|We were busy with the impossible hen when the alarm came. The
impossible hen is sitting on a dozen eggs in the shed, and, like the boy
on the burning deck, obstinately refuses to leave the post of duty. A
sense of duty is an excellent thing, but even a sense of duty can be
carried to excess, and this hen's sense of duty is simply a disease. She
is so fiercely attached to her task that she cannot think of eating, and
resents any attempt to make her eat as a personal affront or a malignant
plot against her impending family. Lest she should die at her post, a
victim to a misguided hunger strike, we were engaged in the delicate
process of substituting a more reasonable hen, and it was at this moment
that a shout from the orchard announced that No. 5 was swarming.
It was unexpected news, for only the day before a new nucleus hive had
been built up from the brood frames of No. 5 and all the queen cells
visible had been removed. But there was no doubt about the swarm. Around
the hive the air was thick with the whirring mass and filled with the
thrilling strum of innumerable wings. There is no sound in nature more
exciting and more stimulating. At one moment the hive is normal. You
pass it without a suspicion of the great adventure that is being hatched
within. The next, the whole colony roars out like a cataract, envelops
the hive in a cloud of living dust until the queen has emerged and gives
direction to the masses that slowly cohere around her as she settles
on some branch. The excitement is contagious. It is a call to adventure
with the unknown, an adventure sharpened by the threat of loss and tense
with the instancy of action. They have the start. It is your wit against
their impulse, your strategy against their momentum. The cloud thins
and expands as it moves away from the hive and you are puzzled to
know whither the main stream is moving in these ever widening folds of
motion. The first indeterminate signs of direction to-day were towards
the beech woods behind the cottage, but with the aid of a syringe we put
up a barrage of water in that direction, and headed them off towards a
row of chestnuts and limes at the end of the paddock beyond the orchard.
A swift encircling move, armed with syringe and pail, brought them again
under the improvised rainstorm. They concluded that it was not such a
fine day as they had thought after all, and that they had better take
shelter at once, and to our entire content the mass settled in a great
blob on a conveniently low bough of a chestnut tree. Then, by the aid of
a ladder and patient coaxing, the blob was safely transferred to a skep,
and carried off triumphantly to the orchard.
[Illustration: 0089]
And now, but for the war, all would have been well. For, but for the
war, there would have been a comfortable home in which the adventurers
could have taken up their new quarters. But hives are as hard to come by
in these days as petrol or matches, or butter or cheese, or most of the
other common things of life. We had ransacked England for hives and the
neighbourhood for wood with which to make hives; but neither could be
had, though promises were plenty, and here was the beginning of the
swarms of May, each of them worth a load of hay according to the adage,
and never a hive to welcome them with. Perhaps to-morrow something would
arrive, if not from Gloucester, then from Surrey. If only the creatures
would make themselves at home in the skep for a day or two....
But no. For two hours or so all seemed well. Then perhaps they found
the skep too hot, perhaps they detected the odour of previous tenants,
perhaps--but who can read the thoughts of these inscrutable creatures?
Suddenly the skep was enveloped in a cyclone of bees, and again the
orchard sang with the exciting song of the wings. For a moment the cloud
seemed to hover over an apple tree near by, and once more the syringe
was at work insisting, in spite of the sunshine, that it was a
dreadfully wet day on which to be about, and that a dry skep,
even though pervaded by the smell of other bees, had points worth
considering. In vain. This time they had made up their minds. It may
be that news had come to them, from one of the couriers sent out to
prospect for fresh quarters, of a suitable home elsewhere, perhaps a
deserted hive, perhaps a snug hollow in some porch or in the bole of an
ancient tree. Whatever the goal, the decision was final. One moment the
cloud was about us; the air was filled with the high-pitched roar of
thirty thousand pair of wings. The next moment the cloud had gone--gone
sailing high over the trees in the paddock and out across the valley. We
burst through the paddock fence into the cornfield beyond; but we might
as well have chased the wind. Our first load of hay had taken wings
and gone beyond recovery. For an hour or two there circled round the
deserted skep a few hundred odd bees who had apparently been out when
the second decision to migrate was taken, and found themselves homeless
and queenless. I saw some of them try to enter other hives, but they
were promptly ejected as foreigners by the sentries who keep the porch
and admit none who do not carry the authentic odour of the hive. Perhaps
the forlorn creatures got back to No. 5, and the young colony left in
possession of that tenement.
We have lost the first skirmish in the campaign, but we are full of
hope, for timber has arrived at last, and from the carpenter's bench
under the pear tree there comes the sound of saw, hammer, and plane,
and before nightfall there will be a hive in hand for the morrow. And it
never rains but it pours--here is a telegram telling us of three hives
on the way. Now for a counter-offensive of artificial swarms. We will
harvest our loads of hay before they take wing.
[Illustration: 0090]
[Illustration: 0091]