BEE NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1855, 10 June 1887, Page 8

BEE NOTES.

ABOUT BEES.

The beehive and its inmates afford, perhaps, a more interesting field for microscopic research than anything else in the whole insect kingdom. Take the bee's sting ; why that alone might occupy all the rest of this paper. The sheath makes the first wound, and, inside it, so managed that they enclose a tube-like space down which the poison runs, are two darts, all built in such a strictly mechanical way that — Mr Cheshire 3ays — they remind him of the guide rods of a steam engine. The poison is gummy, but it is prevented from clogging the machine by a gland which secretes a lubricating oil. The queen's sting is bigger than the worker's — drones have none — but it is practically barbless, and can therefore be easily brought away instead of being left in the wound, and thereby causing the death of its precious owner. It is a formidable weapon, the sheath so hard that it turns the finest razor-edge ; but a queen never stings except in contest with another queen; she may be handled with impunity.

Of a worker, it is a mistake to say that it always leaves its sting in the wound, and dies from the loss. If it generally does so, the fault often lies in your impatience ; bear it like a hero, and the bee will work its sting round and round till it is able to withdraw it without the impediment. Of course you get pierced deeper and deeper, but then, consider, the creature's life is saved by your suffering.

Our honey bees belong to the long-tongued division of the great bee family. Of long and short tongued together there are at least 212 species in England — according to those who delight in multiplying species — while of { the long-tongued we have 19 kinds, including the solitary leaf-cutter, which may sometimes be seen at work on a rose bush, and of • whose history the most marvellous fact is that the last-laid egg is first hatched, and by eating its way out, gives free egress to those behind.

The humble bees are social, but their little society does not last long. All die before winter, except a few females, some of whom on warm spring days you may see inside your window panes, growing more and more furious at not bing able to get out again.

Among our bees the workers survive, unless you take all their honey and neglect to feed them with proper syrup, or leave their hives unthatched during rain or severe cold. The drones are turned out, and often stung to death, soon after swarming is over. A queen will live four or even five years. But she never mates but onee — in her first youth ; and after a time the eggs she lays, being unimpregnated, produce only drones, which is equally the case with the eggs of queens who have never mated. The drone's cell is bigger, and the drone-grub gets a lot more food than the worker-grub, but food of the same kind, whereas the queen-grub is fed all through on what some writers call "royal jelly" — a mixture of honey and pollen — which its nurse has taken care to digest before giving it to the royal infant. All the grubs are fed on this at first — Mr Cheshire calls it "bee milk" — but drones and worker-grubs are weaned betimes, and have to put up with an unassimilated mixture of pollen and honey and water. — " All the Year Bound."

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