William Edward Shuckard

“ The incessant hum that accompanies these proceedings is like the mildest tones of the surge of the distant sea, or the inarticulate buzz of the voice of large crowds. In this seeming confusion all obey the strictest order, for each attends to his own business only; there is no collision or loss of time or labour, each one fulfilling precisely its own mission. At this period the hive is a perfect model of order, neatness, and beauty. The combs we have seen so rapidly growing are to be filled, and fresh cells are being constantly constructed. ”

“ We may be the more excused for this preference when we weigh the interest of the genus Apis to man. The wasp boots us nothing, but is the pilferer of our fruits, and a marauder upon the hive, whose inhabitants it destroys and consumes their produce, it being indifferent to them which they obtain—the bee or the honey,—either furnishing them with sustenance. ”

“ In their modes of flight bees vary considerably; some dart along in a direct line, with almost the velocity of lightning, visit a flower for an instant, and then dart off again with the same fleetness and vivacity, like Saropoda and Anthophora; others leisurely visit every blossom, even upon a crowded plant, with patient assiduity, like Bombus; and some, either from fatigue, or heat, or intoxication, repose, like luxurious Sybarites, within the corolla of the flower. The males seem to flutter about in idle vagrancy, and may be often observed enjoying themselves upon some fragrant hedge-row. ”

“ How could they know, without reflection, that the food they store in the receptacle they form for the egg they will deposit, and which receptacle is exactly adapted to the size that the larva which will be hatched from it will take, is to nurture a creature they will never see, and whose wonderful transformations they will not therefore witness? In the hive bee the maternal instinct exhibits itself as an energy diffused through a multitude of individuals, but these witness the results of their solicitude, and exclusively promote its successful issue ”

“ Whether this be the case or not, as soon as the earth begins to feel the warmth of the sun upon its return from its far southern journey, and to respond to the renewed vitality it gives to vegetation, these bees feel its active influence and come forth. With the progress of the spring and summer most flowers are exposed to their rifling, but they revel upon the elegant flowers of the Horse-chestnut, and their hum is the music of the lime when it is in blossom. ”

“ As male and female conjunctively make up the species, thus do the queen-bee and the neuters collectively make up one sex,—the mother,—for the functions performed by the female alone in the case of the solitary kinds of bees are, in the genus Apis, separately executed. The cares and labours of maternity devolve upon these neuters, while the queen-bee’s maternal function is limited to merely laying the eggs with which she is replete, with the instinctive power of selecting for them their proper depository,—each of which is adapted in size to that of the sex which will be produced. ”

“ When arrived at perfect maturity, and ready to commence the part it has to perform in the economy of nature, it bursts its cerements, making its way through the dorsal covering of its silken skin, and, leaving the exuviæ behind, it crawls forth from its dormitory, when, becoming invigorated by the bracing air and the genial sunshine, it stretches its legs and expands its wings, and flies forth jubilant, rejoicing in its awakened faculties. ”

“ Having fixed upon the preferred plant, Rose-bush or Laburnum or Sallow, or whatever it may be, it alights upon the leaf, and fixing itself upon the edge, it holds it with three legs on each side, then using its mandibles as the cutter of silhouettes would his scissors, and, just as rapidly as he cuts out a profile, does this ingenious little creature ply the tools it is furnished with by nature. ”

“ To our present purpose it has but a collateral interest as an object of curiosity, yet curiosity has led to many discoveries which have proved valuable to mankind. All the divisions of natural science have a mutual and convertible bearing, and closely interlink in their relations. Thus, insects denote the botany, which further indicates the climate or elevation and soil; and the superficial soil will point geological conclusions to subsoil and substructure. One natural science well mastered gives a key to the great storehouse of nature’s riches, and yields a harvest of many different crops. ”

“ They may, perhaps, with their music often convey to the broken-hearted and lonely exile in Siberia, the momentarily cheering reminiscence of joyful youth, and by this bright and brief interruption break the monotonous and painful dullness of his existence, recalling the happier days of yore: but the flowers of humanity, here typified by 79the natural flowers which attract these stray comforters, will one day spring where the salt of tears now desolates, and thus the merry bees have sweetness for even these poor outcasts, and froth their bitter cup with bubbling hope. ”

