It is very natural that the “Bee” should interest the majority of us, so many agreeable and attractive associations being connected with the name. It is immediately suggestive of spring, sunshine, and flowers,—meadows gaily enamelled, green lanes, thymy downs, and fragrant heaths. It speaks of industry, forethought, and competence,—of well-ordered government, and of due but not degrading subordination. The economy of the hive has been compared by our great poet to the polity of a populous kingdom under monarchical government. He says:—

Nothing escaped the wonderful vision of this “myriad-minded” man, and its pertinent application.

This description, although certainly not technically accurate, is a superb broad sketch, and shows how well he was acquainted with the natural history and habits of the domestic bee.

The curiosity bees have attracted from time immemorial, and the wonders of their economy elicited by the observation and study of modern investigators, is but a grateful return for the benefits derived to man from their persevering assiduity and skill. It is the just homage of reason to perfect instinct running closely parallel to its own wonderful attributes. Indeed, so complex are many of the operations of this instinct, as to have induced the surmise of a positive affinity to reason, instead of its being a mere analogy, working blindly and without reflection. The felicity of the adaptation of the hexagonal waxen cells, and the skill of the construction of the comb to their purposes, has occupied the abstruse calculations of profound mathematicians; and since human ingenuity has devised modes of investigating, unobserved, the various proceedings of the interior of the hive, wonder has grown still greater, and admiration has reached its climax.

The intimate connection of “Bees” with nature’s elegancies, the Flowers, is an association which links them agreeably to our regard, for each suggests the other; their vivacity and music giving animation and variety to what might otherwise pall by beautiful but inanimate attractions. When we combine with this the services bees perform in their eager pursuits, our admiration extends beyond them to their Great Originator, who, by such apparently small means, accomplishes so simply yet completely, a most important object of creation.

That bees were cultivated by man in the earliest conditions of his existence, possibly whilst his yet limited family was still occupying the primitive cradle of the race at Hindoo Koosh, or on the fertile slopes of the Himalayas, or upon the more distant table-land or plateau of Thibet, or in the delicious vales of Cashmere, or wherever it might have been, somewhere widely away to the east of the Caspian Sea,—is a very probable supposition. Accident, furthered by curiosity, would have early led to the discovery of the stores of honey which the assiduity of bees had hoarded;—its agreeable savour would have induced further search, which would have strengthened the possession by keener observation, and have led in due course to the fixing them in his immediate vicinity.

To this remote period, possibly not so early as the discovery of the treasures of the bee, may be assigned also the first domestication of the animals useful to man, many of which are still found in those districts in all their primitive wildness. The discovery and cultivation of the cereal plants will also date from this early age. The domestication of animals has never been satisfactorily explained, but all inquiry seems to point to those regions as the native land, both of them, and of the gramineÆ, which produce our grain; for Heinzelmann, LinnÆus’s enthusiastic disciple, found there those grasses still growing wild, which have not been found elsewhere in a natural state.

Thus, long before the three great branches of the human race, the Aryan, Shemitic, and Turonian, took their divergent courses from the procreative nest which was to populate the earth, and which Max MÜller proposes to call the Rhematic period, they were already endowed from their patrimony with the best gifts nature could present to them; and they were thus fitted, in their estrangement from their home, with the requirements, which the vicissitudes they might have to contend with in their migrations, most needed. They would eventually have settled into varying conditions, differently modified by time acting conjunctively with climate and position, until, in the lapse of years, and the changes the earth has since undergone, the stamp impressed by these causes, which would have been originally evanescent, became indelible. That but one language was originally theirs, the researches of philology distinctly prove, by finding a language still more ancient than its Aryan, Shemitic, and Turonian derivatives. From this elder language these all spring, their common origin being deduced from the analogies extant in each. These investigations are confirmed by the Scriptural account that “The whole earth was of one language and of one speech,” previous to the Flood, and it describes the first migration as coincident with the subsidence of the waters.

That violent cataclysms have since altered the face of the then existing earth, the records of geological science amply show; and that some of mankind, in every portion of the then inhabited world, survived these catastrophes, and subsequently perpetuated the varieties of race, may be inferred from those differences in moral and physical features which now exist, and which have sometimes suggested the impossibility of a collective derivation from one stock. The philological thread, although generally a mere filament of extreme tenuity, holds all firmly together.

That animals had been domesticated in a very early stage of man’s existence, we have distinct proof in many recent geological discoveries, and all these discoveries show the same animals to have been in every instance subjugated; thus pointing to a primitive and earlier domestication in the regions where both were originally produced. That pasture land was provided for the sustenance of these animals, they being chiefly herbivorous, is a necessary conclusion. Thence ensues the fair deduction that phanerogamous, or flower-bearing plants coexisted, and bees, consequently, necessarily too,—thus participating reciprocal advantages, they receiving from these plants sustenance, and giving them fertility.

