Male bee

“ These Insects feed in the body of the bee in such a way as to affect its nutrition without destroying its life; hence they offer a means of making experiments that may throw valuable light on obscure physiological questions. Among the effects they produce in the condition of the imago bee we may mention the enfeeblement of the sexual distinction, so that a stylopised male bee becomes less different than it usually is from the female, and a stylopised female may be ill developed and less different than usual from the male. ”

“ Of course the bees are black, but no darker than much of the filthy comb and honey inside the hives. By neglect, much of the worker comb has become unfit for brood-rearing, and hence drones are reared in superabundance, and these deteriorated male bees fill the air for miles in all directions, to vitiate the pure blood of all well-kept apiaries. ”

“ Similar in form, but smaller, are the working-bees, whose sting is straight. The male bee, or drone, is thicker than the others, and stingless.
"What has the queen to do in the [172] hive?" I asked. The old gentleman replied, "She is the mother-bee, lays all the eggs, and is so diligent that she often lays twelve hundred in a day, having a separate cell for each egg. That is her only work; for she leaves the whole care of her children to the industrious working-bees, who have various labors to perform. Some of them build cells of wax; others bring in honey on the dust of flowers, called pollen ”

“ The apiary raises hundreds of male bees. As soon as the single queen-bee takes wing for its nuptial flight all the males follow, but a single male only, the strongest and most nimble, succeeds in reaching her. In the intoxication of copulation he abandons all his genital organs to the body of the queen and dies. The other males, now useless, are all massacred in autumn by the working bees. ”

“ These rulers have the abdomen or part below the waist half as large again, and they are called by some the 'mothers', from an idea that they bear or generate the bees; and, as a proof of this theory of their motherhood, they declare that the brood of the drones appears even when there is no ruler-bee in the hive, but that the bees do not appear in his absence. Others, again, assert that these insects copulate, and that the drones are male and the bees female. ”

“ Instead of being nearly horizontal like the other brood-cells, those of the queens are perpendicular and considerably larger; in form they are oblong spheroids, tapering gradually downwards; their mouths being always at the bottom. Vide Part II. “Architecture of Bees.”
The male passes three days in the egg, six and a half as a worm, and metamorphoses into a fly on the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth day, after the egg is laid. The great epoch of laying the eggs of males may be accelerated or retarded by the state of the atmosphere promoting or impeding the collections of the bees. ”

“ This insect, instead of at first appearing in its grub stage, and then, after a time, putting on the adult form, is at first active and furnished with six legs, two long antennæ, and four eyes. Hatched in the nests of bees, it at first attaches itself to one of the males, and then crawls, when the opportunity offers, upon a female bee. ”

“ The darting bee, which is of a brownish red colour, gradually {82}fading to grey after a few days' exposure to the sun, is the male, and the black one the female. The male rarely settles, but flies about courting the female. Often two or three males may be seen dodging and crossing each other in their flight. ”

“ Of course it is difficult, without special knowledge, to recognize which are bees and which are flies amongst the many which are coming and going, but the yellow-pollened legs of the female bees will generally betray them, as well {83}as their steadier flight. ”

“ Before five minutes are over the industrious little insects have begun to disperse and to make arrangements in their new home. A number (perhaps about two thousand) of large, lumbering bees of a darker colour than the rest, will it is true, wander aimlessly about the hive, and wait for the others to feed them and house them; but these are the drones, or male bees (3, Fig. 54) , who never do any work except during one or two days in their whole lives. But the smaller working bees (1, Fig. 54) begin to be busy at once. Some fly off in search of honey. ”

“ His eye moves restlessly around him, traces the flight of an insect for a moment or two, then that of a second, and even a third, until he perceives one to his liking, when with a shrill sweep he pursues, seizes it, and returns to the same spot to look out for more. This habit is so conspicuous, when he is watching the bee-hives, that several intelligent farmers of my acquaintance are of opinion, that he picks out only the drones, and never injures the working-bees. Be that as it may, he certainly gives a preference to one bee, and one species of insect over another. ”

“ By closely watching and comparing the specimens I see with plates in the books on bees I have learned to distinguish many of the different species. It is one thing, however, to see a bee figured in a book, or to look through a dried collection of them; it is far more delightful to see the bright, beautiful creature itself, instinct with life, busily at work or play. These solitary bees evidently enjoy flirting in the gayest manner, and their soft, downy bodies and brilliant colours only show to real advantage whilst alive and lighted up by sunshine. ”

“ And how does the preponderance of butterflies in the upper regions of the air affect the colour and brilliancy of the flowers? Simply thus. Bees, as we are all aware on the authority of the great Dr. Watts, are industrious creatures which employ each shining hour (well-chosen epithet, 'shining') for the good of the community, and to the best purpose. The bee, in fact, is the bon bourgeois of the insect world: he attends strictly to business, loses no time in wild or reckless excursions, and flies by the straightest path from flower to flower of the same species with mathematical precision. ”

“ An inferior kind of wax is made by those large bees called humble bees, whose gay colours and booming flight make them so well known in our gardens.
FEMALE HUMBLE BEE.
Early in spring, as soon as the catkins of the willows are in flower, a large solitary female may be seen about them collecting honey and pollen. She is the only survivor of the former year’s colony, and is the foundress of a new one. Her first care on awaking from her winter’s sleep is to excavate a hollow in the earth for her nest, which 90is often above a foot under the surface, and is entered by a passage or gallery. ”

