 Introduction of the Bee People. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Larry Wilson. The Bee People by Margaret Warner Morley. Introduction. Bees and flowers belong together. We cannot understand the one without the other. For you see, bees get their food from the flowers, and the flowers need the bees to enable them to form their seeds. The flowers that we like best have bright colored petals. The petals of a rose are pink or white or yellow. The petals of a violet are purple, and those of a forget-me-not are blue. Sometimes the petals are separate as in a rose or a buttercup, and you can pull them off one by one. Sometimes they are all grown into one piece like the funnel-shaped flower of the morning glory. The bees can see the bright colors of the flowers a long way off. They can also smell them, for bright flowers are generally fragrant. The flowers make a sweet juice on purpose to feed bees and other insects. We call this sweet juice nectar, and the bees take it home and make honey of it. The flowers like to have the bees come and take the nectar. Why do you suppose? If you have studied flowers, you will know. If you have not, I must try to tell you. You know there is a golden dust in some flowers. It gets on your face when you smell of them. Sometimes flower dust is brown, and sometimes it is white. If you shake a golden rod in the fall, a cloud of yellow golden rod dust will fly out. This dust is called pollen. Nearly all flowers have it. It grows in little boxes called anthors, and when the anthors are ripe, they burst open and let out the pollen. You know how the anthors in a lily look. They swing on the ends of the six long slender stems that stick out of the lily flower. Nearly all flowers have anthors, but some do not have stems to the anthors. Sometimes the anthors grow right against the inside of the flower, but wherever they may be, they always contain pollen. In the center of the flower is another part that looks a little like an anthor. Its stem is long, and it is marked stigma in the picture. This stigma is not filled with pollen. It is just a sticky knob. When it gets ripe, it gets sticky. If any pollen touches it, the pollen sticks fast. If you take away the petals and the anthors and their stems from the lily, this is what you will have left. You see it is the stigma and its long stem, and there is another knob at the other end of the stem opposite the stigma. This other knob is hollow. It is a seed cup and is filled with seeds. The seeds cannot grow without pollen. If the pollen gets on the stigma, then all goes well. The sticky stigma holds it fast. It finds its way down through the long stem to the little seeds. It nourishes them and they grow. But if the pollen does not come, the seeds die. Flowers do not like their own pollen. One lily prefers the pollen from another lily. It is better for the seeds. But how get this pollen? Why ask the hairy coated bees to bring it, to be sure? And now you see why the flower makes nectar. It wishes to coax the bees to come. When the bees go down to the bottom of the flower after nectar, they will be sure to get their coats dusty with pollen. Then they fly to another flower, and some of the pollen on their coats is rubbed against the stigma and stuck fast there. The nectar is always placed so that the bees have to touch the anthers and the stigma of the flower on their way to the feast. Many flowers have bright lines or spots leading to the nectar that the bee may lose no time in finding it. These are called nectar guides, and you can see them very plainly in the morning glory. Many other insects besides bees visit flowers. Butterflies and moths and flies, and even some beetles are fond of nectar and pollen, and they all carry pollen about from plant to plant. When the insects carry pollen to the stigmas, we say that they fertilize the flowers. Unless a flower is fertilized, it will bear no seed. Bees eat pollen as well as honey, and while gathering it from different flowers they are sure to dust the stigmas. Flowers can be fertilized only by pollen from other flowers of their own kind. Lilies can be fertilized only by pollen from other lilies and roses by the pollen of other roses. Lily pollen cannot fertilize a rose, nor can any pollen fertilize any flower but one of its own particular kind. The three chief parts of a bee are the head, the thorax, and the abdomen. The head bears the antennae, tongue, and eyes. The thorax has attached to it the wings and legs. In the abdomen are the sting and the honey sack. End of introduction. Chapter 1 of The Bee People This is the LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Elsie Selwyn. The Bee People by Margaret Warner Moorley. Chapter 1, Ape's Smilifikia, or the Honey Bee The honey bees are buzzy fuzzy little pepper pots. They have pretty shining wings, but if you so much as touch one of them you will see what happens. You cannot wonder that they do not like to have you come too near. For they are such little creatures that even a small child must seem to them like a tremendous giant. How would you like to see a great warm creature as large as a hill come lumbering up and try to put a finger the size of a church steeple upon you? I am sure you would do anything to keep it away, and if you had a good sharp sting you would use it. So we must not blame the Bee People for stinging us. It is the only way they have of telling us to keep away and let them alone. They are friendly enough to their own relations as you will agree when you learn that there are sometimes as many as 60,000 of them living happily together in one family. Sometimes we build houses which we call hives for them, and sometimes they live in a hollow tree in the woods. The hives we usually make in these days are square cornered boxes that can be opened to take out the honey or to attend to the bees. In some parts of the country an old fashioned hive called a bee gum is still used. If you go to the mountains of North Carolina you will see a great many bee gums. Nearly every cabin has a row of them in its yard and they are made by chopping down hollow sweet gum trees and cutting off lengths of about 3 feet. Sometimes other hollow trees are used but they are all called gums. The mountaineer stand the gum on a board or a stone and put another board or stone on top for a roof. All the holes are plastered up with mud except those near the bottom where the bees go in and out. The mud is used to keep out moths which otherwise might get in and spoil the honeycombs. A row of bee gums standing beside a log cabin on a mountainside is very pretty. A scape as a hive made of twisted straw and in old times was used more than any other particularly in England. It had a peculiar shape and to this day when we say a thing is hive shaped we mean it is shaped like the scape. Once in a while honey bees made their home in the hollow walls of a building and there is a house in a new England city where bees have lived for a number of years. They are under the roof somewhere and there they stay safe and year after year store up honey which nobody can reach. Stories are told of old houses whose hollow walls when they are pulled down were found to be filled with honeycombs. It is not easy to get honey that is stored in the walls of houses as the bees fight bravely for their property. Honey bees are small people being only about twice as large as common house flies. Some are brown all over and some that were brought here from Italy have tan colored abdomens but all of them the brown bees, the Italian bees and the other kinds of hive bees in this country are called by the same name. Apis meleficia. Apis is the Latin word for bee and meleficia is the Latin word for honey making and they have this pretty name because they make and store up quantities of good honey which we like to eat. The bee people are sun lovers and all summer long on bright days you may see them hurrying about but in winter time you would look in vain for them no matter how brightly the sun might shine for they are the friends of the flowers and seldom leave home except when there are blossoms for them to visit. Many flowers keep up a dainty table spread for the bees. Cups of nectar and dishes of ambrosia are ready for them to eat and drink and carry home. If it were not for these gifts from the flowers the honey bees could not live as they get all their food from their flower friends. End of chapter one. Chapter two of the bee people. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. The Bee People by Margaret Warner Moorley. Chapter two. Apes Malefica and her eyes. Here comes a little brown lady whose name is Apes Malefica. She is making her wings go so fast that they buzz like a humming top. Straight as an arrow she goes to that morning glory flower. All at once the buzzing stops. Little Miss Apes has landed feet down and right side up on the nectar guide. Such great eyes as stare at you when you look her full in the face. No wonder she saw the bright flower a long way off and came straight to it. She is more eye space for her size than an owl which is saying a good deal. In fact her head looks as if it were nearly all eyes. Her two large ones cover the sides and if you will believe me in the space between the two large eyes right on top of her head are three small ones. Unless you shave Miss Apes's head you can see but one of these small eyes at a time as there is a tuft of hairs in front of each which hides it unless you are looking right down into it. In the picture Miss Apes's head has been shaved. Five eyes but that is not all. Each of her two large eyes is made up of about 6,300 very small ones. Really Miss Apes, 12,603 eyes are a good supply for one bee. It is fortunate that she does not have to keep count of them for if she counted an eye every second it would take almost four hours to get to the end without stopping to take a sip of honey or even to say oh dear me. How would you like your mother to look at you out of more than 12,000 eyes when you have been doing something naughty? Two eyes are bad enough at such times. Let us hope that young bees never do wrong. Just imagine a naughty little bee looking up to find 12,600 small eyes and three large ones solemnly staring at his wickedness. The truth is all the thousands of small eyes that make up each large eye work together and act as one eye. Miss Apes's large eyes are called compound eyes because they are made of so many small eyes or facets. The facets are so very small that you cannot see them except by the aid of a microscope and here is a picture showing you a portion of the eye considerably magnified. Whoever goes as far as Miss Apes does in search of flowers needs good eyes that can see a long distance. She has been known to fly four or five miles in search of flowers. Just think of going back and forth from hive to flowers and flowers to hive any such distance as that. As a rule, however, Miss Apes goes only a little way, half a mile or so but even for this she needs good, bar-seeing eyes and she has them for her compound eyes are very far-sighted. This is probably the reason she needs the three small eyes which are near-sighted and enable her to see things close at hand. Although she possesses such a prodigious number of eyes, Miss Apes has no eyelids. No, indeed, she has eye hairs instead that point outward and do not prevent her seeing but keep dust and pollen from getting into her eyes. If you look back at the picture of the facets, you will see some of these hairs. She combs her eyes every time she combs her head and this does not seem at all funny to her. For, you see, she is used to it. End of chapter 2. Chapter 3 of The Bee People. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The Bee People by Margaret Warner Moorley. Chapter 3. Her Tongue. Meantime, while we have been gossiping about Miss Apes's eyes, she has gone off. There she is, just landing in another morning glory blossom. She strikes the nectar guide as a shot strikes the bullseye. Then down she tumbles to the very bottom of the flower. Here are the nectar cups, five of them, filled full of sweet clear nectar. For it is early in the morning and Miss Apes is the first to arrive. She wants this nectar to carry home and make into honey. But how is she going to get her head into the tiny openings that lead to the nectar? You need not worry about that. She knows what to do. And all at once produces a long shining brown tongue and thrusts it deep down into the nectar. Here is a morning glory that must have had an x-ray turned upon it, for we can see right through it to where Miss Apes is reaching her brown tongue down to the nectar. This tongue is almost as queer as her eyes. Not that she has 12,600 tongues. Oh no, one tongue like hers is quite enough as you probably will agree when you know more about it. It is a long tongue and a strong tongue and curls about lapping up the sweetness as you can see for yourself if you catch her and give her a drop of honey. But now she has licked the morning glory dry and but what has she done with her tongue? It was almost as long as her body a moment ago and now it is gone. Miss Apes, what have you done with your tongue? Where is your tongue, Miss Apes? Miss Apes, Miss Apes, your tongue, Miss Apes. But she only looks at us out of her 12,600 large eyes and her three small eyes and says not a word. Her tongue is all right and she knows how to hold it. There, she is going to speak. Buzz, buzz. No, that is her wing music. Her tongue is still silent. Off she goes and leaves us in despair concerning it. Now she has deposited herself in another flower and sure enough, yes, there is that long brown tongue wriggly around in the nectar cup. I will catch hold of it and pull it, Miss Apes, but do not tell me what you did with it. Will you, she seems to say, solemnly looking at us out of 12,600 and three eyes? No, we will not because it is gone again. I think in spite of her solemn and owl-like looks she is laughing at us. So, Miss Apes, what do you do with your tongue? I know what you do with yours, she seems to say that her tongue is off. But now I know, I saw her do it. She pulled it in just as you do yours when you have put it out of your mouth. But hers is such a large tongue it could not be pulled into her mouth at all. The best she could do was to pull it up as short as possible and then fold it back into a nice little groove under her head. It is a very useful tongue and a very queer one. It has to reach down into long flower cups and so it must be long. It has to lap up honey and so it must be flexible. It has to find its way through very small openings and so it must be as slender as a thread. It often has to come into contact with the hard parts of flowers and plants and so it must be protected. It is protected by two hard, horny sheets one covering the upper side of the tongue the other covering the lower side. The lower sheath is made of two long pieces that can be separated as you see in the picture. Each has a little feeler at the end. Usually they lie side by side with their edges overlapping underneath the tongue. They make a little trough in which the tongue lies as you see in this next picture. They protect the underside of the tongue. The upper sheath is also made of two horny pieces that can be separated from each other. They lie side by side when not separated and their inner edges overlap so that they form a covering to the upper side of the tongue. So you see when the two sheets are in the right places they make a tube about the tongue and the tongue is run out at the point of the sheets when the bee wants to lick up nectar. Miss Apis has her tongue sheath separated into so many parts for a very good reason. If the sheath were a closed tube pieces of honeycomb or grains of pollen or other substances might get wedged in when she was licking up honey or nectar and give her a great deal of trouble. But as it is, if anything gets caught all she has to do is separate the parts of her tongue sheath and clear it out. Miss Apis' tongue is surrounded by rings of hairs which hold fast the nectar and enable her to draw it up into her mouth through the tube made by her tongue sheaths. The very tip of her tongue is like a little round plate and helps her to lick up the honey. You see by now that Miss Apis' tongue is a very sweet tongue in fact a honeyed tongue as we might say. We speak of poets and orators as having honeyed tongues but I leave it to you if any of them can equal Miss Apis in this. If you look in Miss Apis' face when she is not eating you cannot see her tongue at all as it is folded back under her head. You can see her tightly closed jaws and her upper lips but not her tongue. Here she has opened her jaws and let her tongue down between them but you can see only the upper sheath and the two little feelers that grow on the points of the lower sheath. In this next picture she has pushed her tongue out below the sheaths as she does when licking up honey or nectar that is easily reached. If the nectar is hard to get at she needs a longer tongue and therefore shoots the under sheath out below the upper one. When she does this her tongue is not so well protected but it is longer as you can see in this next picture. When the tongue is not in use it is drawn up as short as possible and then is folded back into a groove on the underside of Miss Apis' head something as a boy shuts his knife blade into the handle. Getting honey is very easy when it is in open cups but sometimes the flower sweets are in the bottom of tubes too long for the bee's tongue to reach them. What is she to do in such a case? When she smells a delicious meal which she cannot reach shall she pass by with a sigh because she cannot get it? Sometimes she is obliged to but sometimes she is helped by the bumblebees. These are much larger than honey bees and you will know them because they are covered all over with hair as if they had on furry coats. Honey bees have very little hair on the body below the waist. Bumblebees have broad bands of yellow hairs across their bodies and sometimes the whole thorax or part between the head and waist is bright yellow. Bumblebees can always be found in red clover fields. Their horny tongue sheets are larger and stronger than the sheets of the honey bee. Indeed they make quite a strong little dagger with which Madam Bombus, the bumble bee, can cut a hole in a flower. When Madam Bombus finds a flower with sweets which she cannot reach without taking too much trouble she goes to the spot beneath which the sweet she wants is concealed and with a downward blow of her convenient dagger rips open the intervening membrane. Then she unfurls her flag in triumph. In this case her flag is her tongue, you'll understand. She inserts it in the hole she has made and licks out the sweet juice. After she is gone comes the turn of Miss Apis who puts her tongue through the hole that her larger and stronger friend has made and takes her share also. Since the nectaries of the flowers usually fill up as soon as the bees have licked them out Miss Apis may get as much honey as though Madam Bombus had not taken any. It is too bad for the bumble bee to break into the flowers as she does and we are almost ashamed of Miss Honey Bee for following such a bad example. It is the flowers with spurs that Madam Bombus is most apt to treat in a gracious manner. I myself have seen her go up to a tidy little touch-me-not cup and passing straight by the open door in front cling to the yellow spur at the back which holds the nectar and with no hesitation whatever thrust her sharp little dagger into the spur slid a hole there and take out the nectar. It is difficult to believe this of a very respectable looking being several thousands of solemn eyes that make her look many times as wise as an owl but are only proves how little one can rely upon appearances in this world. It is very unwise for Madam Bombus to do such a thing as well as very unkind for by going in at the front door she would preserve the lives of the flowers that feed her. When she goes about slitting open nectaries she injures not only herself but all her fellow bees. For bees carry pollen from flower to flower as you very well know and this pollen is necessary to the forming of the seeds. When the bees go into a flower as they ought they carry some of the pollen that has rubbed off against their hairy bodies to the next flower they visit which is just what the flowers need. But when they break open the nectaries from the outside they do not get dusted with pollen and do not carry it to other flowers. No pollen, no seeds, no seeds, no more plants. So now you understand why the bees make such a mistake when they cut nectaries open. The honey bees seldom do this not because they are better than the bumble bees but because they are not able. Their dagger sheath is not strong enough. I once saw a honey bee try very hard to cut a hole in the long tube of a purple azalea. She could not reach the nectar from the front of the flower because the tube was too long and slender. So she tried to break in the back way but she could not do it and all the azalea nectar she got she sucked out of holes that the purple bees had made in some of the flowers. The azalea did not make honey for the bees its long and slender