“ The habits are the peculiar manners and economy of a species; and the habitat is the kind of locality the creatures affect, such as hill or plain, wood or meadow, forest or fell, hedgebank or decaying timber, sand or chalk or clay, and ground vertical or horizontal; and the 128metropolis of a species—another term in use—is the centralization of the general habitat where the insect either nidificates collectively with its fellows, or, where, from any other cause, it may be found in its season, usually in profusion. But good fortune does not always attend the discovery of this locality. ”

“ That it has not been caught laden with pollen upon its legs has no weight against the fact of its non-parasitism, for it is not always that the excursions of bees are made for the purpose of collecting pollen. Honey is as necessary to their economy—and in this case perhaps more so—as pollen, and the only way to determine the fact of its carrying pollen, corroboratively, would be when knowing that one of these bees has visited a bramble stick—its presumptive nidus,—to watch the stick very patiently for the insect’s return from every journey until it came back laden ”

“ Ascending from species, the naturalist scarcely hopes to find in the groups formed above them strict parallelism, although, to be logical, it should be so, and, where the combinations are most natural, it is most nearly so. Thus we do not again distinctly reach equivalents until we arrive at these families, which from linking together associations usually combined by an identity of instinct and functions, attach to themselves greater interest, and form alliances pointed out by the finger of nature itself, which are therefore exempted from the arbitrary caprice of the constructive systematist. ”

“ These cells are occupied by a succession of six, or eight, or even sometimes no more than two, three, or four cartridge- or thimble-like cases, in each of which is deposited a single egg with a sufficiency, taught the creature by its instinct, of a mingled paste of honey and pollen, for the full nurture and development of the vermicle that will proceed from the egg upon its being hatched, and wherein this larva, having consumed its provender, becomes transformed into the pupa, and by the continuance of nature’s mysterious operations, it speedily changes into the perfect insect. ”

“ It comes forth prepared to undertake the cares, and meet the vicissitudes of existence. The new life that now opens to it is one apparently teeming exuberantly with every delight. It dwells in sunshine and amidst flowers; it revels in their sweets, attracted by their beautiful colours and their delightful odours; and the consummation of its bliss is to find a congenial partner. With him it enjoys a brief connubial transport, but which is speedily succeeded by life-long labour, for the cares of maternity immediately supervene. ”

“ The bees, in their temporary distribution of labour, are something like the Indians which have caste, among whom each service has its special servitor, who never undertakes or interferes with the duties of another. The collection of pollen is almost as needful to the well-being of a hive as honey, this being used exclusively as the basis of the sustenance of the new brood in their larva state, in all their conditions of worker, drone, and queen, the perfect bee itself never partaking of it. ”

“ Gradually these joyous spring insects lose their gayness and their brilliancy, as do those which have followed in succession of development with the growing year, and they become senile and faded and are lost as they have progressively fulfilled their function. By this time the ragwort is in bloom, and the thistle displays its pinky blossoms; now the males are to be found numerously exhibiting themselves upon these flowers, and also another equally fresh brood to those of the spring and early summer, of females. ”

“ Is it accident or is it intelligence that instructs the bee, or is it the impulse of the instinct implanted by that Supreme Intelligence which gives man his reason and moulds all things to their most fitting use? ”

“ Thus science dissipates the popular supposition, that a multiplicity of the individuals of one species of this insect produces the tons of wax and the myriads of gallons of honey that are annually consumed.
Which of these bees first benefited the human race, in its primitive seat, and before the multiplication of mankind forced them to take divergent courses from the cradle of their birthrace, “to people the whole earth,” it is impossible to say. ”

“ The instinctive impulse of the cares of maternity prompt the wild bees to their early assiduity, urging them to their eager quest of these foremost indicators of the renewed year. The firstling bees are forthwith at their earnest work of collecting honey and pollen, which, kneaded into a paste, are to become both the cradle and the sustenance of their future progeny.
Wherever we investigate wonderful Nature, we observe the most beautiful adaptations and arrangements,—everywhere the correlations of structure with function ”

