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+Project Gutenberg's The Children's Life of the Bee, by Maurice Maeterlinck
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Children's Life of the Bee
+
+Author: Maurice Maeterlinck
+
+Illustrator: Edward J. Detmold
+
+Release Date: January 8, 2012 [EBook #38516]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHILDREN'S LIFE OF THE BEE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Annemie Arnst and Marc D'Hooghe at
+http://www.freeliterature.org (From images generously made
+available by the Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+THE CHILDREN'S LIFE OF THE BEE
+
+BY
+
+MAURICE MAETERLINCK
+
+
+SELECTED AND ARRANGED BY
+
+ALFRED SUTRO AND HERSCHEL WILLIAMS
+
+
+ILLUSTRATED BY
+
+EDWARD J. DETMOLD
+
+
+
+NEW YORK
+
+DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
+
+1919
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+  I ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE HIVE
+  II THE SWARM
+  III THE FOUNDATION OF THE CITY
+  IV THE YOUNG QUEENS
+  V THE MASSACRE OF THE MALES
+  VI THE PROGRESS OF THE RACE
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+"The black throng issues, or rather pours forth, in a
+throbbing, quivering stream"--_Frontispiece_
+
+In the heart of the flower.
+
+"And the bees, forming a circle around the two, will
+eagerly watch the strange duel"
+
+"The queen takes possession together with her servants,
+guardians and counsellors"
+
+The Sphinx
+
+
+
+
+THE LIFE OF THE BEE
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+ON THE THRESHOLD OF THE HIVE
+
+
+I have not yet forgotten the first apiary I saw, where I learned to love
+the bees. It was many years ago, in a large village of Dutch Flanders,
+the sweet and pleasant country that rejoices in brilliant flowers; a
+country that gladly spreads out before us, as so many pretty toys, her
+illuminated gables and wagons and towers; her cupboards and clocks that
+gleam at the end of the passage; her little trees marshaled in line
+along quays and canal-banks, waiting, one almost might think, for some
+splendid procession to pass; her boats and her barges with sculptured
+sterns, her flower-like doors and windows, her spotless dams and
+many-coloured drawbridges; and her little varnished houses, bright as
+new pottery, from which bell-shaped dames come forth, all a-glitter with
+silver and gold, to milk the cows in the white-hedged fields, or spread
+the linen on flowery lawns that are cut into patterns of oval and
+lozenge and are most amazingly green.
+
+To this spot an aged philosopher had retired, having become a little
+weary; and here he had built his refuge. His happiness lay all in the
+beauties of his garden; and best-loved, and visited most often, were the
+bee-hives. There were twelve of them, twelve domes of straw; and some he
+had painted a bright pink, and some a clear yellow, but most were a
+tender blue, for he had noticed the fondness of the bees for this
+color. These hives stood against the wall of the house, in the angle
+formed by one of those pleasant and graceful Dutch kitchens whose
+earthenware dresser, all bright with copper and brass, was reflected
+through the open door on to the peaceful water of the canal. And the
+water, carrying these familiar images beneath its curtain of poplars,
+led one's eyes to a calm horizon of meadows and of mills.
+
+Here, as in all places, the hives lent a new meaning to the flowers and
+the silence, the balm of the air and the rays of the sun. One seemed to
+have drawn very near to all that was happiest in nature. One was content
+to sit down and rest at this radiant cross-road, along which the busy
+and tuneful bearers of all country perfumes were incessantly passing
+from dawn until dusk. One heard the musical voice of the garden, whose
+loveliest hours seemed to rejoice and to sing of their gladness. One
+came here, to the school of the bees, to be taught how nature is always
+at work, always scheming and planning; and to learn too the lesson of
+whole-hearted labor which is always to benefit others.
+
+
+In order to follow, as simply as possible, the life of the bees through
+the year, we will take a hive that awakes in the Spring and duly starts
+on its labors; and then we shall meet, in their order, all the great
+events of the bees. These are, first of all, the formation and departure
+of the swarm; then, the foundation of the new city, the birth and flight
+of the young queens, the massacre of the males, and, last of all, the
+return of the sleep of winter. We will try to give the reasons for each
+event, and to show the laws and habits that bring it about; and so,
+when we have arrived at the end of the bees' short year, which extends
+only from April to the last days of September, we shall have gazed on
+all the mysteries of the palace of honey.
+
+Before we knock at the door, and let our inquisitive glance travel
+round, it need merely be said that the hive is composed of a queen, who
+is the mother of all her people; of thousands of female worker-bees, who
+are neuters or spinsters; and, finally, of some hundreds of males, who
+never do any work, and are known as drones.
+
+
+When for the first time we take the cover off a hive we cannot help some
+feeling of fear, as though we were looking at something not meant for
+our eyes, something alarming and frightening. We have always thought of
+the bee as rather a dangerous creature. There is the distressful
+recollection of its sting, which produces so peculiar a pain that one
+knows not with what to compare it: a sort of dreadful dryness, as though
+a flame of the desert had scorched the wounded limb; and one asks
+oneself whether these daughters of the sun may not have distilled a
+dazzling poison from their father's rays, in order to defend the
+treasure which they have gathered during his shining hours.
+
+There is no doubt that if some person, who neither knows nor respects
+the habits of the bee, were suddenly to fling open the hive, this would
+turn itself immediately into a burning-bush of heroism and fury; but the
+slight amount of skill needed to deal with the matter can be readily
+acquired. Let but a little smoke be deftly applied, let us be gentle and
+careful in our movements, and the heavily-armed workers will permit
+themselves to be robbed without the least thought of using their sting.
+It is not the fact, as some people have stated, that the bees recognize
+their owner, nor have they any fear of man; but, when the smoke reaches
+them, when they become aware of what is happening, so quietly and
+without any haste or disturbance, they imagine that this is not the
+attack of an enemy against whom any defense is possible, but that it is
+some natural catastrophe, to which they will do well to submit. Instead
+of vainly struggling, therefore, their one thought is to safeguard their
+future; and they rush at once to their reserves of honey, into which
+they eagerly plunge themselves in order to possess the material for
+starting a new city immediately, no matter where, should the old one be
+destroyed or they compelled to abandon it.
+
+A person who knows nothing of bees will be a little disappointed the
+first time he looks into a hive. Let us say that it is an
+observation-hive, made of glass, with black curtains and shutters and
+only one comb, thus enabling the spectator to study both sides. These
+hives can be placed in a drawing-room or a library without any
+inconvenience or danger. The bees that live in the one I have in my
+study in Paris are able--even in that great city--to do their own
+marketing, as it were--in other words, to find the food they
+require--and to prosper. You will have been told, when you are shown
+this little glass box, that it is the home of a most extraordinary
+activity; that it is governed by a number of wise laws, that it
+enshrines deep mysteries; and all you will see is a mass of little,
+reddish groups, somewhat resembling roasted coffee-berries or bunches of
+raisins, all huddled up against the glass. They look more dead than
+alive; their movements are slow, and seem confused and without any
+purpose. We ask ourselves, can these be the dazzling creatures we had
+seen, but a moment ago, flashing and sparkling as they darted among the
+pearls and the gold of a thousand wide-open flowers?
+
+Now, in the darkness, they seem to be shivering; to be numbed,
+suffocated, so closely are they huddled together. They look as though
+they were prisoners; or shall we say queens who have lost their throne,
+who have had their one moment of glory in the midst of their radiant
+garden, and are now compelled to return to the dingy misery of their
+poor overcrowded home.
+
+It is with them as it is with all the real things in life; they must be
+studied, and we have to learn how to study them.
+
+Much is happening inside this mass that seems so inactive, but it will
+take you some time to grasp it and see it. The truth is that every
+single creature in the little groups that appear scarcely to move is
+hard at work, each one at its own particular trade. There is not one of
+them that knows what it means to be idle; and those, for instance, that
+seem fast asleep, as they hang in great clusters against the glass, are
+entrusted with the most mysterious and fatiguing task of all; it is
+their duty to create the marvelous wax. But we shall tell later, and in
+its place, precisely what each of the bees is doing; for the moment we
+will merely point out why it is that the different classes of workers
+all cluster together so strangely. The fact is that the bee, even more
+than the ant, is only happy when she is in the midst of a crowd; she can
+only live in the crowd. When she leaves the hive, which is so densely
+packed that she has to keep on butting with her head in order to pass,
+she is out of her element, away from what she loves. She will dive for
+an instant into flower-filled space, as the swimmer will dive into the
+sea that is filled with pearls; but, just as the swimmer must come to
+the surface and breathe the air, so must she, at regular intervals,
+return and breathe the crowd--or she will die. Take her away from her
+comrades, and however abundant the food may be, however gentle the
+climate, she will perish in a few days, not of hunger or cold, but
+merely of loneliness. She needs the crowd, she needs her own city, just
+as she needs the honey on which she lives. This craving for
+companionship in some way helps us to understand the nature of the laws
+that govern the hive. For in these laws the individual bee, the one bee
+apart from the other, simply does not count. Her entire life is
+sacrifice, and only sacrifice, to the bees as a race; as it were, to the
+everlasting community, of which she forms part.
+
+This, however, has not always been the case, for there is a lower order
+of bees that prefers to work alone, and very miserably too, sometimes
+never seeing its young, and at others, like the bumble-bee, living in
+the midst of its own little family. From these we arrive, through one
+stage after another, to the almost perfect but pitiless society of our
+hives, where the individual bee exists only for the republic of which it
+forms a part, and where that republic itself will at all times be
+sacrificed in the interests of the immortal city of the future.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+THE SWARM
+
+
+We will now leave our observation hive, and, in order to get nearer to
+nature, consider the different events of the swarm as they come to pass
+in an ordinary hive, which is about ten times larger than the other, and
+offers entire freedom to the bees.
+
+Here, then, they have shaken off the sluggishness of winter. The queen
+started laying her eggs in the very first days of February, and the
+workers have gone in streams to the willows and nuttrees, the gorse and
+violets, anemones and lungworts. Then Spring comes upon the earth, and
+in the hive honey and pollen abound in cellar and attic, while each day
+sees the birth of thousands of bees. The overgrown males now all sally
+forth from their cells, and sun themselves on the combs. So crowded does
+the city become that hundreds of workers, coming back from the flowers
+in the evening, will vainly seek shelter within, and will be forced to
+spend the night on the threshold of the hive, where many will die from
+the cold.
+
+The inhabitants of the hive become restless, and the old queen begins to
+stir. She feels that there is something to be done; something strange,
+that she has to do. So far, she has religiously fulfilled her duty as a
+good mother; but, to her, the accomplishment of this duty will bring no
+reward. An unknown power threatens her tranquillity; she will soon be
+forced to quit this city of hers, where she has so long reigned. But
+this city has been made by her. She is not its queen in the sense in
+which men use the word. She gives no orders; she obeys, as meekly as the
+humblest of her subjects, the hidden power that for the present we will
+call the "spirit of the hive." But she is the mother of the city; its
+inhabitants are all her children. It is she who has founded it, brought
+it together out of nothing, triumphed over the uncertainty and poverty
+of its beginning; it is she who has peopled it; and those who move
+within its walls--the workers, the males, the larvę, the nymphs and
+young princesses--she is the mother of them all.
+
+
+What is this "spirit of the hive"--where is it to be found? It is not
+like the special instinct that teaches the bird to build its
+well-planned nest, and then seek other skies when winter threatens. It
+is not a fixed and unchanging habit; it is not a law that deals with
+special cases. On the contrary, it deals with all cases; it studies
+them, watches them--and then gives orders for the right thing to be
+done--just as a faithful steward might do who had only the interests of
+his master at heart.
+
+It deals unmercifully with the wealth and the happiness, the liberty and
+the life, of all this winged people; and yet it always acts with
+judgment and wisdom, as though it were itself directed by some
+overpowering duty. It is the "spirit of the hive" that decides how many
+bees shall be born every day, arranging this in accordance with the
+number of flowers that gladden the country-side. It is the "spirit of
+the hive" that warns the queen when it is time to depart, that compels
+her to allow the young princesses to come into the world, although these
+princesses shall be her own rivals. Or perhaps, when the season is on
+the wane, and the flowers are growing less plentiful, the spirit will
+instruct the workers to do away with the princesses, so that there may
+be no chance of disturbance, and work may once again become the sole
+object of all.
+
+The spirit of the hive is prudent and wise, but never niggardly. In the
+glad summer days of sunshine and plenty it permits three or four hundred
+males to exist in the hive--pompous, useless, noisy creatures, who are
+greedy and dirty, vulgar and arrogant; but, one morning when the flowers
+are beginning to close earlier and open later, the spirit will quietly
+issue instructions that every male shall be killed. It draws up a sort
+of time-table for each one of the workers, allotting them tasks in
+accordance with their age; it selects the nurses who attend to the
+larvę, and the ladies of honor who wait on the queen and never by any
+chance let her out of their sight. It has given the necessary orders to
+the house-bees who air and warm the hive by fanning their wings, thereby
+also helping the honey to settle; to the architects, masons, waxworkers
+and sculptors who form the mysterious curtain and build the combs; to
+the foragers who sally forth to the flowers in search of the nectar that
+turns into honey, of the pollen that feeds the larvę, and of the water
+and salt required by the youth of the city.
+
+It is the spirit of the hive that has chosen the chemists whose business
+it is to keep the honey sweet and fresh by allowing a drop of formic
+acid to fall in from the end of their sting; the capsule-makers, who
+seal up the provision-cells when these are filled; the sweepers, who
+clean the streets and public places of the hive; and the guards who all
+day and all night keep watch on the threshold, who question all comers
+and goers, recognize the young bees as they return from their very first
+flight, scare away vagabonds, loafers and trespassers, expel all
+intruders, and, if need be, block up and defend the entrance to the
+hive.
+
+And, last of all, it is the spirit of the hive which decides on the hour
+at which the bees shall swarm; the hour, that is, when we find a whole
+people, who have reached the very height of prosperity and power,
+suddenly abandoning, in favor of the generation that is to follow, all
+their wealth and their palaces, their homes and the fruits of their
+labor, content themselves to face the perils and hardships of a journey
+into a new and distant country. This act will always bring poverty with
+it and sometimes ruin; and the people who once were so happy are
+scattered abroad in obedience to a law that they recognize to be
+greater than their own happiness.
+
+These things that happen to the bee are regarded by us in the way we
+regard most things that happen in the world. We note some of the bees'
+habits; we say, they do this, and do that, they work in such and such a
+way, this is how their queens are born; we observe that the workers are
+all females and that they swarm at a certain time. And having said this,
+we think that we know them, and ask nothing more. We watch them
+hastening from flower to flower, we see the constant movement within the
+hive; and we tell ourselves that we understand all about their life. But
+the moment that we try to come nearer the truth, to see more clearly, we
+find puzzling questions confronting us, questions as to what part is
+played by destiny and what part by will, how much is due to
+intelligence and how much to nature; difficult questions, these, that
+are never absent even from the most simple acts of our own daily life.
