" no " Sun of Righteousness" will ever brighten for him the expanse of treary waters; no favoring gales will wait his shattered bark to a peaceful haven.
The thoughtful reader will require no apology for this moralizing strain, nor blame a elergyman, if sometimes forgetting to speak as the mere naturalist, he endeavors to find
"Tongues in trees, books in running brooks,
Sermons in 'deits," and 'God' in every thing,"
To return to the attempt to account for the existence of so many drones. 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 species 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.
Experience has proved that impregnation may be effected not only when there are no drones in the colony of the young queen, but even when there are none in her immediate neighborhood. Intercourse takes place very ligh in the air (perhaps that less risk may be incurred from birds), and this favors the crossing of stocks.
I am strongly persuaded that the decay of many flourishing stocks, even when managed with great care, may be attributed to the fact that they have become enfecbled by "close breeding," and are thus unable to resist injurious influences, which were comparatively harmless when the bees were in a state of high physical vigor. When a cultivator has but few colonies, or is remote from other Apaiaries, he should guard against this evil by occasionally changing his stocks.
The Workers, or common bees, compose the bulk of the population of a hive. A good swarm ought to contain at least 20,000; and in large hives, strong colonies which are not reduced by swarming, frequently number two or three times as many during the height of the breeding season. We are informed by Mr. Dobrogost Chylinski, that from the Polish hives, which often hold several bushels, swarms regularly issue so powerful that "they resemble a little cloud in the air."
It has already been stated, that the workers are all females whose ovaries are too imperfectly developed to admit of their laying eggs. Being : for a long time regarded as neither males nor females, they were called Neuters; but careful microscopic examinations, by detecting the rudiments of their ovaries, have determined their sex. The accuracy of these examinations has been verified by the well known facts respecting fertile workers.
Riem, a German Aparian, first discovered that workers sometimes lay eggs. Huber subsequently ascertained that such workers were bred in hives that had lost their queen, and near the royal cells in which young queens were being reared. He conjectured that small portions of the peculiar food of these infant queens were _aceidentaly_ dropped into their cells, by eating which their reproductive organs were more developed than those of other workers.
In the Summer of 1854, I examined a brood-comb which had been given to a queenless colony. It contained eleven sealed queens; and numbers of the cells were capped with a round covering, as though they contained drones. Being opened, some contained drone, and others worker-nympha. The latter seemed of a little more sugar-loaf shape than the common workers, and their ceocoons were of a coarser texture than usual. I had previously noticed the same kind of cells in hives raising artificial queens, but thought they all contained drones. It is a well known fact, that bees often begin more queen-cells than they choose to finish. It seems to me probable, therefore, that when rearing queens artificially, they frequently give a portion of the royal jelly to larvae, which, for some reason, they do not develope as full grown queens; and that such larvae become fertile workers. Huber states that those fertile workers which lay only drone-eggs, prefer large cells in which to deposit them, resorting to small ones, only when unable to find those of greater diameter. A hive in my Apiary having much worker-comb, but only a small piece of drone size, a fertile worker filled the latter so entirely with eggs that some of the cells contained three or four each. Such workers have, in rare instances, been tolerated in hives containing a fertile, healthy queen.
The worker is much smaller than either the queen or the drone. She is furnished with a tongue, or probosci, so exceedingly curious and complicated, that a separate volume would hardly suffice to describe its structure and uses (Pl. XVI., Fig. 51). With this organ she obtains the honey from the blossoms, and conveys it to her honey-bag. This receptacle (Pl. XVII., Fig. 54, 4), is not larger than a very small pea, and so perfectly transparent as to appear, when filled, of the same color with its contents; it is properly the first stomach, and is surrounded by muscles which enable the bee to compress it, and empty its contents through her probosci into the cells.
The hinder legs of the worker are furnished with a spoon-shaped hollow, or basket, to receive the pollen which she gathers from the flowers.
