# They Who Walk in the Wilds/Queen Bomba of the Honey-pots

In the hot, honey-scented, murmurous dark of the bees' nest, deep-hidden in the bank beneath the wild-rose thicket, the burly young queen, Bomba of the bumblebees, was seized with a sudden inexplicable restlessness. When she had emerged, two days before, from her cocoon-cell weak on her legs, bedraggled, and dazed by the busy crowding stir of the nest, she had been tenderly fed with thin honey by the great Queen-Mother herself, and cleaned and caressed by two or three of her sturdy little bustling worker-sisters. But as soon as she was strong enough to look after herself, and had found her way to the well-supplied communal honey-pots, she was amiably ignored, as everyone in the nest was working at high pressure. She had dutifully fallen to with the rest, and found her time well occupied in feeding the ever-hungry larvæ in their cells. But now this task no longer contented her. For the moment she did not know what she wanted. She went blundering here and there over the combs, shouldering the little workers aside, and paying ​no heed whatever to the tiny, insatiable mouths in the brood-cells. Then, suddenly, her desires took definite shape. It was change she wanted, and space, and a free wing, and the unknown air. With a deep buzz of decision she rushed to the big waxen honey-pot beside the entrance of the nest, sucked up enough of the thin honey to fill her crop with comfort, then hurriedly crawled along the narrow tunnel which led to the outer world. In her quest for the great adventure she was oblivious to the stream of workers which she passed on the way.
At the exit, half hidden by a tuft of grass, she stopped short, as the first full glare of daylight struck her in the face. For the moment she was half minded to turn back into the familiar dark. But her sturdy spirit forbade any such ignominy. She crept out into the warm grass. Warm scents and soft airs encouraged her. She spread her wings, and stretched them; and at last, lured by the dazzle of sunshine beyond the shadow of the bank, she sprang into the air and went winging off, with a deep droning hum of elation, into the mysterious spaces of green and sheen and bloom.
As she took wing she was accosted by three or four ardent young males of her race—square-built, burly, black-and-orange beaux, hardly half her size but full of energy and enterprise. At this moment, however, their eager wooing left her cold. ​She was set on exploring the new and wonderful world which had just been revealed to her. Impatiently eluding her wooers she boomed away over the sun-steeped meadow, and pounced down upon a patch of late-flowering purple clover. Here she revelled for an hour or two among the honeyed blossoms, plunging her long tongue to the very bottom of the deep and narrow tubes where the nectar lay concealed, and disturbing a host of tiny foraging flies. From the meadow she flew over a tall green hedge, and swung down into the many-coloured tangle of an old-fashioned garden, where all the flowers of late summer were holding a riot of bloom. Over this profusion of riches she went quite wild for a time, sampling nectar of a dozen flavours and pollen of many varied hues, squeezing her broad, black-and-yellow head and shoulders into the foxgloves and the snapdragons, rollicking about in the wide radiant bowls of the hollyhock blossoms, rifling the pale blue campanulas, diving bodily into the Canterbury Bells, and giving voice to shrill, squeaking buzzes of excitement and impatience whenever she felt her quarters too restricted. Once a tall being, all in white, came moving slowly down the garden walk, pausing at times to examine or to sniff at a glowing blossom. Bomba circled around the stranger's head several times, in amiable curiosity, and then, attracted by a vivid gleam of scarlet, droned off ​to the other side of the garden to investigate a row of tall poles draped to their tops with flowering runner-beans.
Late in the afternoon, when the shadows were lengthening across the garden and a strange chill, such as she had never dreamt of in the home nest, began to make the air seem less friendly, Bomba flew off to an ancient brick wall which faced westward and was still bathed in sunshine. This wall was clothed with rambler roses, pink, white, and deep crimson. The mass of bloom was humming with life,—with flies of innumerable kinds, with green and bronze beetles, honey-bees, slim, dapper wasps, and workers, drones and big queens of Bomba's own species. She ignored them all alike, happy in her care-free independence. But when the chill in the air grew fresher she forsook the revels, slipped in under the veil of blossom and leaves, and crept drowsily into a crevice in the sun-warmed bricks. Here she slept away the starlit night, and never emerged next day till the sun was high in the blue and the last of the dew was vanishing from the garden world.