+
+
+Our hive, then, is preparing to swarm, making ready for the great
+sacrifice to the generation that is to come. In obedience to the order
+given by the "spirit of the hive," sixty or seventy thousand bees out of
+the eighty or ninety thousand that form the whole population, will
+forsake their old city at a given hour. They will not be leaving it at a
+moment of great unhappiness; they have not suddenly made up their minds
+to abandon a home that has been rendered miserable by hunger or illness,
+or ruined by war. No; on the contrary, preparations have for a long time
+been made, and the hour most favorable for departure patiently awaited.
+
+If the hive were poor, or had suffered from storm or robbery; or if some
+misfortune had befallen the royal family, the bees would not dream of
+going away. They do this only when everything is at its very best in the
+hive; at a time when, thanks to the enormous amount of work done in the
+spring, the immense palace of wax has its 120,000 well-arranged cells
+overflowing with honey and with the many-colored flour, known as "bees'
+bread," on which the larvę are fed.
+
+Never is the hive more beautiful than on the eve of its great sacrifice.
+Let us try to imagine it for ourselves--not as it appears to the bee,
+for we cannot tell what it looks like to her, seen through the triple
+eye on her brow and the six or seven thousand facets of the eyes on her
+side--but as it would seem to us, were we no bigger than she is. From
+the height of a dome greater than that of St. Peter's at Rome waxen
+walls descend to the ground; and these walls, although they have all
+been built in the dark, are more perfect, more wonderful, than any that
+have been erected by human hands. Each one, smelling so fresh and so
+sweet, contains thousands of cells that are stored with provisions;
+enough, indeed, to feed the whole population for weeks. Here, too, are
+transparent cells filled with the pollen of every flower of spring,
+making brilliant splashes of red and yellow, of black and mauve. Close
+by, sealed with a seal to be broken only in days of distress, is the
+honey of April, clearest and most perfumed of all, stored in twenty
+thousand vats, which look like a long and beautiful embroidery of gold,
+with borders that hang stiff and rigid. Lower down still, the honey of
+May is maturing, in huge open tanks, that are fanned all the time by
+watchful, untiring guardians. In the center, in the warmest part of the
+hive, are the royal nurseries, the domain set apart for the queen and
+her attendants; here also are about 16,000 cells wherein the eggs
+repose, 15 or 16,000 chambers occupied by the youthful bees, and 40,000
+rooms filled with infants in their cradles, cared for by thousands of
+nurses. And, last of all, in the most secret and private quarters, are
+the three, four, six or twelve sealed palaces, vast in size compared
+with the others, where the growing princesses lie who await their hour;
+wrapped in a kind of shroud, all of them motionless and pale, and fed in
+the darkness.
+
+
+The appointed day arrives, the one that has been chosen by the "spirit
+of the hive"; and a certain part of the population will at once sally
+forth. In the sleeping city there remain the males, the very young bees
+that look after the brood-cells, and some thousands of workers who go on
+gathering honey, guarding the treasure, and keeping up the moral
+atmosphere of the hive. For it must be understood that each hive has its
+own moral code; some are admirable in every respect, while others have
+fallen away sadly from the paths of virtue. A careless bee-keeper will
+often spoil his people, and cause them to lose respect for the property
+of others, whereby they will become a danger to all the hives around.
+They will give up the hundreds of visits to neighboring flowers that are
+necessary in order to form one drop of honey, and will prefer to force
+their way into other hives, that are too weak for selfdefense, and to
+rob these of the fruit of their labors; and it is very difficult to
+bring back to the paths of duty a hive that shall have become so
+depraved.
+
+
+All things go to prove that it is not the queen, but the "spirit of the
+hive," that fixes on the hour for the swarm. This queen of ours, like
+many a leader among men, is herself compelled to obey commands that are
+far more important, and far more secret, than those which she gives to
+her subjects. At break of dawn, or perhaps a night or two before, the
+word will be given; and scarcely has the sun drunk in the first drops of
+dew when a most unusual stir may be noticed inside and all around the
+buzzing hive. Sometimes, too, for day after day before the actual
+swarming takes place, one will find a curious excitement, for which
+there would seem no cause, that suddenly appears, and as suddenly
+vanishes, in the golden, gleaming throng. One asks oneself, has a cloud
+that we cannot see crept across the sky that the bees are watching; or
+is it their mere sorrow at the thought of leaving? Has a council of bees
+been summoned to consider whether they really must go? Of all this we
+know nothing; we do know that the "spirit of the hive" has no difficulty
+in letting its message be known to the multitude. Certain as it may seem
+that the bees are able to communicate with each other, we cannot tell
+whether this is done in our human fashion. It is possible that they
+themselves do not hear their own song, the murmur that comes to us
+heavily laden with perfume of honey, the joyous whisper of fairest
+summer days that the bee-keeper loves so well, the festival song of
+labor that rises and falls around the hive, and that might almost be the
+chant of the eager flowers, the voice of the white carnation, the
+marjoram, and the thyme.
+
+Certain sounds that the bees put forth, however, can be readily
+understood by us, sounds that convey anger, sorrow, rejoicing or
+threats. They have their songs of abundance, when the harvest is
+plentiful, their psalms of grief and the chorus they chant to the queen;
+and at the time when she is being chosen the young princesses will send
+forth long and mysterious warcries.... It is quite possible that the
+sounds we ourselves make do not reach the bees; in any event these
+sounds do not seem in the least to disturb them, but are regarded by the
+bees perhaps as not intended for them, not in their world, and anyhow of
+no interest. In the same way perhaps we too only hear a very small part
+of the sounds that the bees produce, and there may be many of which we
+are ignorant. We soon shall be shown how quickly they contrive to
+understand each other, and how each one is told precisely the right
+thing to do, when, for instance, that great honey-thief, the dreadful
+moth that bears a death's head on its back, forces its way into the
+hive, humming its own strange song. The news travels quickly from group
+to group; and from the guards on the threshold to the workers on the
+most distant combs, the whole population of the hive becomes suddenly
+alert and eager, and trembles with fear.
+
+
+For a long time it was thought that when these clever bees, usually so
+prudent and well-advised, left the treasures of their kingdom and sought
+a future that was so full of uncertainty, they were obeying some foolish
+impulse, some suggestion that had no especial meaning. It is our habit,
+when we consider the bees, to say that all that we do not as yet
+understand is just due to fate, that it happens because it had to
+happen. But now that we have discovered two or three of the secrets of
+the hive, we have learned why it is that the bees swarm; the reason
+being merely that the generation at present in the hive has thought it
+its duty to sacrifice itself on behalf of the generation that is to
+come.
+
+The fact that this is the case can easily be proved. If the bee-keeper
+chooses to destroy the young queens in their cells, to enlarge the
+store-houses and dormitories in the hive, all the restlessness,
+confusion, the stir and the worry, would at once disappear. The bees
+would immediately take up their work again and revisit the flowers; the
+old queen, having no one to fill her place, would give up her great
+desire for the light of the sun, and decide to remain where she was. All
+her doubts as to the future being now set at rest, she would peacefully
+continue her labors, which consist in the laying of two or three
+thousand eggs a day, as she passes from cell to cell, omitting none, and
+never pausing to rest.
+
+
+This particular hive, however, that we are now watching, has not been
+interfered with by man; the bees have been left to do what seemed right
+to them. On the appointed day then, the beautiful day, whose dawn, still
+moist with the dew, comes nearer and nearer beneath the trees,
+approaching with radiant and glowing steps, the bees all become
+impatient, and feverishly restless. Over the whole surface of the golden
+corridors that divide the walls of the hive, the workers are busily
+making preparations for the journey. Each one will first of all provide
+herself with honey sufficient for five or six days. From this honey
+that they carry within them they will distil the wax needed to build the
+new home. They will take with them also some kind of solid substance
+with which they will afterwards block up all the holes, strengthen weak
+places, varnish the walls and shut out the light; for the bees love to
+work in complete darkness, guiding themselves with their wonderful eyes,
+or perhaps with their antennę, or feelers, which very possibly possess
+some sense, unknown to us, that enables them to triumph over the
+darkness.
+
+
+This is the most dangerous day in the life of the bee; it is full of the
+most dreadful possibilities; and the bees are well aware of it. Thinking
+of nothing now but their mighty adventure, they will have no time to
+visit the gardens and meadows; and to-morrow, and after to-morrow, it
+may rain, or there may be wind; their wings may be frozen and the
+flowers refuse to open. They would soon die of hunger; no one would come
+to help them, and they would seek help from none. For one city knows not
+the other, and assistance never is given. And even if the bee-keeper
+place the new hive by the side of the old one, the queen and her cluster
+of bees would not dream of returning to the safety and wealth of the
+home they had left, no matter what hardships they might have to endure;
+and all, one by one, and down to the last of them, would perish of
+hunger and cold around their unhappy queen rather than go back to the
+hive where they were born.
+
+
+This is a thing, some people might say, that men would not do; it is a
+proof that the bee cannot have much intelligence. Is this so certain?
+Other creatures may have an intelligence that is different from ours,
+and produces different results; and yet it does not follow that they are
+inferior to us. Are we so readily able to understand of what the people
+are thinking whom we see, perhaps, talking behind a closed window or
+moving about in the street? Or let us suppose that an inhabitant of
+Venus or Mars were to look down from the top of a mountain, and watch
+us, who to him would seem mere little black specks, as we come and go in
+the streets and squares of our towns. Would the mere sight of our
+movements, our buildings, machines and canals, give him any very real
+idea of ourselves? All he could do, like ourselves as we gaze at the
+hive, would be to take note of one or two facts that seem very
+extraordinary. And from these facts he would jump at conclusions that
+would be just as uncertain as those that it pleases us to form
+concerning the bee.
+
+"What are they aiming at, what are they trying for?" he would wonder,
+after years and years of patient watching. "I can see nothing that seems
+to direct their actions. The little things that one day they collect and
+build up, the next they destroy and scatter. In a great many cases their
+conduct is quite extraordinary. There are some men, for instance, who
+seem to do no work and hardly to stir from their place. They can be told
+from the others by their glossier coat, and also by their being
+generally fatter. They live in buildings ten or twenty times bigger than
+those of the workers, very much richer, and full of little ingenious
+contrivances. They spend a great many hours every day at their meals, of
+which they take a great number. They appear to be held in high honor by
+all who come near them; and have numbers of men and women to wait on
+them, to feed them and look after them. It can only be assumed that
+these persons must be of the greatest use and service to the country,
+but I have so far not been able to discover what this service may be.
+There are others who do nothing but work, and work very hard indeed, in
+great sheds full of wheels that are always turning round and round, or
+in dark and dirty hovels, or on small plots of earth that from sunrise
+to sunset they are always digging and delving. It is certain that this
+labor must be an offense, and one which is punished. For the persons who
+are guilty of it are lodged in wretched little houses, in which there is
+absolutely no comfort at all, and very often no light and no air. They
+are clothed in some colorless sort of hide. They are so madly fond of
+the foolish things they are doing that they scarcely allow themselves
+time to eat or to sleep. In numbers they are to the others as a thousand
+to one. The curious thing is that, apart from this extraordinary craving
+for their work--which would seem to be very tiring--they appear to be
+quite gentle and harmless, and satisfied with the leavings of those who
+are evidently the guardians, if not the saviors, of the race."
+
+Whatever we may think about the intelligence of the bee, we must at
+least admire the way in which it sacrifices itself to the one thing it
+seems to care for or value--and that is, the future. It is the future of
+the race, and that only, which directs the bee's actions, its virtues,
+and even its cruelties. That is its ideal, the one thing it lives for;
+and where shall we find one that is more sublime, where shall we look
+for a self-denial that is braver or more complete?
+
+
+It is such a logical little republic, this one of the bees; they reason
+so clearly, they are so careful and wise; and yet they allow this dream
+of theirs, this dream that is so uncertain and full of doubt, to master
+them completely. Who shall tell us, oh little people, who are so deeply
+in earnest, who have fed on the warmth and the light and on all that is
+purest in nature, on the very soul of the flowers, who shall tell us why
+you seem to have found the answer to questions that to us are
+unanswerable still? Oh little city, so full of faith, and mystery, and
+hope, why do your thousands of workers sacrifice themselves so
+cheerfully? Another spring, another summer, would be theirs if only they
+would not waste their strength so recklessly, if only they would take a
+little more care of themselves and not work so dreadfully hard; but at
+the wonderful moment when the flowers are calling to them, the bees
+forget everything but their work, give themselves up to it
+whole-heartedly, passionately; with the result that in less than five
+weeks they are worn out, their wings are broken, their bodies shriveled
+and covered with wounds.
+
+Why, we ask ourselves, why do they give up their sleep, the delights of
+honey, the leisure that their winged brother, the butterfly, enjoys so
+gaily? It is not because they are hungry. Two or three flowers will
+provide each bee with the nourishment that she requires, and in one hour
+she will visit two or three hundred, to gather a treasure whose
+sweetness she never will taste. Oh bees, we wonder, why all this toil
+and suffering? And the answer is that they aim at one thing only, to
+live, as long as the world itself, in those that come after them.
+
+
+But we are forgetting the hive, where the swarming bees have begun to
+lose patience; the hive whose black and trembling waves are bubbling and
+overflowing, like melting copper beneath a hot sun. It is noon, and the
+heat so great that the trees around appear almost to hold back their
+leaves, as we hold our breath when something very solemn and wonderful
+is about to happen. The bees give their honey and sweet-smelling wax to
+the man who keeps them, but more precious gift still is their summoning
+him to the gladness of June, to the joy of the beautiful months; for
+events in which bees take part happen only when skies are pure, at the
+joyous hours of the year when flowers are brightest. The bees are the
+soul of the summer, the clock whose hands are marking the moments of
+plenty; they are the untiring wing on which delicate scents are
+floating; they are the guide of the quivering sunbeams, the song of the
+tranquil, gentle air. To see them in their flight recalls to us the many
+simple joys of the quiet hours of summer; as we look at them, we seem to
+hear the whisper of the good, kindly heat. To him who has known them and
+loved them, a summer where there are no bees becomes as sad and as empty
+as one without flowers or birds.
+
+
+It will startle you just a little, the first time you see the great
+swarm of a bee-hive. You will be almost afraid to go near it. You will
+wonder, can these be the same friendly, hard-working bees that you have
+so often watched in the past? A few minutes ago, perhaps, you may have
+seen them flocking in from all parts of the country, as busy as little
+housewives, with no thought beyond household cares. You will have
+watched them stream into the hive, all out of breath, tired, flurried;
+you will have seen the young guards at the gate salute them as they
+passed by. They will have rushed through, to the inner court, and have
+quickly handed over their harvest of honey to the workers on duty there,
+exchanging with these the three or four necessary words; or perhaps they
+will have hastened to the great vats near the brood-cells, and will have
+emptied the two heavy baskets of honey that hung from their thighs, then
+going out again without giving a thought to what might be happening in
+the royal palace, the work-rooms, or the nurseries, where the young
+bees lie asleep; without for one instant heeding the babble in the
+public place in front of the gate, the place where the cleaners, when
+the heat is very great, are accustomed to gather and gossip.