tube was fitted to the tongues of large moths and butterflies. End of Chapter 3 Chapter 4 of the Bee People This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Larry Wilson The Bee People by Margaret Warner Morley Her Honey Sack What do you suppose becomes of the nectar Miss Apis gathers with her hairy tongue? She swallows it you say and that is true. She does swallow it but that is not the end of the story. When it is swallowed it passes into a little honey sack which is not as large as a sweet pea seed and which is so delicate it looks like a little soap bubble. This honey sack is in the big end of the abdomen and in the picture it is shown by a dotted circle. It holds less than a drop of nectar and we may call it the jug or bottle in which Miss Apis carries the bosson nectar home for she does not swallow it for her own use but that she may bear it to the hive for the baby bees to eat. You can see this honey sack by feeding a hive bee as much as she wants and then letting her fly to the window. The light shining through the delicate body makes the clear honey in her little bottle plainly visible. The Italian honey bees whose abdomens are a light tan color at the upper end show the honey drop better than the common brown bees. Some of the honey passes on into the true stomach of the bee which is just beyond the honey sack and is digested but the most of it Miss Apis carries to the hive in her honey sack. It is curious that everything Miss Apis eats has to be swallowed into the honey sack before it can get into the stomach and yet the honey is always clear and pure. Honey and pollen go together into the honey sack yet the honey in the comb contains almost no pollen. The reason is Miss Apis strains her honey before she puts it in the comb. In her honey sack is a little strainer which is very wonderful and very beautiful. It looks as you can see in the picture something like a flower bud. Honey and the pollen grains go together in the honey sack but they do not stay together for the pollen grains are gathered up by the action of muscles in the walls of the honey sack and pass through the strainer into the stomach. The strainer opens its mouth to let them pass but as soon as they have done so it closes. Of course quite a good deal of nectar passes through with the pollen but this is squeezed back by the muscles of the stomach into the honey sack through the closed mouth of the strainer. The mouth of the strainer is fringed with hairs that point backwards and cross each other when the strainer mouth is closed. So though the nectar can squeeze through the pollen grains cannot. They are kept back in the stomach by this clever little strainer and only pure nectar or honey can get back into the honey sack. When Miss Apis gets to the hive she takes the muscles of her honey sack squeeze the honey into her mouth and she then puts it into the honey comb. Miss Apis follows nectar as the sweet juice of the flowers is called but when we take honey from the honey comb it has undergone a change and is no longer nectar but honey. In some way the nectar has been changed and made into honey. End of Chapter 4 Chapter 5 of the Bee People This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Larry Wilson The Bee People by Margaret Warner Morley Ambrosia and Nectar Of course no one, not even Miss Apis nor the lovely Venus herself could live entirely upon nectar. We know that the gods and goddesses when they had a party amount of Olympus always had Ambrosia as well as nectar. They sat around and had it passed to them by the graceful goddess Hebe. She was as beautiful as the springtime and I have no doubt they often ate and drank more than was good for them just for the sake of having her bring them one more cup of nectar or one more slice of Ambrosia. The nectar of the gods was like honey. Some say that nine tenths of it was honey. Just what Ambrosia was I am not able to say. But I suppose it was like the best bread that ever was made on earth only a great deal better and like the most delicious cake that ever was concocted for Christmas time only a great deal more delicious and like all the bonbons and good things rolled into one only a great deal sweeter and finer than anything we can possibly imagine. Miss Apis too takes Ambrosia with her nectar, though hers is not at all like that of the gods and goddesses. She gets it from the flowers and is very fond of it though we do not agree with her concerning the excellence of her feast. But then we might not like the Ambrosia the gods were so fond of. Tastes differ. Her Ambrosia just suits Miss Apis. In fact she finds it so much to her mind that she seldom eats anything else. She drinks nectar and eats Ambrosia. Her nectar is the sweet juice of the flowers and her Ambrosia is the pollen of the flowers a very precious Ambrosia indeed. Miss Apis not only eats all she wants when she visits the flowers but she mixes nectar and pollen together and carries them away with her. She is able to do this for she always carries baskets on purpose. She never yet was known to go away from home and forget to take her pollen baskets. End of Chapter 5 Chapter 6 of the Bee People This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by John Brandon The Bee People by Margaret Warner Moorley Chapter 6 Miss Apis' Legs The reason Miss Apis never forgets her baskets is that they are fastened onto her. For I must tell you her legs are as remarkable as her 12,603 eyes her folding tongue and her very peculiar honey sack. She has six legs fastened to her thorax which you remember is the division of her body next back of her head. Although she is so well supplied with legs she has no arms. Since she has no arms she has no hands. That seems rather unfortunate and we are inclined to be sorry for her. But I doubt if she would thank us for feeling so. She probably feels sorry for us because we have not six legs and wonders how we get along with only two to prop us up and help us to go about with not even wings for help. For besides six legs Miss Apis has four wings they are wonderful wings but we must return to legs. Since Miss Apis has no hands she uses all six legs or rather the claws at the ends of them for clinging fast to things. She also uses all six legs to walk and run with and once in a while went under great excitement to jump a little. The claws at the ends of her legs are not ordinary claws such as cats or hens have. There is nothing ordinary about Miss Apis I must remind you not even her claws. There is a claw at the end of each of Miss Apis's six feet. They are as good as a whole box of tools being a great deal better than hands and fingers for doing some of the things she is in the habit of doing. Between the points on each foot is a small pad that can stick fast to smooth surfaces like the pad on a fly's foot and so enable Miss Apis to walk on slippery places if she wants to. Her foot is made of four very movable joints besides the claw and this enables her to curl it about objects so as to get a better grasp of them. When she pleases she can turn up her claws and use them as hooks by which to suspend herself. You will see later that it is very important for her to be able to hang herself up when she wishes. But what have her legs to do with pollen baskets you are asking? They have a great deal to do with them but Miss Apis carries her baskets on her hind legs. Oh well, laugh if you want to. I have known people before who laughed too soon. I wonder where you would fit pollen baskets to Miss Apis if you had it to do. Probably you would put them on her head where she could not see because of them and where she could not reach them and where the pollen would be always spilling out if she ever succeeded in getting any in. But I can tell you you might look Miss Apis over from top to toe and you would not find another place as good as her hind legs for disposing of pollen baskets. Each of her legs has ten joints. There are two small ones close to the body which are very much alike on all the legs. Then comes a long joint which is quite similar in all six legs. Then comes a second long joint which is very curious. The fifth joint is also very interesting. Six, seven, eight, nine are the small joints forming the foot and ten is the last joint of all or the claw. Miss Apis carries her pollen baskets on the outside of the fourth joint of each of her hind legs. As she walks about they are not in her way. She does not spill the pollen and she can easily reach the baskets with her other legs when she wants to fill them. The outside of the joint is hollowed a little and along the outer edge of this hollow space are stiff hairs that turn towards the middle and make a very complete little basket to hold the pollen that is put into it. If you look at her with a little hand magnifying glass you can get quite a good view of her pollen baskets. How do you suppose Miss Apis puts into her baskets? If you look at her body and at the upper part of all her six legs you will find them covered with long hairs. If you look at the hairs under a magnifying glass you will find them branched. When Miss Apis wants pollen she scrapes it from the anther cells with her claws and gathers it together with her legs. Very often her whole body becomes dusted with it and wherever the pollen grains touch the branched hairs they cling fast to them. Miss Apis wriggles about in the flowers scraping out the pollen with her feet and collecting it on her branched hairs. Then she carefully brushes it together and by means of her legs transfers it to her pollen baskets. For you must know she has a number of brushes on her legs to help her to gather up the pollen. These brushes are tufts or rows of stiff hairs that are not branched. If we look on the underside of her hind leg the same that bears the pollen basket on the fourth joint of its upper side we shall see two kinds of brushes or combs for gathering the pollen together. The stiff hairs on the edge of the fourth joint and the sharp teeth that cover the fifth joint. Each hind leg is supplied with these useful brushes and one hind leg scrapes the pollen into the basket of the other. The first chance you get you must watch Miss Apis gathering pollen. Sometimes she looks as if she were running about over a head of flowers to find something she had lost. Now this way and now that. She goes in a great hurry then turns around and around but she has not lost anything and she has not gone crazy. She is merely collecting pollen as fast as she can and if you have sharp eyes you will see her rub, rub rubbing it with her legs back into her baskets. It is astonishing how much she can carry. When her baskets are