These islands, under certain modifications, were, previous to the glacial period, one land with the continent of Europe; and it was when thus connected that those many tropical forms of animal life, whose fossil remains are found embedded in our soil, passed hither. By the comparatively rapid intervention of geological changes, some of the lower forms of life went no further than the first land they reached, and are, consequently, not even now to be found so far west as Ireland: the migration appears clearly to have come from the East. Thus, although we have no direct evidence of the presence of “bees,” yet as insects must have existed here, from the certainty that the remains of insect-feeding reptiles are found, as well as those of herbivorous animals, it may be concluded that “bees” also abounded.

Claiming thus this very high antiquity for man’s nutritive “bee,” which was of far earlier utility to him than the silkworm, whose labours demanded a very advanced condition of skill and civilization to be made available; it is perfectly consistent, and indeed needful, to claim the simultaneous existence of all the bee’s allies. The earliest Shemitic and Aryan records, the Book of Job, the Vedas, Egyptian sculptures and papyri, as well as the poems of Homer, confirm the early cultivation of bees by man for domestic uses; and their frequent representation in Egyptian hieroglyphics, wherein the bee occurs as the symbol of royalty, clearly shows that their economy, with a monarch at its head, was known; a hive, too, being figured, as Sir Gardner Wilkinson tells us, upon a very ancient tomb at Thebes, is early evidence of its domestication there, and how early, even historically, it was brought under the special dominion of mankind. To these particulars I shall have occasion to refer more fully when the course of my narrative brings me to treat of the geographical distribution of the “honey-bee;” I adduce it now merely to intimate how very early, even in the present condition of the earth, bees were beneficial to mankind, and that, therefore, the connection may have subsisted, as I have previously urged, in the remotest and very primitive ages of the existence of man; and that imperatively with them, the entire family of which they form a unit only, was also created.

In America, where Apis mellifica is of European introduction, swarms of this bee, escaping domestication, resume their natural condition, and have pressed forward far into the uncleared wild; and widely in advance of the conquering colonist, they have taken their abode in the primitive, unreclaimed forest. Nor do they remain stationary, but on, still on, with every successive year, spreading in every direction; and thus surely indicating to the aboriginal red-man the certain, if even slow, approach of civilization, and the consequent necessity of his own protective retreat:—a strong instance of the distributive processes of nature. It clearly shows how the wild bees may have similarly migrated in all directions from the centre of their origin. That they are now found at the very ultima Thule, so far away from their assumed incunabula, and with such apparent existing obstructions to their distributive progress, is a proof, had we no other, that the condition of the earth must have been geographically very different at the period of their beginning, and that vast geological changes have, since then, altered its physical features. Where islands now exist, these must then have formed portions of widely sweeping continents; and seas have been dry land, which have since swept over the same area, insulating irregular portions by the submergence of irregular intervals, and thus have left them in their present condition, with their then existing inhabitants restricted to the circuit they now occupy. That long periods of time must necessarily have elapsed to have effected this by the methods we still see in operation, is no proof that it has not been. Nature, in her large operations, has no regard for the duration of time. Her courses are so sure that they are ever eventually successful; for, as to her, whose permanency is not computable, it matters not what period the process takes; and she is as indifferent to the seconds of time whereby man’s brevity is spanned, as she is to the wastefulness of her own exuberant resources, knowing that neither is lost to the result at which she reaches. Consuming the one, and scattering broadcast the other, but in unnoticeable infinitesimals, she does it irrespective of the origin, the needs, or the duration of man, who can only watch her irrepressible advances by transmitting from generation to generation the record of his observations; marking thus by imaginary stations the course of the incessant stream which carries him upon its surface.

That other bees are found besides the social bees, may be new to some of my readers, who will perhaps now learn, for the first time, that collective similarities of organization and habits associate other insects with “the bee” as bees. Although the names “domestic bee,” “honey-bee,” or “social bee,” imply a contradistinction to some other “bee,” yet it must have been very long before even the most acute observers could have noticed the peculiarities of structure which constitute other insects “bees,” and ally the “wild bees” to the “domestic bee,” from the deficiency of artificial means to examine minutely the organization whereby the affinity is clearly proved. This is also further shown in the poverty of our language in vernacular terms to express them distinctively; for even the name of “wild bees,” in as far as it has been applied to any except the “honey-bee” in a wildered state, is a usage of modern introduction, and of date subsequent to their examination and appreciation. Our native tongue, in the words “bee,” “wasp,” “fly,” and “ant,” compasses all those thousands of different winged and unwinged insects, which modern science comprises in the two very extensive Orders in entomology of the Hymenoptera and the Diptera;—thus exhibiting how very poor common language is in words to note distinctive differences in creatures, even where the differences are so marked, and the habits so dissimilar, as in the several groups constituting these Orders. But progressively extending knowledge, and a more familiar intimacy with insects and their habits, will doubtless, in the course of time, supervene, as old aversions, prejudices, and superstitions wear out, when by the light of instruction we shall gradually arouse to perceive that “His breath has passed that way too;” and that, therefore, they all put forth strong claims to the notice and admiration of man.

