OPINIONS OF THE PRESS.

From The Journal of Horticulture, February 28, 1865.

Mr. Neighbour says in his preface: "We are so frequently applied to for advice oil matters connected with bees and bee-hives, that it seemed likely to prove a great advantage to our correspondents and ourselves if we could point to a 'handy book' of our own which should contain full and detailed replies sufficient to meet all ordinary inquiries." Keeping this object steadily in view, the writer describes the various hive's and apiarian apparatus manufactured by his firm, pointing out the various advantages claimed for them, and giving ample directions for their use. When we add that the author expresses his acknowledgments to Mr. Woodbury, Mr. Taylor, the illustrious Huber and Mr. Langstroth, it may readily be imagined that the information derived from such sources must in the main be correct, and that Mr. Neighbour, in addition to the strictly business portion of his work, has been enabled to impart to his readers a very considerable amount of sound instruction on most points of Apiarian management.

From The Journal of Horticulture, May 29, 1866.

Mr. Neighbour's book, the first edition of which was noticed by us in February 1865, now makes its appearance in a new guise, being reduced from demy 8vo. to crown 8vo., whilst the number of its pages is increased from 134 to 274, with but a slight increase in price. In addition to a description of the various hives and apiarian apparatus sold by the well-known firm of which the author is a member, it contains a considerable amount of generally accurate information compiled from the best authorities; Mr. Woodbury's contributions to our pages being in particular heavily drawn upon.

A new feature in this edition is a couple of steel plates illustrative of the anatomy of the bee, engraved by Mr. E. W. Robinson with his customary ability; embracing also coloured delineations of the three sexes of the Ligurian or Italian variety of honey-bee. . . .

Mr. Neighbour possesses a very great advantage over a mere compiler, in that he himself is a practical bee-keeper, and divers anecdotes of his experiences are related by him in a light and amusing manner. For this reason also the information conveyed in his pages is, as we have already stated, very generally correct.

Athenæum, August 19, 1865.

Emanating from a house so well known and so extensively patronized by the cultivators of bees, it will readily be concluded that the object of the present work is primarily commercial. The author, a member of the firm, in giving the reason for the publication of his book, speaks in the name of the company. "We are," he says, "so frequently applied to for advice on matters connected with bees and bee-hives, that it seemed likely to prove a great advantage, alike to our correspondents and ourselves, if we could point to a 'handy-book' of our own, which should contain full and detailed replies sufficient to meet all reasonable inquiries." This is candid and open, and stands in favourable contrast to the ordinary puffing books which aim to conceal under the aspect often of a scientific treatise the boasting advertisement of their own wares. It is but justice to the respectable house from which the present little treatise issues to say that it fulfils its public object, presenting one of the most useful practical treatises on this most interesting pursuit which we have met with. It does not profess to enter deeply into the physiological marvels of the habits of bees; it is, in fact, meagre in the scientific phase of the subject. The various theories concerning the propagation of bees are nowhere discussed,[1] and the hypothesis of Siebold is not even alluded to.[1] But for those persons who desire to know how to procure good honey with certainty, and how to watch in safety the working of these little untaught but unerring mathematicians, the work of Mr. Neighbour will be found very useful. It also informs us where the best hives of every kind and form are to be obtained—of course, of "Messrs. Neighbour & Sons."

[1] Will be found in third edition.

The Reader, 26 August, 1865.

The Apiary; or, Bees, Beehives, and Bee Culture. By Alfred Neighbour. (Kent & Co.)

This valuable manual is, what it professes to be, a familiar account of the habits of bees, and the most improved methods of management, with full directions adapted for the cottager, farmer, or scientific apiarian. The writer is a regular enthusiast, but an enthusiast whose practical knowledge of the subject is made all the more available to the reader from the very enthusiasm which, as in Virgil, leaves not the most minute instruction untold. Nobody can write about bees without quoting poetry, and Mr. Neighbour does this largely, yet most aptly.

THE APIARY.

GEO. NEIGHBOUR & SONS' BEE FARM, WEST END, HAMPSTEAD.—See [page 330].

THE APIARY;

OR,

BEES, BEEHIVES. AND BEE
CULTURE.

BEING A FAMILIAR ACCOUNT OF THE HABITS OF BEES AND THE
MOST IMPROVED METHODS OF MANAGEMENT.

BY

ALFRED NEIGHBOUR.

THIRD EDITION.
GREATLY ENLARGED, REVISED, AND REMODELLED.

"Beaucoup de gens aiment les abeilles; je n'ai vu personne qui les aima médiocrement:
on se passionne pour elles."—Gelieu.

LONDON;
KENT AND CO., PATERNOSTER ROW;
GEO. NEIGHBOUR AND SONS,
149, REGENT STREET, and 127, HIGH HOLBORN,
AND ALL BOOKSELLERS.
1878.

Hazell, Watson, and Viney, Printers, London and Aylesbury.

PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION.

THE present issue of our handbook may be fairly said' to be really a new work. Not that the greater portion of it has been consecutively rewritten, nor yet that the larger half of the former matter has wholly disappeared; but the additions of entirely new sections and half-sections, the transpositions with a view to facilitating reference, the erasures of what is either out of date or only repetition—in short, the thorough overhauling of the text from beginning to end—are such as to render the form in which it is now presented a new book rather than an ordinary fresh edition.

First as to our own department, the practical appliances. The descriptions of several hives and apparatus that have gone out of use have been removed to make room for the much larger number of new and improved inventions. Of the eighteen hives now described, no less than a half are new introductions, and the same is the case in greater or less degree with the supers, the covers, and the bee contrivances of every kind.

The chapter on "Manipulation" has been equally enlarged, having throughout been collated with the chapters on that branch in Mr. Langstroth's "Honey Bee." For very many valuable additions, both large and small, we are therefore indebted to that source, and we have also some obligations to acknowledge to Mr. Cheshire's "Practical Bee-keeping."

It is in reference chiefly to this department that so many transpositions have been made from the arrangement of the matter in former editions. Finding that by giving extensive practical directions under nearly every individual hive we were losing much greatly needed space by repetition, and at the same time giving less complete instructions to each, we have endeavoured when possible to comprise all this in articles of a general character, and to retain under special hives or appliances such only as was strictly peculiar to themselves. The system of references now carried out, together with the numbering of sections and displaying the numbers in the head-lines of every page, will we trust remove even that small apparent inconvenience which is the accompaniment of a large and substantial gain.

But perhaps more than all has the earlier part of our work been enlarged and emended—that which treats on the insect itself, its natural history, its reproductive economy, its habits, and its structure. For this course of improvement we are largely indebted to the very masterly and exhaustive treatise of Baron von Berlepsch, "Die Biene und ihre Zucht in beweglichen Waben" ("The Bee and its Culture in Movable Combs"); after this to Dr. Dzierzon's latest work, "Rationelle Bienenzucht;" to Schmid and Kleine's "Leitfaden;" to Samuelson and Hicks's "Honey Bee;" to Mr. John Hunter's very comprehensive and readable "Manual of Bee-keeping;" and to the British and American Bee Journals, the former for letters from correspondents, and the latter also for the very able articles by which that remarkably well-conducted periodical is distinguished. To Mr. Frederick Smith, of the Entomological Department at the British Museum, we have also to acknowledge our indebtedness for courteous personal communications rendered more than once.

Reference should also be made to aid in the translations from the German Treatises before mentioned, as well as to some other literary assistance which we hope has added to the interest of this work.

149, Regent Street, London,
August 1877.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

OUR apology for preparing a bee-book is a very simple one. We are so frequently applied to for advice on matters connected with bees and beehives, that it seemed likely to prove a great advantage, alike to our correspondents and ourselves, if we could point to a "handy book" of our own which should contain full and detailed replies sufficient to meet all ordinary enquiries. Most of the apiarian manuals possess some special excellence or other, and we have no wish to disparage any of them; yet in all we have found a want of explanations relating to several of the more recent improvements.

It has more especially been our aim to give explicit and detailed directions on most subjects connected with the hiving and removing of bees, and also to show how, by judicious application of the "depriving" system, the productive powers of the bees may be enormously increased.

We need say little here as to the interest that attaches to the apiary as a source of perennial pleasure for the amateur naturalist. Many of the hives and methods of management are described with a direct reference to this class of bee-keepers, so that, besides plain and simple directions suitable for cottagers with their ordinary hives, this work will be found to include instructions useful for the scientific apiarian, or at least valuable for those who desire to gain a much wider acquaintance with the secrets of bee-keeping than is now usually possessed. We would lay stress on the term "acquaintance," for there is nothing in the management of the various bar-and-frame hives which is at all difficult when frequent practice has rendered the bee-keeper familiar with them. Such explicit directions are herein given as to how the right operations may be performed at the right times, that a novice may at once commence to use the modern hives. The word "new-fangled" has done good service for the indolent and prejudiced, but we trust that our readers will be of a very different class. Let them give a fair trial to the modern appliances for the humane and depriving system of bee-keeping, and they will find offered to them an entirely new field of interest and observation. At present our continental neighbours far surpass us as bee-masters; but we trust that the following season, if the summer be fine, will prove a turning point in the course of English bee-keeping. There is little doubt that a greater number of intelligent and influential persons in this country will become bee-keepers than has ever been the case before.

Our task would have lost half its interest did we not hope that it would result in something beyond the encouragement of a refined and interesting amusement for the leisurely classes. The social importance of bee-keeping, as a source of pecuniary profit for small farmers and agricultural labourers, has never been appreciated as it deserves. Yet these persons will not, of themselves, lay aside the bungling and wasteful plan of destroying the bees, or learn without being taught the only proper method, that of deprivation. Their educated neighbours, when once interested in the pursuit, will be the persons to introduce the more profitable system of humane bee-keeping. The clergy especially, as permanent residents in the country, may have great influence in this respect. There is not a rural or suburban parish in the kingdom in which bee-keeping might not be largely extended, and the well-being of all but the very poorest inhabitants would be greatly promoted. Not only would the general practice of bee-keeping add largely to the national resources, but that addition would chiefly fall to the share of those classes to whom it would be of most value. Moreover, in the course of thus adding to their income, the uneducated classes would become interested in an elevating and instructive pursuit.

