Locusts and Wild Honey | Page 4

in the hive
is very precarious. They look like the giants, the lords of the swarm, but
they are really the tools. Their loud, threatening hum has no sting to
back it up, and their size and noise make them only the more
conspicuous marks for the birds. They are all candidates for the favors
of the queen, a fatal felicity that is vouchsafed to but one. Fatal, I say,
for it is a singular fact in the history of bees that the fecundation of the
queen costs the male his life. Yet day after day the drones go forth,
threading the mazes of the air in hopes of meeting her whom to meet is
death. The queen only leaves the hive once, except when she leads
away the swarm, and as she makes no appointment with the male, but
wanders here and there, drones enough are provided to meet all the
contingencies of the case.
One advantage, at least, results from this system of things: there is no
incontinence among the males in this republic!
Toward the close of the season, say in July or August, the fiat goes
forth that the drones must die; there is no further use for them. Then the
poor creatures, how they are huddled and hustled about, trying to hide
in corners and byways! There is no loud, defiant humming now, but
abject fear seizes them. They cower like hunted criminals. I have seen a
dozen or more of them wedge themselves into a small space between
the glass and the comb, where the bees could not get hold of them, or
where they seemed to be overlooked in the general slaughter. They will
also crawl outside and hide under the edges of the hive. But sooner or

later they are all killed or kicked out. The drone makes no resistance,
except to pull back and try to get away; but (putting yourself in his
place) with one bee a-hold of your collar or the hair of your head, and
another a-hold of each arm or leg, and still another feeling for your
waistbands with his sting, the odds are greatly against you.
It is a singular fact, also, that the queen is made, not born. If the entire
population of Spain or Great Britain were the offspring of one mother,
it might be found necessary to hit upon some device by which a royal
baby could be manufactured out of an ordinary one, or else give up the
fashion of royalty. All the bees in the hive have a common parentage,
and the queen and the worker are the same in the egg and in the chick;
the patent of royalty is in the cell and in the food; the cell being much
larger, and the food a peculiar stimulating kind of jelly. In certain
contingencies, such as the loss of the queen with no eggs in the royal
cells, the workers take the larva of an ordinary bee, enlarge the cell by
taking in the two adjoining ones, and nurse it and stuff it and coddle it,
till at the end of sixteen days it comes out a queen. But ordinarily, in
the natural course of events, the young queen is kept a prisoner in her
cell till the old queen has left with the swarm. Later on, the unhatched
queen is guarded against the reigning queen, who only wants an
opportunity to murder every royal scion in the hive. At this time both
the queens, the one a prisoner and the other at large, pipe defiance at
each other, a shrill, fine, trumpet-like note that any ear will at once
recognize. This challenge, not being allowed to be accepted by either
party, is followed, in a day or two, by the abdication of the reigning
queen; she leads out the swarm, and her successor is liberated by her
keepers, who, in her time, abdicates in favor of the next younger. When
the bees have decided that no more swarms can issue, the reigning
queen is allowed to use her stiletto upon her unhatched sisters. Cases
have been known where two queens issued at the same time, when a
mortal combat ensued, encouraged by the workers, who formed a ring
about them, but showed no preference, and recognized the victor as the
lawful sovereign. For these and many other curious facts we are
indebted to the blind Huber.
It is worthy of note that the position of the queen cells is always
vertical, while that of the drones and workers is horizontal; majesty
stands on its head, which fact may be a part of the secret.

The notion has always very generally prevailed that the queen of the
bees is an absolute ruler, and issues her royal orders to willing subjects.
Hence Napoleon