+
+
+But to-day everything is changed. A certain number of workers, it is
+true, will quietly go off to the fields, as though nothing were
+happening, and will come back, clean the hive, attend to the
+brood-cells, and take no part whatever in the general rejoicing. These
+bees are the ones who are not going away with the queen. They will
+remain to guard the old home, to look after the nine or ten thousand
+eggs, the eighteen thousand young bees, and the seven or eight royal
+princesses who to-day will be forsaken. The order has been given, and is
+faithfully obeyed; and hardly ever will one of these resigned
+Cinderellas be found in the giddy throng of the swarm.
+
+
+And yet, the temptation must seem very great. It is the festival of
+honey, the triumph of the race; the one day of joy, of forgetfulness and
+light-heartedness, the only Sunday the bees ever know. It seems, too, to
+be the one day on which all eat their fill, and revel, to heart's
+content, in the treasure which they have amassed. They might be
+prisoners freed at last, suddenly led into a land overflowing with
+plenty. They cannot contain the joy that is in them. They come and go
+without aim or purpose; they depart and return, sally forth again to see
+if the queen is ready; they tease and play about with their sisters, and
+do anything to pass the time. They fly much higher than usual, and the
+leaves of the mighty trees round about are all quivering in reply. The
+bees have left all trouble behind, and all care. They no longer are
+fierce, suspicious, angry. On this day man can go near them and handle
+them, can divide the glittering curtain they form as they fly round and
+round in songful circles. He can take them up in his hand, he can gather
+them as he would a bunch of grapes; for to-day, in their gladness,
+possessing nothing, but full of faith in the future, they will submit to
+everything and injure no one, so long as they be not separated from
+their queen, on whom that future depends.
+
+
+But the signal has not yet been given. In the hive there is the
+strangest confusion, a disorder which we are unable to understand. At
+ordinary times, each bee, as soon as she has returned to the hive,
+appears to forget her wings; she will do her work, scarcely making a
+movement, on that particular spot in the hive where her special duties
+lie. But to-day every bee seems bewitched; they fly in dense circles
+round and round the smooth walls, like a living jelly stirred by an
+unseen hand. There are times even when the air inside the hive will
+become so hot that the wax of which the buildings are made will soften,
+and twist out of shape.
+
+The queen, who till now never has stirred from the center of the comb,
+is rushing wildly to and fro, in breathless excitement, clambering over
+the crowd that keeps on turning and turning. Is she hastening their
+departure, or trying to prevent it? Is she commanding or imploring? Is
+she the cause of all this emotion, or merely its victim?
+
+There would seem reason to believe that the swarming always takes place
+against the wish of the queen. The workers, her daughters, are
+extraordinarily good to her, but it is just possible that they have not
+much faith in her intelligence. They treat her rather like a mother who
+has seen her best days. Their respect for her, their tenderness, is
+remarkable, and there is nothing they would not do for her. The purest
+honey is kept for her use. She has guardians who watch over her by day
+and by night, and get the cells ready in which the eggs are to be laid.
+She has loving attendants who pet and fondle her, who feed her and clean
+her. Should she meet with the slightest accident, the news will spread
+quickly from group to group, and the whole people will rush to and fro
+with loud expressions of sorrow. If she were to be taken away from the
+hive at a time when the bees had no hope of filling her place, the work
+of the city would stop in every direction. No one would look after the
+young; the bees would wander about looking for their mother, many of
+them leaving the hive. The workers who were building the comb would
+scatter, the gatherers of honey would no longer visit the flowers, the
+guards at the gate would give up their post; and the enemies of the
+hive, who are always watching for a chance to come in and steal, would
+enter and leave without any one giving a thought to the defense of the
+treasure which it had taken so long to collect. And poverty, little by
+little, would creep into the city; and the miserable inhabitants would
+before long all die of sorrow and hunger, though every flower of summer
+should be blossoming before them.
+
+But if the queen be put back before the bees have suffered too much,
+before they believe her to be lost forever, they will give her the
+deepest, most touching welcome. They will flock eagerly round her;
+excited groups will crawl over each other in their anxiety to see her.
+They rush to offer her honey, and lead her in triumph back to the royal
+chamber. And order at once comes back and work starts again, from the
+comb gatherer of brood-cells to the furthest cells where the reserve
+honey is stored. And the bees go forth to the flowers, in long black
+files, to return, in less than three minutes sometimes, with their
+harvest of nectar and pollen. The streets will be swept, thieves and
+other enemies driven out, and in the hive will be heard the soft sounds
+of the strange hymn of rejoicing, which would seem to be the chant that
+denotes the presence of the queen.
+
+A number of instances could be given of the absolute devotion that the
+workers show for their queen. Should a disaster fall on the city;
+should the hive or the comb collapse; should the bees suffer from
+hunger, from cold or disease, and die in their thousands, the queen will
+nearly always be found, alive and safe, beneath the bodies of her
+faithful daughters. They may be relied on to protect her, and help her
+to escape; they will keep for her the last drop of honey, the last
+morsel of food. And be the disaster never so great, they will not lose
+heart so long as the queen be alive. You may break their comb twenty
+times in succession, twenty times take from them their young and their
+food, you will still never succeed in making them despair of the future.
+Though they be starving, and so few in number that they scarcely can
+conceal their mother from the enemy's gaze, they will set about to start
+the city again and to provide for what is most pressing. They will
+quietly accept the new conditions, and divide the work between them in
+accordance with these conditions; they will take up their labors again
+with extraordinary patience, and zeal, and intelligence.
+
+"I have come across a colony of bees," says Langstroth, "that was not
+sufficiently large to cover a comb of three inches square, and yet they
+tried to rear a queen. For two whole weeks did these bees cherish their
+hope. Finally, when their number was reduced by a half, their queen was
+born, but her wings were imperfect, and she was unable to fly.
+Incomplete as she was, her bees did not treat her with less respect.
+Another week, and scarcely a dozen remained alive; a few days more, and
+the queen had vanished, leaving only a few wretched, inconsolable
+insects mourning for her on the comb."
+
+I have more than once had queens sent to me from Italy, for the Italian
+species is stronger, more active and gentler than our own. It is the
+custom to forward them in small boxes, with holes made in the top so as
+to let in the air. In these boxes, some food is placed, and the queen
+put in, together with a certain number of workers, who are selected as
+far as possible from among the oldest bees in the hive. (The age of the
+bee can easily be told by its body, which becomes more polished, thinner
+and almost bald as it grows older; and more particularly by the wings,
+which the hard work uses and tears.) It is the mission of these
+worker-bees to feed the queen during the journey, to tend her and guard
+her. I would frequently find, when the box arrived, that nearly every
+one of the workers had died. On one occasion, indeed, they had all
+perished of hunger; but in this instance, as in all others, the queen
+was alive, unharmed and full of strength. The last of her companions had
+probably died in the act of presenting the last drop of honey she held
+in her sac to the queen, who was the emblem of a life more precious and
+more sacred than her own.
+
+
+It is probably not because of the queen herself, but of the future that
+she represents, that the bees show so great a devotion. For they are by
+no means sentimental; and should one of their number return to the hive
+so badly wounded that she will be unable to work again, they will
+unmercifully drive her away from the city. But for their mother they
+always show the same strong attachment. They will recognize her from
+among all; and even though she be old, crippled and forlorn, the guards
+at the gate will never allow another queen to enter the hive, however
+young and much needed she be.
+
+When the queen has grown old, the bees will bring up a certain number of
+royal princesses to take her place. What happens then to the old queen?
+As to this, we have no certain knowledge; but bee-keepers will
+occasionally find a magnificent young queen perched on the central comb
+of the hive, and in some dark corner, hidden away at the back, the
+haggard old queen who had reigned before her. In cases like this the
+bees will have to take the greatest care to protect her from the hatred
+of the powerful newcomer who longs for her death; for queen hates queen
+so fiercely that, were two to find themselves under the same roof, they
+would immediately fly at each other. One would like to believe that the
+bees contrive to provide a shelter for their poor old queen, in some
+far-away corner of the hive, where she may end her days in peace. But
+here we are confronted again by one of the thousand mysteries of the
+city of wax; and we are once more shown that the habits and actions of
+the bees depend on themselves, and are governed by an intelligence much
+greater than we are inclined to believe.
+
+
+What would the bees do, if we, by force or by some trick, were to bring
+a second queen into the city? Though their sting is always in readiness,
+and they make constant use of it in fights among themselves, _they will
+never draw it against a queen;_ nor will the queen ever draw hers on
+man, or an animal or any ordinary bee. She will never unsheath her royal
+weapon--which is curved, instead of being straight, like that of the
+worker-bee--except only when she is opposed to, and fighting, another
+queen.
+
+If a new queen were brought into the hive, the bees would at once
+surround her, making a ring with their bodies. They would thus form a
+sort of living prison in which the captive would be unable to move; and
+in this prison they would keep her for twenty-four hours, or longer if
+need be, till the victim shall have died of suffocation or hunger.
+
+But if the reigning queen should approach, and seem anxious to attack
+the stranger, the living walls would at once fly open; and the bees,
+forming a circle around the two, will eagerly watch the strange duel, in
+which they themselves will take no part whatever. For it is written that
+against a queen-bee only another queen may draw her sting.
+
+If the fight should last too long, or one of the rivals attempt to
+escape, then, no matter whether she be the reigning queen or the
+intruder, she will at once be seized and kept in the living prison until
+she again shows readiness to attack her foe. The reigning queen will
+almost always conquer, being emboldened and encouraged perhaps by the
+knowledge that she is fighting in her own home, with her subjects around
+her. Perhaps too the bees may make some difference in their treatment of
+the rivals during the period of imprisonment, for their mother seems
+scarcely to suffer from it at all, while the stranger always appears a
+little weakened and bruised.
+
+
+We have shown that, if the queen be taken away from the hive, her people
+will mourn her, and display every sign of the deepest distress. If she
+be put back, a few hours later, her daughters will hasten joyfully
+towards her, offering honey; one section will respectfully form a lane
+for her to pass through, while others, their heads bent low, will move
+in great semi-circles before her, singing the song of welcome that is
+only heard at moments of great happiness and solemn devotion.
+
+But if a new queen were placed in the hive, instead of the old one, the
+greatest trouble and disturbance would ensue. The bees would know at
+once that a trick had been played on them; the impostor would be seized,
+and immediately confined in the terrible living walls made by their
+bodies, and held there until she died. She will hardly ever be allowed
+to come out alive.
+
+There are ways, however, of dealing with this hatred of the new-comer;
+and one of them is to bring her into the hive enclosed in a little cage
+with iron wires, which is hung between two combs. The door of the cage
+is made of wax and honey; the bees, after their first display of fury,
+will gnaw at the wax and honey, thus freeing the prisoner, who will then
+sometimes be allowed to go unharmed, and be subsequently accepted. There
+is another way, too, that is used by a bee-master at Rottingdean, who
+imagined that the unfavorable reception of the new queen might in some
+degree be caused by her own curious behavior. No sooner will she have
+been put into the hive than she will rush wildly to and fro, vainly
+trying to hide in one place or another, and generally doing all she can
+to make the bees suspicious. Mr. Simmins, the bee-master in question,
+shuts the queen up for half an hour without any food before putting her
+into the hive. He then carefully raises a corner of the cover, and
+drops her on to the top of one of the combs. She seems overjoyed at
+finding the bees around her, and as she is starving she gladly accepts
+the food that they offer her. The workers, deceived by her manner, seem
+to believe that she actually is their old queen who has come back to
+them, and welcome her joyfully. In this case, therefore, it would seem
+that Huber, and the other experts who declare that the bees can always
+recognize their own queen, are not entirely right.
+
+And there is also this to be said about the affection the bees have for
+their queen. That affection is real, and certainly exists; but it is
+certain also that it does not last very long. If you were to put back
+into the hive a queen who had been away for several days, her daughters
+would receive her so badly that you would have to snatch her up very
+quickly, and take her away. The explanation is that the bees will have
+made their arrangements to replace her, and will have turned a dozen
+workers'cells into royal cradles, thus providing for a new queen and
+rendering the future safe. They will therefore have nothing more to do
+with the old one.
+
+
+The future is the bees' one consideration, and they sacrifice everything
+to it. As a curious instance, one may mention the way in which they will
+deal with a mouse, or a slug perhaps, that shall have managed to get
+into the hive. They will very soon kill the intruder, but then have to
+consider how they will get rid of the body. If they are unable to drag
+it out of the hive or tear it to pieces, they will build a perfect waxen
+tomb round it, which will tower strangely above the ordinary monuments
+of the city. In one of my hives last year I found three such tombs side
+by side; they had been made with party-walls, like the cells of the
+comb, so that no wax should be wasted. The careful grave-diggers had
+raised these tombs over the remains of three snails that a child had
+dropped into the hive. Generally, in the case of snails, the bees will
+be satisfied to seal the opening of the shell with wax. But here it
+seemed that the shells were broken, and the bees had therefore thought
+it wiser to bury the entire snail; and so that the entrance-hall should
+not be blocked, they had made a number of galleries, wide enough for the
+male bees, which are almost twice as big as the workers, to pass
+through. In districts where the hideous death's-head moth abounds, the
+bees erect little columns of wax at the entrance of the hive, and place
+them so closely together that the night-thief cannot pass through.
+
+
+And now to return to our swarming hive, where the bees have already
+given the signal for flight. And at once, as though with one sudden
+impulse, every gate in the city is flung open wide; and the black throng
+issues, or rather pours forth, in a double or treble jet, in a
+throbbing, quivering stream, that quickly divides and melts into space,
+where the thousands of beating wings weave a tissue humming with sound.
+And this for some moments will hover above the hive, rustling like
+gossamer silk; then, like a veil of gladness, all stirring and
+quivering, it floats to and fro, from the flowers up to the sky. The
+radiant mantle will gather together its four sunlit corners; and, like
+the fairy carpet, will fly across space, steering its straight, direct
+course to the willow, the pear-tree or lime on which the queen will have
+settled. Around her each wave comes to rest, as though on a golden nail,
+and from it there hangs the tissue of pearls and of golden wings.
+
+And then there is silence once more; and, in an instant, this mighty
+tumult, this bewildering golden hail that streamed upon every object
+near, becomes nothing more than a cluster of inoffensive and harmless
+bees, that wait patiently, in thousands of little motionless groups
+hanging down from the branch of a tree, for the scouts to return who
+have gone in search of a place of shelter.
+
+This is the first stage of what is known as the "primary swarm," at
+whose head the old queen is always to be found. The bees will usually
+settle on the shrub or the tree that is nearest the hive; for the
+queen, who has spent all her life in the dark and has almost forgotten
+the use of her wings, is afraid to venture too far.
