BEE-spoke-data/bees-v0 huggingface dataset:
**157**. It is well known to breeders of poultry, that the fertiiiity of a hen decreases with age, until at length size may become entirely barren. By the same law, the'recundity 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 sycmatileca 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 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.
The Worker-Bee.
**158**. The workers are the smallest inhabitants of a beehive, and compose the bulk of the population. A good swarm ought to contain at least 20,000; and in large hives, strong colonies, which are not reduced by swarming, frequently number three or four times as many during the height of the breeding season.
**159**. Their functions are varied. _The young bees_ work inside of the hive, prepare and distribute the food to the larvae, take care of the queen, by brushing her with their tongues, nurse her, maintain the heat of the hive, or renew the air and evaporate the newly-gathered honey (**249**), by ventilating (**261**, **366**). They clean the hive of dirt or debris, close up all the cracks, and secrete the greater part of the wax which is produced in the hive.
_The old bees may,_ if necessary, do a part of the same work; but, as we have seen, (**39**), _did_ give renders some unfit to prepare the food of the larvae. More alert than the young bees, they do the outside work, gather honey (**216**), pollen (**263**), and water (**271**), for the use of the family, and propolis (**236**) to cement the cracks.
**160.** "Dzierzon states it as a fact, that worker-bees attend more exclusively to the domestic concerns of the colony in the early period of life; assuming the discharge of the more active out-door duties only during the later periods of their existence. The Italian bees (**551** ) furnished me with suitable means to test the correctness of this opinion.
"On the 18th of April, 15.15, I introduced (**533**) an Italian queen into a colony of common bees; and on the 10th of May following, the first Italian workers emerged from the cells. On the ensuing day, they emerged in great numbers, as the colony had been kept in good condition by regular and plentiful feeding. I will arrange my observations under the following heads:
**161.** "I. On the 10th of May, the first Italian workers emerged; and on the 17th they made their first appearance outside of the hive. On the next day, and then daily till the 29th, they came forth at'ont noon, disporting in front of the hive, in the rays of the sun. They, however, manifestly, did not issue for the purpose of gathering honey or pollen, for during that time none were noticed returning with pellets; none were seen,ighting on any of the.flowcrs in my garden; and I found no honey in the stomachs of such as I caught and killed for examination. The gathering was done exclusively by the old hees of the original stock, until the 29th of May, when the Italian bees began to labor in that vocation also--being then 19 days old.
**162.** "I. On the feeding troughs placed in my garden, and which were constantly crowded with common bees, I saw no Italian bees till the 27th of May, seventeen days after the first had emerged from the cells.
"From the 10th of May on, I daily presented to Italian bees, in the hive, a stick dipped in honey. The younger ones never attempted to lick any of it; the older occasionally seemed to sip a little, but immmediately left it and moved away. The common bees always eagerly licked it up, never leaving it till they had filled their honey-bags. Not till the 25th of May did I see any Italian bee lick up honey eagerly, as the common bees did from the beginning. "These repeated observations force me to conclude that, during the first two weeks of the worker-bees's life, the impulse for gathering honey and pollen does not exist, or at least is not developed; and that the developmcnt of this impulse proceeds slowly and gradually. At first the young bee will not even touch the honey, presented to her; some days later she will simply taste it, and only after a further lapse of time will she consume it eagerly. Two weeks elapse before she readily cats honey, and nearly three weeks pass, before the gathering impulse is sufficiently developed to impel her to fly abroad, and seek for honey and pollen among the flowers. 163. "I made, further, the following observations respecting the domestic employments of the young Italian bees: "I. On the 20th of May, I took out of the hive all the combs it contained, and replaced them after examination. On inspecting them half an hour later, I was surprised to see that the edges of the combs, which had been eut on removal,* were covered by Italian bees exclusively. On closer examination, I found that they were busily engaged in re-attaching the combs to the sides of the hive. When I brushed them away, they instantly returned, in eager haste, to resume their labors. "I. After making the foregoing observations, I instcted in the hive a bar from which a comb had been eut, to ascertain whether the rebuilding of comb would be undertaken by the Italian bees. I took it out a few hours subsequently, and found it covered almost exclusively by Italian workers, though the colony, at that time, still contained a large majority of common bees. I saw that they were sedulously engaged in building comb; and they prosecuted the work unremittingly, whilst I held the bar in my hand. I repeated this experiment several
three weeks after the Italian bees emerged, I found the brood-combs eovered principally by bees of that race: and it is, hence, probable that the brood is chiefly attended to and nursed by the younger bees. The evidence, however, is not so conclusive as in the case of comb-building, inasmuch as they may have eongregated on the brood-combs beeause these are warmer than the others.
