70 The authentic charm of Vateria is in the harmonious action of its spirit of conscious competence. That spirit of competence turns to the best human uses its hard-won material gain, and turns again the energy drawn from mental and moral freedom back into the conduct of affairs. The reasoned appreciation of such sturdy, self-complete civic entities is worth encouraging in America to-day. Too often is the City Beautiful held to be a matter of parkways, fountains, groupings, and vistas. Let us rather learn to see the quality of beauty where there is lucid excellence of civic and industrial performance. THE HONEY-BEE1 A. E. SHIPLEY, F. R. S. THE Social life of the honey-bee (Apis mellifica) is more complex than that of any other animal save man, and in some respects the differentiation of the units which compose the society surpasses anything we can recognize in human economy. Among other bees and wasps the future of the race is wrapped up throughout the winter months in the body of one fertilized female; should she die, the particular race is at an end; but the honey-bee colony lives through the winter and is permanent, or at any rate potentially permanent. Although a “queen” is cherished, the life of the hive is socialistic. No private property exists; "all is the state's; the state provides for all.” In devotion to duty, in single-mindedness of purpose, in energy expended for others, in whole-hearted devotion to the welfare of the community which shelters her, the worker-bee is unique. As every one knows, the inhabitants of a hive comprise three ranks of bees. (i) The queen, as a rule but one at a time, is very literally the mother of her people, for she alone lays eggs; with rare ex(ii) the workers, in structure females, though ceptions never laying eggs, but doing with tireless energy the work of the hive; (iii) the drones or males, absolutely use 1 From the Edinburgh Review, January, 1914. Reprinted by permission. less except that amongst them will be found one probably the strongest who fertilizes the queen-bee. Let us consider for a brief space the activities of these varying ranks. A hive has swarmed that is to say, a number of workers, together with a smaller number of drones and the existing queen, have left the hive and are hanging clustered together in a mass of moving insects, perhaps as small as a cricket ball, perhaps five feet in height and at its widest a foot or more in diameter. The swarm either finds a new home for itself in a hollow tree, or more usually is "hived" by a beemaster in a skip. After cleaning out and if necessary smoothing the walls of their new home, the worker bees immediately begin the formation of the new combs. An uppermost row of bees clasps the roof of the hive with their fore legs supporting other rows below them, until we find a living veil of bees hanging from the roof of the hive. All these bees are secreting wax on the wax plates of their abdomens. To produce this they must previously have produced much honey. Latter tells us that to produce one pound of wax fifteen pounds of honey must be eaten. Right and left of this veil of bees will be parallel veils engaged in forming other combs so accurately spaced that ultimately the empty plane between two finished combs is just wide enough to allow two bees to pass each other. The topmost row of bees, after kneading and moulding the wax with their jaws (mandibles), press it in a line along the roof to form a foundation for the comb. This of course is an upside-down foundation, for bees construct their comb from above downwards. More wax is then supplied by the hanging bees below and passed forward to the builders of the foundation. As soon as the foundation is secured, the living veil disintegrates and the constituent bees begin to work independently at the building of the comb. No bee or group of bees works at one cell or group of cells; always fresh workers are coming and fastening their mite of wax to one or the other part of the comb. All seems unorganized, undirected, confused, and without guidance. There is no foreman builder; there is no experience, for many of the builders have scarcely emerged from the pupa stage for three days; there is no means even of seeing, for the inside of a hive is pitch dark. Yet the bees produce with machine-like rapidity and mathematical accuracy a cell so uniform in size that "at the time when the decimal system was established, and a fixed measure sought in nature as a starting-point and an incontestable standard, it was proposed by Réaumur to select for this purpose the cell of the bee." Bees, and wasps also, have learned that to obtain most space with the use of the least material and consequently least labor, the columnar cells should be six-sided in cross-section. The vertical comb of bees consists of two layers of cells back to back. The bottom of each cell is a three-sided pyramid, just the shape that is seen when the eighth part of a cube is removed; on the six edges thus shown the six sides of the cell arise. The walls of the cells are not of uniform thickness; they become thinner as they near the mouth, which, however, has a thickened rim. These cells are all of one size and serve as the homes of the young workers and for the storing of the