It is curious to observe that honey, whether regarded as a manufactured article or as an agricultural product, is obtained under economical conditions of exceptional advantage. If regarded as a manufactured article, we notice that there is no outlay required for "labour," nor any expense for "raw material." The industrious labourers are eager to utilise all their strength; they never "combine" except for the benefit of their master, they never "strike" for wages, and they provide their own subsistence. All that the master-manufacturer of honey has to do financially is, to make a little outlay for "fixed capital" in the needful "plant" of hives and utensils; no "floating capital" is needed. Then, on the other hand, if we regard honey as an agricultural product, it presents as such a still more striking contrast to the economists' theory of what are the "requisites of production." Not only is there no outlay needed for wages, and none for raw material, but there is nothing to be paid for "use of a natural agent." Every square yard of land in the United Kingdom may come to be cultivated, as in China, but no proprietor will ever be able to claim "rent" for those "waste products" of the flowers and leaves which none but the winged workers of the hive can ever utilise.

The recent domestication in England of the Ligurian or Italian Alp bee adds a new and additional source of interest to bee-culture. We have therefore gone pretty fully into this part of the subject; and believe that what is here published with regard to their introduction embodies the most recent and reliable information respecting them that is possessed by English apiarians.[2]

[2] Some of our apiarian friends may be inclined to be discouraged from cultivating the Ligurian bees in consequence of the liability of their becoming hybridised when located in proximity to the black bees. We can dispel these fears by stating that we have not unfrequently found that hybrid queens possess the surprising fecundity of the genuine Italian ones, whilst the English stocks in course of time become strengthened by the infusion of foreign blood.

We are under many obligations for the advice and assistance that we have on many occasions received from Mr. T. W. Woodbury, of Exeter, whose apiarian skill is unrivalled in this country. Our acknowledgments are also due to Mr. Henry Taylor, author of an excellent "Bee-keeper's Manual," for his help and counsel during the earlier years of our apiarian experience. Both these gentlemen have frequently communicated to us their contrivances and suggestions, without thought of fee or reward for them. In common with most recent writers on bee-culture, we are necessarily largely indebted to the standard works of Huber and succeeding apiarians. From the more recent volume of the Rev. L. L. Langstroth we have also obtained useful information. But having ourselves, of later years, had considerable experience in the manipulation and practical management of bees, we are enabled to confirm or qualify the statements of others, as well as to summarise information gleaned from various sources.

Let it be understood that we have no patented devices to push; we are free to choose out of the many apiarian contrivances that have been offered of late years, and we feel perfectly at liberty to praise or blame as our experience warrants us in doing. It does not follow that we necessarily disparage hives which are not described herein; we have sought as much as possible to indicate the principles on which good hives must be constructed, whatever their outward size or shape. All through the work, we have endeavoured to adopt the golden rule of "submission to Nature" by reference to which all the fancied difficulties of bee-keeping may be easily overcome. In none of the attempts of men to hold sway over natural objects is the truth of Bacon's leading doctrine more beautifully illustrated than in the power that the apiarian exercises in the little world of bees.

Some persons may consider we have used too many poetical quotations in a book dealing wholly with matters of fact. We trust, however, that the examination of the extracts will at once remove that feeling of objection.

We venture to hope that the following pages contain many valuable hints and interesting statements which may tend to excite increased and renewed attention to the most useful and industrious of all insects.

Although bees have neither reason nor religion for their guide, yet from them man may learn many a lesson of virtue and industry, and may even draw from them thoughts suggestive of trust and faith in God.

We beg leave to conclude our preface, and introduce the subject, by the following extract from Shakespeare, who, without doubt, kept bees in that garden at Stratford wherein he used to meditate:—

"So work the honey-bees;

Creatures that, by a rule in Nature, teach

The art of order to a peopled kingdom.

They have a king and officers of sorts;

Where some, like magistrates, correct at home;

Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad;

Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,

Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds;

Which pillage they, with merry march, bring home

To the tent royal of their emperor:

Who, busied in his majesty, surveys

The singing masons building roofs of gold;

The civil citizens kneading up the honey;

The poor mechanic porters crowding in

Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate;

The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum,

Delivering o'er to executors pale

The lazy, yawning drone."

Shakespeare's Henry V., Act i. Scene 2.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION.

CHAPTER I.

The Bee as an Insect.

CHAPTER II.

Anatomy and Physiology.

CHAPTER III.

Modern Beehives.

CHAPTER IV.

Fittings and Apparatus.

CHAPTER V.

Bee Manipulation.

CHAPTER VI.

Miscellaneous Information.

APPENDIX.

DESCRIPTION OF PLATES.

[PLATE I. (Page 34).]

[PLATE II. (Page 86).]

ILLUSTRATIONS.

INTRODUCTION.
LITERATURE OF BEE-KEEPING.

JUST a few words at starting on the history of the bee in ancient and modern literature. Our work is not a critical survey, and still less an exhaustive treatise; but even that popular outline which it is our aim to produce seems defective without some mention of the great bee-students of the past. We find the first definitive description of the insect in Aristotle's "History of Animals," written about the middle of the fourth century before Christ, and combining much sound scientific information on our subject with other statements which better information has had to reject. A little before him lived Aristomachus, of Cilicia, who wrote works on agriculture and domestic economy which are lost to us except in a few quotations, but of whom we are told that he devoted some fifty-eight years to a continual observance of the habits of bees. One Philiscus, of Thasos, is mentioned as another of their votaries, who betook himself to a forest life in order uninterruptedly to pursue their study. Then just after the Christian era came Pliny the Elder, from whom we learn these few particulars of the two just named, and whose celebrated "Natural History," which is the work rather of a student than of a master, honours the bee with an elaborate and interesting description. Shortly after him Columella, in his work "On Rustic Matters," gave copious instructions on bee-keeping, which, though reproducing some older errors, are greatly in advance of any that had appeared, and place him, for the accuracy that they display, at the head of the apiarians of antiquity. Theophrastus, Celsus, and Varro must also be ranked among the ancient writers whose attention was drawn to this industrious insect. But perhaps the most renowned of classic works upon the subject is the fourth book of the "Georgics" of Virgil, in which we are presented with a minute treatise upon bees and their culture, with all the sense as well as nonsense that then passed current thereupon, together with that most beautiful passage in the poet's writings, the story of the visit of Orpheus to the shades, which is appended by one of those incidental connecting-links of which ancient poets were wont to avail themselves.

In more modern times the principal writers have been Swammerdam. The Dutch naturalist; Maraldi, an Italian mathematician; Schirach, a Saxon clergyman; Réaumur, well known for his thermometer; Bonnet, a Swiss entomologist and jurist; the famous Dr. John Hunter; and above all Francis Huber, of Geneva. The last of these, though totally blind, contrived, principally by the aid of his very intelligent and painstaking assistant, Burnens to accumulate a long series of minute observations which have brought about an entire revolution in the science. In connection with Huber must be mentioned Mlle. Jurine, who, by her delicate microscopic examinations, rendered him the most important services, and gave more than one valuable discovery to the world. At the same period lived Dr. John Evans, who may be fitly styled the poet-laureate of the bee. His poem, "The Bees," from which we shall make numerous quotations, is written with great taste, and combines, with rare felicity, scientific accuracy of detail with a poetic spirit which never flags.[3] A little later than these, though in part their contemporary, came Dr. Bevan, whose name is still cited as among the highest authorities on the subject, and whose work, "The Honey Bee," was regarded as its great text-book in our language, till superseded, with the progress of discoveries, by one under the same title from the pen of the Rev. L. L. Langstroth. This last gentleman, who is a Presbyterian minister in Ohio, stands undoubtedly at the present day as the foremost apiarian of the English-speaking race. But we are forced to admit that the Germans bear the palm above us, for all the great advances in our knowledge of the bee which have been made for a generation have come from them. To Dr. Dzierzon,[4] therefore, a Roman Catholic priest of Carlsmarkt in Silesia, to whose acute investigations the great mass of these are to be ascribed, must be conceded a rank scarcely second to that of Huber; while Baron von Berlepsch, of Coburg, who is ever ready to follow up and improve upon the researches of the "great, master," has beyond question earned for himself a position inferior to that of the master alone. Of famous Scotch writers we should allude to Bonner, of Glasgow, who lived in the latter part of the last century, and the Rev. Dr. Dunbar, who dates at the beginning of this.

[3] Dr. Evans's poem consisted of four parts, of which only three were ever published. We possess an author's presentation copy in which is a written memorandum that the manuscript of the remainder had been prepared for the press, and was still in the keeping of the family. We have written numerous letters with a view to tracking it out for publication; but very recently we have learnt that the only survivor of nine children is unable at present to discover the whereabouts of the document. Dr. Evans was some time a physician at Shrewsbury, but removed into and died in Wales.

[4] Pronounced Dzeert-sohn. Some of the above names, it may not be amiss to add, are not always spelt correctly by bee-writers. In particular, nearly all of them, copying each other, omit the accent in "Réaumur" (Ray-oh-mewr), which we find French biographers unanimous in inserting. We have also seen "Miraldi" in a recent popular work, while one author had a fancy to write "Hüber," which is evidently a pure mistake.

Of the mass of other names that press in upon us it will be impossible in such narrow limits to supply any details. The literature of the subject is truly enormous, and all that we can do is to furnish a list in rough chronological order of the more noteworthy of those who have in some way rendered service to our acquaintance with the bee. Besides the great naturalists Linnæus and Cuvier we therefore select the following:—

Sixteenth century.—Hill, Nikol Jacob. "De Proprietatibus Apum" (anon.) published about 1510.

Seventeenth century.—Butler, Purchas, Goedart, Swammerdam, Sir C. Wren, Hartlib, Gedde. Rusden, Ray (with Willughby and Dr. M. Lister), Dr. Martin John (of Germany).

Eighteenth century.—Maraldi, Mme. Merian, Dr. Warder, Dr. Derham, Réaumur, Thorley, Lyonnet, Vanière (poet, of Holland), Dobbs, Rev. Stephen White, Schirach, Janscha, Bonner, Debraw, Thos. and Danl. Wildman, Gilb. White, Mme. Vicat, Pösl, Abbé Della Rocca, Hubbard, Keys, Bonnet, Riem, Dr. Jno. Hunter.

Nineteenth Century.—François Huber (with his son Pierre, and Burnens), Latreille, Mlle. Jurine, Spitzner, T. A. Knight, Rev. Dr. Dunbar, Huish, Dr. Evans (poet), Feburier, Kirby and Spence, Humphrey, Baron von Ehrenfels, Newport, Dr. Bevan, Gundelach, Lord Brougham, Pastor Oettl, Capt. von Baldenstein, Nutt, Payne, Taylor, Golding, Maj. Munn, Woodbury, Quinby (of America), Wagner (ditto).