full she goes about with a ball of pollen attached to each of her hind legs. If she goes into morning glory blossoms this pollen ball is white. If she happens to be visiting wood lilies it is dark reddish brown and if she has been going to see the sweet peas it is bright yellow. She carries it to the hive and stores it up there for the young bees and for winter use and it soon assumes a uniform dark brown color. There is nothing neater than a bee. It stirs her terribly to have a dirty face or a dusty wing and she is forever cleaning herself. If you look along the outer edge of the fifth joint on her front leg you will see her eye comb. She has to keep the pollen and dust combed out of her eye hairs or else how could she see? And when she's combing her eyes she evidently thinks she may just know, being a very neat person comb her head also. She cleans off her velvety thorax with the brushes on her middle legs where she also carries a prong for pringing her wings and for prying the pollen out of her baskets. You can see this prong on the inside of her middle leg at the bottom of the fourth joint. You see the pollen is really the flower that makes her bee bread or ambrosia as it is sometimes called. As she collects it she moistened it with honey so that it can be needed into a sticky mass like dough and thus packed securely in her baskets. All her legs have brushes and when she is pollen gathering you can see her dusting every part of her body with these brushes. Over her head she passes the brushes over her back and under her body she passes the brushes on her middle legs. Then she rubs her legs together to collect the pollen on the combs of the hind legs. Since she gathers the flower for her bread on the hair of her body she is obliged to keep herself very, very clean. So all the leg brushes are also toilet brushes and are used to keep her clean as well as to gather pollen. Most remarkable of her toilet articles are her antenna cleaners but their story comes later. It is much easier to watch Ms. Apis performing her toilet than it is to distinguish her various combs and brushes. If you wet her a little then dust her lightly with flower and put her on the window you can see the whole operation. She generally cleans her antenna and combs her head and eyes first. She turns her head from side to side and puts her front leg up over it and draws her convenient comb through the hairs. She turns her head about using first one front leg and then the other until she has it as clean as a bee's head ought to be. She generally puts out her tongue and gives that a good rubbing too. Grasping it in both her forefeet. When you watch a bee performing her toilet, you will understand why her legs are so beautifully jointed. She must be able to move them in all directions and put them over her back or under her body. She generally cleans her back with her middle legs and her abdomen as the last division of her body is called with her hind legs. She also uses her hind legs and her wings drawing down one wing at a time and holding it tightly against her side while she polishes it with her brushes. She spends a great deal of time rubbing her hind legs together and sometimes she performs the difficult acrobatic feet of standing on her two front legs and rubbing the other four together. She looks very cunning as she rubs and scrubs a fuzzy little body. And if you want to see her do it all you need do is to look. No matter how dirty she may have become if she is allowed to stand still for a few minutes she will look as if she had on a new suit of clothes and had never known what it was to touch a speck of dirt so effective are her numerous brushes and combs. End of Chapter 6 John Brandon Chapter 7 of The Bee People This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by John Brandon The Bee People by Margaret Warner Morley Chapter 7 Her Wings She returns with her sack full of honey and her baskets full of pollen that is if she is fortunate she returns for I regret to say the certain birds who ought to be ashamed of themselves being fond of honey take it be an all. They do not stop her and say your honey or your life but swallow her whole and talk about it afterwards that is if they talk about it at all down their throat she goes honey sack and long brown tongue twelve thousand six hundred and three eyes and jurious legs all at once not so much as an eye escapes so far as I have ever heard then these bad birds sit on a branch and look as innocent as your mammy's mucking bird as Uncle Remus would say just as if they had never eaten a bee in their lives nor even thought of such a thing but if she is fortunate she gets home she does not walk home nor yet run she flies or as you know she has wings dainty wings they are too they are transparent and colorless like glass and are very thin and delicate shine in the light or you would scarcely notice them miss apis seems to have only two wings though really there are four of them whatever miss apis has she appears always to have an abundance and when wings are in question she must needs have four although birds and dragons and such economical creatures are content with two she can fold her four wings down very neatly over her back when she wants to walk about but when she starts to fly she spreads them out a pair on each side of her body if the two wings on either side were to separate from each other and let the air between them her flight would be spoiled and she would go tumbling along in an ungainly and mortifying manner that this may not happen she hooks the upper large wing and the lower small one together when she raises them for flight so that the two are as firm though they were but one she is enabled to do this by a row of hooks on the lower wing which fit into a groove on the upper wing the wings fit so closely together when hooked that you would not discover there were two unless you looked very carefully indeed with her wings safely locked together away she goes sure and swift when she closes them the smaller ones slip onto the larger ones out of the way her wings are handy when one wants to close them and have them out of the way but two are best to fly with so being a somewhat eccentric and with all ingenious individual as you may have observed for yourself before this Miss Apis has two wings to fly with but four to fold away and of Chapter 7 Recording by John Brandon Chapter 8 of the Bee People This is a LibriVox Recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by John Brandon The Bee People by Margaret Warner Marley Chapter 8 How She Hears and Smells Miss Apis can hear and she can smell though just how she hears since she has no ears and just how she smells since she has no nose puzzled people for a long time the truth is she is able to do these things because of her antennae which you remember are the two feelers that stand out from her face these antennae or feelers are jointed having one long joint next the face and a number of short joints forming a very movable tip the long joint serves especially as an arm to move the many jointed end about if Miss Apis's eyes seem to us wonderful what shall we think of her antennae although she has no ears she has thousands of what we might call hearing spots on the short joints of her antennae she also has thousands of smell hollows on these remarkable antennae joints the hearing spots and smell hollows are very very small so that we can see them only by means of the microscope the antennae are also covered with short sensitive hairs which make them very good feelers able to tell Miss Apis what kind of substance she is touching they thus serve for eyes in the dark hive you would not think Miss Apis needed any more eyes but one cannot expect absolute perfection in this world even in eyes or even in Miss Apis and the truth is that Miss Apis's many eyes are probably unable to help her in the dark some creatures like cats can see in the dark but Miss Apis is obliged to rely upon her antennae for information when she goes into a dark place so you see these antennae are very important and valuable but you have not yet heard all when bees have anything to say to each other they say it by means of their antennae just how this is done I cannot say as I do not know but they manage it somehow when two bees meet they cross antennae in a friendly way instead of shaking hands and asking after each other's health that is if they are friends they do if they are not members of the same family I'm sorry to say they fight two sisters however never fight Miss Apis's very life depends upon her antennae by means of them she hears smells discovers the nature of objects about her and communicates with her fellow bees when she is awake her antennae are almost always in motion and she is constantly touching the flowers or examining everything with which she comes in contact if anything happens to them if they get broken off or badly injured or little Miss Apis behaves very much like a rudderless boat at sea she does not seem to know how to get anywhere but moves about in an aimless sort of way she does not eat or do her work and in a short time she dies naturally these priceless helpers need to be well taken care of dust and pollen must not be allowed to clog up the hearing and smelling organs nor interfere with the sensitive hairs since you have found Miss Apis provided with so many toilet articles you will not be surprised that she has combs and brushes on purpose to keep her antennae clean yes she has a comb and a brush on each front leg for that very purpose you can see these curious little antennae cleaners as they are called with the naked eye on the bumblebee you can see them very well indeed with the ordinary magnifying glass they are on the inside of the leg there is a circular opening just large enough for the antennae to fit into it is bordered by a sort of round comb that reminds us of those combs little girls sometimes wear only this comb is very small and the teeth point outward at the end of the joint above a stiff flap hangs down when the leg is bent the flap is brought down in front of the circular opening when Miss Apis wishes to clean her antenna which is very often she raises her leg above her head and draws it down over her antenna and slips into the circular opening then she bends her leg the flap holds the antenna in place and she draws that precious organ through the cleaner the teeth in the round comb on one side and the sharp edges of the flap or brush on the other clean off every particle of dust you can see her almost any time drawing first one antenna than the other through the useful and remarkable little cleaners provided for the