—­Baldwin:  Essential Lessons in Human Physiology.

THE QUEEN BEE

It is a singular fact, also, that the queen is made, not born.  If the entire population of Spain or Great Britain were the offspring of one mother, it might be found necessary to hit upon some device by which a royal baby could be manufactured out of an ordinary one, or else give up the fashion of royalty.  All the bees in the hive have a common parentage, and the queen and the worker are the same in the egg and in the chick; the patent of royalty is in the cell and in the food; the cell being much larger, and the food a peculiar stimulating kind of jelly.  In certain contingencies, such as the loss of the queen with no eggs in the royal cells, the workers take the larva of an ordinary bee, enlarge the cell by taking in the two adjoining ones, and nurse it and stuff it and coddle it, till at the end of sixteen days it comes out a queen.  But ordinarily, in the natural course of events, the young queen is kept a prisoner in her cell till the old queen has left with the swarm.  Not only kept, but guarded against the mother queen, who only wants an opportunity to murder every royal scion in the hive.  Both the queens, the one a prisoner and the other at large, pipe defiance at each other at this time, a shrill, fine, trumpetlike note that any ear will at once recognize.  This challenge, not being allowed to be accepted by either party, is followed, in a day or two, by the abdication of the old queen; she leads out the swarm, and her successor is liberated by her keepers, who, in her turn, abdicates in favor of the next younger.  When the bees have decided that no more swarms can issue, the reigning queen is allowed to use her stiletto upon her unhatched sisters.  Cases have been known where two queens issued at the same time, when a mortal combat ensued, encouraged by the workers, who formed a ring about them, but showed no preference, and recognized the victor as the lawful sovereign.  For these and many other curious facts we are indebted to the blind Huber.

It is worthy of note that the position of the queen cells is always vertical, while that of the drones and workers is horizontal; majesty stands on its head, which fact may be a part of the secret.

The notion has always very generally prevailed that the queen of the bees is an absolute ruler, and issues her royal orders to willing subjects.  Hence Napoleon the First sprinkled the symbolic bees over the imperial mantle that bore the arms of his dynasty; and in the country of the Pharaohs the bee was used as the emblem of a people sweetly submissive to the orders of its king.  But the fact is, a swarm of bees is an absolute democracy, and kings and despots can find no warrant in their example.  The power and authority are entirely vested in the great mass, the workers.  They furnish all the brains and foresight of the colony, and administer its affairs.  Their word is law, and both king and queen must obey.  They regulate the swarming, and give the signal for the swarm to issue from the hive; they select and make ready the tree in the woods and conduct the queen to it.