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Little Busybodies: The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, and Others

<h2>XIV</h2> <h3>A DAY'S HUNTING</h3> It was a glorious day after the night's storm. By five o'clock the children were ready to go hunting with Ben Gile. Although they were rather sleepy, yet they managed to get an early breakfast—five o'clock is an early breakfast, isn't it?—and by six o'clock they were off into the woods. Ben Gile made the children follow behind him in single file, and so in line, making as little noise as possible, they went through the woods. The birch-trees and poplars, in the midst of the darker, heavier foliage, seemed golden with the early sunlight. Everywhere the bushes sparkled with the rain of the night before. They took a path that ran almost in a curve around one entire side of the mountain. Ben Gile kept a sharp lookout, for the partridge, he knew, would be upon the ground or up in the trees. He pointed to several places where partridge had been scratching. The woods were full of them, and every minute he expected to hear the whir of their wings as they started up. And, sure enough, there was suddenly a loud beating of wings, and then, crack! crack! crack! from the shot-gun. Down came three plump partridges. Not more than ten minutes later the old man brought down three more. Then he let Jack, who was a good shot, take his gun, and down came two more. "Eight partridge," he exclaimed, "and quite enough for us all! We shoot only what we actually need for food, not a bird more. Oho! somebody else made a home here. Old Paw Bear has been tearing it out and licking his chops." The children leaned forward, looking eagerly. "What was it?" they asked. "Honey," said the guide. "Paw Bear has a sweet tooth for honey and berries." "I should think the bees would sting him," said Jimmie. "They do try to, but little he cares, with his thick coat of hair. Not a bit. The bees have another enemy, too, which is always hovering about to find a chance to get into the busy little house; that is the bee-moth. If she gets the least opportunity Mother Bee-Moth lays her eggs in the wax of the honeycomb, for the baby moths are very fond of wax. It's not an easy matter to get in when the bees are not looking, but she manages it quite often; and when the little larvas hatch out of the eggs, they eat the wax and the mischief is done. When Mother Bee-Moth is seen the bees rush upon her and sting her to death. They have good cause to hate her, for the wax is precious, hard to make and to mould into the little cells. It is not pleasant to have some miserable worm eat the roof from your head. Oftentimes the bees are so discouraged that they decide, as they talk it over in bee language, that it is easier to build a new home than to repair the old one. They settle upon an hour of departure, and off they go." "But I didn't know," said Betty, "that bees live in their hives; I thought that they just stored their honey there." "So did I," said Jimmie. It was Jack's time to smile, for, a country boy, he had often watched the hives. "Couldn't you tell us something, sir? Here's a bit of the cone left." "Do you want to hear?" "Oh, I think bees are so interesting!" Betty clapped her hands. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/illus-139.jpg" alt="LEAF-CUTTER BEE" title="" /> LEAF-CUTTER BEE</div> "Did you ever look closely at a bee? Their bodies are covered with hairs, unlike the hairs found on other insects, for each hair is a tiny plume. And their mouths, which they have to use for so many different things, are remarkably made; each part is formed to do a certain kind of work. First there are the strong biting jaws, then another pair of jaws joined to the lower lip, which move easily back and forth. This forms a sucking instrument, which the bees use for drinking nectar." "My," exclaimed Peter, "it must be convenient to have two pairs of jaws!" "On the head, too, are antennæ, which form little elbows, like those of the ant. With these the bee smells and feels. Some bees have short tongues, and usually live alone; others have long tongues, and generally live in colonies. Perhaps a long tongue makes an insect sociable, and perhaps sociability makes a tongue grow long." The children were looking at their tongues to see which had the longest. Peter scanned his anxiously. "Your tongue is awfully long, Pete," said Jack. "I know an interesting short-tongued bee who lives in a house by herself. Her name is Andrena. She bores a hole in the ground, digging out a wide hallway. From this she digs side passages, each one ending in a little closed room. The walls of these rooms are hard and shiny, like porcelain. When Andrena finishes her house she makes a nourishing paste of nectar and pollen. Pollen is the yellow powder from flowers. You know bees, by carrying about the pollen, help in fertilizing the flowers. But of this we shall learn more some day when we are talking about the flowers. This powder the bee packs down into the little rooms. Then she lays an egg on each pile of food and builds a door to shut the egg away safely." "Do bees always feed their children on nectar and pollen?" asked Hope. "Always," replied the old man. "They never feed their babies on other insects, as the ants and wasps do. Then there are the little short-tongued bees who live in apartments, the apartments all clustered together, with a common wide passageway into the ground and separate hallways. Around the main opening is an odd chimney, built on a slant, which prevents the rain from pouring into the open doorway." The children were wide-eyed with astonishment. That bees should build chimneys was more than they could believe! "Goodness!" said Jimmie, "if that is what a short-tongued bee can do, what can a long-tongued bee do?" "They are very clever. Some are carpenters, some