The Life of the Bee | Page 8

of skill needed to handle it with impunity can be most
readily acquired. Let but a little smoke be deftly applied, much
coolness and gentleness be shown, and our well-armed workers will

suffer themselves to be despoiled without dreaming of drawing their
sting. It is not the fact, as some have maintained, that the bees
recognise their master; nor have they any fear of man; but at the smell
of the smoke, at the large slow gestures that traverse their dwellings
without threatening them, they imagine that this is not the attack of an
enemy against whom defence is possible, but that it is a force or a
natural catastrophe whereto they do well to submit.
Instead of vainly struggling, therefore, they do what they can to
safeguard the future; and, obeying a foresight that for once is in error,
they fly to their reserves of honey, into which they eagerly dip in order
to possess within themselves the wherewithal to start a new city,
immediately and no matter where, should the ancient one be destroyed
or they be compelled to forsake it.
[7]
The first impression of the novice before whom an observation-hive* is
opened will be one of some disappointment. He had been told that this
little glass case contained an unparalleled activity, an infinite number
of wise laws, and a startling amalgam of mystery, experience, genius,
calculation, science, of various industries, of certitude and prescience,
of intelligent habits and curious feelings and virtues. All that he sees is
a confused mass of little reddish groups, somewhat resembling roasted
coffee-berries, or bunches of raisins piled against the glass. They look
more dead than alive; their movements are slow, incoherent, and
incomprehensible. Can these be the wonderful drops of light he had
seen but a moment ago, unceasingly flashing and sparkling, as they
darted among the pearls and the gold of a thousand wide-open calyces?
By observation-hive is meant a hive of glass, furnished with black
curtains or shutters. The best kind have only one comb, thus permitting
both faces to be studied. These hives can be placed in a drawing-room,
library, etc., without inconvenience or danger. The bees that inhabit the
one I have in my study in Paris are able even in the stony desert of that
great city, to find the wherewithal to nourish themselves and to prosper.
They appear to be shivering in the darkness, to be numbed, suffocated,
so closely are they huddled together; one might fancy they were ailing
captives, or queens dethroned, who have had their one moment of glory
in the midst of their radiant garden, and are now compelled to return to
the shameful squalor of their poor overcrowded home.

It is with them as with all that is deeply real; they must be studied, and
one must learn how to study them. The inhabitant of another planet
who should see men and women coming and going almost
imperceptibly through our streets, crowding at certain times around
certain buildings, or waiting for one knows not what, without apparent
movement, in the depths of their dwellings, might conclude therefrom
that they, too, were miserable and inert. It takes time to distinguish the
manifold activity contained in this inertia.
And indeed every one of the little almost motionless groups in the hive
is incessantly working, each at a different trade. Repose is unknown to
any; and such, for instance, as seem the most torpid, as they hang in
dead clusters against the glass, are intrusted with the most mysterious
and fatiguing task of all: it is they who secrete and form the wax. But
the details of this universal activity will be given in their place. For the
moment we need only call attention to the essential trait in the nature of
the bee which accounts for the extraordinary agglomeration of the
various workers. The bee is above all, and even to a greater extent than
the ant, a creature of the crowd. She can live only in the midst of a
multitude. When she leaves the hive, which is so densely packed that
she has to force her way with blows of her head through the living
walls that enclose her, she departs from her proper element. She will
dive for an instant into flower-filled space, as the swimmer will dive
into the sea that is filled with pearls, but under pain of death it behoves
her at regular intervals to return and breathe the crowd as the swimmer
must return and breathe the air. Isolate her, and however abundant the
food or favourable the temperature, she will expire in a few days not of
hunger or cold, but of loneliness. From the crowd, from the city, she
derives an invisible aliment that is as necessary to her as honey. This
craving will