Locusts and Wild Honey | Page 5

the First sprinkled the symbolic bees over the imperial
mantle that bore the arms of his dynasty; and in the country of the
Pharaohs the bee was used as the emblem of a people sweetly
submissive to the orders of its king. But the fact is, a swarm of bees is
an absolute democracy, and kings and despots can find no warrant in
their example. The power and authority are entirely vested in the great
mass, the workers. They furnish all the brains and foresight of the
colony, and administer its affairs. Their word is law, and both king and
queen must obey. They regulate the swarming, and give the signal for
the swarm to issue from the hive; they select and make ready the tree in
the woods and conduct the queen to it.
The peculiar office and sacredness of the queen consists in the fact that
she is the mother of the swarm, and the bees love and cherish her as a
mother and not as a sovereign. She is the sole female bee in the hive,
and the swarm clings to her because she is their life. Deprived of their
queen, and of all brood from which to rear one, the swarm loses all
heart and soon dies, though there be an abundance of honey in the hive.
The common bees will never use their sting upon the queen; if she is to
be disposed of, they starve her to death; and the queen herself will sting
nothing but royalty,--nothing but a rival queen.
The queen, I say, is the mother bee; it is undoubtedly complimenting
her to call her a queen and invest her with regal authority, yet she is a
superb creature, and looks every inch a queen. It is an event to
distinguish her amid the mass of bees when the swarm alights; it
awakens a thrill Before you have seen a queen, you wonder if this or
that bee, which seems a little larger than its fellows, is not she, but
when you once really set eyes upon her you do not doubt for a moment.
You know that is the queen. That long, elegant, shining, feminine-
looking creature can be none less than royalty. How beautifully her
body tapers, how distinguished she looks, how deliberate her
movements! The bees do not fall down before her, but caress her and
touch her person. The drones, or males, are large bees, too, but coarse,
blunt, broad-shouldered, masculine-looking. There is but one fact or
incident in the life of the queen that looks imperial and authoritative :
Huber relates that when the old queen is restrained in her movements

by the workers, and prevented from destroying the young queens in
their cells, she assumes a peculiar attitude and utters a note that strikes
every bee motionless and makes every head bow; while this sound lasts,
not a bee stirs, but all look abashed and humbled: yet whether the
emotion is one of fear, or reverence, or of sympathy with the distress of
the queen mother, is hard to determine. The moment it ceases and she
advances again toward the royal cells, the bees bite and pull and insult
her as before.
I always feel that I have missed some good fortune if I am away from
home when my bees swarm. What a delightful summer sound it is! how
they come pouring out of the hive, twenty or thirty thousand bees, each
striving to get out first! It is as when the dam gives way and lets the
waters loose; it is a flood of bees which breaks upward into the air, and
becomes a maze of whirling black lines to the eye, and a soft chorus of
myriad musical sounds to the ear. This way and that way they drift,
now contracting, now expanding, rising, sinking, growing thick about
some branch or bush, then dispersing and massing at some other point,
till finally they begin to alight in earnest, when in a few moments the
whole swarm is collected upon the branch, forming a bunch perhaps as
large as a two-gallon measure. Here they will hang from one to three or
four hours or until a suitable tree in the woods is looked up, when, if
they have not been offered a hive in the mean time, they are up and off.
In hiving them, if any accident happens to the queen the enterprise
miscarries at once. One day I shook a swarm from a small pear-tree
into a tin pan, set the pan down on a shawl spread beneath the tree, and
put the hive over it. The bees presently all crawled up into it, and all
seemed to go well for ten or fifteen minutes, when I observed that
something was wrong; the