These apiarian battles are often fought in defence of the property of the hive. Bees that are ill managed, and not properly fed, instead of collecting for themselves, will now and then get a habit of pillaging from their more industrious neighbours: these are called by Schirach corsair bees, and by English writers robbers. They make their attack chiefly in the latter end of July, and during the month of August. At first they act with caution, endeavouring to enter by stealth; and then, emboldened by success, come in a body. If one of the queens be killed, the attacked bees unite with the assailants, take up their abode with them, and assist in plundering their late habitation. Schirach very gravely recommends it to apiarists whose hives are attacked by these depredators, to give the bees some honey mixed with brandy or wine, to increase and infiame their courage, that they may more resolutely defend their property against their piratical assailants. It is, however, to be apprehended that this method of making them pot-valiant might induce them to attack their neighbours as well as to defend themselves. Sometimes combats take place in which three or four bees attack a single individual, not with a design to kill, but merely to rob: one seizes it by one leg, another by another; till perhaps there are two on each side, each having hold of a leg; or they bite its head or thorax. But as soon as the poor animal that is thus haled about and maltreated unfolds its tongue, one of the assailants goes and sucks it with its own, and is followed by the rest, who then let it go. These insects, however, in their ordinary labours are very kind and helpful to each other; I have often seen two, at the same moment, visit the same flower, and very peaceably despoil it of its treasures, without any contention for the best share. As the poison of bees exhales a penetrating odour, M. Huber was curious to observe the effect it might produce upon them. Having extracted with pincers the sting of a bee and its appendages impregnated with poison, he presented it to some workers, which were settled very tranquilly before the gate of their mansion. Instantaneously the little party was alarmed: : none, however, took flight; but two or three darted upon the poisoned instrument, and one angrily attacked the observer. When, however, the poison was coagulated, they were not in the least affected by it. after which they were hived in the regular way, and appeared to be doing well. On the Saturday after, a swarm of bees, from some neighbouring hive, appeared to be flying over the garden in which the hive above mentioned was placed, when they instantly darted down upon the hive of the new settlers, and completely covered it in a little time they began to enter the hive, and poured into it in such numbers that it soon became completely filled. A loud humming noise was heard, and the work of destruction immediately ensued; the winged combatants sallied forth from the hive, until it became entirely empty; and a furious battle commenced in "upper air," between the besiegers and the besieged. A spectator informs us, that these intrepid little warriors were so numerous, that they literally darkened the sky over-head like a cloud; meanwhile the destructive battle raged with fury on both sides, and the ground beneath was covered with the wounded and the slain; hundreds of them were lying dead, or crawling about, disabled from reascending to the scene of action. To one party, however, the palm of victory was at last awarded; and they settled upon the branch of an adjoining apple-tree, from which they were safely placed in the empty hive, which had been the object of their valiant contention, and where they now continue peacefully and industriously employed in adding to the stores of their commonwealth. Thorley, 163. 1 Comp. Schirach, 49. Mills, 62. 2 51. A tube impregnated with the odour of poison recently ejected being presented to them, affected them in the same manner. 1 This circumstance may sometimes occasion battles amongst them that are not otherwise easy to be accounted for. Anger is no useless or hurtful passion in bees: it is necessary to them for the preservation of themselves and their property, which, besides those of their own species, are exposed to the ravages of numerous enemies. Of these I have already enumerated several of the class of insects, and also some beasts and birds that have a taste for bees and their produce. The Merops apiaster (which has been taken in England), the fark and other birds, catch them as they fly. Even the frog and the toad are said to kill great numbers of bees; and many that fall into the water probably become the prey of fish. The mouse also, especially the field-mouse, in winter often commits great ravages in a hive, if the base and orifices are not well secured and stopped.2 Thorley once lost a stock by mice, which made a nest and produced young amongst the combs. The titmouse, according to the same author, will make a noise at the door of the hive, and when a bee comes out to see what is the matter, will seize and devour it. He has known them eat a dozen at a time. The swallows will assemble round the hives and devour them like grains of corn. I need only mention spiders, in whose webs they sometimes meet with their end; and earwigs and ants, which creep into the hive and steal the honey. 