''I may add another interesting observation. The feces in the intestines of the young Italian bces was viscid and yellow; that of the common or old bces was thin and limpid, like that of the queen-hec. This is confirmatory of the opinion, that, for the production of wax and jelly, the bees require pollen; but do not need any for their own sustenance.''--(B. Z., 185, p. 163. Dr. Donhoff, translated by the late S. Waguer.)
**165.** There are none but _gentlemen_ of leisure in the commonwealth of bees, but assuredly there are no such _ladies_, whether of high or low degree. The queen herself has her full share of duties, the royal office being no sineeure, when the mother who fills it must daily deposit thousands of eggs.
''The eggs of bees are of a lengthened, oval shape with a slight enrvatne, and of a bluish white eolor: being bessmeared, at the time of laying, with a glutinous substance, they adhere to the bases of the cells, and remain unchanged in figure or situation for three or four days; they are then hatehed, the bottom of each cell presenting to view a small white worm.''--(Bevan.)
**166.** For the first three days after their hatehing, these worms are fed with a jelly, thought to be prepared or secreted by the upper pair of glands of the worker-bees (**39**), which are very large in the nurses. This milky food is a whitish, transparent fluid, and is distributed to the larvae, as it is needed. After four or perhaps five days, the larva is too large for the bottom of the cell, where it was coiled up, to use the language of Swammerdam, like a dog when going to sleep; and stretches itself till it oceupies the whole length of the cell, lying on its back. Its food at this time, is changed for a semi-digested mixture of honey and pollen.
Fig. 28.
EGGS AND LARVA.
(Magnified. After Barb0.)
"The mixture of honey and pollen given at the end of the nursing, is easily detected by its color, which is yellower, on account of the pollen, and can be seen through the skin of the larva.''--(Dubini.)
**167. ''The larva, or grub, grows apace, but not without experience ing a difficulty to which the human family is, in some sort, subject in the (Magnified. From Sartori and Rausch-period of youth. Its coat is inelastic and does not grow with the wearer, so that it soon, fitting badly, has to be thrown off; but, happily in the case of the larva, a new and larger one has already been formed beneath it, and the discarded garment, more delicate than gossamer, is pushed to the bottom of the cell.''--(Cheshire.)
**168. ''The nursing-becs now seal over the cell with a light brown cover, externally more or less convex (the cap of a drone-cell being more convex than that of a worker), and thus differing from that of a honey - cell, which is paler and somewhat concave.''--(''Bevan on the Honey-Bee.'')**
The cap of the brood-cell is made not of pure wax, but of a mixture of bee-bread and wax; and appears under the microscope to be full of fine holes, to give air to the in-closed insect. From its texture and shape it is easily thrust off by the bee when mature, whereas if it consisted wholly of wax, the insect would either perish for lack of air, or he unable to force its way into the world. Both the material and shape of the lids which close the honey-cells are different: they are of pure wax, and are slightly concave, the better to resist the pressure of their contents. The bees sometimes neglect to cap the cells of some of the brood, and some persons have thought that this brood was diseased, but it batchesall the same. The larva is no sooner perfeteity enclosed, than it begins to spin a cicon after the manner of the silk-warn, and Cheshire teaches us that it does not enenase the insect, but is only at the mouth of the cell, "and in no case extends far down the sides."
To return to Bevan:
**169. "When it has undergone this change, it has usually borne the name of nymph, or pupa. It has now attained its full growth, and the large amount of nutriment which it has taken serves as a store for developing the perfect insect. "The working-bce nymph spins its cocoon in thirty-six hours. After passing about three days in this state of preparation for a new existence, it gradually undergoes so great a change as not to wear a vestige of its previous form."**
**170. The last east-off skin of the larva, "which, by the ereature's movements within the cell, beoenes plastered to the walls and joins the cocoon near the mouth end" (Cheshire), is left behind, and forms a closely-attached and exact lining to the cell; by this means the breeding-cells become smaller, and their partitions stronger, the oftener they change their tenants.**
**S\({}_{0}\) thin is this lining, that broad combs more than twenty years old have been found to raise bees apparently as large as any other in the \(\Lambda_{1}\)**j**uary.**
**171. About twenty-one days are usually required for the transformations from the worker-c\({}_{\rm E}\) to the perfect insect. But the time may be shortened or lengthened by the temperature, or the conditions of the colony. Dzierzon and others wrote that a worker-bee can hatch in nineteen to twenty-one days. Collin says nineteen to twenty-three. That the brood can remain even longer before hatching, is confirmed by the report of A. Saunier, in the South of France. Having deprived a live of all its inhabitants, he found bees, hatehing twenty-three days afterwards, that had not even been sealed in their eelis, since there had been no nurses there to do this work. ("L'Apieulteur." Paris, 1870.) As these were already full-grown larvae, when the hive was deprived of its bees, they must have been twenty-seven days old when hatching. In this experiment, the heat produced by the larvae, coupled with that of the atmosphere, had been suffieient to keep them alive and help their slow development.