As she crawled out upon a crimson rose, and stood basking in the sun, her broad velvet bands of black and gold richly aglow, she was aware of a curiously attractive perfume which was not of the flower. It was somehow more living and vital, and of more personal significance to herself. ​It excited her strangely. Presently she became aware that it emanated from an attractive drone of her species, who was hovering close above her, humming persuasively. Of more compliant mood to-day than when first she left the nest, she rose into the air to meet this scented wooer; and the two soared away slowly together, on their mating flight, over the gay-hued patterns of the garden.
Her lover, however, and her interest in lovers, being very soon forgotten, Bomba passed the brief remnant of the summer in careless vagrancy. This was the one time of holiday that her life, predestined to toil, would ever afford. For the present she had nothing to do but feast through the hours of sun, and doze away the hours of dark or storm in the shelter of her cranny in the brick wall, and all the time, though she knew it not, she was laying up strength and substance to last her through her long winter's sleep beneath the snow.
As the honey-bearing blossoms passed away with the passing summer, Bomba began to realize that a sinister change was approaching, and the instinct inherited from a million generations of ancestors warned her that her cranny in the brick wall would soon be an insufficient shelter. Long and earnest search at last yielded her a site that seemed suitable for her winter's retreat. On a dry knoll of sandy loam stood a spreading beech-​tree, and in the light soil beneath one of its roots she proceeded to dig her burrow. She did not, as might have been expected, choose the sunny side of the tree, but rather, in her prevision, the shadowed north, in order that the early, deceiving warmth of the following spring might not awaken her too soon and lure her forth to her doom in a world not yet ready for her.
Not being a very expert digger as compared with some of her remote cousins, she spent several arduous days in tunnelling a narrow tube about four inches in depth. The end of this tunnel she enlarged to a circular chamber wherein she could curl up comfortably. Here, for the next week or two, she spent the chill nights and the wet or lowering days, only coming forth when the noon sun tempted her. But when the few remaining late flowers were all rifled of their honey, and the dancing flies were all gone, and the bedraggled garden looked sorrowful and neglected, and even at high noon the air had a menacing nip in its caress, she felt an irresistible drowsiness creeping over her. Half asleep already, she crawled into her dry, warm burrow, and forthwith sank into a slumber too deep for dreams. The days grew shorter, the nights longer and darker, frosts slew the final valiant blossoms, and at last the snow came, silently, and buried meadow, grove, and garden far from sight—almost, it would seem. ​from memory. Wild storms swept over the white, enshrouded earth, and savage cold scourged the unsheltered fields; but Bomba, in her snug chamber beneath the beech-roots, slept untroubled through it all, carrying secure in her fertilized ovaries the heritage of the future of her race.
Not only was the snow all gone, but spring was firmly established in the land, before the growing warmth awakened Bomba, and she crept forth from her chamber to renew her acquaintance with the sun. Crocus and narcissus and polyanthus starred the brown garden beds; orange-gold dandelions made gay the young grass of the meadows, the willows along the meadow brook were all a cloud of creamy lemon catkins; and the grey old sugar-maple which overhung the garden wall had burst into a film of aerial rose.
It was, above all, the creamy fragrant willow blooms which attracted Bomba for the moment. She would revel among them in the noon-day glow, her heavy, booming note rising above the soft hum of the myriad lesser bees, and small wasps, and many-tinted flies which held riot in the scented pollen. But she was still drowsy; and every day, after gorging herself luxuriously, she would hurry back to her deep chamber under the ​beech-roots, and sleep till the sun was once more nearing his height. But when spring forgot its caprices and melted into summer, she was seized with a new and imperious impulse, the impulse to found a colony and assume the sovereignty which she was born for. Her narrow cell grew distasteful to her, and she fell to searching the open, grassy slopes and bushy hillocks for more spacious quarters. After a long quest she found, in a steep and tangled fence-corner, just what she wanted. It was a forsaken burrow of the little, striped ground squirrel.