masons, some miners, some tailors. The leaf-cutter bee makes a neat home, covering the walls with pretty, green leaves. First she digs a tunnel in a suitable branch of wood; then she goes to a rosebush, cuts out an oval piece of a rose leaf, and arranges it smoothly on the walls of the tunnel; cuts other oval pieces and puts them on, fastening the edges neatly together. In the bottom of the tunnel she puts some pollen paste, lays an egg on the paste, cuts some circular pieces of rose leaf, which she presses on the top of the egg and pollen, forming a green roof for the room and a floor for the room above. She puts in more food and another egg, until the tunnel is full of little rooms." "And what does the carpenter-bee do?" asked Jack, looking with new respect at the bit of honeycomb he held in his hand. "She makes doors of pith, and, like the tender mother she is, sits on top of the nest waiting for her babies to grow up. This is a most unusual thing for a bee mother to do. The egg at the very bottom of the tube hatches first, but it has to wait until the others hatch. By-and-by Mrs. Carpenter-Bee takes them all out for a sunny flight in the summer air." "And they never come back any more!" sang out Peter. "Indeed they do, you care-free youngster. The pith doors have been taken down, and they come back to put things in order. They clean house; they bring out every scrap piece by piece. There is a big carpenter-bee that makes its doors of chips of wood, usually neatly glued together. There is just one lazy bee in the world of which I know, and that is a visiting-bee." "Visiting-bees?" "Yes, the guest-bees, who visit their friends the year round, let their hosts wait upon them, and never help to keep anything clean or to collect nectar and pollen. Mrs. Guest-Bee even lays her eggs in Mrs. Bumblebee's nest, and when the guest babies hatch out, it is not their mother, but Mrs. Bumblebee, who feeds them from the food she has stored up for her own children. The guest-bees are so lazy that no little baskets are found on their legs for carrying pollen." "But aren't the bees ever idle?" asked Peter, whose conscience hurt him because he never liked to work. "No bee except the guest-bee and drone is ever idle. The happy-go-lucky bumblebee, which buzzes so near us on these warm summer days, is always on the go, although she is easy-going and happy-go-lucky. Mrs. Bumblebee isn't an over-particular person, as bee persons go. She is not a careful housekeeper, like her cousin Mrs. Honey-Bee, but she carries her own burdens just the same, and probably is as contented in her roughly made, untidy house as Mrs. Honey-Bee is in her beautifully neat one. Sometimes she has a nest as big as your head, with rooms in it of all sizes and shapes. She probably thinks the honey-bee family would get along just as well if they were a little less fussy, and probably she is right. Early in the spring Mrs. Bumblebee starts out house-hunting. When she finds the place she wants she puts some honey and pollen there, and lays an egg on the little pile. After a while the larvas come out of the eggs. When they have eaten what they want they make a cocoon, and curl up for a rest while they are being made into little workers. You know, the bee family is made up of the mother bee, who is called the queen, and many fathers, who are called drones; all the rest are workers." "That's something like the ants, sir, isn't it?" "Yes, something, Jack; but you mustn't tell that story yet. Every one of Mrs. Bumblebee's first family are workers. While the first workers are out getting food for their brothers and sisters, Mrs. Bumblebee takes the old cocoons which they have left behind and makes them over into rooms for the new babies, who are to be drones and queens. "They are very happy all summer long, but as it grows colder they begin to shiver and shake. At last all die except the young queens, who have crawled away from the nest and found a warm crack somewhere in which to take a long nap. When the spring comes the young queens rub their eyes, stretch their legs and wings, and are off looking for a home for their coming families." "But what kind of bee's-nest did old Paw Bear get into?" asked Hope. "This nest was a wild honey-bee's nest. Some honey-bees are wild this way, but most live close to the homes of men. When they live in our gardens they live in a hive we make for them, and the families consist of Mrs. Honey-Bee, the queen, about a hundred Mr. Honey-Bees, and many thousands of workers. The workers are the little bees, the drones the middle-sized ones, and the queen is the great big bee. "Men often help the workers to build the little cells in which they store the honey and in which the queen lays the eggs. These cells are six-sided rooms. Every day the queen lays an egg in one of the little rooms, and with it the workers put some pollen and honey. In three days out comes the larva from the egg. It is a helpless creature, soft and white, and without feet. "Busy, busy workers are always on hand to take the best care of the babies. The first food the nurses give them is bee jelly, which looks something like blanc-mange. This bee jelly the workers make in their stomach, then feed it from their own mouths into the baby mouths. After lunching a couple of days on bee jelly they are old enough to eat pollen and honey, which the workers get out of the six-sided rooms where they have packed it away. "These babies grow very quickly. Soon they are so long that they almost fill their rooms. Then the nurses put in some extra food, tuck in the babies, and make a roof of wax over each room. For a whole day the baby has to feed itself, shut away all alone; then it stops eating, and lies very quietly while it is being made into a real bee. In about thirteen days it splits its dried skin, in which it has been napping, gnaws a hole in the wax roof, and out