Of contemporary writers in our own language, we may, in addition to Langstroth, refer to Rev. W. C. Cotton, Samuelson (with Dr. Hicks), Hunter, Cheshire, and Pettigrew; while to the German names already given may be added those of Professors Leuckart and Von Siebold, Drs. Dönhoff and Küchenmeister, Pastors Kleine and Schönfeld, Vogel, Dathe, Rothe, Count von Stosch, and Schmid, the editor of the Bienenzeitung. It is worth noting how large is the number of apiarians of different lands to whom the title of "reverend" is prefixed.

But while conceding to Germany an unquestioned first position in the theoretical department, we do not admit the accuracy of Von Berlepsch's assertion that "in all other countries bee-keeping is almost throughout a mere plaything and amusement." If the Baron would honour our island with a visit, we could show him, from one end of it to the other, a goodly number of very different cases; and though we have much to learn, and have not long gone systematically to work to learn it, there are not wanting clear and increasing signs that the right course is entered, upon, and must in time secure corresponding results. In the year 1874 was established the British Bee-keepers' Association, with one of the first entomologists of the day, Sir John Lubbock, at its head; and under its auspices there have since been held annual shows at the Crystal and Alexandra Palaces, at which bees themselves, their dwellings and paraphernalia, and their products, have been submitted to the awards of judges as well as to the popular inspection. Several periodicals are either wholly or in part devoted to apiculture, and altogether appearances are healthy and hopeful. While therefore we still do look for amusement from our bees, we claim to experience a more solid satisfaction as well.

CHAPTER I.
THE BEE AS AN INSECT.

§ I. CLASSIFICATION.

WHERE is a self-complacency in commencing a subject scientifically, so let us devote our first half-page to defining the place of the bee in the animal kingdom. The common English honey bee, sometimes called the black bee, is known by the name of Apis mellifica; while the new favourite, the Italian or Ligurian bee, has obtained the specific name of ligustica, though naturalists are now satisfied that the two are only varieties of a single species. The genus Apis belongs to the order Hymenoptera, or membrane-winged insects, which some entomologists have subdivided into families and sections: of these, one family will comprise the honey bees, humble bees, etc.; another the wasps, of which the hornet is one; and others respectively the ants, the gall insects, the saw-flies, and certain parasites and other winged creatures of little familiarity. The entire order belongs to the class Insecta, and that to the grand division Articulata, or conjointed animals. In England alone there are 250 native species of bee.

Turning now to the particular insect with which we intend to interest ourselves, we observe that every hive or bee colony comprises in summer three distinct classes of bees, each class having functions peculiar to itself, and essential to the maintenance and well-being of the community. As each bee knows its own proper duties, they all work harmoniously and zealously together for the common weal. Certain apparent exceptions to the good-fellowship of the bees will be hereafter noticed, but these arise out of essential conditions in the social economy of the bee community. That honey bees should live in society, as they do in hives, is absolutely needful. A bee in an isolated condition is a very helpless delicate little creature, soon susceptible of cold, and paralysed thereby unless able to join her companions before night comes on. By congregating in large numbers bees maintain warmth, whatever the external temperature may be.

The three classes of bees are—the queen bee, or perfect female; the working bees, or undeveloped females; and the drones, or male bees.

§ II. THE QUEEN,

appropriately styled, by German bee-keepers, the mother bee, is the only perfectly developed female among the whole population of each separate colony. Thus her majesty indisputably sways her sceptre by a divine right, because she lives and reigns in the hearts of loving children and subjects.

The queen may very readily be distinguished from the rest of the bees by the greater length of her body and the comparative shortness of her wings; her legs are longer, and are not furnished with either brushes or baskets as those of the working bee, for, being constantly fed by the latter, she does not need these implements; the upper surface of her body is of a brighter black than the other bees', whilst her colour underneath is a yellowish brown;[5] her wings, which do not extend more than half the length of her body, are sinewy and strong; her long abdomen tapers nearly to a point; her head is rounder, her tongue more slender, and much shorter, than that of the working bee, and her sting is curved. Her movements in the hive are measured and majestic, though when out of her proper sphere, as at swarming time, she is distinguished, on the contrary, by the rapidity of her steps. She has a peculiar scent, which is so attractive to workers, that Mr. Mahan, of Philadelphia, states he has several times had them alight upon his fingers, a mile away from his apiary, after he had been handling the royal mother.

[5] Yellow Italian queens form an exception in point of colour. See [Plate I. Fig. I.]

It is the chief function of the queen to lay the eggs from which all future bees originate, the multiplication of the species being the purpose of her existence; and she follows it up with an assiduity similar to that with which the workers construct combs or collect honey. A queen will lay in the breeding season from 1,000 to 3,000 eggs a day. Both Langstroth and Von Berlepsch have seen queens lay at the rate of six per minute, or more; and the latter observer, on supplying his queen with some new empty comb, found at the end of twenty-four hours that she had laid 3,021 eggs, which at her observed speed she would accomplish in eight hours, and thus have sixteen for rest. She kept up to nearly this rate for twenty days, in which she filled 57,000 cells; and, what is still more surprising, she went on in like style for five years, during which, at the lowest reckoning, she laid. 1,300,000 eggs, or 300,000 per year. But with ordinary queens, says the Baron, 1,200 a day is excellently good work, and this rate from February to September, with allowance for slacker periods, will produce more than 150,000 bees in a year. "Most queens," says Dzierzon, "in spacious hives and at a favourable season, lay 60,000 in a month, ... and a specially fertile queen, in the four years which she on an average lives, lays over a million eggs." This is indeed a vast number; but when there is taken into consideration the multitudes required for swarms, the constant lessening of their strength by death in various ways, and the many casualties attending them in their distant travels in search of the luscious store, it does not seem that the case is overstated.

To keep up these heavy productive duties the queen requires to eat in corresponding proportions, and these she varies, or the bees vary them for her, in the same ratio with the laying itself. She sucks honey from the cells direct, or has it supplied to her by the workers; and, as an important additional fact, the latter regularly nourish her with pollen already partially digested in their own stomachs.

In a glass unicomb hive—which we shall hereafter describe—all the movements of the queen bee may be traced. She may be seen thrusting her head into a cell to discover whether it is occupied with an egg or honey, and, if empty, she turns round in a dignified manner and inserts her long body—so long that she is able to deposit the egg at the bottom of the cell; she then passes on to another, and so continues industriously multiplying her laborious subjects. It not unfrequently happens when the queen is prolific, and if it is an early season, that many eggs are wasted for want of unoccupied cells; for in that case the queen leaves them exposed at the bottom of the hive, where they are greedily devoured by the bees.

The queen bee, unlike the great majority of her subjects, is a stayer at home. On the second or third day of her princess life she usually sets out on the all-important concern of her marriage, and when once this is satisfactorily accomplished she never afterwards leaves the hive, except to lead off an emigrating swarm. Evans, with proper loyalty, has duly furnished a glowing epithalamium for the queen bee, thus:—

"But now, when noontide Sirius glares on high,

With him young love ascends the glowing sky,

From vein to vein swift shoots prolific fire,

And thrills each insect fibril with desire.

Thence, Nature, to fulfil thy prime decree,

Wheels round in wanton rings the courtier bee;

Now shyly distant, now with bolder air,

He woos and wins the all-complying fair;

Through fields of ether, veiled in vapoury gloom,

They seek with amorous haste the nuptial room,

As erst the immortal pair on Ida's height

Wreathed round their noon of joy ambrosial night."

The loyalty and attachment of bees to their queen is one of their most remarkable characteristics; they constantly supply her with food, and fawn upon and caress her, softly touching her with their antennæ—a favour which she occasionally returns. When she moves about the hive all the bees through whom she successively passes pay her the same homage; she experiences no inconvenience from overcrowding, for though the part of the hive to which she is journeying may be the most populous, way is immediately made, the common bees tumbling over each other to get out of her path, so great is their anxiety not to interfere with the royal progress. A number of them often form a circle round her, none venturing to turn their backs upon her, but all anxious to show that respect and attention due to her rank and station.

The majestic deportment of the queen bee, and the homage paid to her, are, with a little poetic licence, thus described by Evans:—

"But mark, of regal port and awful mien,

Where moves with measured pace the insect queen!

Twelve chosen guards, with slow and solemn gait,

Bend at her nod, and round her person wait.

Not eastern despots, of their splendour vain,

Can boast, in all their pomp, a brighter train

Of fear-bound satraps; not in bonds of love

Can loyal Britons more obedient move."

Some modification has to be made, however, in the old ideas on this head, though, so long as it is understood that the reverence of the bees for their queen is an official and not a personal reverence, it may be allowed, except as to the existence of a regular guard, to be for the most part true enough. But the government is a limited and not an absolute monarchy, for the workers often impose their own will upon the sovereign. This homage, moreover, is paid only to matron queens, as Dr. Dunbar noted whilst experimenting on the combative qualities of the queen bee. "So long," says he, "as the queen which survived the rencontre with her rival remained a virgin, not the slightest degree of respect or attention was paid her; not a single bee gave her food; she was obliged, as often as she required it, to help herself; and, in crossing the honey cells for that purpose, she had to scramble, often with difficulty, over the crowd, not an individual of which got out of her way, or seemed to care whether she fed or starved. But no sooner did she become a mother than the scene was changed," and all treated her with due attention.

