Bee

Bee (דּבוֹרָה, deborah', Gr. μέλισσα), a gregarious insect, of the family Apidae, order Hymenoplera, species Apis mellifica, commonly called the honey-bee, one of the most generally-diffused creatures on the globe. Its instincts, its industry, and the valuable product of its labors, have attained for it universal attention from the remotest times. A prodigious number of books have been written, periodical publications have appeared, and even learned societies have been founded, with a view to promote the knowledge of the bee, and increase its usefulness to man. Poets and moralists of every age have derived from it some of their most beautiful and striking illustrations.

The following is a mere outline of the facts ascertained by Swammerdam, Maraldi, Reaumur, Schirach, Bonnet, and Huber: — Its anatomy and physiology, comprehending the antennae, or tactors, by which it exercises at least all the human senses; the eye, full of lenses, and studded with hairs to ward off the pollen or dust of flowers, and the three additional eyes on the top of the head, giving a defensive vision upward from the cups of flowers; the double stomach, the upper performing the office of the crop in birds, and regurgitating the honey, and the lower secreting the wax into various sacklets; the baskets on the thighs for carrying the pollen; the hooked feet; the union of chemical and mechanical perfection in the sting; its organs of progressive motion; its immense muscular strength: — the different sorts of bees inhabiting a hive, and composing the most perfect form of insect society, from the stately venerated queen-regnant, the mother of the whole population and their leader in migrations, down to the drone, each distinguished by its peculiar form and occupations: — the rapidity of their multiplication; the various transitions from the egg to the perfect insect; the amazing deviations from the usual laws of the animal economy; the means by which the loss of a queen is repaired, amounting to the literal creation of another; their architecture (taught by the great Geometrician, who "made all things by number, weight, and measure"), upon the principles of the most refined geometrical problem; their streets, magazines, royal apartments, houses for the citizens; their care of the young, consultations. and precautions in sending forth a new colony; their military prowess, fortifications, and discipline; their attachment to the hive and the common interest, yet patience under private wrongs; the subdivision of labor, by which thousands of individuals co-operate without confusion in the construction of magnificent public works; the uses they serve, as the promoting of the fructification of flowers; the amazing number and precision of their instincts, and the capability of modifying these by circumstances, so far as to raise a doubt whether they be not endowed with a portion, at least, of intelligence resembling that of man.