purpose she will often stop in the middle of her honey gathering to do it or she seems to feel uncomfortable if her antennae are not as clean as clean can be the brush is used to clean out the round comb on the opposite leg as you can imagine it was a long time before people understood the uses of Miss Apis's antennae but about 200 years ago Mr. Francis Huber a Swiss gentleman who loved bees found out a part of the secret he discovered that the honey bee smells and feels with her antennae all who love bees ought to know and love Huber for he spent many, many years studying the bees and finding out wonderful things about them I think you will like to hear his story when only a boy he was very fond of nature and very fond of study he read so constantly that he ruined his eyes and when still a young man became blind this did not stop his work however for he had two friends who were eyes for him one was the young lady to whom he was engaged to be married when he became blind her friends tried to persuade but she would not she insisted upon marrying him and taking care of him Huber and his wife lived in happiness for a great many years and Huber said that he did not realize he was blind until his wife died Huber's other friend was a man named Francis Burnins Huber would tell Burnins just how to perform an experiment what to look for and Burnins would do exactly as he was told and then tell Huber all about it in this way Burnins did the seeing and Huber the thinking Burnins was very patient and careful and once he spent 11 days scarcely stopping to sleep and examining every bee in two hives think what a task that was I believe he drenched the bees with water but he could not sting and then examine them one by one it was owing to the careful work of Burnins that Huber was able to make a number of important discoveries about bees a good many of the interesting facts we know today about bees we owe to blind Huber he invented a hive which opened like the leaves of a book so that he could at any time see what was going on inside the Burnins could see and tell him people today sometimes use narrow hives with glass sides so that everything the bees do can be watched some schools have such a hive fastened in a window this is very interesting for the children bees do not willingly work in a light place they do not seem to enjoy being watched so often they smear the sides of the glass hive all over with bee glue which prevents curious eyes from looking in when bees are handled a good deal they become quite tame they seem to recognize their keeper bee keepers very often have little machines by which they can puff smoke upon the bees this does not hurt them but makes them quiet so the honey can be taken out and the bees handled end of chapter 8 Chapter 9 of the Bee People this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by John Brandon The Bee People by Margaret Warner Morley Chapter 9 Her Sting Other things than birds sometimes catch miss apis toads and frogs for instance and sometimes boys do it but no boy catches her in his fingers without being punished for it she has a dagger for such occasions that it is not her tongue dagger either it is as far from that as can be or it is at the extreme tip of her abdomen of course belonging to miss apis it is a remarkable dagger sharp my if you do not believe me just touch it sharpness however is not unusual in daggers all daggers are more or less sharp though few as sharp as miss apis but the thing that distinguishes her dagger and makes it more terrible than any other is its barbs generally daggers are smooth and make a clean cut coming out as easily as they go in not so miss apis' dagger although it is so tiny that we cannot see any barbs with the naked eye still they are there instead of being smooth it is fuller of barbs than a fish hook or while an ordinary fish hook has but one or two barbs this little stinger has 10 pairs it is not an easy matter to get a fish hook out of your finger if it gets in beyond the barbs as those of you who have ever had such an unpleasant experience know very well if one pair of barbs hold so well think how well 10 pairs must hold they hold all together too well as we shall see presently miss apis' sting is not all in one piece although it seems to be and it requires very careful examination to discover that it is made of three parts it is a sort of sheath with a groove running its whole length into this groove fit two lances that can move up and down in the groove when miss apis decides to sting you she first drives the sharp point of her sheath into you this has a few barbs to keep it from slipping out again then one after the other the lances each with its 10 strong barbs are thrust in deeper and deeper they are forced until they are as deep in as they can go after all the wound they make is very very small no worse than the prick of a fine needle in fact then why does it hurt so ah that is another question miss apis' barbed sting reminds us of the ugly weapons sometimes used by savages and like the cruel savages she too poisons her weapon that is why it hurts us so a jet of poison is pumped down the hollow sting from a poison bag in her body and is forced into the wound through an opening in the 5 lower barbs of each lance so when miss apis stings us we get 10 jets of poison pumped into the little hole she makes in our skin miss apis' pleasant weapon is her constant companion and she is very free to use it accepting when the aforementioned bad birds snap her up so quickly and swallow her down so fast that she has not time to get over her surprise efficiently to use her sting before she is a dead bee you may think she never stings when she is dead but I have heard otherwise however that is another story the birds that swallow her must sometimes get stinging but they do not seem to object perhaps they enjoy it if you really want to know whether miss apis is willing to sting if she gets the chance pick her up some day when she is getting nectar from a flower you will learn several things first that the best thing you could do under the circumstances is to let her go as soon as possible that is the best way to know but if you are a philosopher you will not fail to observe what a very convenient position her sting occupies as convenient for its purpose as the pollen baskets are for theirs she twists her jointed abdomen about so that you will have hard work to take hold of her where she cannot plunge the difference of this little sting gives rise to sensations out of all proportion to its size a sting so small that you can hardly see it produces a pain so large that you do not seem to have room for any other feeling presently the spot about the tiny hole made by the sting begins to swell until it may become several times as large as miss apis herself that you know is because she takes good care to pump poison into the wound this poison of hers is a reliable warranted never to fail irritant if a whole hive of bees were to set upon you and sting you at once you might be made very sick by it as well as have to suffer great torture it is said that people have even died from such mishaps we see that little miss pepperpot is not so innocent as she looks flying about among the flowers still as I said you cannot blame her for using her sting and if she ever does use it on you do not get angry but pull it out then put some mud on the place and try to remember that when it stops hurting you will feel better mud is a very good remedy and like miss apis sting is generally at hand there is another consolation about getting stung if it happens often enough the sting in time ceases to poison you your system seems to become used to the poison so that it gradually loses its effect and its power to injure still I should not advise anyone to try this remedy it is too hard on the bees say nothing of the unpleasant consequences to yourself for poor little miss apis with her many eyes her honey sack her complicated tongue and legs and all the rest pays a terrible penalty for losing her temper and stinging people you remember her sting is barbed like a fish hook and if you have gone fishing much you know how hard it is to pull a fish hook out of anything into which it happens to get fastened well when miss apis recklessly plunges 10 pairs of barbs into the tough skin of your finger she cannot pull them out again and in her efforts to do so outcome sting poison bag and all and off she goes hurt much worse than you are for she will surely die as a result of her loss she has left her poor, savage little sting in your finger much against her will however and your first care should be to extract it so as not to press out any more poison from the poison bag this you can do by pressing the flat edge of the pen knife against your skin close to the sting but not touching it and then drawing out the sting just as you might take out a tack with a tack hammer the sting should be extracted at once because if it remains in your finger its muscles continue to work even though the sting is now primarily separated from the bee and every bit of poison will be pumped out of the poison bag into your finger so you see miss apis' sting continues to do the best it can and to hurt you as much as possible even after it has been completely torn from her body in fact if you touch a sting newly removed from the bee you will get stung by it there is no doubt that it is a very reliable weapon in her fright and anger miss apis does not stop to consider what will happen if she stings you but stings first and thinks afterwards one should never sting first and think afterwards one should always think first and not sting at all unless it becomes absolutely necessary there are cases where one might better sting and die than live and not sting but such cases are rare the American Revolution is one of them but that happened a long time ago and has nothing to do with bees anyway in spite of her reliable sting miss apis is often eaten a good many birds are fond of bees and other creatures particularly bears eat them it is truer to say that bears like honey but they are willing to eat it bees and all bears are great honey thieves and there are many stories told of their efforts to get honey they will upset hives and do not seem to mind being stung at all there is one story of a tame bear that used to take honey out of a bottle he would lick out all he could reach then turn the bottle up and let the honey run down into his mouth usually it ran into his eyes as well but that did not seem to trouble him a good many creatures are fond of bees and honey so you see dangers be set miss apis's path and even the pleasant