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The Wings: Hark

Our modern poets are still enamoured of the voice of the bee, and Rogers stops us thus, finger on lip, - "Hark! the bee winds her small, but mellow horn, Blithe to salute the sunny smile of morn;" and Hogg, in his "Pilgrims of the Sun," sings, - "As they pass'd by, The angels paused, and saints that lay reposed In bowers of Paradise upraised their heads To list the passing music, for it went Swift as the wild bee's note, that on the wing Booms like unbodied voice along the gale." "Hark! along the humming air Home the laden bees repair," says Milman in his "Martyr of Antioch," while the Bard of Avon, in "Troilus and Cressida," informs us, - "Full merrily the humble-bee doth sing, Till she hath lost her honey and her sting."

The bee's wings, although so tiny, are yet larger than actually necessary to the performance of very creditable flight, as is often shown by old bees with worn and ragged wings. They oftentimes continue their nectar-seeking excursions in a state of wings that is truly deplorable. They keep going as long as the wings on both sides are equally worn, and are apparently unconscious that they are sadly in need of repairs, flying long distances and bringing home heavy loads. But if one wing gets torn much more than the other, the case is hopeless, and they can no longer maintain their balance.

When a bee flies, it appears to give itself up to that glorious occupation as though wings were all there is to life. The heavy body droops a little downward, and the legs drop to their length, reminding one of the long legs that trail behind a flying heron.

A "bee-line," popularly supposed to be the most direct The Wings line to a given point, is in reality the most eccentric of courses; and it is the swift curving from side to side that makes the flight of the bee so difficult for the eye to follow. Not improbably, bee-eating birds and insects experience an equal difficulty in following the course of the swift-darting morsel, that is seldom captured while thus describing its "bee-line."

Nor does the bee dart in a straight line up into the air; but when about to take its bearings for distant flight, it ascends to the regions above in a spiral course.

Necessity has led the bee to put its wings to another use than that of flight. Following an instinct which may have developed as a result of communal life, it purifies the air of the hive by means of its wings, as Huber first demonstrated.

The bee is much more dependent upon fresh air than we are. It is soon suffocated by foul air, and will not allow a degree of impurity within its hive which would be quite unnoticed by our senses. It lives in close quarters with many thousands of its kind, - in the ordinary hive from twenty to fifty thousand, - with only a small opening at the bottom of the hive.

The conditions for ventilation seem to us, therefore, the worst that could be devised. But such as they are, they must be accepted; for an opening at the top permitting a draught of air would oftentimes chill and prove fatal to the developing young. The hive must be warm within, and is kept so by the palpitating bodies of the countless inhabitants.

But bees also breathe and exhale from their bodies poisonous vapors as we ourselves do. Unlike the air in our habitations, however, that within the hive is always as pure, or very nearly so, as the air out of doors.

This is accomplished by the bees themselves, who take turns standing near the entrance and fanning with their wings. The low hum of these living ventilating fans can be heard outside the hive, and particularly on warm close days when it is more difficult to supply the needs of the crowded tenement.

So powerful is the draught from the wings of a fanning bee that it can be distinctly felt as a light cool breeze against the cheek when a captive bee performs this office. A piece of tissue-paper two inches square has been raised entirely free from the gauze covering to the little box in which bee-keepers send queen-bees by mail, by the fanning of a single bee; and when a dozen or more bees have a • fanning party in the box they produce quite a little hurricane.

Captive bees will sometimes fan for a long time, apparently for the pure pleasure of the exercise. They seem attacked by an ecstasy of fanning, and for the time are interested in nothing else. The writer of these chronicles has frequently held a pencil between the wings of a fanning bee, which stopped operations while it remained there, but the instant the pencil was removed the wings started again as if run by machinery.

When fanning, the abdomen is raised, the head lowered, and the bee clings fast with its feet, moving slightly from side to side, or turning partly around.

It sometimes presents the appearance of performing a solemn dance, though the solemnity of the occasion is considerably marred by the wings that move so rapidly they irresistibly suggest a short gauze ballet skirt. The bee's method of ventilation, driving both pure and impure air through one opening at the bottom of the apartment, and their brilliant success in accomplishing their The Wings purpose, suggests the idea that their method might possibly be used successfully by architects in ventilating public buildings, it having the advantage of economy and of gaining the desired object without producing the "draught" so greatly feared by modern man.