Honeybee

“ Not far from it was a great bed of lavender and thyme, a special gift to the honeybees, who lived in the pretty antique straw skeps near it. Heavily laden with honey, hundreds of bees were flying slowly home to them, and the misty air was full of an odor from the hives that stirred something at the very roots of her being. ”

“ Because of the fact that honeybees are of such great economic importance, not only as producers of an important food but also as pollenizers of fruit, vegetable, seed, and other crops, they will be discussed separately from the other stinging insects. ”

“ The bumblebee is the only insect that is large enough to reach the pollen in this blossom, and so its doors will open only to him. Botanists tell us that all this great family, to which belong the various peas blossoms and their cousins, were once five-petaled plants, but natural selection has brought about their present shape, which is an admirable 30protection against the depredations of small insects that could only rob but could not fertilize the flowers
Blue is the favorite color of the honeybee, and next to blue he prefers red. ”

“ Many observers have seen the bird at work near hives, and there is no reason to doubt the honesty of their testimony. One bee raiser in Iowa, suspecting the kingbirds of feeding upon his bees, shot a number near his hives, but when the birds' stomachs were examined by an expert entomologist not a trace of honeybees could be found. ”

“ They all knew of its curious habits; how it will guide a man to the nest of the wild bee, by fluttering before him from bush to bush and rock to rock until it reaches the spot; how it will wait until the hive has been robbed of its honey-treasure; and then alight by the despoiled nest to feed upon the larvae of the bees, or the fragments of honeycomb that may have been left! They all knew this of the honey-guide, because they had followed one before now, and proved the truth of this wonderful instinct, which has been doubted by many travellers as well as naturalists. ”

“ I would recommend the study of the honey-bee as one best calculated to awaken the interest of the indifferent. What can arrest the attention like their structure—their diligence in collecting stores for the future—their secretion of wax and moulding it into structures with a mathematical precision astonishing the profoundest philosophers—their maternal and fraternal affection in regarding the mother's every want, and assiduous care in nursing her offspring to maturity—their unaccountable display of instinct in emergencies or accidents, filling the beholder with wonder and amazement? ”

“ Vibrations of the air too feeble to affect our organs affect them. It may even be that other qualities of the atmosphere are apprehended by them. The shape of the cells; the suitability of these for brood of various kinds, for honey or for bee-bread, is ascertained by the antennæ. Every want and every duty is recognised by them; the presence or absence of the queen is discovered by their use, and intelligence is conveyed from one individual to another by means of them. ”

“ On the appointed day then, the beautiful day, whose dawn, still moist with the dew, comes nearer and nearer beneath the trees, approaching with radiant and glowing steps, the bees all become impatient, and feverishly restless. Over the whole surface of the golden corridors that divide the walls of the hive, the workers are busily making preparations for the journey. Each one will first of all provide herself with honey sufficient for five or six days. From this honey that they carry within them they will distil the wax needed to build the new home. ”

“ The honey-bee differs from nearly all the wild varieties, as well as from hornets and wasps, in being adapted to live always in societies. Most other insects of the hymenopterous order become torpid in winter, or perish, with the exception of some queens, who survive to continue the race. Those which really hybernate are able to endure a considerable degree of cold; and, thawing under the influence of warmth, they can resume the functions of life. It is not so, however, with bees. ”

“ So I here take leave of my brief history of the honey-bee—that wonderful, that useful insect, which, though not possessed of the advantages with which man is gifted, having neither religion nor reason for its guide, affords nevertheless an example to man of the most perfect order, the most unremitting industry, the greatest harmony, and the most undeviating attention to the welfare of all. ”

“ All along under that bank I heard the hum of honey bees in the air, attracted by this flower. Especially the hum of one within a spathe sounds deep and loud. They circle about the bud, at first hesitatingly, then alight and enter at the open door and crawl over the spaclix, and reappear laden with the yellow pollen. What a remarkable instinct it is that leads them to this flower. This bee is said to have been introduced by the white man, but how much it has learned. ”

“ Imagine the news circulating like wildfire through the hives. Honey-bees have little time or patience to hunt up solitary and retiring flowers. They want masses of bloom, fields of blossom, having a large work to do—a city to build, a host to feed.
The bumblebee is the good angel of the woodland flowers, the visiting priest—or shall I say priestess—to all outlying parishes, calling at every ledge and gorge and dell where is any colony of blossoms or a lone settler or two. The bee discovers the pale pendent blossoms of the checkerberry [Pg 81] under the leaves and almost prone upon the ground. ”

“ The humble-bee is almost as large as the humming-bird, but cannot fly near so fast. It builds its nest in the ground, where it makes a honey-comb of the size of a man’s hand, and fills it with bees’-bread, wax, and honey, excelling that of the honey-bee in taste. ”

“ Honey-Bee lay with folded hands on her little mossy bed and watched the light of the first stars tremble in the pale sky; then her eyes half closed, and yet it seemed to her as if overhead she saw a little dwarf mounted on a raven. ”

“ The bees that are nearest the cells pass it on to their neighbors, and these in their turn to those next them. Thus it goes from mouth to mouth through the crowd, till it reaches those furthest away. And this honey, this essence of sunshine and flowers, circulates through the hive until such time as the sun itself, the glorious sun of the spring, shall thrust in its beam through the half-open door, and tell of the violets and anemones that are once more coming to life. ”

“ Wherever there was a hole in the trunk it was occupied by a colony of bees. The insect which makes this honey is exactly like a common house-fly in appearance, the combs being generally small and the wax quite black. The cells into which the comb is divided are two or three times larger than those of the English bee, and are roundish and irregular in shape, but the honey is very good, being sweet, and having besides a slight pleasantly acid taste. As these bees possessed no sting, they could be robbed with impunity of the result of their industry. ”

