HOW rapidly the year rolls round! we have arrived at the height of summer, and all nature presents its greatest glories. We have now hot days, and nights almost as warm. The sun is high in the heavens, and his rays pour down especially in the city with almost intolerable heat. How glad we are when a thunderstorm brings down the cooling rain! This is the month when all who can hasten to the seashore and rejoice alike in the bath and the breeze. Perhaps it is there many of you will first read this, half buried in sand. To me the most interesting sight at a watering-place is the groups of dear little children; I love to see them, with their spades, and their clothes tucked up as far as possible, digging out pits or building castles, and boldly and bravely wading into the water. Now the hay-makers are in full swing, and what little one does not enjoy the fun of tumbling about in the hay? It is the time of fruit too, and what child loves not that? But the birds for the most part have ceased their joyous songs, or at least their notes have lost that vivacity and rich tone with which they charmed us in spring. The great majority are now busy with a second family, and towards the end of this month the early broods are flying about in large flocks, and trying to chirp forth their first songs. The Cuckoo and the Swift will soon take their leave, and start on their long journey into Africa. The loud scream of the latter and his powerful whirling flight will alike be missed.
Last month I told you a little about the interesting changes that many insects pass through before they become butterflies or moths. As this is the month when bees are most busy shall I tell you a little about them and their wonderful ways? It would be scarcely possible to find any wild bees in our Island. When they swarm they are carefully watched to secure them, and if a new swarm should perchance make its escape, it is so valuable as speedily to be captured by some one. Once it was not so. England was a vast forest; the wolf, the bear, and the wild bull abounded, and bees were so numerous that it was known abroad as the Island of Honey; and, as a Roman poet expressed it, the very oaks dripped with honey: nor need we be surprised at this. I have known in the vast forests of America whole companies sally forth with wagons and oxen, and after a few days’ hunt return, with their wagons literally loaded with honeycomb. They find immense hives or nests containing hundreds of pounds of comb and honey.
I need not tell you that honeybees live in swarms, and not like some insects, separated one from another. There are three kinds in every swarm or company—the male, or drone; the neuter, or workers; and the female or Queen. These are as different in their shape as is the work they have to perform. The drone is much larger than the others and distinguished by its breadth, its large eyes, and its much larger wings, and is of a pale brown color. The neuter, or worker, is of a dark brown color, nearly black. In a well-stocked hive the number of drones is from six or seven hundred, to two thousand. The number of workers will amount to 15,000 or 20,000. Their occupation is to collect honey, pollen or bee bread, and a substance called propolis and wax, with which to construct their cells, and attend upon their young. The construction of the bee, as indeed of every kind of insect, displays an exquisite fineness or mechanism that makes the most delicate workmanship that man can construct appear coarse and rough in the extreme. For example, if you look at what is called the proboscis—a kind of trunk with which it collects and then deposits honey into the mouth—through a microscope, you will find it composed of five distinct parts; a central part or the tongue, with which it laps up the honey, and four kinds of stalks, two on each side, one of which is a feeler, and the other the lower jaw. But the hind legs of the working bee are a perfect masterpiece of mechanism. It is at one and the same time, a basket, a brush, and a pair of pincers. The brush is composed of extremely fine hairs arranged in well-proportioned rows: with this brush of fairy delicacy the bee continually brushes her velvet robe to remove the pollen dust with which it becomes loaded whilst she is rifling the flowers and sucking up the nectar Another part of the leg is hollow like a spoon and receives all the gleanings which the bee carries to the hive, and thus becomes a basket for provisions. In addition to this, the bee has the power of opening one part of the leg upon the other part, the two pieces thus becoming a perfect pair of pincers by which it performs important service in the construction of the combs. When the bee is loading her basket she first kneads the little pellet till it becomes somewhat dry and less adhesive, as otherwise it would stick to her limbs, and then passing it into the cavity of the basket gives it two or three pats to make it adhere. All this beautiful arrangement is found only in the workers, and is looked for in vain in one of the drone bees.
