VERY wonderful are the many kinds of work that go on inside a bee-hive, from the time that the tiny eggs are laid in the wax cells till the bees are hatched and full grown, ready to take their share in the hard work. Indeed none are idle in the hive, with the exception of those bees called drones. When the eggs are first hatched they are little worms. These are fed on what is called bee-bread; it is the pollen from flowers mixed with a little honey. In a few days’ time they are ready for a change, and the bees that act as nurses shut them up in wax cells by making a door of wax and sealing it up.
Then follows the cocoon state, and the worm has gradually changed into a fluffy bundle, but changes still go on till presently legs and wings grow on the insect and it forces its way out of the covering.
Now it is a grey young bee, but still shut up in its little wax cell. All bees, as you know, make a buzzing noise, and as soon as the nurse bees hear the little ones making the well-known sound, they scrape away a little of the wax till a hole is made in the door and give the captive a little honey every now and then till it has grown strong enough to come out and begin work.
In every hive there are two classes of bees, one called the workers, who gather the honey, and, indeed, do everything in the busy hive, except laying eggs, which is the work of the queen bee; the other class are the drones. The latter, however, form only a small proportion of the whole number, as for every drone there would probably be forty workers. But, however many bees a hive may contain there is never more than one queen bee. She reigns in the midst of her subjects and receives the utmost loyalty from them.
Several times during the season there is great excitement in the hive on account of another queen bee being hatched and coming out of her cell; then the two queens either fight till one is killed, or else the old queen with some thousands of the bees will swarm; that is, they leave the hive and look out for a new home.
The real work of the hive is to gather honey, and the workers have honey bags to put it in and also pockets for the wax, besides which the dust of the flowers or pollen, which clings to their legs, has to be taken home somehow, so it is first rubbed into rough balls or lumps and carried to the hive on the joints of their legs. These joints being very wide may almost be called pollen baskets.
Honey has always been valued from the earliest times, and in Palestine it was so abundant and of such good quality that the land is spoken of as flowing with milk and honey. That is how God spoke of the land of promise when about to deliver the children of Israel from their cruel position in Egypt. Later on, too, we read that John the Baptist lived in the wilderness and his food was locusts and wild honey; that would be the honey stored by wild bees in the hollow trunks of trees and open spaces in rocks.
ML 11/11/1917