occupation of gathering sweets from flowers is not without its drawbacks end of chapter 9 recording by John Brandon chapter 10 of the bee people this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by John Brandon the bee people by Margaret Warner Morley chapter 10 miss apis and her sisters laden with pollen and nectar miss apis starts homeward people used to think she flew in a straight line to the hive and so they call the shortest distance from one place to another a bee line but she does not fly in a straight line far from it whoever has made a bee line for home that is a true bee line must have followed a very indirect course indeed when miss apis has filled her honey sack and is ready to go home she first mounts into the air not straight up but round and round in a spiral and when high enough she starts toward home but not in a straight line she makes a long curve to the right to the left to the right again then to the left and so on I do not know why she does this but no doubt there is a good reason for it perhaps it makes it harder for bee eating birds to catch her it certainly is not easy to follow her flight with the eye until one has practiced enough to become accustomed to it when miss apis reaches home she finds a large family there are her sisters to begin with she generally has many thousands of sisters just like herself and they are all named apis malefica this might be confusing if they called each other by name that is by the name we have given them but of course they do not do that I do not know what they call each other but I do know that they are as much alike as one pea like another they all have twelve thousand six hundred small eyes and three large ones a folding tongue a honey sack wings that lock together extraordinary legs and several other useful and curious things having watched miss apis going from flower to flower in the sunshine you may think that this pleasant duty is all there is in her life but oh how mistaken you are wait until you see her at home there is as much work to be done in her house as in anybody's and she does it too she works very hard and in fact with her sisters does all the work nobody else in the family does any and so she is called the worker bee for you must know that she and her thousands of sisters who are as like her as one pea is like another are not the only members of the family end of chapter ten recording by john brandon chapter eleven of the bee people this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org the bee people by Margaret Warner Morley chapter eleven the brothers there are the drones their brothers these fine gentlemen never gather honey or pollen nor do any work in the hive in fact they are scarcely able to feed themselves and very much like to have their sisters feed them they are handsome fellows and somewhat larger than their little worker sisters they have large round heads with enormous compound eyes that meet on top and crowd the other three eyes down in front between them they have more than twice as many facets in their eyes as the workers their antennae are long and very sensitive they have large bodies covered with a coat of soft brown down yet and their wings are large that they are so helpless I'm glad to say is not their fault Mr. Apes Melafika has no honey sack so he could hardly be expected to go out and try to bring home honey he could not get it even if he had a honey sack in which to store it because his tongue is so short and so weak he could not get the honeycomb in the hive or from any easily obtained supply but that is the best he can do so Mr. Drone Apes Melafika leaves the sweet occupation of gathering nectar to his sister Ms. Worker Apes Melafika as for pollen the drone has no baskets in which to carry it so there is an end to that and as for working in the hive he is no better off for tools to work with than he is for a honey sack a serviceable tongue and pollen baskets in fact there is nothing for him to do but to stay at home and be taken care of like a gentleman of leisure this he does to perfection he stands about with his hands in his pockets so to speak and lets his little brown sisters feed him which they do by allowing him to put his tongue inside their mouths on warm sunny days he flies out to see the world and to try his fortune occasionally a drone meets the young queen of another hive also out to see the world when this happens they mate but she stays with him only a short time and then goes back to her own hive and leaves him the poor fellow has no sting at all so he cannot defend himself or avenge an insult we may pick him up if we can catch him with no fear of being stung and may say anything to him or about him that we please basketless stingless with no honey sack and no serviceable nectar gathering tongue he is almost as helpless as a Chinese lady only she is purposely made helpless and he is born so a Chinese girl baby has as good feet as any baby and they would grow as large as other peoples if it were not the fashion for the mothers to squeeze the poor little tootsie wootsies into small ugly shoes that hurt the babies terribly and the rich people as cross as crabs it serves their mothers right too when they are cross think of crippling them all their lives so they can neither work nor do anything useful in China the people consider it a disgrace to work and the rich people cripple their girl babies to show that it is not necessary for them to work it is not considered a disgrace nor in any other really civilized community in fact all the bees in the hive work very hard accepting the drones and they generally form a very small proportion of the whole number the drone is an idler because he is so made that it is impossible for him to work but he is happy and flies about in the sun taking whatever good comes to him without finding fault his sisters are glad to work for him and he is glad to have them do so End of Chapter 11 Recording by John Brandon The Bee People by Margaret Warner Morley Chapter 12 The Queen One would expect to find a mother in so large and flourishing a family and you will not be surprised to hear that there is one Queen Apis Malefica is the mother of the hive and is by far the most important member of the community as I suppose a queen always is or should be if she is a true queen Queen Apis is a true queen she is no harder than any other bee in the hive of course her work is different from that of the workers else why should she be a queen she does not carry nectar and pollen and make honeycomb and care for the young bees but she does something just as difficult and just as important like the drone she has no honey sack and no pollen baskets though both queen and drone have plenty of brushes on their legs to keep themselves clean her wings are small she has a very short tongue her head is small in proportion to her body as are also her eyes which have fewer facets than the workers eyes and she has short and tenny in this picture of the heads of the queen the drone and the worker you can readily tell which is which you see the queen expects to be taken care of all her days and so does not need to be as well provided with sense organs as the workers like the workers and unlike the drones she has a sting but she very seldom uses it in fact you can handle her with as little fear of being stung as you can handle a drone the queen's sting is very very precious and she will not run the risk of losing it by stinging you there is only one queen in a hive and she very seldom flies abroad there is too much to be done at home for we must not forget that she is really the mother of the whole colony the workers are her daughters and the drones her sons but she is queen only in the sense that every true mother is a queen in her home if the people who named her long ago had known as much about bees as we know today they doubtless would have called her the mother bee instead of the queen bee the chief occupation of the queen bee is to lay eggs she lays the eggs for the whole colony sometimes she lays as many as three thousand in one day she does not keep this up day after day the year round but to lay three thousand eggs a day for a short time will furnish plenty of work for those who have to take care of the eggs and the young bees and will keep the queen busy sometimes a hundred thousand eggs are laid in one season which means a great deal of work for both queen and workers the ancients believed that bees gathered their young off the leaves of trees or from the flowers of honeywort the reed or the olive there was another superstition bees came forth from the decayed bodies of animals and Virgil who wrote much better Latin than most people can write English soberly gives us a recipe for producing bees from the dead bodies of cattle Virgil's power to write well was greater than his knowledge of natural history which is not surprising since there were no microscopes in those days today we know that if there are to be young bees eggs must first be laid bees cannot be picked from trees or flowers or any other object and carried home the queen bee has to lay an egg for every one of the many bees that fill a hive and now you can understand why queen apis is so exceedingly particular about using her sting for her sting is her ovipositor as well ovipositor means egg-placer for ovie comes from a Latin word meaning egg and positor from another Latin word meaning to place it is with this that she places the eggs just where she wants them to be the ovipositor is made very much like the sting of the worker and as the eggs ripen they pass through the long tube of the ovipositor which guides them to the right place in the comb if the queen were to lose her sting she would no longer be able to lay the eggs and so the colony would soon die out for worker bees live only a few months at the best and sometimes only a few weeks so the queen who lives four or five years and sometimes even longer has to keep on laying eggs in order to keep her large household supplied with new members as the old die off it is no wonder therefore that she will not sting the queen takes no care of the eggs nor of the young bees she leaves all that to her daughters the workers she does not even feed herself much of the time but the workers are glad to take care of her they prepare a special food for her better than the food the other grown up bees get which is quite proper as such a bee could not be expected to eat ordinary food queen apis has tasters as did the old kings of France and England only the kings taster ate a little of the king's dish in his majesty's presence that he might be sure nobody had poisoned it for they were fond