5 Upon this subject of the enemies of bees, I cannot persuade myself to omit the account Mr. White has given of an idiot boy, who from a child showed a strong propensity to bees. They were his food, his amusement, his sole object. In the winter he dozed away his time in his father's house, by the fireside, in a torpid state, seldom leaving the chimney corner; but in summer he was all alert and in quest of his game. Hivebees, humble-bees, and wasps were his prey, wherever he found them. He had no apprehension from their stings, but would seize them with naked hands, and at once disarm them of their weapons, and suck their bodies for the sake of their honey-bags. Sometimes he would fill his bosom between his shirt and skin with these animals: and sometimes he endeavoured to confine them in bottles. He was very injurious to men that kept bees; for he would glide into their bee-gardens, and sitting down before the stools, would rap with his fingers, and so take the bees as they came out. He has even been known to overturn the hives for the sake of the honey, of which he was passionately fond. Where metheglin was making, he would linger round the tubs and vessels, begging a draught of what he called bee-wine. As he ran about, he used to make a humming noise with his lips resembling the buzzing of bees. This lad was lean and sallow, and of a cadaverous complexion; and except in his favourite pursuit, in which he was wonderfully adroit, discovered no manner of understanding. Had his capacity been better, and directed to the same object, he had perhaps abated much of our wonder at the feats of a more modern exhibitor of bees; and we may justly say of him now, The worker bees are annual insects, though the queen will sometimes live more than two years; but, as every swarm consists of old and young, this is no argument for burning them. It is a saying of bee-keepers in Holland, that the first swallow and the first bee foretel each other. This perhaps may be correct there; but with us the appearance of bees considerably precedes that of the swallow; for when the early crocuses open, if the weather be warm, they may always be found busy in the blossom. The time that bees will inhabit the same stations is wonderful. Reaumur mentions a countryman who preserved bees in the same hive for thirty years. Thorley tells us that a swarm took possession of a spot under the leads of the study of Ludovicus Vives in Oxford, where they continued a hundred and ten years, from 1520 to 1630.3 These circumstances have led authors to ascribe to bees a greater age than they can claim. Thus Mouffet, because he knew a bees' nest which had remained thirty years in the same quarters, concludes that they are very long-lived, and very sapiently doubts whether they even die of old age at all! which is just as wise as if a man should contend, because London had existed from before the time of Julius Cæsar, that therefore its inhabitants must be immortal. Bees are subject to many accidents; particularly, as I have said above, they often fall or are precipitated by the wind into water; and though like the cat a bee has not nine lives, nor "Nine times emerging from the crystal flood, She mews to every watery god," yet she will bear submersion nine hours; and, if exposed to sufficient heat, be reanimated. In this case their proboscis is generally unfolded, and stretched to its full length. At the extremity of this, motion is first perceived, and then at the end of the legs. After these symptoms appear, they soon recover, fold up the tongue, and plume themselves for flight.5 Experimentalists may therefore, without danger, submerge a hive of bees when they want to examine them particularly, for they will all revive upon being set to the fire. Reaumur says that in winter, during frosts, the bees remain in a torpid state. He must mean severe frosts; for Huber relates an instance, when upon a sudden emergency the bees of one of his hives set themselves to work in the middle of January; and he observes that they are so little torpid in winter, that even when the thermometer abroad is below the freezing point, it stands high in populous hives. Swammerdam, and after him the two authors last quoted, found that sometimes, even in the middle of winter, hives have young brood in them, which the bees feed and attend to. In an instance of this kind, which fell under the eye of Huber, the thermometer stood in the hive at about 92°. In colder climates, however, the bees will probably be less active in the winter. They are then generally situated between the combs towards their lower part. 1 Swamm. Bib. Nat. ed. Hill. i. 160. 2 Ubi suprà, 665. 4 Theatr. Ins. 21. 3 178. 5 Reaum. v. 540. 6 January 11, 1818. My bees were out, and very alert this day. The thermometer stood abroad in the shade at 5140. When the sun shone there was quite a cluster of them at the mouth of the hives, and great numbers were buzzing about in the air before them. But when the air grows milder, especially if the rays of the sun fall upon the hive and warm it, they awake from their lethargy, shake their wings, and begin to move and recover their activity; with which their wants returning, they then feed upon the stock of honey and bee-bread which they have in reserve. The lowest cells are first uncovered, and their contents consumed; the highest are reserved to the last. The honey in the lowest cells being collected in the autumn, probably will not keep so well as the vernal. The degree of heat in a hive in winter, as I have just hinted, is great. A thermometer near one, in the open air, that stood in January at 63° below the freezing point, upon the insertion of the bulb a little way into the hive rose to 22° above it; and could it have been placed between the combs, where the bees themselves were agglomerated, the mercury, Reaumur conjectures, would have risen as high as it does abroad in the warm days in summer.1 Huber says that it stands in frost at 86° and 88° in populous hives. In May, the former author found in a hive in which he had lodged a small swarm, that the thermometer indicated a degree of heat above that of the hottest days of summer.3 He observes that their