The sting of the queen bee is utilised in depositing her eggs, and she does not use it for hostile purposes except in combat with her sister queens. Mr. Langstroth remarks that this forbearance apparently arises from the knowledge that the use of the sting might prove fatal to herself, and thus seriously jeopardise the whole hive. He adds that she will carry it to the extent of allowing herself to be torn limb from limb without an attempt at stinging, though if closely held in the hand she will sometimes use her jaws, which, being more powerful than those of other bees, may occasion some discomfort. But she admits of no rival to her throne; almost her first act, on coming forth from the cell, is an attempt to tear open and destroy the cells containing the pupæ of princesses likely to become competitors. Should it so happen that another queen of similar age does exist in the hive at the same time, then, if one be not promptly destroyed by the workers, as is now considered to be the rule, the two are usually brought into contact with each other, in order to fight it out, and decide by a struggle, mortal to one of them, which is to be the ruler; the stronger of course is victorious, and remains supreme, while her rival either falls dead or is left to die.[6] Either of these, it must be admitted, is a wiser method of settling the affair than it would be to range the whole hive under two distinct banners, and so create a civil war, in which the members of the rival bands would kill and destroy each other for matters they individually had little or no concern about. The bees care not which queen it is, so long as they are certain of having one to rule over them and perpetuate the community; indeed, they have been known in some cases to form rings round the respective combatants, and even to force them to the conflict if unaware of each other's presence. But Dr. Bevan tells us that there do exist queens which will not fight. The workers do not always decide: the matter in such case; it is, indeed, nothing uncommon, says Vogel, for two fruitful queens to be allowed to live together; and we have had instances of the same kind ourselves, without being able to give a reason other than that "the exceptions prove the rule." An Italian queen, it is said, is usually assisted in her third year by a younger mother born in her own hive.

[6] Dr. Bevan mentions examples both of instant fatality and of survival for twenty-four hours. The sting of the queen is evidently less powerful than that of workers, as her poison-bag is smaller; and we learn from Von Gindly that he once succeeded in inducing a queen to sting him, when the effect was like little more than the prick of a needle. Kleine also, after persevering attempts, was once stung by a queen, and so was Hoffnann of Vienna—the queen in this last case losing thereby the faculty of laying.

These royal duels, though no longer regarded as the invariable routine, have been abundantly testified to by undoubted witnesses, and some of these have deduced a singular law as governing the combatants. Neither queen, it is said, will sting her rival unless she has her at an advantage, and can thrust her body beneath the other's, and inflict the fatal thrust without fear either of receiving another simultaneously, or of being unable to withdraw her own sting. If on the contrary each has grappled the other in readiness for mutual slaughter, they will at once separate and commence the battle anew.

After perusing the description given above of the attachment of bees to their queen, it may be easy to imagine the consternation a hive is thrown into when deprived of her presence. The bees first make a diligent search for their monarch in the hive, and then afterwards rush forth in immense numbers to seek her. If the search is unavailing they will return to the hive and commence what Langstroth calls "a succession of wailings in the minor key," which no experienced bee-master can mistake. When such a commotion is observed in an apiary the competent apiarian will repair the loss by giving a queen. The bees have generally their own remedy for such a calamity, in their power of raising a new queen from amongst their larvæ; but if neither this nor the former means is available, the whole colony gradually dwindles and in time dies off. The following is the method by which working bees provide a successor to the throne when deprived of their queen by accident, or in anticipation of the first swarm, which is always led by the old queen:—

They select, when not more than three days old, an egg previously intended for a worker bee—but a larva will serve, so it be not grown to its full size—and then they enlarge the cell so selected by destroying the surrounding partitions; they thus form a royal cradle, in shape very much like an acorn-cup inverted. The chosen embryo is then fed liberally with a peculiar description of nurture, called by naturalists "royal jelly"—a pungent food composed of honey and digested pollen, and prepared by the worker bees exclusively for those of the larvæ that are destined to become candidates for the honour of royalty. The effect of this is both to perfect and to hasten the development of the future insect, so that instead of a worker being produced at the end of twenty-one days, a queen emerges in the reduced term of sixteen.

But should the deprivation happen at a time when, either from the season or from abnormal circumstances, there is no worker brood in the hive, the bees will then often exhibit a series of curious and even ludicrous struggles, which Von Berlepsch has aptly compared to the clutchings at straws made by a drowning man. Themselves individually are no sufferers; but bees look beyond themselves, and posterity they must have. Their sole preoccupation, therefore, is to raise drones and a queen. Some of them often develop a capacity to lay drone eggs (as explained under [§ ix].), and most of these they will carefully cherish for their natural purpose, but others they will surround with royal cells and feed with royal jelly, so that the poor things on hatching are soon dosed to death in a frantic effort to change their sex! And if drone eggs are not to hand they will even try to hatch a queen out of a lump of pollen! In more senses than one then we see that when bees have lost their queen they have lost their head.

As curiously dissimilar, though not discordant, instances of the effect of removing the queen from a hive, we may mention that Mr. Langstroth once tried the experiment for only two or three minutes, when he had all in confusion immediately, and found two days after that royal cells had been prepared; while Dr. Bevan once effected the removal so quietly that for eighteen hours all went on as usual, and then on a sudden the fact became known, and everything was changed into agitation and distraction. Should a queen so separated be detained from her subjects, she resents the interference, refuses food, pines, and dies.

The observations upon the queen bee needful to verify the above-mentioned facts can only be made in hives constructed for the purpose, of which the "Unicomb Observatory Hive" is the best. In ordinary hives the queen is scarcely ever to be seen; where there are several rows of comb she invariably keeps between them, both for warmth and for greater security from danger. The writer has frequently observed in stocks which have unfortunately died, that the queen was one of the last to expire; and she is always more difficult to gain possession of than other bees, being by instinct taught that she is indispensable to the welfare of the colony.

The queen enjoys a far longer life than any of her subjects, her age very often extending to four or even five years; her fertility will, however, except in rare cases, have left her long before that term, or she will lay only drone eggs, so that as a general rule a substitute is better found for her when she has entered her third year. Under the next section, and those on "Reproductive Economy" and "Relation of Sex to Cells," as well as in Chapter IV. under "Queen Cages," will be found other information connected with the queen.

§ III. THE DRONE.

The drones are the male bees; they possess no sting, are larger and more hairy than the workers, and may be easily distinguished by their heavy motion, thick-set form, and louder humming. They have a strong odour, which becomes very noticeable if several of them are confined in a box. Evans thus describes the drones:—

"But now, when April smiles through many a tear,

And the bright Bull receives the rolling year,

Another tribe, to different fates assigned,

In ampler cells their giant limbs confined,

Burst through the yielding wax, and wheel around

On heavier wing, and hum a deeper sound.

No sharpened sting they boast; yet, buzzing loud,

Before the hive, in threatening circles, crowd

The unwieldy drones. Their short proboscis sips

No luscious nectar from the wild thyme's lips;

From the lime's leaf no amber drops they steal,

Nor bear their grooveless thighs the foodful meal;

On others' toils, in pampered leisure, thrive

The lazy fathers of the industrious hive.

Yet oft, we're told, these seeming idlers share

The pleasing duties of parental care,

With fond attention guard each genial cell,

And watch the embryo, bursting from its shell."

But Dr. Evans had been "told" what was not correct when he sought to dignify drones with the office of "nursing fathers" ("brood bees" as the Germans used to call them), for that task is undertaken by the younger of the working bees. Nor are they even utilised in maintaining warmth, for they are expelled just at a time when warmth is most required. No occupation falls to the lot of the drones in gathering honey, nor have they the means provided them by Nature for assisting in the labours of the hive. They are the progenitors of working bees, and nothing more; so far as is known, that is the only purpose of their short existence.

In a well-populated hive the number of drones is computed at from one to two thousand. "Naturalists," says Huber, "have been extremely embarrassed to account for the number of males in most hives, which seem only a burden to the community, since they appear to fulfil no function. But we now begin to discern the object of Nature in multiplying them to such an extent. As fecundation cannot be accomplished within the hive, and as the queen is obliged to traverse the expanse of the atmosphere, it is requisite that the males should be numerous, that she may have the chance of meeting some one of them in her flight. Were only two or three in each hive there would be little probability of their departure at the same instant with the queen, or that they would meet her in their excursions; and most of the females might thus remain sterile." It is important for the safety of the queen bee that her stay in the air should be as brief as possible, as her large size and slowness of flight render her an easy prey to birds. It is not now thought that the queen always pairs with a drone of the same hive, as Huber seems to have supposed. On the contrary, it would appear that with bees, as with so many other animals, there is a provision against such interbreeding. Mr. John Hunter, in his "Manual of Bee-keeping," speaks of this as amounting to a law, and thus represents the fact as diametrically opposite to Huber's conclusion. But we believe the question to be complicated by another—whether the drones that inhabit a particular hive at any given time are regularly born of the same family with that hive, or whether they are not very often to be viewed as "strangers within the gates." At all events, it appears established that the queen and drones within a hive do watch each other's movements when the former is about taking her nuptial flight, and that the union is sometimes consummated close at hand, though certainly never attempted within the precincts of the hive itself. This last circumstance, which by all accounts is absolutely invariable, would seem to be the extent of the provision, and it is one that in ordinary circumstances would preclude the recurrence of in-and-in breeding. A confirmation of these views is afforded from the interesting experience of Captain von Baldenstein with his one Italian stock maintained by itself for seven years, who found that all this time, with one exception, the young queens produced bastard workers, clearly proving that all but that one were impregnated by the drones of other colonies.

The drone that happens to be the selected husband is by no means so favoured as at first sight might appear, for it is a law of Nature that the bridegroom does not survive the wedding-day. His death, however, is doubtless generally instantaneous, whereas in other case it would probably have been one of torture or starvation. In 1867 the German apiarian Von Klipstein was witness of an instance of the wedding ceremony, when a young queen, who was leading a swarm, became detached from it and settled upon a currant bush, where she was joined by a drone; after a few seconds the two flew away together for three yards and then fell to the ground, when the queen disengaged herself, and the drone was found to be dead. But we learn from the American Bee Journal, of March 1861, that two similar cases were observed in the United States some years earlier than this. The latter of these two agreed with the above in showing the immediate death of the male bee, the rule as to which is also confirmed by a fact noticed by Mr. Langstroth, that if a drone is taken between the fingers and squeezed, as one would squeeze a wasp to cause protrusion of the sting, it will give a crack and shrivel up dead as if struck by lightning. The instance in point was also communicated to the Bee Journal through this gentleman, it having been noticed, on a July afternoon in 1860, by his friend Mr. W. W. Gary, of Coleraine, Massachusetts. The queen was returning from a presumably unsuccessful flight, when a drone met her at about three feet from the hive entrance; a sharp snap was heard almost directly, and the male fell to the ground perfectly dead. The other case was witnessed by the Rev. Mr. Millette, of Whitemarsh, Pennsylvania, and occurred in June 1859, during the process of hiving. A young queen—there were four in the swarm—"was observed on the wing, and in a moment after was seized by a drone. After flying about a rod they both came to the ground in close contact; ... the drone was about departing (having broken loose) ... but after crawling about ... in a very few minutes it expired"—the circumstance being probably quite exceptional in this lapse of minutes, and it is unfortunate that we have no information as to the immediate or subsequent effect upon the queen.

