BEES AT WORK.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 4, 6 January 1937, Page 3

BEES AT WORK.

PERFECT COMMUNISM. ORGANISATION OF HIVE. GUARDS, ENGINEERS, NURSES. Those who live among bees have stories to tell which are almost incredible to the layman, for the organisation of a hive is, indeed, marvellous. All the workers so 'co-operate, each doing his own job, that the bees are described as the perrect communists. There are bee policemen, labourers, chemists, undertakers, nursemaids, airconditioning experts, and structural engineers. The community in the hive even has its loafer at the street corner, though even he, the drone, lias his uses. A hive is the busiest place imaginable, for in the honey season all the workers keep going from sunrise to sunset, without rest. Each makes six or eight trips a day to gather honey, and it takes 8,500,000 such beeline trips to gather a teacupful of honey. A bee never lives to eat the honey it gathers, subsisting on the work of a former generation. The worker lives about six weeks in the busy summer season. Queen and her Court. The queen is truly regal, with her court of a dozen workers to attend to her every want. But here is 110 life of case and idleness, for 011 her fecundity depend the life and happiness of the hive. In an average hive about 1000 workers die a day. and she. the mother of her r>o.ooo subjects, must keep up the numbers. Thus in her short life of three to five years she is incessantly laying eggs, up to 2000 a day in the busy season, and altogether about a million and a half. She eats three times her own weight every day. The court escorts her over the comb to the cells ready to receive eggs. These cells are built from wax which the bees make by secreting honey in the paired pockets under the last segments of the abdomen. It hardens on contact with the air, and is moulded by the masons of the hive into the precise sixsided cells—the strongest structure, and that which takes the least space known to geometricians. As the bees use 101b of honey to make lib of wax, the beekeepers strain away the honey and return the comb. Crime waves in the bee world require an efficient police force. At the door of the hive arc 15 to 20 jruards who turn away or sting to death stranger bees unless they bring a gift of honev. Ruthless rqids are made when a hive is short of honey. Attacking a smaller hive the invaders kill the queen and force the vanquished to take tlic'r own honey to the hive of the victors, then drive them out to starve. A h'vn without. a queen is lost, and in di'sp-iir they scattcr and wander about till death, barred bv the strictest immigration barriers from other hives. • Mechanical Staff. The next squad of bees, just through the entrance from the police, is the highly-specialised staff of air-condition-ing experts. By fanning their wings they create air currents which keep the interior atmosphere fresh, and help to evaporate surplus moisture from the honey, which is 70 per cent water when deposited. When it gets too cold the fanning squad can raise the temperature 20 degrees in ten minutes. Besides them there are undertakers, who remove the dead each morning, nursemaids, who feed the baby bees, and engineers who build the combs. Amazing instincts are displayed by the bees when they swarm. They raise a new queen in a special roomy round cell, feeding her on bee jelly. The worker, though of the same sex. is prevented from developing by being confined to a small cell and fed on bee bread, consisting mainly of pollen scraped off the hairy legs of the workers. When the new queen hatches, the old goes off with her following, and leaves the hive to the new. The virgin queens —there are several raised to provide against risk —fight to the death and the winner becomes queen of the hive. The swarm leaves in clouds and clusters 011 a branch or stump, where the beetceeper finds them and gives them a new hive. When the virgin queen is installed in the old hive the next business is mating. She flies away, followed by all the drones of the hive, soaring higher and 1 higher till all but the strongest drone is left behind. He fertilises her and dies, and all the other drones, barred from the hive, die. too. The queen returns to spend the rest of her life laying eggs. If she fails to return by sunset the whole hive, doomed to death, sets up a wail of woe. But if the beekeeper provides a new hive for the swarm which follows the old queen, the workers escort her in with glad song. ,