it comes—a full-fledged bee. "But it is too new and young to go out in the big world yet, so for a few weeks it is kept busy in the hive nursing other baby bees. When it has grown stronger it leaves the hive, flying out over the sunny pastures in search of buttercups and clover heads. "Whenever the honey-bees want to make a queen they know just how to do it. You know, a queen is a very important person. A bee queen is like an ant queen, not the ruler of a kingdom, but the mother of many, many children. Since a queen is a person of such note, she must have a larger room than an ordinary worker, so they set to work and tear down the partitions between two or three cells. When the egg in the large room hatches the white larva is fed bee jelly, just like the little worker larva, but it is never given any pollen or honey. When it is five days old some jelly is put in the room with it and a roof is built over its head. For seven long days the baby stays here all alone, then it gnaws its way out, and, wonder of wonders, we have a queen instead of a worker! "Now, Mrs. Honey-Bee has been the queen of the family so long she is very angry to have a young queen hatch out, and does all she can to kill her. But the workers have spent much time and labor in making this queen, and they stand close around her to protect her from the jealous old queen. The honey-bee family, however, has grown so big that there is room for no new babies in the hive, and that is the reason that the workers have raised a new queen, so that she may start a new family. "There is not room in one house for two queens; one must go, and it is usually old Mrs. Honey-Bee. Surrounded by part of the family, she flies out of the old home in search of a new place. If she is living in some one's garden a new hive is all ready for her, and she soon settles down again to her egg-laying, while the workers hurry to bring in food for the new babies. If there is no hive ready for this exiled family, it swarms in a tree or any other good place it happens to find." "Yes," said Betty; "but do the workers have to work all the time?" "They do everything except the egg-laying. All the pollen and honey must be brought into the hive by them. Have you ever seen the little baskets which working bees have for carrying pollen? Perhaps you do not know what pollen is. Well, some day look right down in the centre of a flower and you will find some fine yellow powder. That is pollen, or bee bread, and the bees are very fond of it. On the hind leg of the worker is a nice smooth place, and on each side of it are stiff, curved hairs which cover it over. Into this little cage the bees push the pollen, then fly swiftly away toward the hive. Here this heavily laden little fellow stands over one of the rooms and pushes the pollen off his hind legs by scraping with his middle legs. "You have eaten honey, and know how thick and sweet it is. Very unlike the sweetened water in the flower-cups, isn't it? The bees make this honey out of the watery nectar, and I will tell you how they do it. The bee sips this sweet nectar into its mouth, then the nectar goes down a tiny tube into a little pouch called the honey sac. This sac opens into the stomach, but between the two are little lips which guard the entrance. If the worker is hungry the little lips open, and the nectar goes from the honey sac into the stomach. But if it wants to carry it back to the hive the lips stay tightly closed. When the honey sac is full the worker flies back to the hive and empties it into one of the rooms. "Then a number of bees stand with their heads bent downward and move their wings just as fast as they can, looking like miniature electric fans. Of course they grow very warm, and this makes the hive warm. This warm air evaporates the extra water in the nectar, and soon the honey is all finished. These bees which beat the air so tirelessly keep the hive fresh and sweet, which is very necessary when so many bees live in one house. "The workers make the cells as well as fill them, and now a very queer thing happens. A great many bees eat a great deal of honey. They eat all they can hold, then crawl up to the top of the hive. There are as many there as can find room; the rest hang on to these until a curtain of bees is formed. Sometimes they hang quietly and patiently for several days until, on the under side of the abdomen, tiny shining plates of wax appear. Other workers break off these pieces of wax and build them up into cells. You know how big a pound is, don't you? Well, just think how many, many times the bees must carry honey to the hives when I tell you that twenty-one pounds of honey will make but one pound of wax. Bees are very economical with their wax. When they have to patch up holes and fill in cracks in their hives they do it with a gum which they scrape off sticky buds. "All summer long these workers are laying in food to keep this large family during the cold weather. If for any reason the supply of food is low the workers sting the babies to death rather than have them starve. Is it any wonder that these workers, who have so much to do and so many cares from morning until night, die very young? The queen may live for two or three years, but the workers do not live longer than six or eight weeks." "Goodness me!" said Jimmie, "I wouldn't have believed there was any insect on the face of the earth as clever as those bees! If insects were all like that, I'd want to know about every one of them. Can't you tell us something of the wasp? They must be clever fellows, too." "Not to-day," answered Ben Gile; "it is getting toward noon, and we must start home for dinner and to get our partridge cooked. Pick up the birds, Jack, and put them in your game-bag. We must be off." <hr class="major" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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