+
+The bee-keeper waits till the great mass of bees is all gathered
+together; then, having covered his head with a large straw hat (for the
+most inoffensive bee will think it is caught in a trap if entangled in
+hair, and will at once use its sting) but, if he be experienced, wearing
+neither mask nor veil--having taken the precaution only of plunging his
+arms in cold water up to the elbow--he proceeds to gather the swarm by
+vigorously shaking, over an inverted hive, the bough from which the bees
+are hanging. Into this hive the cluster will fall just like an over-ripe
+fruit. Or, if the branch be too thick, he can plunge a spoon into the
+mass, and ladle it out, placing the living spoonfuls wherever it pleases
+him, as though they were grains of corn. He need have no fear of the
+bees that are buzzing around him, and settling on his face and hands;
+and he knows that the swarm will not divide, or grow fierce, will not
+scatter, or try to escape. This is a day when these strange workers seem
+to make holiday, and to be full of a faith and a confidence that nothing
+can shake. They have given up the treasure which they used to guard so
+preciously; they no longer have enemies. They are harmless because they
+are happy; though why they are happy we know not, unless it be because
+they are doing what they feel it is right to do.
+
+Where the queen has alighted the swarm will remain; and if she goes into
+the hive, the long black files of the bees will closely follow, as soon
+as the news shall reach them. Most of them will go eagerly in; but many
+will stay for an instant on the threshold of the new home, and there
+form themselves into solemn, ceremonious circles, which is their method
+of celebrating happy events. "They are beating to arms," the French
+peasants say. The new home will at once be adopted, and its furthest
+corners explored. Its position, its shape, its color, are taken note of
+and never forgotten by these thousands of eager and faithful little
+memories, which have also duly recorded the neighboring landmarks; the
+new city is founded and the thought of it fills the mind and the heart
+of all its inhabitants; the walls resound with the song that proclaims
+the royal presence; and work begins.
+
+But if the swarm be not gathered by man, its history will not end here.
+It will cling to the branch of the tree till the scouts return who have
+been flying in every direction looking for a new home. They will come
+back one by one, and give an account of their mission. The report of
+each scout will probably be very carefully considered. One of them,
+perhaps, will speak favorably of some hollow tree it has seen; another
+has something to say about a crack in a ruined wall, a hole in a grotto,
+or an abandoned burrow. Sometimes the assembly will stop and weigh
+matters over till the next morning; but at last the choice is made and
+agreed to by all. At a given moment the entire mass stirs, divides and
+sets forth; and then, in one sustained and impetuous flight that this
+time knows no obstacle, it steers its straight course, over hedges and
+cornfields, over haystack and lake, over river and village, to its fixed
+and always far-away goal. It is rarely indeed that this second stage
+can be followed by man. The swarm returns to nature; and we know not
+what becomes of it.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+THE FOUNDATION OF THE CITY
+
+
+The bee-keeper has gathered the swarm into his hive; let us now see what
+they will do. And, first of all, let us not be unmindful of the
+sacrifice that these fifty thousand workers have made, who, as Ronsard
+says "In a little body bear so brave a heart," and let us, yet again,
+admire the courage with which they begin their life anew in the desert
+into which they have fallen. They have forgotten the wealth and
+magnificence of their native city; they are indifferent to all they have
+left behind. They give not a thought to the vast store of pollen that
+they had collected, to the 120 pounds of honey, a quantity, let it be
+remembered, which is more than twelve times the weight of all the bees
+in the hive put together, and close on 600,000 times that of the single
+bee. Or you might say that to us it would mean something like 42,000
+tons of provisions, a great fleet laden with nourishment more precious
+than any known to us; for to the bee honey is a kind of liquid life,
+which it absorbs with almost no waste whatever.
+
+Here, in the new abode, there is nothing; not a drop of honey, not a
+morsel of wax; there is nothing to begin on, there is nothing to serve
+as a starting-point. There is only the dreary emptiness of an enormous
+building with its bare sides and roof. The smooth and rounded walls
+enclose only darkness; under the lofty arch is a mere void. But useless
+regrets are unknown to the bee; at any rate, they are not allowed to
+interfere with work. And instead of being depressed or moping in a
+corner, the bee sets to at once, and more energetically than ever.
+
+Immediately, and without the smallest delay, the tangled mass divides,
+splits up and forms itself into groups. Most of these will proceed,
+marching abreast in regular columns, like regiments obeying the word of
+command, and will begin to climb the steep walls of the hive. The first
+bees to reach the dome will cling to it with the claws of their front
+legs; those behind will hang on to the ones in front of them, and the
+next the same, and so on to the end, till long chains have been made
+that serve as a sort of bridge for the crowd which is ever mounting and
+mounting. And, by slow degrees, these chains, as the number of bees
+which form them becomes greater and greater, become a kind of dense,
+three-cornered curtain. When the the last of the bees has joined itself
+to this curtain that hangs in the darkness, all movement ceases in the
+hive; and for long hours this strange cluster will wait, in a stillness
+so complete as to be almost uncanny, for the mystery of wax to appear.
+
+In the meantime, the rest of the bees--those whose business it was to
+remain below in the hive--have paid not the smallest attention to the
+others who were forming the curtain, and have made no effort whatever to
+add themselves to the number. They have been told off to inspect the
+hive, and to do what is immediately necessary. They start sweeping the
+floor, and most carefully remove, one by one, every twig, grain of sand,
+and dead leaf. This satisfactorily accomplished, they will most
+thoroughly examine and test the floor of the new dwelling. They will
+fill up every crack and crevice with a kind of raw wax; they will start
+varnishing the walls, from the top to the bottom. A certain number of
+guards will be sent to the gate, to take up their post there; and very
+soon a detachment of workers will go forth to the fields, whence they
+will come back with their store of pollen.
+
+
+Before we raise the folds of the mysterious curtain, let us try to form
+some idea of the skill and industry shown by the bees in fitting up the
+new hive to serve their purposes. Within the walls there is merely a
+desert; they must plan out their city, decide where the dwellings shall
+be; and these must be built as quickly as possible, for the queen is
+ready to begin to lay her eggs. They must consider the ventilation of
+these dwellings, and these, too, must be strong and substantial.
+Different buildings will be wanted for the different kinds of food that
+are to be stored in them; also it is important that they should be
+handily placed, so that there shall be no difficulty in finding them;
+and passages and streets must be contrived between the cells and
+store-houses. And there are many other problems besides, too many indeed
+to relate, but they have all to be dealt with.
+
+Bee-keepers provide different kinds of hives for the bees, ranging from
+the hollow tree, or the earthenware pot, or the familiar bell-shaped
+dome of straw which we find in our farmers' kitchen-gardens or under
+their windows, hidden away between masses of sunflowers, phlox and
+hollyhock, to what may be called the model factory, which is, as it
+were, the last word of man's ingenuity as applied to the bee. It is a
+building that will hold more than three hundred pounds of honey, having
+three or four layers of combs set in a frame which makes it easy to
+remove or handle the combs and take out the honey; after which, the
+combs can be put back in their place like a book that we return to the
+shelf. Now let us imagine that one fine day an obedient swarm of bees is
+lodged in one of these hives. The little insects are expected to be able
+to find their way about, to make their home there, to accept all these
+strange things as natural. They have to make up their minds where the
+winter storehouses shall be, and where the brood-cells; and these last
+must not be too high or too low, neither too near to or far from the
+entrance gate. The swarm may very likely just have come from the trunk
+of a fallen tree, in which there was one long, narrow gallery; it finds
+itself now in a tower-shaped building, whose ceiling is lost in the
+gloom. And in the midst of this building is a confused and bewildering
+network of frames and scaffolding, the like of which the bee never has
+seen; and all around it are puzzling signs of the impertinent
+interference of man.
+
+
+But all this makes no difference to the bee; and no case has ever been
+known of a swarm refusing to do its duty, or of allowing the strangeness
+of its surroundings to discourage it--except only if the new home should
+be too much exposed to the weather, or have an offensive smell. And even
+then they will not give way to despair; they will promptly abandon the
+place, fly away and seek better fortune a little further off.
+
+But if no objection of this kind offers itself in a huge factory of this
+kind, the bees will calmly go their own way, paying no heed whatever to
+man's desires or intentions; the frames seem to them of use for their
+combs, they will readily accept them. This will be more particularly the
+case if the bee-keeper has artfully surrounded the upper layers of the
+comb with a little strip of wax; the bees will pick out the wax, and go
+on with the comb. If this should be covered all over with leaves of
+foundation-wax, the bees will often be content to deepen and lengthen
+the cells that have been traced out in the leaves, but will be careful
+to alter the position of the cells should these not form an absolutely
+straight line. And thus, in the space of a week, they will be in
+possession of a city as comfortable and well-built as the one they have
+left; whereas, in the ordinary way, if all the work had had to be done
+by them, it would have taken them two or three months to erect the
+buildings and storehouses out of their own shining wax.
+
+
+Sir John Lubbock, who has written many interesting books on ants, bees,
+and wasps, does not believe that the bee has any real intelligence of
+its own, once it departs from what it has always been accustomed to do.
+And as a proof of this he mentions an experiment that any one can try
+for himself. If you put half a dozen bees, and the same number of flies
+into a bottle, then place the bottle on the table with its foot to the
+window, you will find that the bees will be quite unable to find their
+way out, and will go on flinging themselves against the glass, till they
+die of fatigue and hunger; while the flies will all have escaped, in
+less than two minutes, through the open neck of the bottle. Sir John
+Lubbock concludes from this that the bee cannot reason at all, and that
+the fly shows more ingenuity in getting out of a difficulty. It is not
+quite sure, however, that this conclusion is the right one. If you take
+up the bottle and turn it round and round, holding now the neck and now
+the foot to the window, you will find that the bees will turn with it,
+so as always to face the light. It is their love of the light, it is
+actually because of their intelligence, that they come to grief in this
+experiment. They feel convinced that the escape from every prison must
+be there where the light shines clearest. To them glass is a mystery
+which they have never met with in nature; they cannot understand why
+they are unable to pass through it, and convinced that there must be a
+way, they persevere to the end; in fact, it is because of their
+intelligence that they make these unhappy efforts to discover the
+secret. The feather-brained flies, on the other hand, to whom the
+mystery of glass means nothing and who possess no power of thought
+whatever, merely flutter wildly hither and thither, and end by rushing
+against the friendly opening that sets them free.
+
+
+As another instance of the bees' lack of intelligence, Sir John Lubbock
+quotes a passage from a book written by a great American bee-keeper, Mr.
+Langstroth: "As the fly has to feed on many substances in which it might
+easily be drowned, it has learned to be very prudent, and alights
+carefully on the edge of a vessel containing liquid food; the bee, on
+the other hand, plunges in headlong, and very quickly perishes. The sad
+fate of their companions does not hinder others from madly rushing in in
+their turn, to share the same miserable end. No one can understand the
+extent of their folly till he has seen a confectioner's shop which has
+been besieged by a crowd of hungry bees. I have known thousands to be
+strained out from a vat of sirup in which they had been drowned;
+thousands more kept on plunging into the boiling sweets; the floors were
+covered and the windows completely darkened with bees, some crawling,
+others flying, and some so bedaubed that they could neither fly nor
+crawl--not one bee in ten able to carry home its ill-gotten spoil, and
+yet the air filled with new hosts of thoughtless comers!"
+
+It will not do, however, to condemn the bees too hastily; there is
+something to be said on their side. They are accustomed to live in the
+midst of nature, which has her own regular laws; and the ways of man are
+strange and bewildering to them. In the forest, in their ordinary life,
+the madness which Langstroth describes might have come over them if
+some accident suddenly had destroyed a hive full of honey; but in that
+case there would have been no fatal glass, no boiling sugar or cloying
+sirup; there would have been no death or danger other than that to which
+every animal is exposed while seeking its food. And let us remember too
+that it was not mere greed, not the bees' own hunger, that caused them
+to rush so wildly into the boiling vat. It was not for themselves that
+they plunged into the deadly sugar; they can always feast on honey at
+home, if they want to. The first thing the bee does when it returns to
+the hive is to add the honey which it has gathered to the general store;
+thirty times in an hour perhaps it will bring its offering to the
+marvelous treasure-house. Their labors, therefore, their eagerness, have
+no selfish motive; they have one desire, and one only, to increase the
+wealth in the home of their sisters, which is also the home of the
+future.
+
+
+However, the whole truth must be told. Their industry is beyond all
+praise; their methods, their sacrifice of self, arouse all our
+admiration; but there is one thing that shocks us somewhat, and that is
+the indifference with which they regard the misfortunes or death of
+their comrades. The bee appears to possess two sides to her nature; in
+the hive, in their home, they all help and care for each other; the
+union between them, the fellowship, is very close and very true. A
+thousand bees will sacrifice themselves to avenge an injury done by a
+stranger to one of their sisters. But outside the hive, away from the
+home, all this changes; they no longer appear to know one another. If a
+piece of honeycomb were placed a few steps away from their dwelling, and
+out of the crowd of bees that would flock to it you were to crush or
+injure twenty or thirty, the others who had not been attacked would not
+even turn their head. That strange tongue of theirs, curved like some
+Chinese weapon, would quietly go on licking up the fluid that they
+regard as more precious than life, and they would pay no heed whatever
+to the agony, the cries of distress, of their sisters. And when they
+have sucked the comb dry, they will be so anxious that not one drop
+shall be lost, that they will even climb over the dead and the dying to
+lick up the honey these hold in their jaws, and not one sound and
+unharmed bee will make the slightest effort to help or relieve the
+victims. The thought that they themselves run any danger does not
+disturb them; they give no thought to the death that may perhaps await
+them too.
+
+But the fact is that the bees do not know the meaning of fear, and smoke
+is the one thing in the world that they are afraid of. When they are out
+of the hive, they are curiously inoffensive. They will avoid anything
+that comes in their way, they will appear not to notice it, provided
+always that it does not venture too near. This indulgence, however, this
+meekness, hides a heart that is very sure of itself, very confident,
+very reliant. No threat will induce the bee to alter her course; she
+will never attempt to escape. Inside the hive, any danger, whatever it
+be, will at once be boldly faced. Should any living creature, be it ant
+or bear or man, venture to attack the sacred dwelling, every bee will
+spring up and defend the home with passionate fury.
+
+But we must frankly admit that they show no fellowship outside the hive,
+and no sympathy, as we understand the word, within it. On the other
+hand, nowhere in the world shall we discover a more perfect organization
+of work for the benefit of all, a more amazing devotion to the coming
+generation. It may be, perhaps, that this very devotion may have caused
+them to ignore everything else. All their love goes to what lies ahead
+of them; we give ours to what is around us. And are we so sure that, in
+our own lives, there are not many things that we do that would seem
+heartless and cruel to some being who might be watching us as closely as
+we watch the bees?
+
+
+Let us now see what means the bees have of communicating with each
+other. Such means must obviously exist, for it would not be possible
+for the work of so large a city, work which is so varied and so
+perfectly organized, to be carried on without them. They must have some
+method of communication, either by sounds or by some language of touch.