of poisoning kings in those days but queen apis is not afraid of poison she knows her children love her too well for that and they taste her food out of love to her in fact they do more than taste it they swallow and digest the bee bread and honey and in their bodies it is made into a very nutritious food with which they feed their queen when she is hungry she goes to a worker bee inserts her short tongue into its mouth and takes what she wants though sometimes she eats honey from the combs as well occasionally bees feed one another on honey in this way and they also feed the drones if you put a bee just caught and with her sack full of honey on a window pane with a bee from the same hive that has had nothing to eat for an hour or two you will see a pretty sight the hungry bee will go to her newly arrived companion and as soon as they have crossed and tenny and discovered they are friends the hungry sister will present her tongue then the other will open her jaws and doubtless proceed to force up the honey from the honey sack to her mouth for the benefit of her hungry sister the one that takes the sweets usually raises her wings slightly as though expressing her pleasure and satisfaction at thus unexpectedly obtaining a meal there is good reason for feeding the queen with royal jelly as her food is called the formation of eggs uses up a good deal of food material as well as a good deal of strength if queen apis' strength were used up in digesting food for it takes a good deal of strength to digest food properly how do you suppose she could lay all those eggs possibly do it the workers seem to know this and so they save her strength in every possible way they give her an abundance of the best of food and they do all the work not even asking her to take any care of the little bee babies when they are hatched end of chapter 12 chapter 13 of the bee people this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Gail Wamba the bee people by Margaret Warner Morley the work in the hive the manufacture of wax since honey bees eat almost nothing but pollen and honey a good store of these has to be laid up for winter use as well as to feed all the young bees and the drones gathering honey and pollen however is but a small part of our little workers business if I tell you there is something very wonderful about Miss Apis that you have not yet heard you will not be surprised probably by this time you would be more surprised if you failed to hear something wonderful about her this that I am about to tell is quite as wonderful as her eyes her neck or her wings or anything else she has pockets you do not think pockets are so very wonderful well neither do I just ordinary commonplace everyday pockets for carrying pencils and such things but what about wax pockets not pockets made of wax you understand but pockets filled with wax Miss Apis has a head that is no news I am aware as most creatures have heads but connected with her head by a short neck as you know she has a chest which if you want to be scientific you must call a thorax to this her legs and wings are fastened and behind her thorax and attached to it by a very slender waist is the rest of her body or as we must call it her abdomen this abdomen is jointed it is made of rings connected to each other by a skin like membrane and the rings fit close together under each other or are drawn apart from each other to lengthen her abdomen there are six of these rings and underneath four of them on the underside of her abdomen are shallow hollows two on each ring and these eight hollows are the wax pockets the queen and the drones have the wax pockets only the workers have them if you think Miss Apis gathers the wax somewhere and puts it into these pockets you are as much mistaken as if you thought two and two or nine she does not gather it she makes it by this time you will understand she is rather peculiar when you undertake to store up honey you must have something to put it in you cannot put it on the floor or in a corner where everybody in the front mirror it would stick fast and where it would run out and be wasted you must have bottles or cans or jars or something of that kind to put it in if you are a bee you cannot go to the store and buy these things you have to make them you have no glass to make them of and would not know how if you had so you gorge yourself with honey eat all you possibly can then go hang yourself up in the top of the hive and wait for the bees at the head of this chapter are doing and now you see how very important their hook like toes are for all they have to do is turn up their toes and hook them fast to the hive or to the foot of another bee this time you understand the honey has actually been eaten not stored away to be drawn back into the mouth again and deposited in the hive it has been eaten and the bee now keeps still while this heavy meal digests you and I who have studied physiology a little know that when people are able to digest much sugar they become fat the sugar is some way turned into fat eating a great deal of sugar is not the same thing as digesting a great deal please remember that when people eat a great deal of sugar as for instance candy and other sweet meats at all hours of the day it generally does not digest it does something very different and ultimately makes them sick but bees are so happily constituted that they can digest all they eat when a bee eats so much honey that she can do nothing but sleep as it were until she gets over the effects we might be tempted to call her a glutton but we must not judge bees by ourselves in some respects they are wiser than we when a bee gorges herself with honey as she is doing she knows she will not suffer from indigestion for one thing and she knows she will not become fat and clumsy for another of course the sweet meal must be disposed of in some way and in fact there is formed from it a substance something like fat only different this substance is wax and it finds its way in liquid form through pores in the bee's body to the eight depressions where it hardens we might say she sweats out the wax into her pockets when miss apis wants wax then she eats a hearty meal of honey and suspends herself in the hive for a nap while it digests when she wakes up her eight pockets are full of wax it was huber who first told us that wax is made from honey eaten by the bees end of the work in the hive of wax recording by gail wamba chapter 14 of the bee people this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org this is a recording by Brian Powell Portland Oregon the bee people by Margaret Warner Moily chapter 14 honeycomb wax makes first rate jars for storing honey it is tight and firm and prevents air and water from getting in it is strong enough not to be injured by the weight of the bees walking over it you may be sure miss apis knows all this she is not surprised to find her pockets full of wax and she knows just what to do with it her hind legs are each provided with a pair of nippers for pulling the wax scales out of the pockets you can best see them by looking at the inside of the leg at the end of joint 4 at A are strong teeth that shut down on the hard plate at X on joint 5 when she has pulled out the scales she moistened them in her mouth with saliva for they are too brittle at first to be useful when they are thoroughly moistened and softened she pulls them out into white bands now she is ready to make honey cups first in company with a number of her sisters she sticks a little wax along one side of the hive near the top then the six-sided cups or cells are begun this sounds easy enough but suppose you try to make a six-sided cell of moist beeswax and see how you succeed of course you have not the best tools in the world for such work for good as fingers may be for cutting with a scissors or driving nails or picking up pins they would be poor tools for making cells of beeswax miss apis is supplied with something better you know about that those claws on her feet are admirable wax tools and so are her jaws and even her tongue which she uses in the finer work of the cell the bees began at the roof and build the comb downward it is wonderful to think of the fairy structure growing there in the dark hive under the efforts of the industrious little bees they make six-sided cells lying close together so as not to waste either room or wax no other shape would so well fill the space they have found this out and as they want to put as many cells into a smaller space as possible the wise workers pat and pull and press the wax into hexagonal cups or jars although many bees work together and in the dark too they keep watch over each other's movements in some way and build the cells in rows one row below the other until they have a wall or sheet of cells reaching nearly to the bottom of the hive this sheet of cells we call a comb you expect to find all the cells in a comb of exactly the same size and shape you will be disappointed Miss Apis fills a space at her disposal with wonderfully regular six-sided cells far better than the ones you or I could make but the rows are not always perfectly straight and the cells are not always perfectly uniform in size as they would be if made by machinery Miss Apis is not a machine and for my part I like her work better than if it were perfectly regular as the comb hangs in the hive the cells of course do not stand up with their open mouths at the top as we set a cup on the table but they lie on their sides which seems rather odd when we come to think of it suppose you were to lay your fruit jars on their sides on the table in a row and then pile another row above them and so on you would have them nicely packed away but how could you fill them without having the contents run out Miss Apis is able to overcome even that difficulty she builds a double row of cells placed back to back and opening of course in opposite directions the cells are not quite parallel with the floor of the hive but their mouths are tipped up just a little and they are slightly curved as if Miss Apis were afraid the honey might run out if she laid them down too flat if you look into an empty cell of honeycomb you will see that the cells in a sheet of comb are not exactly opposite to each other but at the bottom of a cell on the right side of the comb overlaps the edges of three or four cells on the left side that is the cells are placed so that the bottom of one rests where three others on the opposite side come together and sometimes overlaps a fourth you can easily see the edges of the opposite cells through the wax that forms the bottom of a cell and you can understand that placing