The Life of the Bee | Page 5

according to Cicero, watched them for fifty-eight
years, and of Phyliscus, whose writings are lost. But these dealt rather
with the legend of the bee; and all that we can gather therefrom--which
indeed is exceedingly little--we may find condensed in the fourth book
of Virgil's Georgics.
The real history of the bee begins in the seventeenth century, with the
discoveries of the great Dutch savant Swammerdam. It is well, however,
to add this detail, but little known: before Swammerdam a Flemish
naturalist named Clutius had arrived at certain important truths, such as
the sole maternity of the queen and her possession of the attributes of
both sexes, but he had left these unproved. Swammerdam founded the
true methods of scientific investigation; he invented the microscope,
contrived injections to ward off decay, was the first to dissect the bees,
and by the discovery of the ovaries and the oviduct definitely fixed the
sex of the queen, hitherto looked upon as a king, and threw the whole
political scheme of the hive into most unexpected light by basing it
upon maternity. Finally he produced woodcuts and engravings so
perfect that to this day they serve to illustrate many books on apiculture.
He lived in the turbulent, restless Amsterdam of those days, regretting
"Het Zoete Buiten Leve "--The Sweet Life of the Country--and died,
worn-out with work, at the age of forty-three. He wrote in a pious,
formal style, with beautiful, simple outbursts of a faith that, fearful of
falling away, ascribed all things to the glory of the Creator; and
embodied his observations and studies in his great work "Bybel der
Natuure," which the doctor Boerhave, a century later, caused to be
translated from the Dutch into Latin under the title of "Biblia Naturae."
(Leyden, 1737.)
Then came Reaumur, who, pursuing similar methods, made a vast
number of curious experiments and researches in his gardens at
Charenton, and devoted to the bees an entire volume of his "Notes to
Serve for a History of Insects." One may read it with profit to-day, and
without fatigue. It is clear, direct, and sincere, and possessed of a
certain hard, arid charm of its own. He sought especially the destruction

of ancient errors; he himself was responsible for several new ones; he
partially understood the formation of swarms and the political
establishment of queens; in a word, he discovered many difficult truths,
and paved the way for the discovery of more. He fully appreciated the
marvellous architecture of the hive; and what he said on the subject has
never been better said. It is to him, too, that we owe the idea of the
glass hives, which, having since been perfected, enable us to follow the
entire private life of these fierce insects, whose work, begun in the
dazzling sunshine, receives its crown in the darkness. To be
comprehensive, one should mention also the somewhat subsequent
works and investigations of Charles Bonnet and Schirach (who solved
the enigma of the royal egg); but I will keep to the broad lines, and pass
at once to Francois Huber, the master and classic of contemporary
apiarian science.
Huber was born in Geneva in 1750, and fell blind in his earliest youth.
The experiments of Reaumur interested him; he sought to verify them,
and soon becoming passionately absorbed in these researches,
eventually, with the assistance of an intelligent and faithful servant,
Francois Burnens, devoted his entire life to the study of the bee. In the
annals of human suffering and human triumph there is nothing more
touching, no lesson more admirable, than the story of this patient
collaboration, wherein the one who saw only with immaterial light
guided with his spirit the eyes and hands of the other who had the real
earthly vision; where he who, as we are assured, had never with his
own eyes beheld a comb of honey, was yet able, notwithstanding the
veil on his dead eyes that rendered double the veil in which nature
enwraps all things, to penetrate the profound secrets of the genius that
had made this invisible comb; as though to teach us that no condition in
life can warrant our abandoning our desire and search for the truth. I
will not enumerate all that apiarian science owes to Huber; to state
what it does not owe were the briefer task. His "New Observations on
Bees," of which the first volume was written in 1789, in the form of
letters to Charles Bonnet, the second not appearing till twenty years
later, have remained the unfailing, abundant treasure into which every
subsequent writer has dipped. And though a few mistakes may be
found therein, a few incomplete truths; though since his time
considerable additions have been made to the micrography and

practical culture of bees, the handling of queens, etc., there is