The burrow was roomy and dry, and the entrance to it was by a narrow tunnel about two feet long. The only fault Bomba could find with it was that it had a back door, another tunnel to afford its former occupants a means of exit in case of undesirable visitors. Bomba had no need of a back door, which meant draughts, so in cleaning up the nest she packed the litter into this entrance and pretty well stopped it up, intending to make it quite draught-proof later on, when she should find time to plaster it with leaf-bud gum and wax.
Meanwhile, in spite of her ceaseless activity, she was secreting thin morsels of wax from the scales of her under-body—a coarse, dark, yellowish wax, very unlike the delicate white secretion of the hive bees. This wax she presently scraped off and collected, kneaded it together, chewed it, ​and tempered it with her saliva. Then, close beside the inner doorway of the nest she began to build what looked like a large, round, shallow cell, with extremely thin but amazingly tough walls. It was not an ordinary cell, however, but a honey pot, a temporary thing for holding day-by-day supplies; for Bomba knew that her business among the blossoms was liable to be interrupted at any moment by storm or rain, and she must have a store of food indoors, in order not to be delayed in her urgent task of home-building. Into this honey-pot, as soon as it was deep enough, she disgorged what was left of honey in her crop, and then bustled forth, impatient to begin her foraging for the new nest.
But for all her impatience, Bomba's first care, on emerging from the darkness of her tunnel, was to locate herself. She had had trouble enough to find the new home site. She was not going to let herself lose it. With her head towards the almost invisible entrance she rose on the wing and hovered slowly about, in ever-widening circles, for several minutes. Not until she had her directions fixed securely and every landmark noted did she swing away on her great business of gathering supplies.
Unlike her far-off cousin, the hive bee, who is so specialized, so automatic in all her actions, that she seems unable ever to think of more than one ​thing at a time, Bomba could think of everything at once and seized upon opportunity as it came up. She was no purist in method. When the hive bee goes out to gather pollen, she quite ignores honey, she even ignores every kind of pollen except the one which she has started to collect; and when she has her mind set on honey, the most alluring display of pollen leaves her utterly uninterested. Bomba, on the other hand, was out for all she could get. If one blossom offered her honey, she accepted it eagerly, sucking it up and storing it in her honey sac. If the next flower had been already rifled of its nectar, but was rich in pollen, she would seize upon that with equal zest, and stuff it into the capacious pollen baskets on her thighs. Nor did she care what particular brand of pollen it might be. Red, orange, yellow, or creamy buff, it was all the same to her; so that her thighs were soon decorated with vivid, streaky protuberances of the precious spoil. As soon as she felt herself freighted, within and without, to her full capacity, she flew straight back to the nest, circled about the entrance to make sure of it, and then hurried in to unload. Her honey she disgorged into the honey-pot by the door; the pollen she stripped from her thighs and deposited on a smooth spot in the centre of the nest, treating it, as she did so, with a minute proportion of something of the nature of formic acid ​from her own glands to keep it sweet. Then she hastened forth again for another load, and this fragrant toil engrossed her till nearly sunset, for she was intent on getting in as big a store as possible while daylight lasted.
But the fall of dusk, the coming out of the evening star—a sudden gleam of silver in the pure green-violet sky—meant no relaxation to the impatient Bomba. The poet sings to Hesperus as:
but it brought not Bomba home to rest, by any means. Of rest and sleep she had had enough already; and, to the work on which she was now feverishly bent, darkness was no hindrance. In the depth of the nest it was always dark; but all her senses were so subtly acute that this mattered not at all.