We have often noticed the brood of swarms, that had deserted their hives, still alive after a cold night, but in each case its development was delayed.
**172**. A newly hatched worker, like a newly hatched queen, is easily recognized by her small size, her pale gray color, and her weak appearance. After a few days, she has grown considerably larger. She is then in the bloom of health; her color is bright, she has not yet lost a single hair of the down which covers her body. These hairs fall gradually from age and work, and sometimes disappear almost entirely.
**173**. The first excursion of the young bee out of the hive takes place when she is about eight days old (**160**.) The disturbing of the colony, or the lack of old bees may cause them to go out earlier.
The first flight of young worker-bees is easily remembered when onee seen. It usually takes place in the afternoon of a sunny day. They first walk about on the platform in a hesitating manner and then take flight. Their humming, and joyous and peaceable circles to reconnoitre the location of their home, recalls to memory the gay playing of children in front of the school-house door. Their second trip is made about a week after the first; it is then that they bring in their first load. A young bee coming home is readily recognized by the small size of the pollen pellets she carries, when compared with those of older bees, and by the turns she makes before alighting.
**174**. The Apiarist should become acquainted with the behavior of young bees, so as not to mistake their pleasant flight for the restless motions of robber-bees. (**664**.)
**175**. Although the workers are females, they are incapable of freundation (**10S**). Yet the rudimental ovaries of some of them contain a few undeveloped eggs (fig. 33).
**176**. Occasionally some of them are sufficiently developed to be capable of laying eggs; but these eggs always produce drones. Laying workers appear only when a colony has been queenless for some time. Huber thought that fertile workers were reared in the neighborhood of the young queens, and that they received some of the peculiar food, or jelly on which these queens are fed.+ But it is more probable that it is the increase of the milky food, given lavishly to the larvae in the first stage of their development, during a good honey flow, which enlarged their ovaries (**10S**), and that the young bees, thus raised, having no more larva to nurse when the hive has suddenly become queenless, feed each other with their milky food, which excites their laying, as it does for the queens (**39**). The number of drone-laying workers is sometimes very large in a hopelessly queenless hive; we have seen at least a dozen laying on the same eomb. Mr. Viallon, a noted bee-keeper of Louisiana, once had so many in one queenless colony, that he was able to send several dozen for dissection to bee-keepers in this country and Europe.
Footnote : margin: **177**.
**177**. Some persons may question the wisdom of Nature in endowing the workers with the means of laying drone- eggs, when there is no queen in the colony to be freundated by them. But Nature does nothing without purpose. The main cause of the loss of the queen, when there is no brood fit to raise others (**107**), and therefore, no hopes of survival for the colony, is usually the death of the young queen in her bridal flight (**122**).
At some seasons, the drones are scarce, and a young queen may be compelled to make several stripes before she finds one. If she gets lost, the hive having remained quenceless for at least eight or ten days (**109**), the bored is too old to be used to raise another, and the colony is doomed. That other colonies may not be victims of similar aeeidents, owing to the scarcity of drones, Nature endows this worthless colony with the faculty of drone-raising.
It is by the same provision of Nature that unhealthy trees, on the eve of death, are seen covered with blossoms and fruits. They make the strongest efforts to save their raee from extinction, and perish afterwards.
**17S.** The drone-laying of worker-bees is easily discovered by the Apiarist. Their eggs are laid without order, some cells containing grown larvae, or sealed pupae, by the side of eells containing eggs; while the eggs of a queen are very regularly laid. Huber states that the fertile workers prefer large eells in which to deposit their drone eggs, resorting to small ones only when unable to find those of greater diameter. A hive in our Apiary having mueh worker-comb, but only a small piece of drone size, a fertile worker filled the latter so entirely with eggs that some of the eells contained three or four each.
**179**. Sometimes the bees do not seem to know that these terms are drone-eggs, and in their eagerness to raise a queen, they treat some of them as such, by enlarging their cells and feeding them on special food (**109**). The poor overfed drones, thus raised, usually perish in the cell (**136**). The workers soon dwindle away, and the colony perishes.
