The honey-bees,
creatures that by a rule in nature teach
the act of order to a peopled kingdom…
—Henry V
Chief among the everyday miracles within the hive is that of how the first bee discovered the means by which watery nectar, vulnerable to spoilage, might be made to keep the hive not only through the winter, but through a score of winters. Can one conceive of an accidental discovery, a happenstance that arranged for the hive sisters to be arrayed en masse at the mouth of their hive, fanning their wings so vigorously and for so long that the nectar they had gathered evaporated in the draught, growing thick and imperishable? And yet if not an accident, we are left with two equally unsatisfactory explanations: a Creator’s design, or a hive intelligence.
The language of bees is one of the great mysteries left us in this age, the means by which this genus communicate. For speak they do, to tell their hive-mates of food, to warn of invasion, to exchange the password of identity, to reassure that all is well. Speech among humans is a complex interaction between tongue and teeth, lungs and larynx, driven by mind and a thousand generations of tradition.
But what if we humans had developed along another line than that of primate? What if, instead of manipulative digits and opposing thumbs, we were given only arms, teeth, and wings? If in place of fist and weapon we were given a defence that required us to lay down our own lives? If we lacked the lungs and trachea that gave rise to speech, how would we preserve the intelligence of our own community?
Humans convey meaning in a multitude of ways: the lift of a shoulder, the sideways slip of a gaze, the tensing of small muscles or the quantity of air passing through the vocal chords. How much more must this be so in a complex hive-mind that lacks the brute communication of words?
One finds common sense and intelligence in the newest of hives and the rawest of virgin queens, a discernment that goes far past mere dumb survival. No beekeeper doubts that the creatures in his charge have their own language, as immediate and real as that which might be found in a village composed entirely of brothers and sisters. However, whether bees communicate by odour, by subtle emanations, by faint song, or by infinitesimal gestures we have yet to discover.
The massacre of the males is a yearly occurrence in the hive—“Delivering over to executioners pale the lazy yawning drone,” When the days close and the last nectar ceases, the workers cast their gaze upon the drones, whom they have willingly fed and cosseted all the year long, but who are now only a burden on the food reserves, a threat to the future of the hive. So the females rise against the useless males and exterminate them every one, viciously ripping their former charges to pieces and driving any survivors out into the cold.
The female is generally the more practical member of any species.
What might we say of the intelligence of bees? On the one hand, it beggars the imagination that an entire species would permit itself to be enslaved, penned up, pushed about, and systematically pillaged for the hard-fought product of a year’s labours.
Yet is this so remarkably different from the majority of human workers? Are they not enslaved to the coal face or the office desk, told where to go and what to do by forces outside their control? Do not the government and those who control prices in the market-place systematically rob human workers of all but a thin measure of the year’s earnings?
Beekeeping would appear to be a hobby for the tinpot god, the man who seeks to keep an entire race under his control. In point of fact, a mere human has little control over bees: he shelters them, he takes their honey, he drives away pests, but in the end, he merely hopes for the best.
A bee has no loyalty to the keeper, only to the hive; no commitment to the place, only to the community. A queen has no conversation for her human counterpart, and she or any other bee will attack the human protector if he makes a gesture that can be read as threat.
Despite millennia of close history, in the end, the best a beekeeper can hope for is that he be ignored by his bees.
Bees feel joy, and outrage, and contentment. Bees play, tossing themselves in flight with no point but for the pleasure of the thing. And bees despair, when hopelessness and loss have become their lot.
A hive that loses its queen and has no other queen cells to raise up is dead, its future sterile. Workers may continue for a time, but soon listlessness and melancholy overcome them. Their sound changes, from the roar of energetic purpose to a note of anguish and loss. One of the workers may try to summon the energy of the hive and lay her own eggs, as if to conjure up the presence of royalty by enacting its rituals, but every member, drone to new-hatched worker, feels the end upon them.
For the bee, unlike the human, the future is all: the next generation is the singular purpose of their every motion, their every decision. Not for apis mellifera the ethical struggles of individual versus community rights, the protest against oppression, the life-long dedication to perfecting an individual’s nature and desire. For the hive, there is no individual, merely the all; no present, only the call of the future; no personal contribution, only the accumulated essence of great numbers.
In the hive, there can be but one ruler. The queen (Virgil, here, got it wrong, and imagined a bee king) is permitted a sole outing in her long life, one brief foray into the blue heights. She chooses a day of singular warmth and clarity, and sings her anticipation, stirring the hive into a state of excitement before she finally launches herself into the sky, pulling the males after her like the tail of a comet. Only the fastest can catch the queen, with her long wings and great strength, which ensures the strength of their future progeny.
Then she returns to her hive where, if the beekeeper has his way, she spends the remainder of her days, never to fly, never to use her wings, never to see the sky again.
When one watches that queen, dutifully planting her eggs in the cells prepared for them, surrounded at every moment by attentive workers, fed and cleaned and urged to ever greater production, one can only wonder: Does she remember? Does some part of that mind live forever in the soaring blue, inhabiting freedom in the way a prisoner will imagine a rich meal with such detail, his mouth waters? Or does the endless song of the hive fill her mind, compensating for the drudgery of her lot?
Perhaps that freedom is why the queen is the hive’s one true warrior, jealously guarding her position against her unborn rivals until the regal powers wane, her production falters.
But a queen does not die of old age. If she does not fall in royal battle, or of the cold, her daughters will eventually turn against her. They gather, hundreds of them, to surround her in a living mass, smothering her and crushing her. And when they have finished, they discard her lifeless body and begin the business of raising up another queen.
The queen is dead, long live the queen.
That is the way of the hive.