And now, kneading up a stiff paste of pollen moistened with honey, she proceeded to build a low, circular platform, or pedestal, of the mixture, in the centre of the floor. On this savoury foundation she modelled a spacious cell of wax. Inthe bottom of this cell she laid her first eggs, a baker's dozen of them, and then, sealing the top with a thin waxen film, she began to brood them, solicitously as a mother thrush. For four days she stuck to her task, only leaving it for brief intervals to ​snatch a mouthful of honey; and then the eggs hatched out into a bunch of hungry grubs, which fell straightway to satisfying their hunger by devouring the pollen-paste floor on which they squirmed. Now Bomba's duties grew more exacting. She had to rush the work of gathering honey and pollen; for the little grubs in the cell grew swiftly and their appetites with them. She opened the waxen covering of the cell and pumped in continual rations of the nourishing paste. And between whiles she continued to brood the little family, that the warmth of her great velvety body might hasten their development. Soon they grew so big that the cell was crowded and they all had to stand up on their tails in ordertto find room, and in this position Bomba had to feed them individually, thrusting the food into each little greedy mouth in turn. In about seven days, however, they had reached full growth, and then their appetites all ceased simultaneously. Each spun itself a tough, perpendicular, silken-paper, yellowbrown cocoon, independent, but firmly attached to those of its neighbours—shut itself up in it, and went to sleep to await the great final change.
The group of cocoons, all stiffly erect and knitted together, now needing no longer their waxen envelope, Bomba stripped it off and used the precious wax to build other and smaller cells ​encircling the base of the cocoon bundle. In each of these, as she completed it, at intervals of two and three days, she laid five or six more eggs and sealed them up to hatch. She also had to collect more and more honey, more and more pollen, and to build higher the walls of the great honey-pot beside the door as the nectared store increased. When not at any of these tasks she spent her time, not less arduously, in brooding the cocoons, stretching her furry black-and-yellow body to warm them all, like a sitting hen who has been given a bigger clutch than she can properly cover.
Within the nest these days were just one round of uneventful toil; but outside, upon her foraging expeditions among the flowers of field and garden, Bomba's life was not without its risks and its adventures. On account of her great size and strength, and the power of her long (though not very venomous) sting, she had fewer foes to dread than most of her lesser cousins; but, having the sole responsibility of the home, for the present, on her shoulders, she was bound to be careful, though by nature unsuspicious. The biggest and fiercest of northern spiders were of no concern to her, for none would venture within range of that darting flame, her sting, and she could wreck their toughest webs without an effort. But some of the bigger insect-eating birds were a peril against ​which she had to be vigilant. And some of the hunting mice and shrews that infested the meadow were very dangerous, because they knew how to pounce upon her and seize her by the broad back, in such a way that her sting could not reach them. For the most part, however, the insecthunters were inclined to leave her alone, respecting her almost as much as they did that most vicious and venomous fighter, the great black hornet.
On one of these mornings, while Bomba's first brood were yet in their cocoons, and Bomba was out on one of her hurried foragings, a prowling shrew-mouse stumbled upon the entrance of the nest. He was hungry, and the smell that came from the burrow was appetizing. He knew enough about the wild bee, however, to dampen any tendency to rashness. He stood motionless, and listened intently. Keen as were his ears, he could not detect a sound from within. There was no rustle of wings—no bustle of busy feet over the combs—no warning hum. He judged, rightly enough, that the colony was just being started, and that its queen and foundress was out gathering supplies. He decided to slip in, snatch a few mouthfuls of rich and satisfying brood-comb, and get away before the owner's return.
But he had miscalculated. Just as his tawny hind-quarters were disappearing into the burrow. ​Bomba returned. Swooping downward like a flash of flame, she sank her long sting deep into the tender flesh between the marauder's thighs. The terrible weapon seared like fire. With a squeal of anguish the shrew doubled back convulsively, then sprang at his assailant. But Bomba wag already out of reach, circling over him with a deep, angry hum, and obviously ready to strike again.
The shrew was courageous, but his courage failed him now. The pain of his wound was intolerable. He darted away in a panic, to hide himself under the grass and lick—his wound till the anguish should be eased. And Bomba, never vindictive, was satisfied with her victory. She crept into the burrow in anxious haste to assure herself her treasure had not been tampered with.