**1S0**. They often even fail to raise any queen from brood, which may be given them by the Apariist, unless some hatching bees are given at the same time. The latter, when informed of the needs of the colony, usually succeed in raising a queen. The introduction of a laying-queen in a laying-worker colony, is the best remedy. (**533**.)
**1S1**. The bees of the same colony understand each other very well for all their necessities, and they work with an _catrain_ which is truly admirable. They know each other, probably by smell, for it is very rare to see a bee of the hive treated as a robber (**664**). They never use their sting except to defend themselves, when hurt, or their hone, when they think it is threatened.
**1S2**. Their life is short, 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 thirty-five days, on an average; while those bred at the elase 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 works of a quaint old writer) "is a Summer bird"; and that, with the exception of the queen, none live to be a year old.
If an Italian queen be given, in the working season, to a hive of common bees, in about three months none of the latter will be found in the colony, and as the black queen removed has left cross in the cells, which take twenty-one days to hateh, it is evident that the bees all die from fatigue or accident in the remaining seventy days, making their average life thirty-five days _in the working season_.
The age which individual members of the community may attain, must not be confounded with that of the colony. Because have been known to oceupy the same domicile for a great number of years. We have seen flourishing colonies more than twenty years old; the Abbe Della Rocca speaks of some over forty years old; and Stoche says that he saw a colony, which he was assured had swarmed annually for forty-six years! Sueh eases have led to the erroneous opinion, that bees are a long-lived race. But this, as Dr. Evans* has observed, is just as wise as if a stranger, contemplating a populous city, and personally unacquainted with its inhabitants, should, on paying it a second visit, many years after, and finding it equally populous, imagine that it was peopled by the same individua's, not one of whom might then be living.
* Like leaves on trccs, the raec of bees is found, Now green in youth, now withering on the ground, Another raec the spring or Fall supplies, They droop successive, and successive rise.""--Evan.
Apiarists, unaware of the brevity of the bee's life, have often constructed huge "bec-palaces" and large closets, vamily imagining that the bees would fill them, being unable to see any reason why a colony should not increase until it numbers its inhabitants by millions or billions. But as the bees can never at one time equal, still less exceed, the number which the queen is capable of producing in a season, these spacious dwellings have always an abundance of spare room. It seems strange that men can be thus deceived, when often in their own apiary they have healthy stucks, which, though they have not swarmed for a year or more, are no more populous in the Spring, than those which have regularly parted with vigorous colonies.
**1S3**. There is something cruel in the habits of the bee. Whenever one of then becomes unable to work from some cause or other, if she does not perish in her efforts to go to the fields, the other bees draw her out pitilessly; their love being concentrated on the whole family, not on a single individual. Yet, when one is hurt, and complains, hundreds of others resent the injury and are ready to average her.
**1S4**. Nuclehed and raeguel wings and sliny bodies, instead of gray hairs and wrinkled faces, are the signs of old age in the bee, indicating that its season of toil will soon be over. They appear to die rather suddenly; and often spend their last days, and even their last hours, in useful labors.
Place yourself before a hive, and see the infleatable energy of these industrious veterans, toiling along with their heavy burdens, side by side with their more youthful conpeers, and then judge if, while qualified for useful labor, you ought ever to surrender yourself to slothful indulgence.
Let the eheerful 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.
**185**. The drones are the male bees. 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 (**7S**) with which to defend themselves, and no suitable proboscis (**18**) for gathering honey from the flowers, no baskets on their thighs (**59**) for holding bee-bread, and no poueles (**201**) 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.
"'Their short proboscis sips
No luscious nectar from the wild thyme's lips,
Nor bear their grooveless thighs the foodful meal:
On other's toils in pamper'd leisure thive
The lazy fathers of the industrious hive."
--Evans.
**186**. 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 colony. Like the other inhabitants of the hive they cannot perform the work for which they are intended, till at least one week old. They go out of the hives only when the weather is warn, and at mid-day.
**187**. As we have seen (**122**), the mating of the queen with a drone always takes place in the air. Physiologists say that it cannot be otherwise, because the sexual organs of the drone cannot be extruded unless his abdomen is swelled by the filling of all the tracheee with air. This happens only in swift flight (**74**).
Dzieron supposes that the sound of the queen's wings, when she is in the air, excites the drones. Evidently their eyes (111) and ears (25) which are highly developed, as proven by Cheshire, help them also in the search of the queen, which is their sole occupation, when in the field. In the interior of the hivc, they are never seen to notice her; so that she is not molested, even if thousands are members of the same colony with herself. But outside of the hivc, they readily follow her, led, according to Dzierzon, by the peculiar hum of her flight, and certainly also, by the senses of smell and of sight, which are more perfect than those of the worker, most likely for this single purpose.