“ He loves not the honey, but the bees; and, it must be confessed, is frequently on the lookout for these industrious little insects. He plants himself on a post of the fence, or on a small tree in the garden, not far from the hives; and from thence sallies on them as they pass and repass, making great havoc among their numbers." The ravages of this little tyrant are not confined to the bee species; he is to be seen often "in pasture fields, taking his stand on the top of rank weeds near the cattle, and making occasional sweeps after passing insects, particularly the large black gad-fly. ”

“ Is it not odd that bees can make so much wax from their small wax-bags?
Did you ever find in the earth the nest of a humble-bee? The humble-bee queen works. Humble-bees dig holes in the earth with their front feet.
[Pg 48]
When they have made a hall and a room, they make a nest. It is of grass, or leaves, or hay, cut fine. They lay eggs in the nest.
They make honey in large combs. The combs are more soft and dark than those which the hive bee makes. Field mice and moles eat these bees and their combs. ”

“ There was, no doubt, a time of old that tradition could tell about, before all this sweat-shop business was afoot, when a bee might have some individuality and some kind of family life for himself, some sort of pleasure of his own; when he could stretch his sticky legs comfortably of an evening and in a pair of loose pantouffles, unfold his newspaper leisurely, and read under his carefully adjusted spectacles, the latest doings in the bee and blossom world ”

“ Even where man has not yet made his way in the wilderness and the solitary place, there are the flowers, with their honey, and there, amid other insects, is the busy, happy bee, to gather it. How vast must be the field of enjoyment which the omniscient eye surveys, if even the study of insects unfolds such a view as is here suggested.
The habits of the wild bees are nearly the same as those of the domestic ones. They live in large communities, build their cells in hexagons, are subject to the government of a queen, and have their periodical swarms, as we have related. ”

“ In the same country the honey ratel will sit and hold one of his paws before his eyes, about the time of sunset, in order to get a distinct view of the objects of his pursuit; and when he sees any bees flying, he knows that at that hour they are returning home, and so he follows them.
The domestic bees afford a good opportunity for studying the habits of this wonderful race of insects. Three kinds of bees are discovered in the hive; the drone, the queen bee, and working bee. The drones are the fathers of the young bees, and live an idle life. ”

“ If any one goes out on a bright spring morning, late in March or early in April, about 11 o'clock, into a garden well stocked with flowers, it will not, I think, be many minutes before an insect darts on the wing along some border, and, if attention be paid to the flowers, a little black hairy bee with yellow legs, like a small humble bee, will be seen diligently at work sucking honey from one of them. ”

“ No sight is more exciting than that of a swarm of bees. The air is clouded with the circling bees—vocal with their united music, while the eyes of the bee-master quietly watch their descent. As soon as the queen settles, the bees cluster around her and hang from the branch on which she has settled. As soon as the great mass has settled, take your bee-box or hive, hold it with one hand, mouth or bottom upward, beneath the swarm, enclosing as many of the pendent bees as the situation will allow. ”

“ Knowing that in the breeding season, the bees resort much to springs of water in the woods, the hunter places on a flat stone a small quantity of honey-comb, and draws round it a circle of white paint. The bee, on approaching the honey, is necessitated generally to cross the circular line, and, of course, its body becomes bedaubed with the colouring matter, and the direction of its route when flying is thereby easily ascertained. ”

“ The only animated beings over whom I at present hold dominion, are a large pussy, and two hives of bees. Those winged chemists are my perpetual admiration. Their early explorations, their tireless industry, the mathematical symmetry of their hexagonal cells, their internal order, the mystery with which they seek to veil their habitudes, with other strong peculiarities, are a curious and pleasant study.
A German bee-master comes at stated periods to claim their sweet rental. He boldly takes them in his hands if he wishes to transfer them from one abode to another. ”

“ He borrowed my brother’s net and gloves, my brother went off and hid in the woods, and with net and glove protection and a smudge as well, we cut into the tree and took up the swarm. We got sixty pounds of honey.
In this article I have alluded many times to “taking up” a bee tree. The phrase may be colloquial, but it sticks. [41] Smith never cut a bee tree. He always “took it up.” Moreover, he always referred to a bee as “he.” I am well aware that a working bee is a sterile female, but I cannot bring myself to call it “she.” There is nothing feminine about a working bee but its anatomy. ”

“ When she finds the place she wants she puts some honey and pollen there, and lays an egg on the little pile. After a while the larvas come out of the eggs. When they have eaten what they want they make a cocoon, and curl up for a rest while they are being made into little workers. You know, the bee family is made up of the mother bee, who is called the queen, and many fathers, who are called drones; all the rest are workers. ”

“ Thus, again, we are struck with the fact that the more closely we examine the organs of any segment of the body of the insect, the more reason do we find to admire the skill, and the care for His creatures, manifested by the infinitely wise and the infinitely good Maker of them all. Beauty, adaptation, perfection, are the words which are continually suggested to our minds by the contemplation of the structure of the bee. ”

“ Of the insect tribe, the bee is certainly the most distinguished; with the exception of the silkworm, none can approach her in ministering to the wants, or rather to the luxuries, of the human family. The instinct bees possess for feeding on flowers, bringing home honey and - 32 - pollen, and secreting wax, entitles them to our close consideration of their structure and of the tools provided them by Nature for carrying on their handiwork. ”

“ This is a wise provision of nature, for were it otherwise, the other insect and animal tribes would appropriate the treasures of the bee—honey, wax, etc., and this industrious little insect would soon become instinct.
The worker bee possesses an instinct but little inferior to reason in the human family. ”