As a general rule the royal lady, not meeting drones straightway upon her issue from the hive, spends a little time in reconnoitring her home, and then, often not till her second day's exit, sails away high into the air, and sometimes to a considerable distance horizontally as well. "A Renfrewshire Bee-keeper" states in the British Bee Journal, of May 1877, that an undoubted instance had come to his knowledge in which a common queen, located five miles distant in a bee-line measured upon the Ordnance map, had become impregnated by one of his own Italian drones—these being positively the only Italians in the entire district.

On the queen's return—that is, supposing her object to have been achieved—she will exhibit the male organ adhering to her extremity, and sometimes she is unable to free herself of it, nor can the bee-keeper give her any assistance without the risk of effects as fatal to herself as they were to her spouse. The explanation of this series of phenomena lies in the structure of the organ itself. It is simply the expanded prolongation of the seminal duct, and is attached to the orifice like the sleeve of a coat to the shoulder, but is wholly internal. To be protruded it must therefore be turned literally inside out, and to effect this a powerful inflation is required, in which act the forces of the system are in some way fatally ruptured; while, as Professor Leuckart very rationally deduces—thus clearing up another mystery—it is only when the breathing vessels are filled by motion in the air that the drone is able to accomplish it at all. Then the singular scales and protuberances with which the organ is beset render it when once inserted very difficult of withdrawal, even if its owner were not already dead. Mr. Langstroth remarks as to the design of this seemingly harsh provision that in default of it the queen would be compelled to remain with the drone much longer in the air, thus incurring far greater danger of falling a prey to some passing bird. After all it is undoubtedly one of those instances as to which it may be said of Nature, in Tennyson's words:—

"So careful of the type she seems,

So careless of the single life."

Her majesty, although thus left a widowed, is by no means a sorrowful bride, for in from two to three days she becomes the happy mother of a large family. Such at least is the normal rule, but should the season be late in the autumn she may not commence laying till the following spring. It cannot be said that she pays no respect to the memory of her departed lord, for she never marries again. Once impregnated—as is the case with most insects-—the queen bee continues productive during the remainder of her existence.

The swarming season being over—that is about the end of July, when the gathering has materially slackened—-a general massacre of the "lazy fathers" shortly follows. Dr. Bevan observes that now their work is completed, "they are regarded as useless consumers of the fruits of others' labour: love is at once converted into hate, and a general proscription takes place." For it was love, the drones having previously been petted and fed with prepared pollen in the same way as the queen herself. Von Berlepsch describes the work of destruction as commencing with the casting forth of the drone brood just issuing from the cells, after which the larvæ and nymphs are similarly treated. Then the drones themselves are chased from the honey stores, and a watch is kept to prevent their access thereto. On finding it hopeless they crouch away together in corners, till, when thoroughly exhausted by hunger, the workers drive them out one by one, and they die with cold and hunger: very few of them are stung. This work goes on night and day, and occasionally they collect to die in such a heap before the flight-hole that there is a danger of their suffocating the hive. Disabled or useless workers are dealt with in an equally summary fashion; but in the case of a super-annuated queen, the best opinions are that she is allowed to take her own quietus.

Supposing the drones come forth in April or May, which is the usual period, then, as their destruction takes place somewhere about the commencement of August, three or four months will be the ordinary extent of their existence; but should it so happen that the development of the queen has been retarded, or that the hive has by chance been deprived of her, the massacre of the drones is deferred. On the other hand, in case of the cutting short of the gathering season by bad weather, it occasionally happens at an earlier date—even so soon as May. Now and then a drone or two escape, and prolong their lives through the winter.

§ IV. THE WORKER.

The working bees form by far the most numerous of the three classes contained in the hive. They are the smallest of the bees; in colour they are dark brown or nearly black (except the Italians and other foreign varieties), and they are distinguished by their activity upon the wing. As to their numbers in a colony, "an ordinary first swarm from a straw hive," says Von Berlepsch, "contains from twelve to twenty thousand, but I have had large wood hives in which, at a moderate computation, there were living at the end of June about a hundred thousand bees:" from thirty to fifty thousand, however, will better represent the strength of an average stock in an English hive. The worker, though formerly spoken of under the term "neuter," is of the same sex as the queen, but is only partially developed, and thus, with some exceptions (see [§ ix].), it is incapable of laying eggs. But any egg which would ordinarily produce a worker bee may, by the cell being enlarged and the "royal jelly" supplied to the larva, be hatched into a mature and perfect queen. This most curious fact may be verified in any apiary by most interesting experiments, which are capable of being turned to important use.

The lives of the worker bees vary very greatly, and are much more prolonged during the repose of winter than in the wear and tear of the gathering season. Von Berlepsch describes three careful sets of experiments which he carried out for the purpose of attaining more exact knowledge on this point. In one of these he introduced an Italian queen into an ordinary stock at the beginning of October when all the old brood was hatched; he then found as a result that the last of the common bees had disappeared at the end of May, so that some of them for a certainty lived eight months, and possibly more, though it seems most probable that the last to die were also the latest born. In another case, the queen having died at the commencement of winter, he strictly isolated the hive, and, the season being exceptionally mild, he found that some of the bees continued alive for ten and a half months. His remaining experiment bore upon the summer term of existence, and it resulted in exhibiting six weeks as the average, and three months as the outside possible period of lifetime. Dzierzon points out the difference produced by the character of a bee's employment. To have to fly a long distance to its pasturage will soon wear it out, and so will knocking its wings against sharp leaves, as is the case with the bluebottle, the thick corn amid which this plant grows rendering the effect very much worse. But if, he adds, they pass the summer in entire repose, as a hive without a queen may do, then, if well fed, their lives may be prolonged for a year or even more.

The population of a hive is very small during the winter in comparison with the vast numbers gathering produce in the summer—produce which they themselves live to enjoy but for a short period. So that not only, as of old, may lessons of industry be learned from bees, but they also teach self-denial to mankind, since they labour for the community rather than for themselves. Dr. Bevan, in describing the age of bees, thus adapts the well-known lines of Homer in allusion to the fleeting generations of men:—

"Like leaves on trees the race of bees is found,

Now green in youth, now withering on the ground;

Another race the spring or fall supplies,

They droop successive, and successive rise."

With regard to the functions of worker bees, Huber supposed that there were two distinct classes, one acting as gatherers of store and the other as nurses of brood. This however has been demonstrated to be a mistake, for the distinction is not one of class, but simply of age, the younger workers, for the first two or three weeks of their existence,[7] assuming the whole of the inner or home occupations—viz., those of feeding the larvæ, the queen, and the drones, and of making wax, building comb, and closing the cells, as well as keeping the hive in a state of cleanliness—and these duties they retain until themselves sufficiently vigorous to range the fields in quest of supplies. After this term of apprenticeship they enter upon the labours of adult bees, and collect honey, pollen, and propolis—particulars as to which functions, and that of wax secretion, will be found in the third and fourth sections of our next chapter, and in the sections devoted to these four items in Chapter VI. Water and salt are also brought in to aid in the sustenance of the young brood. The older bees perform the duties of the younger when there are none or insufficient of the latter in the hive; but they will hang about perfectly idle if kept at home by weather when there is a full staff of their younger sisters. These last, on the contrary, cannot possibly supply the places of the older until at the very least they have attained their eleventh or twelfth day.

[7] German observations cited by Von Berlepsch give from ten to nineteen days. The Baron gives provisionally the sixteenth day as the rule. The first sporting before the hive is given at from the fourth to the tenth day.

Another of the varied duties performed by the younger worker bees is that of ventilating the hive by fanning with their wings. On a warm day a number of them may be seen located outside on the alighting-board working these appendages at the utmost velocity so as to drive a current of pure air within; while inside, but not exactly opposite to their comrades, are another troop, who by the same process are engaged in driving the foul air out. Other detachments are in the hottest weather posted in different parts of the interior, and the whole relieve each other in pickets. Huber ascertained that the inside air of a hive is thus preserved nearly as pure as that without.

In older works on the subject we are told of the sentinels of bees, but this idea is now abandoned as a fiction. It arose naturally enough out of the above office of fanners, as well as from the fact that if a rap be given upon the alighting-board a bee will immediately appear without. So too if danger appears, and if any bees are outside either as fanners or for their own relief from the heat, these will promptly perform the duties of sentinels. But as to any of them being posted specially for that purpose, it is sufficient to say that at the season when enemies are most to be feared there are no guards at the gates to be found.

It has been much queried whether bees ever go to sleep during the working season, as it is known that at night, when not gathering abroad, they are engaged in ceaseless activity at home. Huber, however, observed frequent instances of bees placing their heads' in empty cells and remaining perfectly motionless in that position for from fifteen to twenty-five minutes, in his opinion evidently asleep. Von Berlepsch has repeatedly observed similar occurrences both with workers and queens—not with drones, but then, says he, what is the whole life of these but sleep?—and he considers that there can exist upon the point no doubt whatever. "The more active the bees are," he remarks, "the more will they sleep, like every creature."

The following passage from Dzierzon describes in a popular way the round of the bees' concerns as they vary with the seasons: "In spring, when all Nature has awakened to a new life, the activity of the hive is especially directed to the increasing of the stock, the laying of eggs; at first, indeed, none but worker eggs are laid, and at the outset only a few hundred cells in a day, but afterwards thousands, as every hive seeks in the first place to make its own continuance secure. When gradually the number of bees has through the daily augmentation become perceptibly increased, when the pastures have more fully unfolded themselves, and the warmth in the hive has reached a higher degree, then, in the confidence of strength and of a sort of maturity, and having regard to the remoter object of increase through connubial relations, drone brood is also laid. Finally, although not in every case, in greater or less number queen cells are prepared. As soon as one or other of these is sealed over, the old queen feels no longer safe in the hive, and leaves it on a fine day at noon with the so-called 'fore-swarm.'... In most years and most districts the bee store has passed its climax and entered upon its decline after the swarming period. The activity of the bees now takes another direction. In order to leave over as much honey as possible for the provisionless season that stands before them, a system of saving is now pursued. To compensate for the unavoidable loss of population from the journeys abroad, a certain quantity of worker brood is still continually set on, but to a limited extent, while the breeding of drones is not only given up, but the already deposited drone brood is usually thrown out, and the drones themselves, as no longer of any use, are expelled from the hive. Comb-building too, which the bees so eagerly carried on in the spring, now rests entirely, as it would consume honey, and at the first autumn gathering the bees in fact fill all cells to hand with honey, though previously these may for the most part have served for brood-rearing. Their activity is now bent to securing their future position by accumulating the largest possible store of honey, and preserving themselves against draughts and cold by stopping up the holes in their dwelling with propolis, and narrowing the too wide flight-holes; and these cares generally occupy them so long as the temperature is of such a degree that they can still make their flights, which is up to about 13 degrees Réaumur [say 60 Fahr.].... When there is nothing more to gather, the bees, in order to save strength as well as honey, fly out no longer, even on the finest days, but preserve themselves in complete repose, and only undertake, after several days, an occasional sport before the hive on some warm noonday, so as to cleanse themselves once more before the winter."