+This strange sense may perhaps lie in the antennę, which are little
+horns, or feelers, containing, in the case of the workers, 12,000
+delicate hairs and 5,000 "smell hollows"; with these antennę they seem
+to question and understand the darkness.
+
+It is evidently not only in their work that the bees are able to
+communicate with each other, for we know that any news, good or bad, any
+sudden event, will at once be noised about in the hive; the loss or
+return of the queen, for instance, the entrance of an enemy, the
+intrusion of a strange queen, or the discovery of treasure. And each
+separate incident produces such a different emotion among them, the
+sounds they make are so essentially varied, that the experienced
+bee-keeper, listening to the murmur that arises from the hive, can at
+once and without any difficulty tell what it is that disturbs the
+multitude that are moving restlessly to and fro in their city.
+
+If you would like to have a more definite proof, you have only to watch
+a bee which shall just have found a few drops of honey on your
+window-sill or the edge of your table. She will immediately lap it up;
+and so eagerly that you will have time to put a tiny touch of paint on
+her belt without disturbing or interrupting her. It is not that she is
+greedy; she rejoices at the thought that she has found some honey for
+the hive. As soon as she has filled her sac, she will go, but watch her
+manner of going; she will not, like the fly, for instance, merely buzz
+around or make a dart for the window; for a moment or two she will hover
+about the room, with her back to the light, eagerly fixing in her mind
+the exact position of the honey. Then, and not till then, she will
+return to the hive, empty her sac into one of the provision-cells; and
+in three or four minutes you will find her back again, going
+unhesitatingly to the spot, and making straight for the honey. And so
+she will come and go, till evening, if need be, as long as a drop
+remains; and her journeys from the hive to the window, from the window
+to the hive, will be as regular as clock-work; there will be no interval
+for rest; there will be no interruption.
+
+
+I will frankly admit that the marked bee often returns alone. Are there
+the same differences among the bees, perhaps, as among ourselves, some
+of them being gossips, and others not given to talk? When I was trying
+this experiment once a friend who was with me said that it must be mere
+selfishness or vanity on the part of the bee that kept her from letting
+her comrades know of the treasure she had found. But, be this as it may,
+it will often happen that the lucky bee will bring two or three friends
+back with her; and I have found this to be the case four times out of
+ten. One day it was a little Italian bee which was the first to find the
+honey; I marked her belt with a touch of blue paint. When she had gorged
+herself she flew off, and came back with two of her sisters; these I
+imprisoned, but did not interfere with her. After her second feast she
+went forth once more, and this time returned with three friends, whom I
+again shut away, and kept on doing this for the rest of the afternoon,
+when, counting my prisoners, I found that she had brought no less than
+eighteen bees to the feast.
+
+One may safely say that the bees will very frequently communicate with
+each other, even though this is not an invariable rule. American
+bee-hunters are so sure of the bees possessing this faculty that their
+methods of searching for nests depend in some measure upon it. "They
+will take a box of honey," Mr. Josiah Emery writes, "to a field or a
+wood far away from any tame bees, and then pick up two or three wild
+ones, and let them fill themselves with the honey. The bees will fly off
+to their home with the spoil, and soon return with their friends, to
+whom they have told the glad news. These will again be allowed to drink
+their fill, and then taken to different points of the compass, and
+allowed to fly home; the direction of their flight will be carefully
+noted, and in this way the hunters are able to discover the position of
+the tree in which the bees have built their nest."
+
+
+It is to be noticed, too, that the bees do not all come together to feed
+on the honey we have put on the table; there will be several seconds
+between the different arrivals. We ask ourselves therefore whether the
+bees are led by, and merely follow the original discoverer, or whether
+they go independently, having been told by her where it is? Experts hold
+different opinions as to this; in the case of the ant Sir John Lubbock
+is satisfied that the ant which finds the treasure merely leads the way
+and is followed by the others; but the ant, of course, merely crawls
+along the ground, while the bee's wings throw every avenue open.
+
+My study in the country is on the first floor, and rather above the
+ordinary range of the flight of the bees, except at times when the lime
+and chestnut trees are in blossom. I took an open honeycomb, and kept it
+on my table for a week, without its perfume having attracted a single
+bee. Then I went to a glass hive that was close by the house, took an
+Italian bee, brought her in to my study, set her on the comb, and marked
+while she was feeding. When she had drunk her fill, she flew off and
+returned to the hive. I followed quickly, saw her crawl over the huddled
+mass of the bees, plunge her head into an empty cell, disgorge her
+honey, and then get ready to set forth again. At the entrance of the
+hive I had placed a glass box, divided by a trap-door into two
+compartments. The bee flew into this box; and as she was alone, and no
+other bee seemed to accompany or follow her, I left her there, and then
+repeated the experiment on twenty bees in succession. By means of the
+trap, with its two little compartments, I was able in each case to
+separate the marked bee from the ones that might accompany her, and to
+keep her a prisoner in one of the little rooms. Then I marked all the
+bees in the other room with paint of a different color, and set them
+free; I myself returned quickly to my study, to await their arrival.
+
+Now if the bees which had not visited my study had been able to
+communicate with the others, and to be told by them precisely where the
+comb was, with instructions how to get at it, a certain number of them
+would have found their way to my room. I must frankly admit that, to my
+disappointment, there was only one that did actually arrive. And I
+cannot tell even whether this may not have been a mere chance. I went
+down and released the first bee, and my study soon was invaded by the
+buzzing crowd to whom she showed the way to the treasure.
+
+We need not trouble any further with this unsatisfactory experiment of
+mine, for there are many other curious circumstances to be noted among
+the bees which make it quite certain that they can tell each other
+things that go much further than a mere yes or no. In the hive, for
+instance, the wonderful way in which they divide up their work, the way
+in which the work is combined, one bee holding herself in readiness to
+take the place of another who has finished her own particular job and is
+waiting for her--these things all prove that they must be able to let
+each other know. I have often marked bees that went out in the morning
+collecting food; and found that, in the afternoon, if there was no
+special abundance of flowers, these same bees would take on another job
+altogether; would either be fanning and heating the brood-cells, or
+perhaps adding themselves to the mysterious, motionless curtain in whose
+midst the sculptors and waxmakers would be at work. In the same way I
+have found that bees which for one whole day would be gathering nothing
+but pollen would, on the next, evidently in obedience to some order that
+had been given, devote themselves entirely to the search for nectar.
+
+
+Day after day, the sun will scarcely have risen when the explorers of
+the dawn return to the hive, which awakes to receive the glad tidings of
+what is happening on the earth. "The lime-trees are blossoming to-day on
+the banks of the canal." "The grass by the roadside is gay with white
+clover.", "The sage and the lotus are about to open." "The mignonette,
+the lilies, are overflowing with pollen." The news is handed in to
+headquarters, and arrangements are quickly made to divide up the work.
+Five thousand of the strongest and most active will be sent to the
+lime-trees, while three thousand juniors sally forth to the clover.
+Those who yesterday were gathering nectar will to-day give a rest to
+their tongues and the glands of their sac, and will bring back red
+pollen from the mignonette or yellow pollen from the tall lilies; for
+you will never find a bee gathering or mixing up pollens of a different
+color or species, and indeed it is one of the special cares of the hive
+to keep the different-hued pollens apart in separate store-rooms.
+
+The workers set out, in long black files, each one flying straight to
+its own particular task. George de Layens stoutly declares that they
+have been told where to go to, and which flowers they are to visit; that
+they are aware how much nectar each flower will give, and know its
+precise value. It is their business to collect the greatest possible
+amount of honey; and if we watch the different directions in which the
+bees fly, we will find that they divide themselves up most carefully
+among the flowers which offer the best chance of a prosperous harvest.
+As these vary day by day, so will the different orders be given. In the
+spring, for instance, when the fields are still bare, the bees will
+flock to the flowers in the woods, and eagerly visit the gorse and the
+violets, langworts and anemones. But, a few days later, when cabbage and
+colza are beginning to flower, the bees will turn their attention to
+these alone, neglecting the woods almost entirely, for all the abundance
+that still may be found there. They know that the colza and cabbage
+flowers are richer in honey, and therefore give them the preference;
+thus deciding, day by day, what plants they shall visit, their one idea
+being to amass the greatest value of treasure in the least possible
+time.
+
+
+You may ask, perhaps, what does it matter to us whether the bees have or
+have not a real intelligence of their own? I think that it matters a
+very great deal. If we could be quite certain that other creatures
+beside ourselves are able to think or to reason it would give us
+something of the emotion that came over Robinson Crusoe when he saw the
+print of a human foot on the sandy shore of his island. Like him, we
+should seem less alone. And when we study, when we try to understand,
+the intelligence of the bees, we are at the same time trying to
+understand what is the most wonderful thing in ourselves; the power that
+enables the will to effect its purpose, and overcome obstacles in its
+way.
+
+
+We will now go on with the story of the hive, take it up where we left
+it, and lift a fold of the curtain of bees which are hanging, head
+downwards, from the dome. A curious kind of sweat, as white as snow and
+airier than the down on the wing of a bird, is beginning to show itself.
+This is the wax that is forming; but it is unlike the wax that we know;
+it has no weight, it is amazingly pure, being, as it were, the soul of
+the honey, which is itself the essence of the flowers.
+
+It is very difficult to follow, stage by stage, the manufacture of wax
+by the swarm, or even the use to which they put it, for all this comes
+to pass in the very blackest depth of the mass of bees all huddled
+together. We know that the honey in the sac of the bees that are
+clinging to each other turns itself into wax, but we have no idea how
+this is done. All we can tell is that they will stay in this position,
+never stirring or making the least movement, for eighteen or twenty-four
+hours, and that the hive becomes so hot that it is almost as though a
+fire had been lit. And then at last white and transparent scales show
+themselves at the opening of four little pockets that every bee has
+underneath its stomach.
+
+When the bodies of most of the bees forming the curtain have thus been
+adorned with ivory tablets, we shall suddenly see one of them detach
+herself from the crowd, and eagerly, hurriedly, clamber over the backs
+of the motionless crowd till she has reached the top of the dome. To
+this she will fix herself firmly, banging away with her head at those of
+her neighbors who seem to interfere with her movements. Then, she will
+seize with her mouth and her claws one of the scales that hang from her
+body, and set to work at it like a carpenter planing a soft piece of
+wood. She will pull it out, flatten it, bend it and roll it, moistening
+it with her tongue and licking it into shape; and, when at last she has
+got it to be just what she wanted, she will fix it to the highest point
+of the dome, thus laying the stone, the foundation, of the new city; for
+we have here a city that is being built downwards from the sky, and not
+from the earth upwards, like the cities of men. To this beginning she
+will add other morsels of wax, which she takes from beneath her belt;
+and at last, with one final lick of the tongue, one last touch of her
+feelers, she will go, as suddenly as she came, and disappear among the
+crowd. Another bee will at once take her place, carry on the work from
+the point where the first has left it; she will go through her own
+carpentering, just like her sister, and add to or improve the first
+one's job if she thinks this is called for. And then a third will
+follow, a fourth and a fifth, all coming from different corners, all
+eager and earnest, till numbers and numbers have taken their turn, none
+of them finishing the work but each adding her share to the task in
+which all combine.
+
+
+A small lump of wax, as yet quite formless, hangs down from the top of
+the hive. As soon as it is sufficiently thick, we shall see another bee
+coming out of the mass. This one is very sure of herself, puts on a
+little side as it were; and she is watched very closely by the eager
+crowd below. She is one of the sculptors or carvers; she does not make
+any wax herself, her job being to deal with the material which the
+others have provided. She marks out the first cell, settles where it
+shall be; digs into the block for a moment, putting the wax she has
+taken out from the hole on the borders around it; and then she goes,
+making way for another, who is impatiently waiting her turn, and will go
+on with the work that a third will continue, while others close by are
+digging away at the wax on the opposite side. And very soon we shall be
+able to see the outline of the new comb. In shape it will be something
+like our own tongue, if you can imagine this to be made up of little
+six-sided cells, which all lie back to back. When the first cells have
+been built, the architects put on the ceiling, and then start building a
+second row, and a third and a fourth, and so on, gallery on the top of
+gallery, and the dimensions so carefully worked out that there will
+always be ample space, when the comb is finished, for the bees to move
+freely between its walls.
+
+It happens, however, sometimes that a mistake has been made; that too
+much space, or too little, will have been left between the combs. The
+bees will do the best they can to set matters right; they will slant the
+one comb that is too near the other, or fill up the space that has been
+left with a new comb specially shaped.
+
+
+The bees build four different kinds of cells. There are the royal cells,
+rather like an acorn in shape; the large cells in which the males are
+reared, and provisions stored when flowers are plentiful; the small
+cells used as cradles for the workerbees and also as ordinary
+store-rooms. These last are the most common kind, and about four-fifths
+of the buildings will be composed of them. Then there are also a certain
+number of what are known as "transition-cells," irregular in shape,
+which connect the larger cells with the smaller.
+
+Each cell, with the exception of the transition ones, is worked out
+absolutely to scale, with extraordinary accuracy. It is a kind of
+six-sided tube, and two layers of these tubes form the comb. It is in
+these tubes that the honey is stored; and to prevent it from spilling,
+the bees tilt the tubes slightly forward. Each cell is solidly built,
+and the position of one to the other has been carefully thought out and
+arranged. Indeed, such wonderful skill and ingenuity is shown in the
+construction of the cells that it is difficult to believe that instinct
+alone is sufficient to account for it. The wasps, for instance, also
+build combs with six-sided cells; but their combs have only one layer of
+cells, and are not only less regular, but also less substantial;
+further, the wasps are so wasteful in their manner of working that, to
+say nothing of the loss of material, they also deprive themselves of
+about a third of the space that they might have used. Some bees
+again--which are not as civilized as those in our hives--build only one
+row of rearing-cells and rest their combs on shapeless and extravagant
+columns of wax. Their provision-cells are nothing but great pots,
+grouped together without any system or order. You could no more compare
+these nests with the cities of our own honey-bees than you could a
+village made up of huts with a modern town.
+
+
+The very greatest ingenuity is shown in the construction of the combs,
+quite apart from the admirable precision of the architecture. Thus, for
+instance, there is a most skillful arrangement of alleys and gangways
+through and around the comb, which provide short cuts in every
+direction, allow the air to circulate, and prevent any block of the
+traffic. The connecting cells again, which join the large cells to the
+small ones, are so made that their shape can be altered with the least
+possible delay. There may be different reasons for desiring this
+alteration: an overflowing harvest may render more store-rooms
+necessary, or the workers may consider that the population of the hive
+should not be further increased, or it may be considered advisable that
+more males should be born. In any of these cases the bees will proceed,
+with unerring, unhesitating accuracy and precision to make the necessary
+changes, turning small cells into large, and large into small; and this
+without any waste of space or material, without allowing a single one of
+their buildings to become mis-shapen or purposeless, without in any way
+interfering with the neatness or general harmony of the hive.
