Cape Bees and “Animal Intelligence”

Abstract

I KEEP a large number of hives, chiefly of Cape bees, and find that their habits closely resemble those of European honeybees; but in the course of my observations I have met with an instance of sagacity on the part of Cape bees, which, although it may also have been observed with regard to European or American bees, has not, so far as I am aware, been recorded in any treatise upon the subject. Last year my gardener hived a swarm of bees, which were not however satisfied with their new hive, their scouts having probably already selected some hollow tree for their future habitation. They accordingly left, but were soon again secured. In order, if possible, to prevent their deserting the new hive, I placed the queen in a queen-cage (a small perforated metal box with circular holes of the diameter of an ordinary pin's head), which I fixed to the roof inside the hive. A few days afterwards there were several honeycombs in the hive, and in most of the cells eggs had been deposited. Now there could be only three ways of accounting for these eggs in the cells: there might have been more than one queen in the swarm, or there might have been an egg-laying neuter among them, or else the eggs must have been those of the imprisoned queen. Accordingly I several times examined the swarm and the honeycombs (the hive being a frame hive), and satisfied myself that there was no other queen in the swarm. The queen was kept in the cage until some of the larvæ had come to maturity, the bees of course feeding her through the holes of the cage, and I found that the young bees were neuters, and not drones as they would have been if the eggs had been laid by a neuter. The only explanation, therefore, of the presence of the eggs in the cells was that they had been laid or passed by the queen through the holes of the cage, and taken up and deposited in the cells of some of the workers. This performance showed so much sagacity on the part of the bees, especially the mother bee, that I subsequently repeated the experiment with eight other swarms, and in two instances there was an exactly similar result. Two of the six remaining swarms were so dissatisfied with the new hives offered to them that they refused to build any comb, and ultimately deserted the hive, leaving the caged queen behind, although I was quite satisfied that neither swarm had a second queen among their number. I may here remark that it is much more difficult to retain a swarm of Cape bees in an artificial hive selected for them than appears to be the case in Europe or America, the explanation perhaps being that they are not sufficiently domesticated, and prefer being queenless in a natural hive selected by themselves to remaining with their imprisoned queen in a hive they do not approve of. It is possible of course that the two swarms which left their queen behind may have joined some other occupied hives or may have returned to their own former hive; but I may state that on each occasion I had removed the hives from which the swarms had issued to a considerable distance from their former position. The four remaining swarms upon which I experimented were satisfied with their new hives and built combs, but no eggs were found deposited in the cells. One of these swarms had an imported fertile Italian queen; the second and third had Cape queens, and the fourth had an Italian queen, the progeny of the imported one; the three first began laying in the cells soon after being released, but the fourth never laid eggs at all. As to the last of these queens, I fear she was rather roughly handled when caught, and that this may explain her not laying at all; but I may add that I have not yet succeeded in obtaining queens proved to be fertile from among the progeny of imported Italian queens. There are very few Italian drones in the colony, or at all events in the neighbourhood of Cape Town, and if the Cape drone does not cross with the Italian queen this would be a sufficient explanation of my failure. While upon this subject I may state that we have a yellow bee in South Africa somewhat resembling the Italian, but the neuters are a little smaller. They more closely resemble the Egyptian bees, judging by the descriptions I have read of the latter; but some of their habits are different, for they have only one queen in a hive, and they gather and use propolis, which the Egyptians are said not to do. But most of our Cape bees rather resemble the English bee, although considerably smaller, and the rings of their abdomen are of a lighter brown colour, and I confess till a few years ago I was not aware that we had any other variety. To my surprise, however, about three years ago a swarm of the yellow-winged bees arrived at my place. At first I took them to be Italians, but I had not yet then imported any myself, nor have I since been able to discover that any one else had done so. The queen and drones were exactly like the Italian queen and drones, but the neuters were a little shorter and more slender. I have unfortunately not secured any fresh swarms from the one which I hived, but the neuters that are now in the hive cannot be distinguished from the ordinary Cape worker. There are not at present any drones in the hive, and, as the hive has no frames, it is difficult (without first driving the swarm) to discover whether the queen, now in the hive, has the same appearance as the one which originally arrived. Strangely enough I continually find drones of the yellow variety in hives of the ordinary Cape brown bee. I sometimes, but rarely, see yellow workers visiting my flowers and fruit, and on a recent visit to Natal I saw numbers of bees visiting a sugar store in Durban, all of which were of the yellow variety. I was not sufficiently long in Natal to be able to say whether there are any of the ordinary Cape bees in that colony, but in the Transvaal I have seen both varieties in the fields.