“ To-day we passed one of these lofty trees bearing above twenty bees’ nests, among them four old ones 52 white with wax.1 As the country is full of tapangs, in which alone do the bees build their nests, the stories of the great amount of wax formerly procured in this district may be true. Why do the honey-bees generally build on one particular tree? Its being the finest in the forest is no good reason, perhaps there is something enticing in the bark. ”

“ I have often felled bee-trees whose honey was so clear that it could not be distinguished from a glass of water put by its side. If you are near home when you cut down a bee-tree, you drive the creatures, which have collected close by in a swarm round their queen, into a bag, take them home, and shake them out into a hollowed tree, nail a board at top and bottom, cut a hole in the lower board, and place it above-ground at a spot protected from the north wind. The bees at once set to work, continuing it winter and summer, and in a short time the hive is filled with honey and wax. ”

“ The wild honey bees, too, in their several species, had peculiar charms for me. There were the buff-coloured carders, that erected over their honey-jars domes of moss; the lapidary red-tipped bees, that built amid the recesses of ancient cairns, and in old dry stone walls, and were so invincibly brave in defending their homesteads, that they never gave up the quarrel till they died; and, above all, the yellow-zoned humble-bees, that lodged deep in the ground along the dry sides of grassy banks, and were usually wealthier in honey than any of their cogeners, and existed in larger communities. ”

“ The method is, if the honey be in a hollow tree, or in a cleft of the rock, or such a locality, to pay no attention to the buzzing of the bees, or to attempt in any way to knock them away, should they settle on you, but to slowly insert the hand into the nest, and withdraw the honeycomb and carry it away. It rarely happens that the bees attack any one, and should they do so their sting is far less painful than is that of the English bee. ”

“ For her majesty, finding it impossible to reach the bottom of the cells to place her eggs as she has been accustomed to do, will retire to the lower boxes, where she finds places perfectly adapted to her instincts or her needs. The honey is thus kept free from brood, and it presents a massive and rich appearance. Bees seem greatly - 166 - to appreciate this form of hive, and a strong swarm will often fill the two lower boxes with comb in ten days. ”

“ As he bends forward and thrusts his head into the flower to suck the honey the vertical slit in the upper lip will be widened out and the stamens will protrude and strike the insect’s head. When the humble-bee at last leaves the flower to continue his journey its various parts will resume their former relative positions. Should no insects visit the flower self-pollination will occur. This appears to be the usual course of events in the North where humble-bees are scarce. ”

“ If these bees were left to themselves, they would find a home after a time in a hollow tree, or under the roof of a house, or in some other cavity, and begin to build their honeycomb there. But as we do not wish to lose their honey we will bring a hive, and, holding it under the swarm, shake the bough gently so that the bees fall into it, and cling to the sides as we turn it over on a piece of clean linen, on the stand where the hive is to be. ”

“ It is interesting to note that the humble-bees do not, in all cases, obtain the honey in the way intended by the plant. A dark spot is often to be seen near the tip of the helmet where a humble-bee has nibbled through the flower leaf and obtained access to the nectary direct. In this way the designs of the plant for cross fertilisation may be frustrated, for where the honey is obtained in this manner no pollen is carried from flower to flower by the insect visitor. ”

“ In the cells, or little holes in the wax honeycomb, are many eggs that after a while will hatch out into other bees, mostly workers or drones. The queen bee lays the eggs that hatch into other bees. But if it should happen that the queen should die, the worker bees at once begin to feed to some of the half-hatched little bees a peculiar kind of food gathered from the flowers. It is a sort of mixture of honey and juices from the bees’ bodies. ”

“ Ordinary honey is too strong for their infantile digestion, and therefore the honey is mixed with the pollen to render it a fit nourishment for these fastidious babies.
This is the only object the bees have in collecting the pollen; but it is not the only end they serve in the plan of the great Creator. Unknown to themselves they are doing a great work in the propagating of flowers. The fertilising dust of one flower must be conveyed to the corresponding organs of another; and the bee like a village postman, is brought in to convey the necessary love-tokens. ”

“ Let there be wings and yellow dust and the drone of dreams of honey—who loses and remembers?—who keeps and forgets?
In a blue sheen of moon over the bones and under the hanging honeycomb the bees come home and the bees sleep. ”

“ You see many different kinds of insects about most flowers. Most of these insects, we suppose, live upon the honey that they find there. We know that some do, for we see them gathering it. We see the bees do this. The busy little honey-bee goes from flower to flower, and gets a little honey from each. When he has gathered as much as he well can carry, off he flies to lay it up in the hive. A great many bees there are in one hive; and each bringing continually his little load, they after a while lay up a large amount of honey.
Bumble-bees. ”

“ The rambler in the most remote woods and pastures little thinks that the bees which are humming so industriously on the rare wild flowers he is plucking for the herbarium in some out-of-the-way nook, are, like himself, ramblers from the village, perhaps from his own yard, come to get their honey for his hives. All the honey-bees we saw were on the blue-stemmed golden-rod, Solidago cæsia, which lasts long and which emitted a sweet, agreeable fragrance, not on the asters. ”

“ The procession, preceded by Bob on his feathered steed, passed through a chasm overgrown with brambles. Honey-Bee, with her golden hair flowing over her shoulders, looked like the dawn breaking on the mountains, supposing, of course, that the dawn was ever frightened and called her mother and tried to escape, for all these things she did as she caught a confused glimpse of dwarfs, armed to the teeth, lying in ambush along the windings of the rocks. ”