+
+
+The swarm whose movements we are following have started building their
+combs, which are already becoming fit for use. And although, as we look
+into the hive, we see little happening, there will be no pause, either
+by day or by night, in the creation of the wax, which will proceed with
+amazing quickness. The queen has been restlessly pacing to and fro on
+the borders that shine out gleamingly white in the darkness; and no
+sooner has the first row of cells been built than she eagerly takes
+possession, together with her servants, her guardians and
+counselors--though whether it be she who leads them, or they who direct
+her, is a matter beyond our knowledge. When the spot has been reached
+that she, or her retinue, regard as the proper one, she will arch her
+back, lean forward, and introduce the end of her long spindle-shaped
+body into one of the cells. Her escort form a circle around her, their
+enormous black eyes watching her every movement; they caress her wings,
+they feverishly wave their antennę as though to encourage her, to urge
+her on, or perhaps to congratulate her. You can always easily tell where
+the queen is, because around her there will be a kind of starry
+cockade, something like the oval brooch that our grandmothers used to
+wear; of this she will be the center. And there is one curious thing
+that we may note here: the worker-bees never by any chance turn their
+back to the queen. When she approaches a group they immediately form
+themselves so as to face her, and walk backwards before her. It is a
+token of respect or reverence that they never fail to show; it is the
+unvarying custom.
+
+Very soon the queen will be passing from cell to cell, busily laying her
+eggs. She will first peep into the cell to make sure that all is in
+order, and that she has not been there before. In the meanwhile two or
+three of her escort will have hastened into the cell which she has just
+left, in order to see that her work has been properly done, and to care
+for, and as it were tuck up, the little bluish egg she has laid. From
+now on right up to the first frosts of autumn the queen will never stop
+laying; she lays while she is being fed, she even lays in her sleep, if
+she ever does sleep, which may perhaps seem rather doubtful.
+
+It will sometimes happen that the worker-bees, in their eagerness to
+find room for their honey, will have stored it in some of the vacant
+cells reserved for the queen; when she comes to these the workers
+frantically carry away the honey so that she may lay her eggs. If there
+is a shortage of cells for honey, and this is accumulating very fast,
+the bees will contrive, as quickly as they can, to get ready a block of
+large cells for the queen, as these take less time to build. But they
+are cells for male bees; and when the queen comes to them, she seems
+vexed; she will lay a few eggs, then stop, move away, and insist on
+being given the smaller cells that are used for the workers' eggs. Her
+daughters obey; they set to at once and reduce the size of the cells;
+and the queen, in the meantime, goes back to the cells at which she had
+started at the very beginning. These will be empty now, for the larvę
+will have come to life, leaving their shadowy corner, and will already
+have spread themselves over the flowers around, glittering in the rays
+of the sun and quickening the smiling hours; and soon they will
+sacrifice themselves in their turn to the new generation that now is
+beginning to take their place in the cradles they have left.
+
+
+The bees all obey the queen; and yet they themselves contrive to direct
+her movements; for the number of eggs that she lays will be in strict
+proportion to the food that is given her. She does not take it herself;
+she is fed like a child by the workers. And if flowers are abundant, so
+will the food be, and therefore the number of eggs. Here we find, as
+everywhere in life, cause and effect working together in a circle of
+which one part is always in darkness; the bees, like ourselves, obey the
+lord of the wheel that is always turning and turning.
+
+Some little time back I was showing one of my glass hives to a friend,
+and he was almost startled to see the frantic activity there. Each comb
+seemed alive; on every side there was movement, hurry, bustle, activity;
+the nurses, incessantly stirring and doing, were busy around the
+broodcells; the wax-makers were forming their ladders and living
+gangways; the sculptors, the architects, cleaners, the builders, all
+were at work, feverishly, restlessly, never pausing for food or sleep;
+there was constant and pitiless effort among them all, save only in the
+cradles where lay the larvę that soon themselves would be taking their
+turn in this chain of unending duty, which permits of no illness and
+accords no grave. And my friend, his curiosity soon satisfied, turned
+away, and in his eyes there were signs of sorrow, and almost of fear.
+
+And in good truth, beneath all the gladness that we find in the hive,
+with its memories of precious jewels of summer--of flowers, of running
+waters and peaceful skies--beneath all this there dwells a sadness as
+deep as the eye of man ever has seen. And we, who dimly gaze at these
+things, we who know that around us, in our own lives, among our own
+people, there also is sadness, we know too that this has to be, as with
+all things in nature. And thus it ever shall be, so long as we know not
+her secret; and yet there are duties all must do, and those duties
+suffice. And in the meantime let our heart murmur, if it will, "It is
+sad," but let our reason be content to add "So it must be."
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+THE YOUNG QUEENS
+
+
+Let us now leave the new hive, which we find to be already beginning to
+work as before, and go back to the old one, the mother-city, which the
+swarm had left. Here, at the start, all looks forlorn, and dreary, and
+empty. Two-thirds of the population have gone, have departed forever.
+But thousands of bees remain; and these, whatever their feelings may be,
+still are faithful to the duty that lies on them, and have not forgotten
+what they have to do. They set to work, therefore, and try their best to
+fill the places of those who have joined the swarm. They start cleaning
+the city, look to the store-cells and put things in order there, attend
+to what is necessary in the hive, and despatch their bands of
+worker-bees to collect fresh food from the flowers.
+
+And if the outlook at first appear rather gloomy, there still are signs
+of hope wherever the eye may turn. One might almost fancy oneself in one
+of the castles they tell of in fairy-stories, where there are millions
+of tiny phials along the walls containing the souls of men about to be
+born. For here, too, are lives that have not yet come to life. On all
+sides, asleep in their closely-sealed cradles, in their thousands of
+waxen cells, lie the larvę, the baby bees, whiter than milk, their arms
+folded and their head bent forward as they wait for the hour to awake.
+Around them hundreds of bees are dancing and flapping their wings. The
+object of this seems to be to increase the temperature, and procure the
+heat that is needed--or perhaps there may be some reason that is still
+more obscure; for this dance of theirs combines some very extraordinary
+movements whose meaning no observer has as yet been able to understand.
+
+In another few days the lids of these thousands of urns--of which there
+will be from sixty to eighty thousand in a hive--will break, and two
+large, earnest black eyes will peer forth, while active jaws will be
+busily gnawing away at the lid, to enlarge the opening. The nurses at
+once come running; they help the young bee out of her prison, they clean
+her and brush her, and with the tip of their tongue they give her the
+first drop of honey that ushers in the new life. But the bee that has
+come so strangely from another world is still trembling and pale, and
+stares wildly around; she has something of the look of a tiny old man
+who might have been buried alive, and has made his escape from his tomb.
+She is perfect, however, from head to foot; and she loses no time, but
+hastens at once to other cells that have not yet opened, and there joins
+in the dance and starts beating her wings with the others, so that she
+may help in quickening the birth of her sisters who have not yet come to
+life.
+
+The most arduous labors, however, will at first be spared her. She will
+not leave the hive till a week has passed since the day of her birth.
+She will then undertake her first flight, known as the
+"cleansing-flight," and absorb the air into her lungs, which will fill
+and expand her body; and thenceforward she becomes the mistress of
+space. The first flight accomplished, she returns to the hive, and waits
+yet one week more; and then, with her sisters, who were born the same
+day as herself, she will for the first time sally forth and visit the
+flowers. A special emotion, now, will lay hold of her; a kind of
+shrinking, almost of fear. For it is evident that the bees are afraid;
+that these daughters of the crowd, of secluded darkness, shrink from the
+vault of blue, from the infinite loneliness of the light; and their joy
+is halting, and woven of terror. They cross the threshold, and pause;
+they depart, they return twenty times. They hover aloft in the air,
+their heads turned towards their home; they describe great soaring
+circles, their thirteen thousand eyes taking in, registering and
+recording, the trees and the fountain, the gate and the walls, the
+neighboring windows and houses, till at last the outside world becomes
+familiar to them, and they know that they will be able to find their way
+back to the hive.
+
+It is curious how they are able to accomplish this; to return to a home
+that they cannot see, that is hidden perhaps by the trees, and that in
+any event must form so tiny a point in space. Put some of them into a
+box and set them free at a place that is two or three miles from their
+hive, they will almost invariably succeed in discovering their way home.
+Have they landmarks by which they guide themselves, or do they possess
+the instinct, the sense of direction, that is common among swallows and
+pigeons? Different experiments that have been made appear to show that
+this latter is not the case. I have, however, on more than one occasion
+noticed that the bees seem to pay no attention to the color or shape of
+the hive. It is rather the platform on which the hive rests that
+attracts them, the position of the entrance-gate and of the
+alighting-board. When the winter comes on, a hive may be taken away and
+put perhaps into some dark cellar where it will remain till the spring;
+if then it should be set a little to right or to left of its former
+position on the platform, all the bees, on their first return from
+visiting the flowers, will steer their straight, direct, unhesitating
+course to the precise spot which the hive had occupied in the preceding
+year; and it will only be after much hesitating and groping that they
+will find the door whose place has now been shifted. And some will be
+unable to do this, or will be altogether lost.
+
+
+In the old hive thousands of cradles are stirring and the larvę coming
+to life; such bustle and movement is there that the solid walls seem to
+shake. But the city still lacks a queen. In the center of one of the
+combs you may notice seven or eight curious structures, each one about
+three or four times as large as the ordinary worker's cell; they look
+something like the circles and hillocks that we see on the photographs
+of the moon. These dwellings are surrounded by guards who never leave
+them, and are always watchful and alert. They know that they are
+protecting the home of the queen that is to be.
+
+In these cells eggs will have been placed by the old queen, or more
+probably perhaps by one of the workers, before the departure of the
+swarm; the eggs will have been taken from some cell that was near, and
+will be exactly the same as those from which the ordinary worker-bee is
+hatched. And yet the bee that will in due time come out is so unlike the
+others that she might almost belong to an entirely different race. Her
+life will last four or five years, instead of the six or seven weeks
+that are the portion of her worker-sister. Her body will be twice as
+long, her color clearer, and more golden; her sting will be curved, and
+her eyes have only seven or eight thousand facets instead of twelve or
+thirteen thousand. Her brain will be smaller, and she will have no
+brushes, no pockets in which to secrete the wax, no baskets to gather
+the pollen. She will not crave for air, or the light of the sun; she
+will die without once having sipped at a flower. She will spend her life
+in the darkness, in the midst of an ever-moving crowd; and her one
+thought, her one idea, will be the constant search for cradles in which
+she can lay her eggs. It is probable that she will not, twice in her
+life, look on the light of day; and as a rule she will only once make
+use of her wings.
+
+
+A week has passed, let us say, since the old queen has gone, at the head
+of the swarm. The royal princesses who still are asleep in their cots
+are not all of the same age; for the bees prefer that there should be an
+interval between the birth of each one. The time of the eldest princess
+draws near; she is already astir, and has begun eagerly to gnaw at the
+rounded lid of her cradle, whose walls the workers have already for
+several hours been thinning, so as to make it easier for her to get out.
+And at last she thrusts her head through the lid; the workers at once
+rush eagerly to her, and help her to get clear; they brush her, caress
+her and clean her, and soon she is able to take her first trembling
+steps on the comb. At first, her food will be the same as that given to
+the ordinary workers, but after a very few days she is nourished on the
+choicest and purest milk, which is known as "royal jelly."
+
+The princess, at the moment of birth, is weak and pale; but in a very
+few minutes she gets her strength, and then a strange restlessness comes
+over her; she seems to know that other princesses are near, that her
+kingdom has yet to be won, that close by rivals are hiding; and she
+eagerly paces the waxen walls in search of her enemies.
+
+This is the gravest and most serious moment in the history of the hive.
+The bees have to consider how many swarms they intend to send out; at
+times they make mistakes, and leave the mother-city too empty, at times
+also the swarms themselves are not sufficiently strong. These are
+matters that the "spirit of the hive" has to settle; it has to decide
+whether another queen will be required, in addition to the young one who
+has just come to birth, in order that she may head a swarm in the
+future. On this decision rests the whole prosperity of the hive; and
+very rarely will the judgment of the bees go astray.
+
+
+But let us assume that here the spirit of the hive has decided against a
+second swarm. The young princess, who has just come to life, will be
+allowed to destroy the rivals who are still asleep in their cradles. She
+will hasten towards them, and the guard will respectfully make way. She
+will fling herself furiously on to the first cell she comes across,
+strip off the wax with teeth and claws, tear away the cocoon and dart
+her sting into the victim whom she has laid bare. She will stab her to
+death and then go, with the same passionate fury, to the next cell, and
+then the next, again uncovering the cradle and killing her rival, till
+at last, breathless and exhausted, she has destroyed all her sleeping
+sisters.
+
+The watchful circle of bees who surround her have stood by, inactive
+and calm, and have not interfered; they have merely moved out of her way
+and have let her indulge her fury; and no sooner has a cell been laid
+waste than they rush to it, drag out the body, and greedily lap up the
+precious royal jelly that clings to the sides of the cell. And if the
+queen should be too weak or too tired to carry out her dreadful purpose
+to the end, the bees will themselves complete this massacre of the
+innocent princesses, and the royal race, and their dwellings, will all
+disappear. This is the terrible hour of the hive.
+
+At times it will happen that two queens will come to life together,
+though this occurrence is rare, as the bees take special pains to
+prevent it. But should such a case arise, the deadly combat would start
+the very moment the rivals come out of their cradles. Afraid of each
+other, and yet filled with fury, they attack and retreat, retreat and
+attack, till at last one of them succeeds in taking her less adroit, or
+less active, rival by surprise, and in killing her without risk to
+herself. For the law of the race has demanded one sacrifice only.
+
+
+But let us suppose that the spirit of the hive has decided that there
+shall be a second swarm. In this case, as before, the queen will advance
+threateningly towards the royal cells; but instead of finding herself
+surrounded by obsequious servants, her way will be blocked by a guard of
+stern and unflinching workers. In her mad fury, she will try to force
+her way through, or to get round them; but in every direction sentinels
+have been posted to protect the sleeping princesses. The queen will not
+be denied; she returns again and again to the charge, puts forth every
+effort; but each time she will be driven back, hustled even, till at
+last it begins to dawn upon her that behind these little workers there
+stands a law that does not yield even to a queen. And at last she goes,
+and wanders unhappily from comb to comb, giving voice to her thwarted
+fury in the war-song that every bee-keeper knows well; a note like that
+of a far-away silver trumpet, and so clear that one may hear it, at
+evening especially, two or three yards away from the double walls of the
+hive.
+
+This cry, this war-song, has the strangest effect on the workers. It
+fills them with terror, it has an almost paralyzing influence upon them.
+When she sends it forth, the guards, who the moment before may have been
+treating her rather roughly, will at once cease all opposition, and will
+wait, with bent heads, in meekest submission, till the dreadful song
+shall have stopped.