Dr. Evans addresses and describes the worker bee in two passages of such real beauty that we cannot refrain from giving them a place here:—

"Ye light-winged labourers! hail the auspicious sign,

When the twin stars in rival splendour shine!

Cheered by their beams, your quickening numbers swell,

And pant your nations in the crowded cell.

Blithe Maia calls, and bids her jocund train

Breathe the warm gale, or softly falling rain;

Inhaled at every pore, the dewy flood

Spreads the young leaf, and wakes the sleeping bud.

Yes, light-winged labourers! still unwearied range

From flower to flower, your only love of change!

Still be your envied lot, communion rare,

To wreathe contentment round the brow of care!

No nice distinctions, or of rich or great,

Shade the clear sunshine of your peaceful state;

Nor Avarice there unfolds her dragon wing,

Nor racked Ambition feels the scorpion sting;

Your tempered wants an easy wealth dispense,

The public store your only affluence:

For all alike the busy fervour glows.

Alike ye labour, and alike repose;[8]

Free as the air, yet in strict order joined,

Unnumbered bodies with a single mind.

One royal head, with ever-watchful eye,

Reins and directs your restless industry.

Builds on your love her firm-cemented throne,

And with her people's safety seals her own."

[8]

"Omnibus una quies operum, labor omnibus unus."

Virgil, G. iv. 184.

Plate I.

E. W. Robinson, Delt. et Scp. 1865.

§ V. THE ITALIAN OR LIGURIAN BEE.

A new, or rather a re-discovered, variety of bee has recently been brought into practical use amongst apiarians in Germany and America, as well as in this country. It has been called "the Yellow Italian Alp Bee," and was also named "the Ligurian Bee" by the Marquis de Spinola, who found it in Piedmont in 1805; and he considered it to be the principal species known to the Greeks. "There can exist no doubt," says Kleine, in his handbook, "The Italian Bee and its Culture," "that both kinds were known side by side from the earliest times. Even mythology relates that Jupiter, out of gratitude for their having fed him with honey when a new-born god, afterwards made the bee 'brass-coloured' or 'golden-coloured.' Aristotle also noticed the coloured as different from the black bee, and Virgil adduces the same distinction." The latter speaks of the "best kind" of bee as being of a golden colour with ruddy scales. It is stated that it is found also in Spain. Leading apiarians are all but unanimous in pronouncing these bees justly entitled to the high character given them. The special advantages claimed for them are—greater fecundity of the queens, more industry and productiveness, less irascibility, and a more handsome appearance; for, being of a golden colour, they are prettier than our black bees. (See coloured engraving, [Plate I. Figs. 1, 2, 3.])

The Italian varies but little from the common bee in its physical characteristics. The difference in appearance consists in the first three rings of the abdomen being of an orange colour instead of a deep brown, except the posterior edge and under portion of the third, which are black: some individuals, however, have less colour about them than others—the younger bees far the most. These orange-coloured parts are transparent when closely examined with the sun shining on them. The drones are more darkly ringed than the workers, and are light-yellow beneath, which is an infallible mark of distinction from the English drones, which are nearly white in that part; many are also a fourth part smaller than the English. The queens vary greatly: "The finest and rarest," says Von Berlepsch, "are bright yellow varying into a bluish. Others rather resemble the workers, exhibiting only yellow rings; and a few are very difficult or impossible to distinguish from our own. From this we see that the Italian is not a constant race, like, e.g., our own or the Egyptian."

It is now over thirty years since attention was recalled to this variety by Captain von Baldenstein, who, when stationed in Italy during a part of the Napoleonic wars, had observed that the bees about Lake Como were of a different colour from ordinary ones. In later years, after his retirement from military life, he became a student of natural history, and, remembering these bees, he procured a colony of them in 1843. This he preserved, through constant disappointments, for seven years, and in 1848 he communicated to the Bienenzeitung the deductions of his experience. From this Dr. Dzierzon was induced to pursue the experiment, and from him the variety became introduced in Germany.

The introduction of this new variety of bee into England was through our agency. M. Hermann, a bee-cultivator at Tamins-by-Chur, Canton Grison, Switzerland, wrote to us on the 5th of July, 1859, offering to supply us with Italian queen bees. The date should be specially noted, because this was the commencement of a new era in bee-keeping in this country. We were always in friendly intercourse with the late Mr. H. Taylor, author of "The Bee-keeper's Manual," and then correspondent on Bee Culture to the Cottage Gardener (since called the Journal of Horticulture); and, being in the practice of frequently discussing apiarian subjects with him, we told him of the offer made us of a new kind of bee. He said he knew nothing about it himself, but asked permission to publish the intelligence in the journal he was connected with, and we assented, entirely for public interest and to gratify him. The letter, or an extract from it, appeared accordingly in the current number of the journal referred to. Prior to this the Italian, or, as many have called it, the "Ligurian" bee, was UNKNOWN IN THIS COUNTRY, except to a few naturalists. The same letter attracted the attention of that intelligent apiarian, the late T. W. Woodbury, Esq., so well known as the "Devonshire Bee-keeper." On the 19th of July, that is, a fortnight after M. Hermann's offer, we received a consignment of Italian bees—the first imported into England. With these Mr. Woodbury also received one queen bee and a few workers, which he introduced into a hive of English bees from which the queen had been removed. His efforts were very successful, and "the spring of 1860 found him in possession of four Ligurianised stocks." His subsequent experience with this new variety he fully described in a communication to the Bath and West of England Agricultural Journal.

Subsequently M. Hermann sent us a copy of his pamphlet entitled "The Italian Alp Bee; or, the Gold-Mine of Husbandry," with the request that we should have it translated from the German, and that copies of it should be printed in the English language. It was speedily published by us accordingly, and, although singular as a literary production, it may be useful for the advanced apiarian.

Certainly the bees are partially of an orange or golden colour, and if one could believe the golden anticipations indulged in by M. Hermann respecting them, these would be sufficient to identify the Italian bee as the species described by Hood in "Miss Kilmansegg"—those which dwelt in

"A golden hive, on a golden bank,

Where golden bees, by alchemical prank,

Gather gold instead of honey."

In the pamphlet referred to, M. Hermann gives the following description of what he insists on designating as Apis helvetica: "The Yellow Italian Alp bee is a mountain insect; it is found between two mountain chains to the right and left of Lombardy and the Rhetian Alps, and comprises the whole territory of Ticino, Val Tellina, and the southern Grisons.[9] It thrives up to the height of 4,500 feet above the level of the sea, and appears to prefer the northern clime to the warmer, for in the south of Italy it is not found. The Alps are their native country, therefore they are called Yellow Alp or tame house bees, in contradistinction to the black European bees, which we might call common forest bees, and which, on the slightest touch, fly like lightning into your face.[?]

[9] Otherwise Tessin, Veltlin (French Valteline), and the southern Graubünden. Von Berlepsch names the localities they inhabit as Genoa, Venetia, Lombardy, and the southern valleys of the Grisons bordering upon Italy.

"As all good and noble things in the world are more scarce than common ones, so there are more common black bees than of the noble yellow race, which latter inhabit only a very small piece of country, while the black ones are at home everywhere in Europe, and even in America."

Our own experience with the Italian bee enables us to corroborate the statements which have been made in its favour. We find the queens more prolific than those of the common kind, and the quantity of honey produced is greater. These two facts stand as cause and effect: the bees being multiplied more quickly, the store of honey is accumulated more rapidly, and the Italian bees consume, if anything, less food than the common kind. When of pure Italian blood these bees are, by some apiarians, thought to be hardier than our own. That they forage for stores with greater eagerness, and have little hesitation in paying visits to other hives, we can testify from our own observation. The following anecdote will illustrate their intrusive propensities; Another bee-keeper, who lived in the same neighbourhood, was once inspecting our hives, when, on observing the yellow bees, he exclaimed, "Now I have found out where those strange-looking bees come from; for," said he, "these yellow-jackets are incessant visitors to my hives. I thought they were a species of wasp that had come to rob, and until now I have been unable to account for their appearance at the entrance of my hive, so that I have killed them by hundreds." This was not at all pleasing intelligence for us, and we trust that our neighbour has been more lenient to "the yellow-jackets" since his visit, for such summary capital punishment was wholly unmerited, because when a bee is peaceably received (see [page 169]) it becomes naturalised, and works side by side with the others in its fresh abode. We are inclined to believe that more visiting takes place amongst bees of different hives than bee-keepers have been accustomed to suppose; but where the Italian and black bees are kept near each other, the foreigners being conspicuous by their lighter colour, there is less difficulty in identifying them when at the entrance of other hives. Von Berlepsch, we find, remarks that there exists during the gathering season a species of "communism of dwellings" between the bees of neighbouring hives.

The Italian bees are more active than common bees when on the wing. They are also observed to work longer hours than other bees both early and late, as well as in seasons when the latter will not stir abroad. Thus altogether they are much more productive. In many seasons we have had more honey from an Italian stock than from any one of our colonies of black bees. From this hive we have taken a glass super containing forty pounds nett of honey, besides having drawn from it an artificial swarm; and after all it remained the strongest hive in our apiary.

In a private letter received from Mr. Langstroth he informed us that in the season of 1865 he bred over 300 Italian queens; these he disseminated to various' bee-masters on the American continent, and the united opinion of apiarians in that country was increasingly in favour of the decided advantage of the cultivation of the Italian bee. At the present date it is literally "all the rage" with bee-keepers there. With ourselves there is a quieter but not less genuine welcome accorded to it. In the British Bee Journal for May 1877, the distinguished apiarian "A Renfrewshire Bee-keeper" writes: "After careful study and comparison of both I found the Italian superior for beauty, prolificness, power, and activity, and (to my view the greatest value of all) for fresh blood."