Besides the males and the workers there is the Queen bee, which is the most striking feature in the whole hive. Strictly speaking, the workers or neuters are female bees, but owing to the peculiar way in which they are brought up, when first they break through their little eggs, none of them are capable of producing other eggs. All the eggs in one hive are produced by the one Queen, and there is never but one allowed in the same hive, and she is treated with every attention by the whole colony of bees. But if accident carries off the Queen they miraculously know how to create for themselves another. When the females first break through their little eggs, and while in the caterpillar state they are so scantily supplied with food that they never become perfect female bees. But the moment the Queen dies the nurses construct a vast royal cell, forty or fifty times as large as the others. Then they bear away a simple workwoman from her narrow cell, and placing her in this palace they load her with the most agreeable and sweetest-scented bees’ bread, under the influence of which she immediately begins to grow and soon becomes a perfect Queen bee, and receives the homage and obedience of the hive.
It would fill a big book to tell you all about the way in which the bee builds its wonderful hive; how it sallies forth for miles round to find honey and honey-bread, and the material with which it makes its comb; how it makes beautiful little cells; joins them one to another, fills them with honey, then seals them up for winter food: how the Queen lays vast quantities of eggs in a great number of cells made on purpose for her; how the nurses take care of these eggs, as soon as they are hatched feeding the female bees differently from what they do the males, by which they become what are called the neuters or workers; how wonderfully the whole company is organized, so as to divide the labor, and all attending to their own duties in the most perfect manner; in what a remarkable way they keep clean and ventilate and defend their hives; then, again, if their hive is attacked by another swarm of bees, how wonderfully they put themselves in battle array, march forth under their leaders, and with what fury they set upon their assailants. Then, again, it would be most interesting to tell you all about the way they swarm; how, at a certain time, a great number will surround a new Queen, become exceedingly restless, and at a given moment how the new Queen gives a signal, sallies forth, and is instantly followed by all that intend to leave; how they follow her wherever she goes, and cling together on whatever she may happen to settle (often on a branch of a tree), in such a cluster that you would think all the inside ones would be smothered and die, and how in this state they are easily taken, when, being placed in a new hive, they immediately begin to work and form a colony for themselves. But all this I can only name to you with the hope that many will be led to learn much more about these wonderful little creatures. By way of exciting your curiosity let me tell you the remarkable intelligence they display in dealing with enemies that intrude into their hives. If it be an enemy little to be dreaded the first sentinels pierce it with their stings, and in the twinkling of an eye eject the corpse from the common dwelling. But if it be a strong and heavy slug, a general agitation siezes the workers, each one gets ready his weapon, whirls round the invader, and pierces it with his dart. Wounded on all sides, and poisoned by the venom from their stings, the invader dies in violent contortions. But what is to be done with such a weighty foe? The little feet of all the tribe could not suffice to stir the corpse, and the door of the hive would be too narrow to allow it to pass. Its putrid exhalations, would, however, soon infect the colony and develop the germ of some malady. How are they to escape from this dilemma? The republic take counsel and come suddenly to just such a resolution as they would have done if they had thoroughly known one of the arts of ancient Egypt. The bees set to work to embalm the dead animal. For this purpose the workers scatter themselves over the country in order to gather the resinous matter which clings to the buds, with which they closely envelope the dead body and deposit all round it a thick solid layer, which preserves it from putrefaction. But if the invader, instead of being a soft slug vulnerable on all sides, should be a mailed shell-snail, he is attacked in a totally different manner. As soon as the swarm begins to attack it, the snail entrenches itself within its shell and is proof against all their stings. The bees at once set to work and deposit around the shell a solid frame of resinous matter which glues it firmly to the hive, and thus the intruder is doomed to die in his lair!
Wonderful indeed are the works of God and not the least wonder is this, that the more minute are His creatures the more wonderful and exquisite are all their parts and the more interesting their ways.