collected pollen and honey. But after some weeks the inhabitants of the hive begin to think of rearing drones and queens. Appropriate cells for these are now prepared. The drone-cell has to accommodate a bigger larva than the worker-cell and is correspondingly bigger and about one-third deeper, but except in size the difference is negligible. Among wild honey-bees, drone-cells are often placed in special drone-combs, but in the artificial hive these cells are intermingled with the worker-cells. They are, to begin with, very few in number, usually four or five; thirty seems almost to be a record in a flourishing colony. All trace of a six-sided column disappears; the cell is cylindrical inside, but irregular and often marked with the scars of worker-cells outside. The cell is about the size of an acorn; the wall is very stout, two to three millimeters thick, and the mouth opens downwards. As a rule these queen-cells stand out from under the edge of the worker-comb, rarely are they found on the drone's comb. The worker-cells are used over and over again for successive breeds 1 Maeterlinck, The Life of the Bee, translated by Alfred Sutro, p. 189. of these undeveloped females, and the same is true of the dronecells; but as soon as the young queen has emerged from the royal-cell, it is broken up and the wax is carried off to be used elsewhere. The "middle-plate" between the two layers of cells of one comb is separated from the "middle-plate" of the next comb by a space of 35 mm. The depth of each brood-cell is 12.5 mm., and this leaves a space between each adjacent comb of 10 mm., room enough for the bees to pass back to back as they run over the open mouths of the cells tending the inmates. But since when filling or emptying the honey-cells there is no need for the bees to pass one another, the honey-cells are deeper (16-17 mm.), and the space between them is consequently narrowed, and the bulky queen-bee cannot traverse it. The rate of growth of the comb depends on the rate of growth of the colony, and often it happens that the lower part is left in an incomplete state. A young comb is white, translucent, very brittle, but it soon hardens and toughens. The larva housed in each cell before turning into the cocoon spins a silken sac. When she emerges from the cell as a perfect insect, she leaves this sac behind her, and although the vacated cell is at once and carefully cleaned out, this silken sac is suffered to remain, and so with each new occupant of the cell the number of sacs increases, adding greatly to the strength of the comb. The cells of old combs and combs are often years old may contain dozens of these silken webs, and although each is of extreme tenuity, their accumulated bulk often necessitates the enlargement of the cell if it is to accommodate further larvæ. The cell covers of the worker and drone brood-cells are convex and are easily distinguished from the flat caps of the honey-cells. One of the constant cares of the ever-busy bee is that of keeping the comb in repair, and constant reparation is needed. Another duty is to keep it clean. As soon as a cell is empty, it is "swept and garnished." Dust, fungi, dead bees, old remains of food, the dejecta of the queen and of the drones, are all removed by the workers. In fact these indefatigable spinsters enjoy, as they deserve to do, a perpetual spring-cleaning, so dear to the female heart. One other substance besides honey and pollen is brought by the workers into the hive, and that is the gummy, sticky exudation of certain trees for instance, that of the horse-chestnut buds. This propolis, as it is called, is never stored in cells. It is used to stop crannies in the hive and so prevent draughts; sometimes it is plastered nearly all over the inner wall, and at other times invading snails or moths or even mice, which are too big for the bees to remove, find a sticky sepulture entombed in propolis within the hive: -- "And with their stores of gather'd glue contrive No bird-lime, no Idean pitch, produce A more tenacious mass of clammy juice." -VIRGIL, Fourth Georgic. An average hive will contain some 30,000 workers, 2000 drones, and one queen, but in a strongly stocked community these numbers may be doubled or even trebled. The queen alone lays eggs and is a fully functional female; she is bigger than the worker, and her abdomen is enlarged to accommodate her enormous ovary which pours forth a ceaseless flow of eggs. The hind legs of the queen are devoid of those modifications which enable the worker to collect and store the pollen; the wax glands again are reduced and apparently never used. The drone is the male; he is bigger than the workers and the queen, and is more stoutly built; his hairs are densely placed and short, his eyes are so large that they meet on the top of the head, the hind legs have no modifications for pollen collecting, etc., the antennæ have an extra joint; his hum is deeper and louder than that of the workers. He has altogether a stronger and more virile organism, and yet, with the sole exception of fertilizing the queen, he does absolutely nothing helpful in the life of the hive. When the queen moves on her egg-laying progress, she first explores each empty cell with her antennæ, putting her head |