CHAPTER XXIV
WORKERS IN THE CITY
BESIDES the fanners, the foragers, and the guards, there are other classes of bees at work in the hive. There are, for instance, the scavengers and cleaners-up, whose duty it is to keep the city and the combs spotlessly clean. Little twigs, dead leaves, and bits of gravel are all removed by these bees. Sometimes a mouse or a snail enters the hive, and then indeed there is great excitement. Imagine a great elephant-like creature, thirty or forty feet high, with a tail thirty feet long, to come walking into one of our cities, and you will have some idea what it seems like to the bees when a mouse is foolish enough to poke its head into the hive! But the bees are not frightened; the guards are promptly called out, and the poor mouse is soon put to death by hundreds of stings. Having made sure that the intruder is quite dead, the bees leave his body to the scavengers, who are confronted with the problem of disposing of it. If it were left it would cause disease and pestilence throughout the city, and it is too big and heavy for them to move. It is true that they might bite it into tiny pieces and thus carry it outside the hive, but this would take too much of the bees’ valuable time. A better plan is thought of, and the body is soon covered over with a thin coating of wax. It is thus embalmed in a beautiful white tomb, which is made perfectly air-tight. If the tomb is near to the door, and interferes with the passing in and out of the workers, tunnels are cut through it. Sometimes when we look inside a hive, we may see two or three of these little mounds of wax, and we may be sure that each one is the grave of some intruder who had no right to be there.
Then there are the undertakers, who have a grim duty to perform. They carry away the bodies of workers who may have died within the hive, and in winter they have a busy time. It has been said, with what truth we do not know, that each hive has a burial-ground where the bodies of its workers are placed. It may be behind some bush in a corner of the garden, or perhaps down by the willows which fringe the banks of the stream. Whether this is so or not, it is certain that the undertakers carry the bodies of the dead bees away from the hive, so that they shall not pollute the pure air of the city and so cause disease. Now and then as we watch we may see one of these undertakers carrying what looks like the ghost of a bee! It is a bee in form, but its wings are folded, and its body is not a beautiful brown, but pearly white. This is a young bee, which has died before its birth, in the cell which has been both its cradle and its tomb. In winter, when it is too cold for the undertakers to journey far with their gruesome burdens, they will drop them just over the alighting-board, and so we sometimes see the ground near a hive strewn with dead bees, for many die during the colder months.
The water carriers are the bees who fly backwards and forwards between some neighbouring stream and the hive, supplying it with the water necessary to the workers. A hive should be placed near a stream or river, so that the bees may have as much water as they want, and they are helped in this if the stream be a shallow one in which there are little pebbles and rocks so that they can easily sip up the water. Another class of workers are the chemists, whose duty it is to place a tiny drop of acid, from their poison-bag, into each cell of honey, before it is finally sealed over. The acid supplied is chiefly what is called formic acid, and this is a very good preservative; it serves to keep the honey fresh and sweet until it is wanted.
You will remember that we said that it was actually good for us to be stung. This is because the formic acid which is pumped into the wound by the bee mixes with our blood, and prevents rheumatism. You will hardly ever find that a bee-keeper is troubled with this complaint.