On the eleventh day from the commencement of their chrysalis sleep the perfect workers began to break the tops of their cocoons and crawl forth, very frail, damp, and dishevelled. Bomba guided them all, by ones and twos, to the great honey-pot, where they slaked their hunger, then gathered them back to her cocoon couch to be warmed by her body and helped with their first, much needed toilets. For the next day or so she mothered them tenderly in the intervals of her other duties,—and the duty of keeping the honey-pot supplied, needless to say, was a heavy one. But by the end ​of that time the youngsters had reached their full strength, and all her care was rewarded. She had now a dozen sturdy, sprightly, glossy young workers, less than half her size, but keen and diligent to share with her the swiftly multiplying labours of the nest. The youngsters eagerly buzzed forth to collect honey and pollen, and fell to mixing bee-bread, feeding the new batch of larvæ, constructing fresh brood-cells, and replenishing the big communal honey-pot, with the instinctive skill which was their heritage of a million generations. They also reinforced the tops of their old cocoons with wax, and turned these into storage cells that no precious space or labour should be wasted.
The colony being now fairly established, it grew with amazing speed. Every two or three days a new batch of eggs hatched out into hungry larvæ, a new detachment of velvety, black-and-yellow little workers emerged from their cocoons to swell the happy industry of the nest. To them all Bomba was both queen and mother. Her rule was absolute, unquestioned; but for all her royalty she, unlike the sequestered queen of the hive bees, took full share in all the tasks of the community, besides performing her own peculiar duty of ​laying eggs. Now, however, she began to leave more of the dangerous outdoor work, the gathering of supplies, to her subjects, and spent more of her time in the homework of the nest. But she could not forget the lure of the sunshine or the riot of bloom which now clothed garden and meadow with colour. Once or twice a day she would go booming forth to levy toll of her favourite flowers.
One day, when she had her head buried deep in the fragrant calyx of a honeysuckle, the Lady of the Garden stood close by and watched her at her work. Presently the Lady put forth a slender finger and, very cautiously and delicately, stroked the black-and-gold velvet of Bomba's back. The touch was light as dandelion down, and conveyed no menace to Bomba's sensitive nerves. She gave a shrill little squeak of protest, and went on sucking up the honey with redoubled speed, probably thinking that the intruder was after a share of it. The Lady laughed, and drew back a step or two, still watching and wondering if the great bee was going to resent the liberty which had been taken with her. Nothing was further from Bomba's thought. She withdrew her head, having drained all the honey, and hummed over to the next blossom.
At this moment a hungry shrike,—a bird fitly known as "the butcher-bird,"—who had his ​nest in a tree beyond the garden wall, swooped down and made a dash at the unsuspecting Bomba, just as she sank her head into the calyx. It was the moment of fate for her,—and consequently, for the little community at home in the burrow as well. But the Lady, quicker than thought, gave a sharp cry and struck at the audacious bird with her hand. The shrike, startled, missed his aim, merely brushed the blossom roughly with a wing tip, and flew up into the nearest tree. The Lady, indignantly hurled a handful of gravel at him,—which, strangely enough, almost hit him,—and drove him from the garden. She hated him heartily, ever since she had discovered the thorn bush on whose spikes he impaled the butterflies, grasshoppers, and little birds who were his victims, when he had captured more than he could eat. As for Bomba, somewhat flustered by her narrow escape, she darted straight away to the safe shelter of the nest, without waiting to complete her honeyed load. For the nest was indeed a safe shelter now—with a hundred ready and fiery stings to guard it from all intruders.
By the time the hay was gathered in and the hot noons were growing drowsily shrill with the noise of the grasshoppers and cicadas, Bomba's swarm had grown powerful and her little citadel in the burrow nearly filled its earthen hiding-place. Though built apparently at haphazard, it was ​now an elaborate structure, tier upon tier of coarse, irregular comb all centred about the original bunch of cocoons. Throughout it was traversed by galleries so spacious that even Bomba's bulky form could reach every cell comfortably,—the little workers building not only for their own puny stature but for hers. As to the character and contents of the cells there was rather a lack of system, but in general there was a tendency to keep the brood cells near the centre, surrounded by the pollen cells, for storing thick honey, and a few scattered honey-pots for thin, watery day-today supplies, towards the circumference. The great communal honey-pot beside the entrance had long ago been abandoned, and its waxen walls used up in new construction.