the cells this way makes the comb much stronger now the comb is made and ready to be filled with honey probably young bees that have not yet gone out of the hive in search of nectar build the cells the rovers bring in nectar and standing over the cells press it up from their honey sacks a great many loads are necessary to fill one cup as each bee carries less than a drop at a time all day long in and out fly the bees each one leaving her little load of honey to help to fill the honeycomb cells but why does not the honey run out as fast as it is put in that question has not yet been answered it is easier to ask than to answer unless you know more about natural philosophy than I think you do to begin with honey is sticky you know that as well as I do and it will stick to honey cups as well as anything else when the bee puts a little drop in the bottom of a cup it tends to stick fast a cell full of honey however the honey comes from running out as we know when we take off the cover to a honeycomb cell to help the honey to stay in the cells as we know are tilted up a little the cells are small and the liquid honey tends to remain in a small cell just on that account which is a matter of physics to explain then when miss apis has her cell nearly full she begins to put a cover over it she begins at the bottom of the cell to put on this cap by the time she has finished the cap the cell is as full of honey as she can get it but there is a little air left in which acts as a cushion and keeps the honey from running against the cap so there is her honey cup filled and sealed miss apis fills her honey cell rather slowly and leaves it uncapped for a few days until the extra water evaporates and the honey is ripened you know very well that if you have molasses in an open dish it becomes thicker as time goes on and leaves water by evaporation and that is exactly what happens when honey is left uncapped for a while it gets thicker and keeps better miss apis does not fill all her fine little wax preserved jars with honey if she did what would become of the bee bread we do not often see bee bread in these days because we have given miss apis little wooden frames for her honeycomb and when we take these from the hive only those containing pure honey are needed to mark it if there is bee bread in any of the frames they are returned to the hive when miss apis comes home with her pollen basket full she scrapes out her load into a wax jar or cell as I suppose we ought to call it you remember the little crowbar she has on her middle leg for prying the sticky mass out of her pollen basket when the pollen or bee bread as it generally is called after miss apis has gathered it and mixed it with honey has been pushed into the cell and perhaps a little more honey added to it when the cell is full it is capped over like the cells that contain honey sometimes a whole comb will be filled with bee bread and sometimes a comb will contain part bee bread and part honey miss apis is fond of bee bread but we are not we gladly take away her honey but we do not care to rob her of her bee bread it has a curious taste which I should like to describe to you but I can only say bee bread and like nothing else in the world that I know of miss apis has a habit of storing the honey in the top of the hive and that is where in our new fashioned hives we put the little wooden frames we want her to fill when she has filled them all we have to do is open the top of the hive and lift them out that is unless she has glued them fast miss apis is very particular about having everything firm and tighten her hive she does not want honeycombs tumbling about her ears breaking and spilling what is in them so whenever there is half an excuse to do so she glues them fast she stops up all the holes in her hive too with glue that is if there are any holes no doubt this glue is very useful when she builds in hollow trees or when her hive is old and rickety but people generally take care of the hives and build them tight or else stop up the holes miss apis' glue is a perfect nuisance she seems to think she must dobb everything over with it whether necessary or not and she fastens the frames so tightly if the beekeeper is not on the watch that it is hard work to get them out of the hive the only way is to watch and take out the frames before she has time to glue them fast you wonder where she gets her glue why she just finds it she sometimes scrapes it off the sticky buds of the poplar or cherry tree or from other plants huber watch his bees scrape bee glue from wild poplar buds miss apis brings the glue home in her pollen baskets it is brown and shiny like resin and spoils the looks of whatever it touches but miss apis does not seem to care much for mere looks end of chapter 14 this was recording by bryan powell june 2019 chapter 15 of the bee people this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit libravox.org for bee people by margaret warner moorley honey and honeydew miss apis is probably as proud of her hive when she gets it stored full of honey and bee bread as your mother is of her pantry when she gets the jelly and preserves done in the fall at least I should think she would be it is very cunning art to take nectar from the flowers and in one's honey sack change it into delicious honey it is not every creature that can do that in fact I know of but one or two besides miss apis and her near relatives at the can although the nectar has changed to honey it still retains its own flavour so that the bee keepers can often tell the taste from the kind of flowers honey is made from miss apis is very particular about the quality of her honey and does not like to mix up the different kinds if she starts out to get the white clover honey she will visit the clover fields all day and for many days and pass by other flowers rather than mix their nectar with the clover nectar white clover honey is delicate and delicious and bees are very fond of visiting the white clover heads honey bees do not gather much honey from the red clover because the little flower tubes are too long for their tongues and generally they cannot reach the nectar bumblebees love the red clover but you shall hear a story about that later clover yields good honey and where it grows the bees gather her a great deal from it the fragrant flowers of the basward are great favourites for the bees and when a basward tree is in bloom it sometimes sounds like an enormous beehive there are so many bees after its honey most people who live in the north are familiar with the dark coloured buckwheat honey and those who live far south get a delicate orange blossom honey sometimes bees gather honey from poisonous plants but that does not happen very often in this country when you read Xenophon Xenobasis you will learn as Xenophon's whole army were poisoned by eating some honey they found whilst marching through Asia the retreat of the 10,000 is a very interesting story and I hope you will hurry to read the anabasis Miss Apis sometimes gathers other sweets than flower juice I am sorry to say she will even steal the honey from the other bees if she can get it sometimes she takes cider but that makes very poor honey indeed when the ripe fruit split open or the wasp bite holes in them Miss Apis may sometimes be seen taking her share of the fruit juice it is not often however the Miss Apis preserves fruit juice she leaves that for us to do she does collect honeydew though and sometimes will fill a hive full of honey made from it probably you do not know what honeydew is it is not everyone who does know but I do and I am going to tell you all have heard of the aphids the ants' cows you know that they are little tiny insects with two horns on their backs they give out a sweet liquid of which the ants are very fond we are told that some ants take care of the aphids protect them and treat them as if they were indeed little insect cows at certain seasons of the year the aphids are very abundant we sometimes call them plant lice and I am sure you have all seen them on rose bushes and lilies and other garden plants sometimes they are green sometimes brown sometimes they have wings and sometimes not they are very curious little creatures and sometimes you must learn more about them an aphids puts a bill into the skin of the leaf and there she stays and sucks out its juice which you can imagine is not very good for the leaf some of the juice which the aphids eat is changed into the sweet liquid the ants are so fond of and if there are no ants to eat it the aphids are obliged to get rid of it and they squirt it out into the air I have stood under a tulip tree and watched a perfect shower of this honeydew come raining down from the countless aphids on the leaves the aphids stay on the underside of the leaves the honeydew falls on the upper side of the leaves below them sometimes the leaves of a tree or bush will shine as if they had been varnished because of the honeydew that covers them such leaves are sticky to the touch too and in fact become very disagreeable as dust settles on the sticky surface I once saw all the plants in the carolina mountains covered with this honeydew the season have been dry which is what the aphids like and they were over everything the little mountain children used to pick these leaves and lick off the honeydew you see they have no candy in the mountains and the children took the honeydew without waiting for the bees to make it into honey but bees and children are not the only lovers of honeydew I have often watched the squirrels from the leaves they take a leaf between their paws and hold it to their mouths while their little tongues lick the leaf all over it is great fun to watch the squirrels do this and I hope you'll see it to yourself one day I do not know whether squirrels like candy but I am perfectly sure they like honeydew honeydew used to be a great mystery to people and very funny notions were held regarding it Pliny an old Latin naturalist supposed it was the perspiration of the sky the saliva of the stars or the moisture deposited by the atmosphere while purging itself corrupted by its admixture from the mists of earth we know that is not the perspiration of the sky nor the saliva of the stars but just the work of the little aphids there are many people still living who think the honeydew goes up as a sort of mist from the earth and falls again as a sweet dew on the leaves bees like the honeydew very much and I have eaten honey made from it but I must confess I did not like it some honeydew is said to make very good honey but I prefer to have the bees bring my honey from the flowers end of chapter 15