To the testimonies already cited we will now add that of the late Mr. Woodbury. The following is extracted from the paper contributed by him to the Bath and West of England Agricultural Journal: "From my strongest Ligurian stock I took eight artificial swarms in the spring, besides depriving it of numerous brood-combs. Finding, in June, that the bees were collecting honey so fast that the queen could not find an empty cell in which to lay an egg, I was reluctantly compelled to put on a super. When this had been filled with thirty-eight pounds of the finest honeycomb,[10] I removed it, and as the stock hive (a very large one) could not contain the multitude of bees which issued from it, I formed them into another very large artificial swarm. The foregoing facts speak for themselves; but as information on this point has been very generally asked, I have no hesitation in saying that I believe the Ligurian honey bee infinitely superior in every respect to the only species that we have hitherto been acquainted with."

[10] This super was exhibited at our stand in the International Exhibition of 1862.

The chorus of praise is not however universal. Most noticeable is the broad divergence of views between the two greatest apiarians of Germany—Dr. Dzierzon and Baron von Berlepsch. The former pronounces this bee less given to stinging, less sensitive of cold, more prolific, earlier in brood-raising and swarming, forwarder also in comb-building, more industrious and honey-yielding, more courageous in defence of its stores, and prompter in expelling the drones. The Baron examines these and other assertions one by one, and declares emphatically that, after a long course of experience, he has not found them true in a single particular. He calls the bee "the Italian humbug," and sums up as follows: "While it may perhaps be distinguished from our own by a somewhat slighter disposition to sting, but, on the other hand, it begins building drone comb and raising numbers of drones in the first year, and its queens grow unfertile so early, and that mostly at so inopportune a time, it stands manifestly inferior to our own in a relation of economic utility, and has therefore for us no practical value at all."[11]

[11] In our previous editions Von Berlepsch's views were cited as strongly favourable to the Italian bee. The change is his own, and he now makes full recantation of his "error."

Though we are unshaken in our adhesion to the Italian bee by these opposite views, it is impossible to treat them as beneath consideration. They are not a mere prejudice, for the Baron was at first as much prepossessed in the strangers' favour as any one. But it would be still less possible to set aside on their account the united testimony of Dzierzon, Langstroth, and a host of others who are above delusion on such a point. How then can we account for this one notable divergence? In the first place, much of Von Berlepsch's data are negative only, and negative evidence can never set aside positive; thus when he tells us that he "has not observed" earlier activity or greater courage or less sensitiveness, while others of unquestioned judgment have observed these points, we cannot hesitate to decide in the favour of the latter. As to less disposition to sting, the positive evidence should be on the Baron's side when he says that they do sting; but in this case, as we have seen, he partly concedes the point. As to productiveness and fecundity, there may be some undetected peculiarity about this bee to which something in the Seebach apiary or neighbourhood is not so congenial as in other parts. At all events. Dr. Dzierzon is unmoved from his faith, for we find him in the present year giving as the result of twenty-five years experience that this bee is "as gentle, diligent, and prolific as it is beautiful;" that it "bears our German climate well, and that its preservation in purity is with some care quite possible."

Still some persons are sure to be disappointed with a foreign bee, just as some will be with a foreign country. Some have had their expectations raised too highly, and expect wonderful results to follow without effort; others, on the contrary, are so wrapt up in the new treasure that they cherish it with vastly greater pains than their other bees, and thus attribute to the bee itself what is partly to be credited to their own superior care. In particular, with regard to the greater fecundity of the queens, we think some allowance ought to be made for the circumstance that in order to meet the demand for Italian queens they are being continuously bred, so that when united to English stocks they are always young and in the prime as to fertility; whilst the common black queens are allowed to exist in the hives their appointed time, as there is nothing to call for encouraging their special propagation. In making comparisons we think this fact has been a little overlooked; but though too much may have been thus credited to the Italians, we think there is a clear balance on this point in their favour, and they retain altogether our most decided preference.

§ VI. OTHER FOREIGN VARIETIES.

1. Carniolan Bees.—In appearance this variety is very much like our English bee. The difference is that the rings on the abdomen are whiter; otherwise (except by a close observer) one would not be known from the other.

Eight years ago the Rev. W. C. Cotton (brother of Lord Justice Cotton and author of "My Bee Book") had a stock of these bees from Austria, where they are largely cultivated, and he left them under our charge. We placed them in our own apiary at Hampstead, where they did very well, working a capital super in the first year, as well as parting with a fine swarm. The second year Mr. Cotton had the swarm sent to his own apiary, near Chester, because he wanted the original queen, which of course this had with it. This swarm had rather a remarkable adventure, and was nearly lost, as related at [page 78]. The Carniolans have been praised as possessing similar good qualities with the Italians, and though Von Berlepsch laughs at them and calls them "a new grand swindle," yet, as he declares them to be "closely allied, if not altogether identical," with the following variety, for which he has only good reports, his denunciations of these seem reasonably open to qualification.

2. Lower Austrian Bees.—Baron von Berlepsch mentions these as a variety which he found, to his surprise, in the neighbourhood of Vienna, but which must have been the same that Von Ehrenfels had cultivated and described. They scarcely differ from the Carniolan, but about one in fifty is rather strongly marked with red upon the first ring of the back. The Baron speaks of their habitat as "the El Dorado of the Bee," and he declares them wholly free from the vices of the next sort, and thinks they raise fewer drones than ordinary bees. He recommends, as likely to be a profitable breed, a cross of these with our own variety.

3. Heath Bees.—This is a race of a very different character, deriving its name from the district known as Luneburg Heath, and found also about Oldenburg, Schleswig, and Holstein. In form and appearance Heath bees are wholly identical with our own, but they seem like bees in a lower state of civilisation, perpetually swarming without occasion and with unmanageable impulse, and producing principally drones and drone comb even with a queen of the first year. "Undoubtedly," says Von Berlepsch, "this is by far the worst kind of bee existing in Germany."

4. Greek or Cecropian Bees.—In some particulars these are like a cross between the Italian and common bees. The queen is dark bronze on the abdomen as far as the second scale, but the common colour above. Most of the workers have a ring and a half of bronze or a reddish rust-colour; some have two entire rings of this hue. They are stated to be more industrious and productive than common bees, and the drones to be smaller.

This and the two previous varieties we thus briefly notice on the basis of the remarks of Von Berlepsch. We are not aware that either of them has been introduced into this country, nor do they appear to have attained much success in Germany. Thus humorously does our author dismiss this last: "Since 1864, when Deumer sounded his trumpet with distended cheeks, we have heard not so much as a last dying speech from the Cecropian bee, and she seems already in Germany to have gone the way of all flesh. May the earth lie lightly on her!"

5 and 6. Cyprian and Smyrnæan Bees.—"A Country Doctor" writes in the British Bee Journal that he had prepared a translation from the Bienenzeitung of an article by Herr Corri, in which he speaks most highly of the good qualities of the Cyprian bees, and considers them in advance of any other bee that he has cultivated. In this opinion he is borne out by Count Rudolph Kolowrat of Tabor.

"It so frequently happens," proceeds the correspondent, "that the last pet receives the highest honours, and we are so apt to believe that that must have special value which has cost considerable pains to obtain, that a certain amount of caution is advisable in receiving these enthusiastic statements. Herr Corri's opinion, however, is deserving of the highest respect; for both he and the Count have been most perseveringly engaged for many years past in importing various races of bees from their native lands, and making comparative observations as to their merits, and this without being biased by the expectation of commercial gain.

"The bees got from Smyrna (1864) seem to stand next in their estimation. Both the originally imported stocks, and those subsequently raised from them, presented, however, a certain number of black bees, and after the most painstaking attempts to breed them pure the results remained the same. The conclusion come to was that they were of a mixed race."

Our own experience tallies very much with this opinion. We imported from Germany stocks of both the Cyprian and Smyrnæan bees, and exhibited them at the bee shows of the British Bee Association. Previous to doing so we submitted specimens to Mr. F. Smith of the British Museum, and he reported favourably of them—that although resembling the Italian (Apis ligustica), the Cyprian were clearly of a different species, but more nearly approaching the Egyptian (A. fasciata): they certainly possessed the irascible qualities so distinctive of the Egyptians, and used their stilettoes unmercifully on some of the gentlemen connected with the show. We have not been sufficiently enamoured of them to pursue their cultivation further. The resemblance is so close to those bees already domiciled here that we see no special advantage to be gained by doing so.

7. Asiatic Bees.—This bee (Apis dorsata) is a distinct species; it is larger than our own, and exists in a wild state in the woods of India. Mr. Woodbury made considerable exertions to have a colony brought to England, but without success. The stings of these bees, are more formidable than those of the varieties possessed here, and except as a matter of curiosity we can see nothing to recommend their introduction.

8. Egyptian Bees.—These bees, though called Apis fasciata, are considered by many as a variety of the same species as ordinary bees. They are rather smaller and slenderer than our own and the Italian, though closely resembling the latter in appearance. They have white hairs all about them, and the first two and a half rings of the abdomen are of a reddish yellow. The drones are also well marked with similar rings, and the queen is even more beautiful than the Italian. Baron von Berlepsch recommends crossing the handsomest Italian queens with Egyptian drones, with a view solely to the æsthetic purpose of raising the most beautiful breed of bees to be obtained.

The German apiarian Herr Vogel has given special attention to this variety, and has discovered in it some interesting peculiarities. It never gathers propolis, but uses wax in its place; and it seems almost proof against the cold. But the most singular fact that has come to his knowledge is that there exist regularly in an Egyptian colony some twelve or so small drone-laying queens, which would be called fertile workers but that they have a distinctive appearance, consisting in the waxen yellow of their breasts—a feature which is possessed also by the drones of their progeny. This is assuredly one of the most curious discoveries that have ever been made in relation even to this most curious of insects.

