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The Family: Butler

The modern queen-bee certainly has no spot, like a diadem, glittering on her brow, as Pliny relates, but she is fairly entitled to the pleasant praise of Butler, who informs us, "The queen is a fair and stately bee, differing from the vulgar both in shape and color: her back is all over of a bright brown; her belly, even from the top of her fangs to the tip of her train, is of a sad yellow, somewhat deeper than the richest gold," and the remainder of Butler's description of the queen is as accurate and far more picturesque than can be found in the modern beebooks. Queen-bee. "She is longer than a honey bee, by one third part, that is, almost an inch long: she is also bigger than a honey bee; but not so big as a drone, although somewhat longer: her head proportionable, but that is more round than the little bees, by reason her fangs be shorter: her tongue not half so long as theirs: for whereas they gather with the one nectar, with the other ambrosia; she hath no need to use either, being to be maintained, as other princes, by the labor of her subjects: her wings of the same size with a small bee's, and therefore with respect of her body long, they seem very short, resembling rather a cloak than a gown; for they reach but to the middle of her train or nether part: her legs proportionable, and of the colour of her belly, but her two hind legs more yellow; her nether part so long and half so long as her upper part."

We know that the queen does receive peculiar attention from the other members of the hive; as Langstroth says, "The queen is treated with the greatest respect and affection by the bees. A circle of her loving offspring often surround her, testifying in various ways their dutiful regard : some gently embracing her with their antennæ, others offering her food from time to time, and all of them politely backing out of her way, to give her a clear path when she moves over the combs."

So strong is the feeling of the workers for the queen that if for any reason she is removed, the whole hive is filled with consternation and dismay, and speedily falls a victim to despair. Her death, when it is too late in the season to raise another queen, means the final extinction of the colony. The bees know that a terrible calamity has befallen them, their family is doomed, and they lose all heart and all their eagerness to work.

Huber experimented upon his bees by carefully removing their queen, and he tells us, - "Bees are not immediately aware of the removal of their queen: their labors are uninterrupted; they watch over the young, and perform the whole of their ordinary occupations. But, in a few hours, agitation ensues, all The Family appears a scene of tumult in the hive. A singular humming is heard; the bees desert their young and rush over the surface of the combs with delirious impetuosity. Then they discover that their queen is no longer among them. But how do they ascertain it? How do the bees on the surface of one comb discover that the queen is or is not on the next comb? - "I cannot doubt that the agitation arises from the workers having lost their queen, for, on restoring her, tranquillity is instantly regained among them; and, what is very singular, they recognize her you must interpret this expression strictly. Substitution of another queen is not attended with the same effect, if she is introduced into the hive within the first twelve hours after removal of the reigning one. Here the agitation continues, and the bees treat the stranger just as they do when the presence of their own leaves them nothing to desire. They surround, seize, and keep her a very long time captive, in an impenetrable cluster, and she commonly dies either from hunger or privation of air."

Virgil gives us this pleasant picture of the love of the bees for their queen: - "Besides, not Egypt's self, nor great Lydia, nor the nation of the Parthians, nor Median Hydaspes, are so observant of their king. Whilst the king is safe, there is one mind among all: when he is dead, they sever their allegiance; they themselves tear to pieces the fabric of their honey, and demolish the structure of their combs. He is the guardian of their works: him they admire, and all encircle him with thick humming, and guard him in a numerous body; often they lift him up on their shoulders, expose their bodies in war, and through wounds seek a glorious death."

Although the facts do not sustain this romantic description, there is no doubt that the queen owes her reputation for royalty to the peculiar conduct of the bees about her and yet she is in no sense a ruler. She does not issue commands nor examine the work done with a view either to criticise or to advise, nor does she indulge in royal idleness.

On the contrary, no bee in the hive performs so stupendous a task as she. There may be over a hundred thousand bees hatched in one season, and of all these she alone is the mother. A good queen will sometimes lay three thousand five hundred eggs a day, or nearly double the weight of her own body, and continue doing it for several weeks in succession.

What enables her to perform this apparent miracle?

Two things, - her advantageous physical start in life, for she is the best nourished of all the bees, and the great care she receives from the workers.

She is in reality from the time she begins her maternal task little more than an egg-laying machine.

As she has no responsibility of finding nectar or building waxen cells, or even of caring for her own wants, she has no use for the highly developed nervous organization that distinguishes the worker bees, and we find this mother of the hive possessed of a small head, a small brain, and a simple understanding. Her antennæ contain but two-thirds as many sense organs as those of the workers, and her compound eyes have each somewhat less than five thousand facets, while the workers' contain over six thousand. Her digestive power is so imperfect that the worker bees are obliged to eat and digest the pollen for her, secreting a rich nutritious fluid which the queen obtains by putting her short tongue into the open mouths of the workers. Fed thus upon extremely nutritious and already digested The Family food, the queen is able to maintain the necessary heat of the body and produce an enormous number of eggs.

We are not surprised to learn that no pollen baskets have developed upon her legs, and that her hairs are but slightly branched.

If carefully prepared food is necessary to the usefulness of the queen as an egg-producer, it is no less necessary to her formation in the first place, and she has the best of the good things to eat from the time she leaves the egg. The worker bees build sheets of honey-comb, which are suspended from the top of the hive. As we buy the honeycomb to-day in small boxes weighing a pound or two, we see only one kind of comb, that in which honey is stored. These honey cells are the same as those in which the drone eggs are laid, and the young drones reared. The honeycomb becomes a cradle for bees or a store-house for honey at the will of the bee. But in every hive at the beginning of the season there are built combs of cells like the honey cells, but one-fifth smaller.

There are often a great many of these, and they are the cradles of the young worker bees.