motion, and even the agitation of their wings, increases the heat of their atmosphere. Often, when the squares of glass in a hive appeared cold to the touch, if either by design or chance he happened to disturb the bees, and the agglomerated mass in a tumult began to move different ways, sending forth a great hum, in a very short time so considerable an accession of heat was produced, that when he touched the same squares of glass he felt them as hot as if they had been held near a fierce fire. By teasing the bees, the heat generated was sometimes so great as to soften very much the wax of the combs, and even to cause them to fall.4 The above conclusions, however, of Reaumur and Huber, as to the great temperature of the interior of bee-hives in winter, are contrary to the results obtained by George Newport, Esq., from his minute and very valuable series of experiments to determine this point, which will be further adverted to in directing your attention to the hybernation of insects; but this excellent comparative anatomist, of whose labours British entomology is so justly proud, has not only fully confirmed what these entomologists have advanced as to the extra heat generated by bees in their hives in summer, but, after showing that all insects have a temperature greater than that of the surrounding atmosphere, and that this temperature, as in vertebrate animals, is intimately dependent on the volume and velocity of their circulation, and the quantity and activity of their respiration, has proved that it is in consequence of the greater energy of this last function in bees and humble-bees, owing to the superior development and capacity of their trachea and vesicular dilatations, that their power of producing heat is so much greater than that of most other insects. If, as happened to myself a few days ago, a wild bee should chance to drop on a newspaper you are reading in the open air, and you observe it attentively, you will see it pant like a greyhound after a chase, the alternate rapid contraction and expansion of its abdominal segments corresponding with the numerous and rapid acts of respiration which the exertion of its recent flight has caused; and Mr. Newport found that in the hive-bee, when very mode 1 v. 671. 2 i. 354. note *. DD rately active, the number of respirations did not exceed 40 per minute, while, when in violent action or a state of excitement, they were from 110 to 120 per minute. The degree of heat developed by the hive-bee is thus always in proportion to the activity of its respiration, which again usually depends on the greater or less activity of its motions; and hence it is in summer often 250 Fahr. above that of the atmosphere, and as much or more even in winter, if the bees be in any way excited.1 And now, having detailed to you thus amply the wonderful history and proceedings of the social tribes of the insect world, you will allow, I think, that I have redeemed my pledge, when I taught you to expect that this history would exceed in interest and variety and marvellous results every thing that I had before related to you. I trust, moreover, that you will scarcely feel disposed to subscribe to that opinion, though it has the sanction of some great names, which attributes these almost miraculous instincts to mere sensation; which tells us that the sensorium of these insects is so modelled with respect to the different operations that are given them in charge, that it is by the attraction of pleasure alone that they are determined to the execution of them; and that, as every circumstance relative to the succession of their different labours is preordained, to each of them an agreeable sensation is affixed by the Creator; and that thus, when the bees build their cells; when they sedulously attend to the young brood; when they collect provisions; this is the result of no plans, of no affection, of no foresight; but that the sole determining motive is the enjoyment of an agreeable sensation attached to each of these operations.2 Surely it would be better to resolve all their proceedings at once into a direct impulse from the Creator, than to maintain a theory so contrary to fact, and which militates against the whole history which M. Huber, who adopts this theory from Bonnet, has so ably given of these creatures. That they may experience agreeable sensations from their various employments, nobody will deny; but that such sensations instruct them how to perform their several operations, without any plan previously impressed upon their sensorium, is contrary both to reason and experience. They have a plan, it is evident; and that plan, which proves that it is not mere sensation, they vary according to circumstances. As to affection—that bees are irritable, and feel the passion of anger, no one will deny; that they are also susceptible of fear, is equally evident; and if they feel anger and fear, why may they not also feel love? Further, if they have recourse to precautions for the prevention of any evil that seems to threaten them, how can we refuse them a degree of foresight? Must we also resolve all their patriotism, and the singular regard for the welfare of their community which seems constantly to actuate them, and the sacrifices, even sometimes of themselves, that they make to promote and ensure it, into individual self-love? We would not set them up as rivals to man in intelligence, foresight, and the affections; but they have that degree of each that is necessary for their purposes. On account of the difficulties attending all theories that give them some degree of these qualities, to resolve all into mere sensation is removing one difficulty by a greater. 1 Newport "On the Temperature of Insects," in Phil. Trans. 1837, pp. 309. 311, &c. 2 Huber, i. 313. |