+
+For two or three days, sometimes even for five, the queen's lament will
+be heard, the fierce challenge to her well-guarded rivals. And these, in
+their turn, are coming to life; they are beginning to gnaw at the lids
+of their cradles. Should they emerge from them while the angry queen is
+still near, with her one desire to destroy them, a mighty confusion
+would spread itself over the city.
+
+But the spirit of the hive has taken its precautions, and the guards
+have received the necessary instructions. They know exactly what must be
+done, and when to do it. They are well aware that if the princesses were
+to come out of their lodging too soon, they would fall into the hands of
+their furious elder sister, who would destroy them one by one. To avoid
+this, therefore, the workers keep on adding layers of wax to the cells
+as fast as the princesses within are stripping it away; so that all
+their gnawing and eagerness are of no avail, and the captives must bide
+their time. One of them perhaps will hear the war-cry of her enemy; and
+although she has not yet come into contact with life, nor knows what a
+hive may be, she answers the challenge from within the depths of her
+prison. But her song is different; it is hollow and stifled, for it has
+to pass through the walls of a tomb; and when night is falling and
+noises are hushed, while high over all is the silence of the stars, the
+bee-keeper is able to distinguish, and recognize, this exchange of
+challenges between the restlessly wandering queen and the young
+princesses still in their prison.
+
+The young queens will have benefited by the long stay in their cradles,
+for when at last they come out they are big and strong, and able to fly.
+But this period of waiting has also given strength to the first-born
+queen, who is now able to face the perils of the voyage. The time has
+come, therefore, for the second swarm, called the "cast," to depart,
+with the eldest queen at its head. No sooner has she gone than the
+workers left in the hive will release one of the princesses from her
+cradle; she will at once proceed to show the same murderous desires, to
+send forth the same cries of anger, as her sister had done before her,
+till at last, after another three or four days, she will leave the hive
+in her turn, at the head of the third swarm, to build a new home far
+away. A case has been known where a hive, through its swarms and the
+swarms of its swarms, was able in a single season to send forth no less
+than thirty colonies.
+
+This excessive eagerness, which is known as "swarming-fever," usually
+follows a severe winter; and one might almost believe that the bees,
+always in touch with the secrets of nature, are conscious of the dangers
+that threaten their race. But at ordinary times, when the seasons have
+been normal, this "fever" will rarely occur in a strong and
+well-governed hive; many will swarm only once, and some, indeed, not at
+all.
+
+The second swarm will in any event generally be the last, as the bees
+will be afraid of unduly impoverishing their city, or it may be that
+prudence will be urged upon them by the threatening skies. They will
+then allow the third queen to kill the princesses in their cradles;
+whereupon the ordinary duties of the hive will at once be resumed, and
+the bees will have to work harder than ever in order to provide food for
+the larvę and generally to replenish the storehouses before the arrival
+of winter.
+
+The second and third swarms will sally forth in the same way as the
+first, with the difference only that the bees will be fewer in number,
+and that, owing perhaps to less scouts being available, operations will
+not be conducted with quite as much prudence and forethought. Also, the
+younger queen will be more active and vigorous than her sister, and will
+therefore fly much further away, leading the swarm to a considerable
+distance from the hive. As a consequence, these second and third swarms
+will have greater difficulties to meet, and their fate will be more
+uncertain. So all-powerful, however, is the law of the future, that
+none of these perils will induce the queen to show the least hesitation.
+The bees of the second and third swarms display the same eagerness, the
+same enthusiasm, as those of the first; the workers flock round the
+fierce young queen, as she gropes her way out of her cell, and there is
+not one of them that shrinks from accompanying her on the voyage where
+there is so much to lose and so little to gain. Why, one asks, do they
+show this amazing zeal; what makes them so cheerfully abandon all their
+present happiness? Who is it selects from the crowd those who shall stay
+behind, and dictates who are to go? The exiles would seem to belong to
+no special class; around the queen who is never to return, veteran
+foragers jostle tiny worker-bees who will for the first time be facing
+the dizziness of the skies.
+
+We will not attempt to relate the many adventures that these different
+swarms will encounter. At times, two of them will join forces; at
+others, two or three of the imprisoned princesses will contrive to join
+the groups that are forming. The bee-keeper of to-day takes steps to
+ensure that the second and third swarms shall always return to the
+mother-hive. In that case, the rival queens will face each other on the
+comb; the workers will gather around and watch the combat; and, when the
+stronger has overcome the weaker, they will remove the bodies, forget
+the past, return to their cells and their storehouses, and resume their
+peaceful path to the flowers that are awaiting and inviting them.
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+THE MASSACRE OF THE MALES
+
+
+If the skies remain pure, the air still warm, and pollen and nectar are
+plentiful in the flowers, the workers will endure the presence of the
+males for a brief space longer. The males are gross feeders, untidy in
+their habits, wasteful and greedy; fat and idle, perfectly content to do
+nothing but feast and enjoy themselves, they crowd the streets, block up
+the passages, and are always in the way; they are a nuisance to the
+workers, whom they treat with a certain good-natured arrogance,
+apparently never suspecting how scornfully they themselves are
+regarded, or the deep and ever-growing hatred to which they give rise.
+They are still happily unconscious of the fate in store for them.
+
+Careless of what the workers have to do, the males invariably select the
+snuggest and warmest corners of the hive for their pleasant slumbers;
+then, having slept their fill, they stroll jauntily to the choicest
+cells, where the honey smells sweetest, and proceed to satisfy their
+appetite. From noon till three, when the radiant countryside is a-quiver
+beneath the blazing stare of a July or August sun, the drones will
+saunter on to the threshold, and bask lazily there. They are gorgeous to
+look at; their helmet is made of enormous black pearls, they have
+doublet of yellowish velvet, two towering plumes and a mantle draped in
+four folds. They stroll along, very pleased with themselves, full of
+pomp and pride; they brush past the sentry, hustle the sweepers, and get
+in the way of the honey-collectors as these return laden with their
+humble spoil. Then one by one, they lazily spread their wings, and sail
+off to the nearest flower, where they doze till they are awakened by the
+fresh afternoon breeze. Thereupon they return to the hive, with the same
+pomp and dignified air, sure of themselves and perfectly satisfied; they
+make straight for the storehouses, and plunge their head up to the neck
+into the vats of honey, taking in nourishment sufficient to restore
+their strength that has been exhausted by so much labor; afterwards,
+with ponderous steps, seeking the pleasant couch and giving themselves
+up to the good, dreamless slumber that shall fold them in its embrace
+till it be time for the next meal. But bees are less patient than men;
+and one morning the long-expected word of command goes through the hive.
+And there is a sudden transformation: the workers, hitherto so gentle
+and peaceful, turn into judges, and executioners. We know not whence the
+dreadful word issues; it may be that endurance has reached its limit,
+and that indignation and anger have bubbled over. At any rate we find a
+whole portion of the bee-people giving up their visits to the flowers,
+and taking on themselves the administration of stern justice.
+
+An army of furious workers suddenly attacks the great idle drones, as
+they lie pleasantly asleep along the honeyed walls, and ruthlessly tear
+them from their slumbers. The startled drones wake up, and stare round
+in amazement, convinced at first that they must be dreaming, and the
+prey of some dreadful nightmare. There must be some shocking mistake;
+their muddled brains grope like a stagnant pond into which a moonbeam
+has fallen. Their first impulse is to the nearest food-cell, to find
+comfort and inspiration there. But gone for them are the days of May
+honey, the essence of lime-trees and the fragrant ambrosia of thyme and
+sage, of marjoram and white clover; the path that once lay so invitingly
+open to the tempting reservoirs of sugar and sweets now bristles with a
+burning-bush of poisonous, flaming stings. The air itself is no longer
+the same; the dear smell of honey is gone, and in its place only now the
+terrible odor of poison, of which thousands of tiny drops glisten at the
+tip of the threatening stings. Around them is nothing but fury and
+hatred; and before the bewildered creatures have begun to realize that
+there is an end to the happy conditions of the hive, each drone is
+seized by three or four ministers of justice, who proceed to hack off
+his wings and antennę and deftly pass their sword between the rings of
+his armor. The huge drones are helpless; they have no sting with which
+to defend themselves; all they can do is to try to escape, or to oppose
+the mere force of their weight to the blows that rain down. Forced on to
+their back, with their enemies hanging on to them, they will use their
+powerful claws to shift them from side to side; or, with a mighty
+effort, will turn round in wild circles, dragging with them the
+relentless executioners, who never for a moment relax their hold. But
+exhaustion soon puts an end; and, in a very brief space, their condition
+is pitiful. The wings of the wretched creatures are torn off, their
+antennę severed, their legs hacked in two; and their magnificent eyes,
+now softened by suffering, reflect only anguish and bitterness. Some die
+at once of their wounds, and are dragged away to distant burialgrounds;
+others, whose injuries are less, succeed in sheltering themselves in
+some corner, where they lie, all huddled together, surrounded by guards,
+till they perish of hunger. Many will reach the gate, and escape into
+space, dragging their tormentors with them; but, towards evening, driven
+by famine and cold, they return in crowds to the hive and pray for
+admission. But there they will meet the merciless guard, who will not
+allow one to pass; and, the next morning, the workers, before they start
+on their journey to the flowers, will clear the threshold of the corpses
+that lie strewn on it; and all recollection of the idle race will
+disappear till the following spring.
+
+It will often happen that, when several hives are placed close together,
+the massacre of the drones will take place on the same day. The richest
+and best-governed hives are the first to give the signal; smaller and
+less prosperous cities will follow a few days later. It is only the
+poorest and weakest colonies that will allow the males to live till the
+approach of winter. The execution over, work will begin again, although
+less strenuously, for flowers are growing scarce. The great festivals of
+the hive, the great tragedies, are over. The autumn honey, that will be
+needed for the winter, is accumulating within the hospitable walls; and
+the last reservoirs are sealed with the seal of white, incorruptible
+wax. Building ceases; there are fewer births and more deaths; the nights
+lengthen and days grow shorter. The rain and the wind, the mists of the
+morning, the twilight that comes on too soon--these entrap hundreds of
+workers who never return to the hive; and over this sunshine-loving
+little people there soon hangs the cold menace of winter.
+
+Man has already taken for himself his good share of the harvest. Every
+well-conducted hive has presented him with eighty or a hundred pounds of
+honey; there are some even which will have given twice that quantity,
+all gathered from the sun-lit flowers that will have been visited a
+thousand or two times every day. The bee-keeper gives a last look at his
+hives, upon which slumber now is falling. From the richest he takes some
+of their store, and distributes it among those that are less
+well-provided. He covers up the hives, half closes the doors, removes
+the frames that now are useless, and abandons the bees to their long
+winter sleep.
+
+They huddle together on the central comb, with the queen in the midst of
+them, attended by her guard. Row upon row of bees surround the sealed
+cells, the last row forming the envelope, as it were; and when these
+feel the cold stealing over them, they creep into the crowd, and others
+at once take their places. The whole cluster hangs suspended, clinging
+on to each other; rising and falling as the cells are gradually emptied
+of their store of honey. For, contrary to what is generally believed,
+the life of the bee does not cease in winter; it merely becomes less
+active. These little lovers of sunshine contrive, through a constant and
+simultaneous beating of their wings, to maintain in their hive a degree
+of warmth that shall equal that of a day in spring. And they owe this
+to the honey, which is itself no more than a ray of heat which has
+passed through their bodies, and now gives its generous blood to the
+hive. The bees that are nearest the cells pass it on to their neighbors,
+and these in their turn to those next them. Thus it goes from mouth to
+mouth through the crowd, till it reaches those furthest away. And this
+honey, this essence of sunshine and flowers, circulates through the hive
+until such time as the sun itself, the glorious sun of the spring, shall
+thrust in its beam through the half-open door, and tell of the violets
+and anemones that are once more coming to life. The workers will wake,
+and discover that the sky again is blue in the world, and that the wheel
+of life has turned, and begun afresh.
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+THE PROGRESS OF THE RACE
+
+
+It is as well, before ending this book--as we have ended the story of
+the hive with the silence that winter brings--to add a few words about
+the extraordinary industry of the bees. People are apt to say, while
+admitting that it is very wonderful, that it has always been the same
+from the very beginning of time. Have the bees not, for thousands of
+years, built their combs, their marvelous combs, in just the same way;
+these combs that combine the most perfect science of chemist and
+architect, mathematician and engineer; combs in which it would be
+impossible for us to suggest a single improvement? Where shall we find
+any instance of progress, of the bees having discovered some new method
+or change in the old; show us that, and we will gladly admit that the
+bees, besides their instinct, possess also an intellect worthy of being
+compared with that of man!
+
+This method of reasoning is not without its perils. It is the same kind
+of "mere common sense" that the people of Galileo's time displayed when
+they refused to believe that the earth revolved in space. "The earth
+cannot possibly turn," they would say, "for we can see the sun move in
+the sky, see it rise in the morning and set in the evening. Nothing can
+deceive our eyes." Common-sense is all very well; but it is not a sure
+guide unless it go hand in hand with a certain reflection and judgment.
+
+The bees give abundant proof that they are capable of reason. As an
+instance, we may mention that Andrew Knight, a wellknown student of
+insect life, once covered the bark of some diseased trees with a kind of
+cement which he had made out of turpentine and wax. Some time after he
+noticed that the bees round about were making use of this mixture, which
+they had tried and adopted; they had found it close to their hive, and
+appeared to prefer it to their own. As a fact, the science of
+bee-keeping consists largely in giving the bees the opportunity of
+developing the spirit of initiative that they undoubtedly possess. Thus
+the bee-keeper, when pollen is scarce and it is important that there
+should be food for the larvę, will scatter a quantity of flour near to
+the hive. This is a substance that the bees, in a state of nature, in
+their native forests in Asia, can never have met with, or known. And
+yet, if care be taken to tempt them with it--if one or two be placed on
+the flour, and induced to touch it and try it, they will quickly realize
+that it more or less resembles the pollen of which they are in need;
+they will spread the news among their sisters, and we shall soon find
+every forager-bee hurrying to gather this strange food, and supplying it
+to the infant-bees in place of the accustomed pollen.
+
+
+It is only during the last hundred years that the bees have been
+seriously studied by man; only fifty years ago that the movable frames
+and combs were designed by means of which we were able to watch their
+movements. Need we wonder, then, if our knowledge is still somewhat
+limited? The bees have existed many thousands of years; we have
+observed them only for what is relatively a very short time. And if it
+could be proved that, during that time, no change has taken place in the
+hive, should we be right in assuming that there had been no change
+before our first questioning glance? Remember that a century is no more
+than a drop of rain that falls into the river; that a thousand years
+glide over the history of nature as a single one over the life of man.
+
+It is of interest to compare the honey-bee of the hive with the great
+tribe of "Apiens," which includes all the wild bees. We shall discover
+differences more extraordinary than those that exist among men. But let
+us merely, for the moment, consider what is known as the domestic bee,
+of which there are sixteen different kinds, all, the largest as the
+smallest, exactly alike, except for the slight modifications caused by
+the climate or the conditions in which they exist. The difference
+between them, in appearance, is no greater than between an Englishman
+and a Russian, a European or a Japanese.