“ Where self-preservation is not the prompter, or the rivalry of love the instigator, but the duration of which is limited to a season, the feuds of the animal world all seem to proceed from the urgency of their gastronomic suggestions, the acrimony of which urges craft and strength to their most powerful exhibition. ”

“ We shall thus be enabled to see and follow the wonderful economy of the hive and its many mysteries, which it would not have been possible to accomplish in an abode of their own choice,—some cavity presented by Nature herself, the hollow of a tree, or an excavated rock. They are, therefore, now housed, and after the survey of the capacity of their abode, which is a short affair, with all the prompt energy peculiar to them they at once commence their labours. The queen is already matured, and ready to lay eggs. ”

“ The parasitical habits of Nomada are evident and unmistakable. This is the handsomest genus, in variety of colour and elegance of form, of all our native bees, but the species are never conspicuous for size. They have much of the appearance of wasps, and are often mistaken for them even by entomologists, who have not paid attention to bees. Many of our native species seem limited to our own islands: others of our species occur in France and Germany, and through Denmark in direct line to Lapland, turning down into Russia, and have been caught as far south as Albania. ”

“ The study requires method as a lodestar to guide through its intricacies, but it is one which, pursued simply as a recreation, yields both much amusement and gratifying instruction. It shows us that when we unclasp the book of nature, and wherever we may turn its leaves, every word, the syllables of which we strive to spell, is pregnant with the fruitfulness of wonderful wisdom, whose profound expression the human intellect is too limited thoroughly to comprehend. ”

“ But it is now that the large females only are at work, for they have to create their companions before they can be surrounded by them. Their fruition is the result of the previous autumn’s amours, at a period too late to form sufficient stores for the numerous brood they will produce, and accordingly, after revelling in a brief honeymoon, they resort, like staid matrons, to a temporary domicile, some cavity just large enough for themselves. ”

“ It is the necessary result of the imperfection of our intellect, and one of the dominant conditions of overruling time, that one thing must follow the other. It is, therefore, neither an expressed nor even an implied inferiority that puts one species before the other in a generic group; or one genus before the other in their successive order. Affinities may lead both species and genera in varying directions, although treated descriptively as of linear succession, in which order they are usually arranged, but this is unavoidable and therefore not derogatory. ”

“ When we add to this the many species with the same productiveness! Yet who, in walking abroad, sees them but the experienced entomologist? When we consider the important function they exercise in the economy of nature, and that but for them, in the majority of instances, flowers would expand their beautiful blossoms in abortive sterility, we can but wonder at the wise and exuberant provision which forecasts the necessity and provides accordingly. ”

“ But the study must be thorough, and its details are not to be spread out before us merely as a beautiful picture-book. They all have their place in the great ordinance of nature, which it is for us to find. At first we can only spell the syllables, which the study of species puts together for us, but by degrees we shall trace the words, 175and read the sentences: a study more abstruse but far more pregnant than that of the Egyptian hieroglyphics, and whose attainment is rewarded with a supremer knowledge than is accorded by these, which exhibit merely the legends of dead despots ”

“ Nature, in her large operations, has no regard for the duration of time. Her courses are so sure that they are ever eventually successful; for, as to her, whose permanency is not computable, it matters not what period the process takes; and she is as indifferent to the seconds of time whereby man’s brevity is spanned, as she is to the wastefulness of her own exuberant resources, knowing that neither is lost to the result at which she reaches. ”

“ The female, like those of the rest of the bees, is no time-waster, but flies steadily to and fro in her occupation of provisioning her nest, and the male often accompanies her in these expeditions, gallantly winging about with extreme velocity as if to divert his sedulous companion in the fatigue of her toil, by his evolutions and his music, which is very sonorous. And on a fine May day it is extremely pleasant in a picturesque situation to sit and watch the operations of these very active insects. ”

“ In the male of the genus Eucera, they have a remarkable extension, being as long as the body, whereas folded back they are rarely so long, or not longer than the thorax in other males, speaking in reference only to our native kinds. In the females they are not often longer than the head. It is in the males of the genus Halictus that they take the greatest extension. In the male of the genus Eucera, we also find the remarkable peculiarity of the integument of some of the joints being distinctly of an hexagonal structure,—a peculiarity often observable in natural structures. ”