About this time, when the rich, heavy days were shortening and the ripeness of later summer had come upon the lazy air, Bomba, at the height of her prosperity, began to take thought for the future of her race. She, and she alone, had premonition of the bitter season that was to come. She began to lay two new kinds of eggs, one kind, in ordinary worker cells, to produce males or drones instead of workers, the other kind, laid in large cells, destined to hatch into big larye which should ultimately be transformed into great and splendid queens like herself.
With this change in her activities Bomba sud​denly found herself strictly confined to the nest for a time. She was confronted by an entirely new and inexplicable anxiety. As soon as she began laying the drone and queen eggs some of the workers,—who were themselves all imperfectly developed females, and not without certain feminine instincts,—were seized with a strange fratricidal jealousy. From time to time they would make murderous raids upon these new kinds of eggs, seeking to tear them to pieces. Bomba angrily beat off all these attacks, but she dared not leave the nest even for the briefest turn in the sunshine. She had to be ceaselessly on guard, night and day. But as soon as the eggs were hatched the mothering instincts of the workers triumphed over their jealousy, and they began tending the new larvæ with all care. A few, their thwarted sex-instincts partially aroused, even began to emulate Bomba and laid some eggs for themselves. These eggs, however, never having been fertilized by a mating, were incapable of producing either workers or queens. All that hatched from them, for some inscrutable reason known only to Mother Nature herself, were small drones. These disappointed little females were doing their best in producing mates for others, though at no possible profit to themselves.
All these drones of Bomba's tribe, though scarcely larger than the workers, were fine, inde​pendent, capable fellows, far superior to those greedy and lazy spongers the drones of the hive-bee. As soon as they were grown up they promptly left the nest, to forage for themselves and to seek amorous adventure through the last bright weeks of the fleeting summer. They were quite capable of looking after themselves, and it was not for them to loaf about at home and eat up the stores which others had collected.
Bomba's care was now all for her young queens,—who took much longer than the workers or the drones to reach maturity. Each as it came forth from its big cocoon she tended lovingly, and saw it at length fly forth, loaded with honey, never to return. By the time the last young queen had left the nest Bomba was visibly growing old. Worn with her labours, she was weary and bedraggled, and her velvety garb had a somewhat moth-eaten look. She laid a few more worker eggs; and then stopped, as there was no need of raising fresh young bees just to be killed by the autumn frosts. The colony now dwindled apace. Many of the workers, having no more young to tend at home, forsook the nest and revelled away their closing days among the late asters and zinnias and dahlias of the garden. Others, more indolent or more toil-worn, fell to eating up the stored honey in the cells, to crawl forth finally for a last, listless flight, and fall into the grass ​when the worn-out little engine of their being came to a stop.
To Bomba the now almost deserted nest grew suddenly hateful. It was all the creation of her own tremendous energy and life-force, but she had no more use for it. The old fire flickered up again, though feebly, in her nerves. Once more, after all her toils, she would roam free. She crawled out into the glow of the afternoon sun and soared briskly over the garden wall,—turning her back upon the nest forever.
Drawn by the blaze of a bed of flame-coloured late nasturtiums she quite lost her head for half an hour or so, dipping into one gorgeous bloom after another, as if to make the most of the fleeting joy. But presently her elation flagged. She felt heavy with sleep, and clung to the blossom she was on as if she were dazed. Soon she lost her hold, and went fluttering to the ground. The air had suddenly turned cold. Too drowsy to fly she crawled in among the pale-green stalks, and nestled down there till she was almost hidden. It was an inadequate shelter, but to her it seemed sufficient for the moment. She would hunt up a better one when she again felt ready to fly. Soon she dropped to sleep. The sleep passed into a deep coma. The sun went down, and with twilight an invisible shroud of damp cold settled upon the garden. At its touch the last faint spark of ​Bomba's life flickered out, painlessly. But she had lived to the full; and she left behind her a score of royal and fertile daughters, to carry on, when spring should come again, the ancient, fine traditions of her race.