+
+
+Bees do not, like ourselves, dwell in towns that are open to the sky and
+exposed to the caprice of rain and storm, but in cities that are
+entirely covered with a protecting envelope. If they were guided solely
+by their instinct, they would build their combs in the air. In the
+Indies we find that they do not even seek a hollow tree or a cleft in
+the rocks. The swarm will hang down from the branch of a tree, and the
+comb will be lengthened, the queen's eggs laid, provisions stored, with
+no shelter other than that which the workers' own bodies provide. Our
+Northern bees have at times been known to do this, deceived perhaps by a
+too gentle sky; and swarms have been found living in the center of a
+bush.
+
+But even in the Indies this exposure to all weathers is by no means an
+advantage. So many workers are compelled to remain always on one spot,
+in order to keep up the heat that is required for those who are molding
+the wax and rearing the brood, that they are unable to erect more than a
+single comb; whereas, if they have the least shelter, they will build
+four or five more, thereby increasing the wealth and population of the
+hive. And so we find that every species of bee that lives in cold and
+temperate regions has given up building its hive in exposed places. Its
+intelligence has decided that it is better to select more sheltered
+spots. But it is none the less true that, in forsaking the open sky that
+was so dear to them, and seeking shelter in the hollow of a tree or a
+cave, the bees have been guided by what was at first a daring idea,
+which came to them through their observation, experience and reasoning.
+
+
+There can be no doubt that they have made great progress. We have
+already mentioned the intelligence they show in using flour instead of
+pollen, cement in place of wax. We have seen with what skill they are
+able to adapt a new building to their requirements, and the amazing
+cleverness they display in the matter of combs made of foundation wax.
+They handle these marvelous combs, which are so curiously useful and yet
+so incomplete, in the most ingenious fashion, and actually contrive to
+meet interfering man half-way.
+
+Imagine for a moment that we had for centuries past been building our
+cities, not with bricks, stones and lime, but with a substance as soft
+as is the wax secreted by the bees. One day an all-powerful being lifts
+us into the air and places us in the midst of a fairy city. We recognize
+that it is made of a substance resembling the wax that we have been
+using; but, as regards all the rest, we are merely lost and bewildered.
+We are called upon to make this city suit our requirements. Each of the
+houses in it is so small that our two hands can cover it. We can
+distinguish the beginnings of thousands of incomplete walls. There are
+many things that we have never come across before; there are gaps to be
+filled and joined up with the rest, there are many parts that have to be
+propped up and supported. We see a chance of getting things right, but
+around us there is nothing but hardship and danger. Some superior
+intellect, able to guess at most of our desires, has evidently been at
+work, but has been baffled and confused by the vastness and variety of
+the necessary details.
+
+It becomes our business, therefore, to disentangle this confusion, to
+induce order where now is disorder; we must find out what this superior
+intellect wanted us to do; we must build in a few days what would
+normally have taken us years; we must alter our methods of labor, we
+must change these in accordance with the work that has already been
+done. In the meanwhile we must deal with all the problems that arise, we
+must meet all the difficulties that the superior intellect had not
+foreseen; we must learn how to make the fullest use of the wonderful
+opportunities that have been provided. This is more or less what the
+bees are doing to-day in our modern hives.
+
+What one may call the local self-government, the bees' methods of
+dealing with their own affairs--such as the swarm, for instance, or the
+treatment of queens--these vary in every hive. Syrian hives have been
+known to produce 120 queens, whereas our own will never rear more than
+ten or twelve. In one hive in Syria 120 dead queen-mothers were found,
+together with ninety living ones. The bee is capable, too, of altering
+her ways, should conditions require it; of changing her methods. Take
+one of them to California or Australia, and her habits will become quite
+other than when she was in Europe. Having discovered that summer always
+abides in the land and that flowers never are absent, she will, after a
+time, be content to live from day to day, and gather only honey and
+pollen sufficient for her immediate requirements; and her observation
+of the new conditions will teach her that it is not necessary to make
+provision for the winter. All this she will learn in a year or two; and
+in fact it becomes necessary for the bee-keeper to deprive her of the
+fruits of her labor, in order to maintain her activity. Similarly it is
+said that, in the Barbadoes, the bees in such hives as are close to the
+sugar-refineries will entirely cease visiting the flowers, but will
+gather their store from the vast quantity of sweets that surround them.
+
+
+Of wild bees no less than 4500 varieties are known. Some naturalists
+believe that the "Prosopis," a little wild bee that is found all over
+the world, is the original kind from which all the others have sprung.
+This unfortunate little insect is to our domestic bee more or less what
+a cave-dweller would be to a highly-civilized man of to-day. You will
+probably more than once have seen it, hovering over the bushes in a
+deserted corner of your garden, and it will never have occurred to you
+that there, fluttering before you, was the first-comer of those to whom
+we probably owe most of our flowers and plants; for it is a fact that
+more than a hundred varieties of plants would disappear if they were not
+regularly visited by the bees.
+
+The prosopis is nimble and not unattractive, the French variety being
+elegantly marked with white over a black background. She leads a
+miserable life of starvation and solitude. Her body is almost bare; she
+has not the warm and sumptuous fleece of her happier sisters. She has no
+baskets in which to gather the pollen, no brushes, no towering plumes.
+With her tiny claws she must scratch away the powder from the cups of
+the flowers; and she must swallow this powder in order to bring it home.
+She has no tools to work with, nothing but her tongue, her mouth and her
+claws; and her tongue is short, her claws are feeble and her jaws
+without strength. Unable to form any wax, to bore holes through wood or
+dig in the earth, she builds clumsy galleries in the soft pith of dry
+berries; she puts up a few shapeless cells, and stores these with a
+little food for the young whom she never will see. And then, having done
+all this as best she can, she goes off and dies in some hidden corner,
+as lonely now at the end as she has been through all her poor life.
+
+
+As the bees progress from wildness to civilization, we note that their
+tongue gradually lengthens, thus enabling more nectar to be drawn from
+the flowers; hairs and tufts grow and develop, and brushes for
+collecting the pollen; mandibles and claws become firmer and stronger
+and the bees acquire the intellect that enables them to make
+improvements in their dwellings. To relate all the different changes
+would require a whole volume; I will merely dwell on one or two
+instances of their development.
+
+We have seen the unhappy prosopis living her lonely little life in the
+midst of this vast and indifferent universe. Some of her more civilized
+sisters, who have tools of their own and are skilled in the use of them,
+still exist in absolute solitude. If by chance some creature attach
+itself to them and share their dwelling, it will be an enemy or, more
+often, what is known as a parasite. For the world of bees contains many
+strange phantoms; and there are some species which will have a kind of
+indolent double, a creature exactly similar to the victim it has chosen
+to live with, save only that its uninterrupted idleness has caused it to
+lose one by one its implements of labor. It never works, or tries to
+work, it collects no food itself, but lives on that which is painfully
+got together by the unfortunate bee on whom it has fastened.
+
+Little by little, by slow degrees and slow stages, the bees advance in
+civilization and intellect till we find them dwelling together in the
+regular life of a city. They have abandoned their solitude, their
+isolation; their existence, formerly so narrow and incomplete, has now
+become more assured, more concerned with the existence of those round
+about them. Instead of thinking only of their own offspring, they have
+learned that they must devote themselves to the race, that they must
+live and work together in order to make the future sure and safe.
+
+
+There are certain building-bees which dig holes in the earth, and unite
+in large colonies to construct their nests. Between the individual
+members of the crowd, however, there is no communication and no
+understanding; they join together in a common task, but each one thinks
+only of her own particular interest. A little higher up in the scale we
+come to a race of bees, known as the Panurgi, who seem to have
+recognized the advantage of living and working as one community. They
+build in the same haphazard fashion as the others, each one digging its
+own underground chambers, but the entrance is common to all, as is also
+the gallery which winds from the surface to the different cells below.
+Here we find the idea of fellowship beginning to penetrate into the
+life of the bee, and it progresses with their civilization. As this
+increases, their manners and methods soften; what was formerly a mere
+instinct, due to the fear of cold and hunger, has become an active
+intelligence, working in the interests of life.
+
+
+The bumble-bees, the great, hairy creatures that are so familiar to us
+all, so inoffensive although they appear so fierce, begin their life in
+solitude. In the first days of March the mother-bee, who has survived
+the winter, will start to construct her nest, either underground or in a
+bush, according to the species to which she belongs. She is alone in the
+world, and around her is only the miracle of awakening spring. She
+chooses a spot that seems favorable; she clears the rubbish away, digs
+down and builds her cells. Into these, which will have no special shape
+of their own, she will store the honey and pollen that she collects, and
+here she will lay and hatch her eggs; soon a troop of daughters will
+surround her, and these will all help in the work within the nest and
+without. More cells will be added, and the construction of these will be
+better; the colony grows, and there are signs of some prosperity. The
+old mother finds herself now at the head of a little kingdom which might
+serve as the model on which that of our honey-bee was formed. But the
+model is still in the rough. The good-fortune of the humble-bee never
+lasts. If they have laws, they do not obey them; the elder bees will at
+times devour the larvę, the buildings still are far from perfect and
+much material has been wasted in putting them up; but the most
+remarkable and essential difference between the two is that the
+honey-bees' city will endure forever while the poor shelter that the
+humble-bees have raised will disappear when the winter comes, its two or
+three hundred inhabitants all perishing, with the exception of one
+single female. The others have vanished, and left no trace behind; she,
+when next spring comes, will begin again, in the same solitude and
+poverty as her mother before her, and with the same useless result.
+
+
+Yet another stage up, and we find a more civilized class of bee, whose
+organization is as complete as in our own hives. The males of this race,
+which are known as the "Meliponitę," are not wholly idle, and they help
+in the secretion of wax. The entrance to the hive is carefully guarded;
+it has a door that can be closed when nights are cold, and a sort of
+curtain that will let air in when the heat is oppressive. But still
+there is not the same good government, the same security and general
+prosperity, as among the honey-bees. Labor is not so well distributed;
+much less skill is shown in the designing of the city, and the spirit of
+the hive is not so fully developed.
+
+It is only about a hundred and ninety years ago that people first began
+to study the habits of wild bees; at that time few were known, and
+although since then many others have been observed, there may be
+hundreds, possibly thousands, of whom we know very little. It was in the
+year 1730 that the first book on the subject was published; and the
+humble-bees, all powdered with gold, that were feasting then on the
+flowers, were precisely the same, as regards their habits and ways, as
+those that to-morrow will be noisily buzzing in the woods round about
+you. A hundred and ninety years, however, are but as the twinkling of an
+eye; and many lives of men, placed end to end, form but a second in the
+history of Nature.
+
+
+Although the highest type of bee-life is found in our domestic hives, it
+must not be imagined that these reveal no faults. They contain one
+masterpiece, the six-sided cell, which displays absolute perfection; a
+perfection that all the geniuses in the world, were they to meet in
+council, could in no way improve. No living creature, not even man, has
+achieved in his sphere what the bee has achieved in her own; and if some
+one from another world were to descend on this globe and to ask what was
+the most perfect thing that unaided reason had produced here below, we
+should have to offer the humble comb of honey.
+
+But such perfection as the honey-comb reveals is not shown in all the
+works of the bee. We have already drawn attention to some shortcomings,
+such as the vast number of males and their persistent idleness, the
+excessive swarming, the entire absence of pity, and the almost monstrous
+sacrifice that each individual is called upon to make to the community.
+To these must be added a curious inclination to store enormous masses of
+pollen, often far in excess of what is required; with the result that
+the pollen soon turns rancid and goes solid, blocking up the surface of
+the comb.
+
+Of these defects the most serious is the repeated swarming. But here we
+must bear in mind that for thousands of years the bee has been
+interfered with by man. From the Egyptian of the time of Pharaoh down
+to the peasant of our own day the bee-keeper has always disregarded the
+desires and the intentions of the bees. The most prosperous hives are
+those which send out only one swarm after the beginning of summer. They
+have done their duty; they have safeguarded the future of the swarm,
+which is composed of so large a number of bees that they will have ample
+time to erect solid and well-provisioned dwellings before the arrival of
+autumn. If man had not come in the way, it is clear that these first
+swarms and their colonies would have been the only ones to survive the
+hardships of winter, which would have destroyed the others, owing to
+their weakness and poverty; and the bees would gradually have learned
+the folly of swarming so frequently, and would have acted accordingly.
+But it is precisely these prudent, careful hives that man has always
+destroyed in order to possess himself of the honey which they contained.
+He allowed only the feeblest colonies to survive; the second or third
+swarms, which had barely sufficient food to endure through the winter.
+The result will probably have been that the habit of excessive swarming
+fastened itself on the bees, in whom, particularly in the black
+varieties, it is much too general. For some years, however, modern and
+scientific bee-keeping has done much to correct this dangerous habit;
+and it is possible, perhaps, that in time the bees themselves will learn
+to abandon it.
+
+
+As for the other faults which we have noticed, they are probably due to
+causes unknown to us, that still remain the secrets of the hive. As for
+the bees' intelligence, their power of reasoning, let every one judge
+for himself. To me, many actions of theirs appear to prove that they do
+possess this power; but, were it otherwise, if it could be conclusively
+established that all that they do is directed by some blind instinct, my
+interest in them would not be one whit the less. We are taught by them
+at least that there are many things in nature that we cannot understand
+and cannot explain, and this induces us to look with more eagerness on
+the things around us, and is not without its effect on our thoughts and
+our feelings, and on all that we try to say.
+
+And, further, I am not at all sure that our own intellect is the proper
+tribunal to judge the bees and pass a verdict upon their mistakes. Do we
+not ourselves live in the midst of errors and blunders without being
+aware of them; and even when aware of them, are we so quick at finding
+a remedy? The bees might have much to say if they passed us in review,
+and criticized our world as we do theirs; they would find a good deal
+to puzzle them in our own reason and moral sense, and would be compelled
+to admit that we seemed to be governed by principles quite beyond their
+understanding.
+
+
+I have referred to the way in which man interferes with the bees; and
+truly they do here provide a most admirable lesson. No matter to what
+extent their own plans have been thwarted, they will none the less do
+what they know to be their profound and primitive duty. And as to what
+this duty may be they are never in doubt. It is written in their tongue,
+in their mouth, over every organ of their body, that they are in this
+world to make honey; as it is written in our eyes, our ears, our
+nerves, in every lobe of our brain, that we have been created to think,
+to reason, to understand, to improve our sense of justice, our
+knowledge, to cultivate our soul. The bees know not who will eat the
+honey they harvest, as we know not who shall profit by the spiritual
+treasure we gather. As they go from flower to flower absorbing nectar
+beyond what they or their hive will need, so let us go from thought to
+thought, forever seeking the truth. And let the knowledge that this is
+our duty quicken the zeal, the ardor and purity with which our soul
+turns to the light.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Children's Life of the Bee, by 
+Maurice Maeterlinck
+
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