It is highly improbable that ordinary language will ever find distinctive names to indicate genera, and far less species: and although we have some few words which combine large groups, such as “gnats,” “flesh-flies,” “gad-flies,” “gall-flies,” “dragon-flies,” “sand wasps,” “humble-bees,” etc. etc.; and, although the small group, it is my purpose in the following pages to show in all their attractive peculiarities, has had several vernacular denominations applied to them to indicate their most distinctive characteristics, such as “cuckoo-bees,” “carpenter bees,” “mason bees,” “carding bees,” etc., yet many which are not thus to be distinguished, will have to wait long for their special appellation.

The first breathings of spring bring forth the bees. Before the hedge-rows and the trees have burst their buds, and expanded their yet delicate green leaves to the strengthening influence of the air, and whilst only here and there the white blossoms of the blackthorn sparkle around, and patches of chickweed spread their bloom in attractive humility on waste bits of ground in corners of fields,—they are abroad. Their hum will be heard in some very favoured sunny nook, where the precocious primrose spreads forth its delicate pale blossom, in the modest confidence of conscious beauty, to catch the eye of the sun, as well as—

The yellow catkins of the sallow, too, are already swarmed around by bees, the latter being our northern representative of the palm which heralded “peace to earth and goodwill to man.” The bees thus announce that the business of the year has begun, and that the lethargy of winter is superseded by energetic activity.

The instinctive impulse of the cares of maternity prompt the wild bees to their early assiduity, urging them to their eager quest of these foremost indicators of the renewed year. The firstling bees are forthwith at their earnest work of collecting honey and pollen, which, kneaded into a paste, are to become both the cradle and the sustenance of their future progeny.

Wherever we investigate wonderful Nature, we observe the most beautiful adaptations and arrangements,—everywhere the correlations of structure with function; in confirmation of which I may here briefly notice in anticipation, that the bees are divided into two large groups,—the short-tongued and the long-tongued,—and it is the short-tongued,—some of the AndrenidÆ,—which are the first abroad; the corollÆ of the first flowers being shallow and the nectar depositories obvious, an arrangement which facilitates their obtaining with facility the honey already at hand. These bees are also amply furnished,—as will be afterwards explained,—in the clothing of their posterior legs, or otherwise, with the means to convey home the pollen which they vigorously collect, finding it already in superfluous abundance, and which, being borne from flower to flower, impregnates and makes fruitful those plants which require external agents to accomplish their fertility. Thus nature duly provides, by an interchange of offices, for the general good, and by simple, although sometimes obscure means, gives motion and persistency to the wheel within wheel which so exquisitely fulfil her designs, and roll forward, unremittingly, her stupendous fabric.

The way in which the bees execute this object and design of nature, and to which they, more evidently than any other insects, are called to the performance, is shown in the implanted instinct which prompts them to seek flowers, knowing, by means of that instinct, that flowers will furnish them with what is needful both for their own sustenance, and for that of their descendants. Flowers, to this end, are furnished with the requisite attractive qualifications to allure the bees. Whether their odour or their colour be the tempting vehicle, or both conjunctively, it is scarcely possible to say, but that they should hold out special invitation is requisite to the maintenance of their own perpetuity. This, it is supposed, the colour of flowers chiefly effects by being visible from a distance. Flowers, within themselves, indicate to the bees visiting them the presence of nectaria by spots coloured differently from their petals. This nectar, converted by bees into honey, is secreted by glands or glandulous surfaces, seated upon the organs of fructification; and nature has also furnished means to protect these depositories of honey for the bees, from the intrusive action of the rain, which might wash the sweet secretion away. To this end it has clothed the corollÆ with a surface of minute hairs, which effectually secures them from its obtrusive action, and thus displays the importance it attaches to the co-operation of the bees. That bees should vary considerably in size, is a further accommodation of nature to promote the fertilization of flowers, which, in some cases, small insects could not accomplish. Many plants could not be perpetuated, but for the agency of insects, and especially of bees; and it is remarkable that it is chiefly those which require the aid of this intervention that have a nectarium, and secrete honey. By thus seeking the honey, and obtaining it in a variety of ways, bees accomplish this great object of nature. It often, also, happens that flowers which even contain within themselves the means of ready fructification cannot derive it from the pollen of their own anthers, but require that the pollen should be conveyed to them from the anthers of younger flowers; in some cases the reverse takes place, as for instance, in the Euphorbia Cyparissias, wherein it is the pollen of the older flower which, through the same agency, fertilizes the younger. Although many flowers are night-flowers, yet the very large majority expand during the day; but to meet the requirements of those which bloom merely at night, nature has provided means by the many moths which fly only at that time, and thus accomplish what the bees perform under the eye of the sun. Here insects are again subservient to the accomplishment of this great act; for the petals of even the flowers which open in the night only are usually highly coloured, or where this not the case, they then emit a powerful odour, both being means to attract the required co-operation. But of course our clients have nothing to do with these night-blooming flowers, as I am not aware of a single instance of a night-flying bee; nor are they on the wing very late in the evening, being before sunset, already in their nidus. In those occasional cases where the nectarium of the flower is not perceptible, if the spur of such a flower which usually becomes the depository of the nectar that has oozed from the capsules secreting it, be too narrow for the entrance of the bee, and even beyond the reach of its long tongue, it contrives to attain its object by biting a hole on the outside, through which it taps the store. The skill of bees in finding the honey, even when it is much withdrawn from notice, is a manifest indication of the prompting instinct which tells them where to seek it, and is a matter of extreme interest to the observer, for the honey-marks—the maculÆ indicantes—surely guide them; and where these, as in some flowers, are placed in a circle upon its bosom, as the mark upon that of Imogen, who had—