The late Mr. Woodbury imported some of these bees, but found them exceedingly vicious, and really to possess no superiority over our English bees. Some years since Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins, the naturalist, bought a stock of Mr. Woodbury, and brought them with him in order to place in the Horticultural Gardens at South Kensington. Being unacquainted with the placing of bees, he asked our aid in doing so. From the experience of them thereby acquired our own idea would be that no one could ever desire such bees; they came out with a rush, and stung everybody within reach, right and left, who was not provided with a veil.[12] This is the kind of bee found in Palestine, and therefore the one which Samson found in the carcase of the lion.

[12] Vogel says, that this bee never stings unless incensed, "but then quite maliciously;" also that it is only more irritated by tobacco smoke, but is effectually subdued by that from willow touchwood.

In connection with this species, the Rev. H. B. Tristram, in his valuable book, "The Land of Israel," has an interesting account of the bees in that country. In Palestine bee-keeping is an important item of industry, and every house has a pile of beehives in its yard. Their bee, he says, "is amazingly abundant, both in hives, in rocks, and in old hollow trees. It is smaller than our ordinary bees, with brighter yellow bands on the thorax and abdomen, which is rather wasp like in shape, and with very long antennæ. In its habits, and especially in the immense population of neuters in each community, and in the drones cast forth in autumn, it resembles the other species. Its sting also is quite as sharp. The hives are very simple, consisting of large tubes of sun-dried mud, like gas-pipes, about four feet long, and closed with mud at each end, leaving only an aperture in the centre large enough for two or three bees to pass at a time. The insects appear to frequent both doors equally. The tubes are laid in rows horizontally, and piled in a pyramid. I counted one of these colonies, consisting of seventy-eight tubes, each a distinct hive. Coolness being the great object, the whole is thickly plastered over with mud and covered with boughs, white a branch is stuck in the ground at each end to assist the bees in alighting. At first we took these singular structures for ovens or hen-houses. The barbarous practice of destroying the swarms for their honey is unknown. When the hives are full the clay is removed from the ends of the pipes, and the honey extracted with an iron hook; those pieces of comb which contain young bees being carefully replaced, and the hives then closed up again. Everywhere during our journey we found honey was always to be purchased; and it is used by the natives for many culinary purposes, and especially for the preparation of sweet cakes. It has the delicate aromatic flavour of the thyme-scented honey of Hybla or Hymettus.

"But, however extensive are the bee colonies of the villages, the number of wild bees of the same species is far greater. The innumerable fissures and clefts of the limestone rocks, which everywhere flank the valleys, afford in their recesses secure shelter for any number of swarms; and many of the Bedouin, particularly in the wilderness of Judæa, obtain their subsistence by bee-hunting, bringing into Jerusalem jars of that wild honey on which John the Baptist fed in the wilderness, and which Jonathan had long before unwittingly tasted, when the comb had dropped on the ground from the hollow tree in which it was suspended. The visitor to the Wady Kurn, when he sees the busy multitudes of bees about its cliffs, cannot but recall to mind the promise, 'With honey out of the stony rock would I have satisfied thee.' There is no epithet of the Land of Promise more true to the letter, even to the present day, than this, that it was 'a land flowing with milk and honey.'"

The question as to the worth or worthlessness of the above respective varieties is not yet so decided a matter as it is with the Italians. Those interested in the sale of a particular race will praise it up, while those who have had a single disappointment with it will run it down—and that is nearly the sum of the experience to be gathered from current literature. Thus we find Dathe announcing, "I have discontinued the rearing of Cyprian, Egyptian, and Carniolan bees." That is intelligible; but in the same paper we read, "Between the German and Heath bees there is no particular difference"—which so staggers us after Von Berlepsch's vituperations of the latter that we do not know how much confidence we ought to place in the rest of the sentence, which is given as the summing up of a discussion in that famous bee country, Silesia: "The Egyptian bee ranks after the German and Italian; the Carniolan, at the expense of honey, produces many bees; the Cyprians are diligent, but quite inclined to sting. The Herzegovinian bee is praised. Bees obtained by judicious crossing have the preference over the pure races."

Numbers of other varieties may be expected to crop up from time to time, as for instance the one last named. Della Rocca in the last century spoke of a "dawn-coloured" bee that was brought from Holland and Belgium, and which is probably one of the races included with the Italian. Dr. Gerstäcker thus classifies the varieties: The North European (now spread all over the world), the Italian with black breasts, the Italian with yellow breasts, the Egyptian, the African, and the Madagascar. Three South Asiatic bees he regards as specifically distinct—Apis dorsata, indica, and florea. Mr. F. Smith adds zonata and nigrocincta, and inclines to make a species of fasciata (the Egyptians).

§ VII. FACULTIES AND FUNCTIONS.

It would be trenching too much upon our limits if we were to venture into the inviting field to which this heading might introduce us. Still the extreme interest of the subject renders it perhaps desirable that some succinct allusion should be made to it, even if it be for little more than to remark that the information we have to give is scattered through other sections and chapters. Especially as some might be disposed to skip the unattractive portion on "Anatomy and Physiology," it may be well to state here that in the second section of that chapter will be found a brief account of the sight and other senses of bees, and of the uses of their antennæ, by which they seem to feel, hear, smell, and communicate. A remark upon their power of distinguishing colours, and its practical value, will be found in connection with our description of bee-houses for twelve hives ([Chap. IV. § i.]). On the senses of taste and smell we have some further observations in the sections of [Chapter VI]. upon "Stings," "Robbing," and "Bee-keeping in London."

For the functions and habits of bees we must also refer to the passages already instanced, as well as to the sections above on the "The Queen," etc., that on "The Rationale of Swarming" ([page 72]), and to those in Chapter VI. on the four substances which bees collect or secrete, as well as (though in a less degree) to those headed "Pasturage" and "General Remarks." Those who will favour our book with a consecutive reading will, we trust, find at the conclusion that all the more important and interesting facts of this class are in one or other of these places tolerably though briefly described.

The service that bees perform to flowers is a subject that has attracted much attention of late years. As every one knows, or should know, a flower has its stamens and pistils, which are respectively its male and female organs, and the pollen contained in the anthers, or little knobs on the summits of the stamens, must be conveyed to the pistils, or no seed will be produced. When the anthers burst; the pollen might happen to fall partly on the pistils, or it might not; but the visits of bees (though they do not roll about in the flower, in the manner that some have stated) are found by experience to be efficacious in conveying this dust to the right spot. Owners of fruit trees have noticed, in a season generally unfavourable to the orchard, that if during only one fine forenoon the bees had spread freely amongst the blossoms of a particular tree, that tree would prove more fruitful than its fellows. On this account the orchard is a good place for the apiary, for it seems that the more abundant the honey the better will be the crop of fruit. The whole subject is scientifically treated in Mr. Darwin's remarkable book, "The Fertilisation of Orchids," but we must add to the foregoing how much more urgent are the services of bees in the case of what are termed monœcious and diœcious plants, the former of which have the stamens and pistils in different flowers, and the latter have these flowers upon different roots. A familiar example of the former is found in the nut tree, whose long catkins, hanging like caterpillars in the early spring, are assemblages of male flowers; while the females, from which the nuts develop, may be detected by their crimson pistil-tips (stigmas), and grow in stalkless clusters of two or three in the openings of remote scaly buds. But for the visits or bees, our autumn nutting rambles would thus have but little prospect of success. In the second case, often very considerable distances intervene between the two flowers; for instance, with the common dog mercury (Mercurialis perennis), a botanist may find plantation after plantation containing male flowers by thousands, but not a single female; and at length in some far-off spot he may succeed in finding the females, equally by themselves, yet in full seed. In these cases there is nothing but the visits of pollen-gathering insects which can convey the fertilising dust to the flower for which it is designed. And according to Mr. Darwin all plants are practically diœcious, for he states that the pollen, to have a fertilising effect, must be brought to the pistils of one flower from the stamens of one on another root. Whether this be considered established or not, there remains the fact of the existence of diœcious plants as explaining the admirable design of the provision that a bee in the course of one flight shall gather pollen solely from one species. As far as honey-gathering is concerned the bee is not governed by this rule; but for this other important function it becomes absolutely essential that the right pollen, and that only, should be conveyed to the right flower. The careful observer may note how the dust on the bodies of bees varies from yellow to red and brown according to the kind of flowers from which it has been gathered, and the "socks," as the Germans call them, on the two hind legs will be found always of the same colour.

To no scientific man are we probably more indebted for observations and deductions upon this branch than to Sir John Lubbock. Whilst this edition was in course of preparation it was the writer's privilege to listen to a lecture upon "Relations of Plants and Insects" delivered by this able investigator before the Society of Arts; and the lecture has since been published as a paper in the Fortnightly Review of April 1877. In the course of his remarks Sir John cited many interesting particulars of the ways in which flowers are protected from the incursions of ants, whose visits would be harmful, both from their rifling the stores from the bees, by whom alone they are likely to be fertilised, and from the liability of the latter to desert any species in which their tender probosces were in danger of being seized by ants—it being the nature of an ant to grapple any pointed thing directed towards her. Kerner was referred to as having observed some of the modes by which such results are obviated. In some cases there are chevaux de frise around the flower, in the form of hairs pointing downwards, or other barriers which the ant cannot penetrate or surmount: notably in the corn bluebottle, which is smooth all over except just beneath the flower, and in the thicket heads of some thistles. In others there are glutinous parts which the ant cannot traverse, as was noticed in the Polygonum amphibium, which, when it grows on land, has sticky glands at the extremities of certain hairs, while when in the water, where it is safe already, it is perfectly smooth. Again, there are pendulous flowers, like the snowdrop, which are so slippery on the surface that an ant would immediately slide off, as was humorously illustrated by a sketch prepared with several others by the lecturer's daughter. Facts were also stated showing how the pollen is sometimes preserved by the closing of certain flowers at times when winged insects were not on the move, and the exclusion thereby of such as would not aid in the work of fructification. "It is not too much to say," as Sir John elsewhere expresses himself ("British Wild Flowers in Relation to Insects "), "that if on the one hand flowers are in many cases necessary to insects, insects on the other hand are still more necessary to the very existence of flowers; that if insects have been in many cases modified and adapted with a view to obtain honey and pollen from flowers, flowers in their turn owe their scent and colour, their honey, and even their distinctive forms, to the action of insects."

"And plains sad Chloris how these spoilers steal

From her ripe crests the vivifying meal,

Pare the thin films that shield her anthered reign,

And all her nectared cells insatiate drain?

No! kind intruders; all reserved for you

She pours through honeyed horn her luscious dew,

While, grateful for the rich repast, ye shed