Every worker is armed with a formidable sting, and when provoked makes instant and effectial use of her natural weapon. When subjected to a microscopic examination (Pl. XVII., Fig. 53), it exhibits a very intricate mechanism. "It is moved by muscles" which, though invisible to the eye, are yet strong enough to force the sting, to the depth of one-twelth of an inch, through the thick skin of a man's hand. At its root are situated two glands by which the poison is secreted; these glands uniting in one duct, eject the venomous liquid along the groove formed by the junction of the two piercers. There are four barbs on the outside of each piercer; when the insect is prepared to sting, one of these piercers, having its point a little longer than the other, first darts into the flesh, and being fixed by its foremost heard, the other strikes in also, and they alternately penetrate deeper and deeper, till they acquire a firm hold of the flesh with their barbed hooks, and then follows the sheath, conveying the poison into the wound. 'The action of the sting,' says Paley,'affords an example of the union of _chemistry_ and mechanism; of chemistry, in respect to the _evacom_ which can produce such powerful effects; of mechanism, as the sting is a compound instrument. The machinery would have been comparatively useless, had it not been for the chemical process by which, in the insect's body, _honey_ is converted into _poison_; and on the other hand, the poison would have been ineffectual, without an instrument to wound, and a syringe to inject it.'
"Upon examining the edge of a very keen razor by the microscope, it appears as broad as the back of a pretty thick knife, rough, uneven, and full of notches and furrows, and so far-from anything like sharpness, that an instrument as blunt as this seemed to be, would not serve even to cleave wood. \(\Lambda\)n exceedingly small needle being also examined, it resembled a rough iron bar out of a smith's forge. The sting of a bee, viewed through the same instrument, showed everywhere a polish amazingly beautiful, without the least flaw, blemish, or inequality, and ended in a point too fine to be discerned."
As the extremity of the sting is barbed like an arrow, the bee can seldom withdraw it, if the substance into which she darts it is at all tenacious. In losing her sting she parts with a portion of her intestines, and of necessity soon perishes.
Although they pay so dearly for the exercise of their patriotic instinets, still, in defence of home and its sared treasures, they * **Some the application of the first edition of this treatin, I have had an opportunity during a visit to the Mexican founder, after studying the habits of the honey-beneat, of that region.** It not, in shape and material, resembles that of our common honest; and some of them contain many pounds of deflections honey. This insect, which in those regions is so servocable to man, like the honey-bose, is unable to withdraw its string from the wound. It has also a queen, and lives in a colony state during the whole year.
* **Some of the application of the first edition of this treatin, I have had an opportunity during a visit to the Mexican founder, after studying the habits of the honey-beneat, of that region.** It has not, in shape and material, resembles that of our common honest; and some of them contain many pounds of deflections honey. This insect, which in those regions is so servocable to man, like the honey-bose, is unable to withdraw its string from the wound. It has also a queen, and lives in a colony state during the whole year.
seven months; but their age depends very much upon their greater or less exposure to injurious influences, and severe labors. Those reared in the Spring and early part of Summer, upon whom the heaviest labors of the hive devolve, appear to live not more than two or three months*; while those bred at the close of Summer, and early in Autumn, being able to spend a large part of their time in repose, attain a much greater age. It is very evident that " the bee" (to use the words of a quaint old writer), " is a Summer bird;" and that, with the exception of the queen, none live to be a year old.
Footnote *: If an Italian queen be given, in the working season, to a swarm of common been, in about three months only a few of the latter will be found in the colony.
Notched and ragged wings, instead of gray hairs and wrinkled faces, are the signs of old age in the bee, and indicate that its season of toill will soon be over. They appear to die rather suddenly; and often spend their last days, and sometimes even their last hours, in useful labors.
Place yourself before a hive, and see the indefatigable energy of these industrious veterans, toiling along with their heavy burdens, side by side with their more youthful compepers, and then judge if, while qualified for useful labor, you ought ever to surrender yourself to stolthful indulgone. Let the cheerful hum of their busy old age inspire you with better resolutions, and teach you how much nobler it is to die with harness on, in the active discharge of the duties of life.