they work their way around, lapping the nectar as they go. To facilitate this fecundation of plants, which is Nature’s prime object, bees are usually more or less hairy; so that if even they limit themselves to imbibing nectar, they involuntarily fulfil the greater design by conveying the pollen from flower to flower. To many insects, especially flies, some flowers are a fatal attraction, for their viscous secretions often make these insects prisoners, and thus destroy them. To the bees this rarely or never happens, either by reason of their superior strength, or possibly from the instinct which repels them from visiting flowers which exude so clammy a substance. It is probably only to the end of promoting fertilization by the attraction of insects that the structure of those flowers which secrete nectar is exclusively conducive, and which fully and satisfactorily explains the final cause of this organization.

To detect these things, it is requisite to observe nature out of doors,—an occupation which has its own rich reward in the health and cheerfulness it promotes,—and there to watch patiently and attentively. It is only by unremitting perseverance, diligence, and assiduity that we can hope to explore the interesting habits and peculiar industries of these, although small, yet very attractive insects.

Amongst the early blossoming flowers most in request with the bees, and which therefore seem to be great favourites, we find the chickweed (Alsine media), the primrose, and the catkins of the sallow; and these in succession are followed by all the flowers of the spring, summer, and autumn. Their greatest favourites would appear to be the AmentaceÆ, or catkin-bearing shrubs and trees, the willow, hazel, osier, etc., from the male flowers of which they obtain the pollen, and from the female the honey; all the RosaceÆ, especially the dog-rose, and PrimulaceÆ, the OrchideÆ, CaryophyllaceÆ, PolygoneÆ, and the balsamic lilies; clover is very attractive to them, as are also tares; and the spots on those leaves of the bean which appear before the flower, and exude a sweet secretion; also the flowers of all the cabbage tribe. Beneath the shade of the lime, when in flower, may be heard above one intense hum of thrifty industry. The blossoms of all the fruit-trees and shrubs, standard or wall, and all aromatic plants are highly agreeable to them, such as lavender, lemon-thyme, mignonette, indeed all the resedas; also sage, borage, etc. etc.; but the especial favourites of particular genera and species I shall have occasion subsequently to notice in their series; but to mention separately all the flowers they frequent would be to compile almost a complete flora. Bees are also endowed with an instinct that teaches them to avoid certain plants that might be dangerous to them. Thus, they neither frequent the oleander (Nerium Oleander) nor the crown imperial (Fritillaria imperialis), and they also avoid the RanunculaceÆ, on account of some poisonous property; and although the Melianthus major drops with honey, it is not sought. It is a native of the Cape of Good Hope, and may be attractive only to the bees indigenous to the country, which is also the case with other greenhouse plants equally rich in honey, but which not being natives, possibly from that cause the instincts of native insects have no affinity with them.

Bees may be further consorted with flowers by the analogy and parallelism of their stages of existence. Thus, the egg is the equivalent to the seed; the larva to the germination and growth; the pupa to the bud; and the imago to the flower. The flower dies as soon as the seed is fully formed, which is then disseminated by many wonderful contrivances to a propitious soil; and the wild bees die as soon as the store of eggs is as wonderfully deposited, according to their several instincts, in fitting receptacles, and provision furnished to sustain the development of the progeny. Thus, each secures perpetuity to its species, but individually ceases; whereas the unfecundated plant and the celibate insect may, severally, prolong for a short but indefinite period, a brief existence, to terminate in total extinction. Nature thus vindicates her rights, for nothing remains sterile with impunity.