WHERE THE BEE SUCKS
IT is characteristic of those unlettered in bee-craft that they are often
afraid when there is no danger, and will venture with the intrepidity
that is born of ignorance where old experienced bee-keepers fear to
tread.
Temper in bees is one of the most variable qualities in a creature made
up of variabilities. There are times, when a summer storm is threatening
and the air is charged with electricity, when to go among the bees is to
court certain disaster; and there are other times, such as the full
height of the honey-flow, when almost any liberties can be taken with
bees, without fear of reprisals. And yet this is not always the rule.
Much depends on their lineage and the purity of the strain, and, again,
on the systems of the bee-master. Bees respond as readily as any other
form of domestic stock to wise and considerate treatment. Handled in a
firm, quiet, deliberate way, the most vicious colony can often be dealt
with in perfect safety; while the mildest-natured bees will commonly meet
fumbling indexterity with a prompt challenge to war.
Since the Italian bee was brought to England, some half-century ago,
there is no doubt that the original English strain has been greatly
modified. Some authorities, indeed, question whether there are any
absolutely pure British bees left at all. The golden girdles of the
Italian crop up in the most unlikely places, and the foreign blood seems
to have got into the race in all but the remotest parts of the country.
One must regret, although it is a vain regret now, that these undesirable
aliens were ever allowed to set foot on the soil. Whatever naturally
survives and thrives in a particular country, must be the most suitable
thing for that country; and these southern races of the honey-bee seem to
have brought back, to the detriment of our own stock, idiosyncrasies long
ago bred out of the native race. Much of the nervous irritability and
proneness to disease visible in the honey-bee of to-day is more or less
directly traceable to the introduction of foreign blood; and the grand
special advantage of the Italian bee—its much vaunted and widely
advertised possession of a long tongue—has proved an entire myth.
Numberless measurements undertaken by our leading scientific apiarians
have proved that the Italian bee has a tongue no longer than any other,
although most are willing to concede her the possession of a very long
and ready sting indeed. But here we do her an injustice: a pure-bred
Italian worker-bee is as good or as bad tempered as any other of her
species. It is the first crosses with the native bee which display so
much vindictive aggressiveness, and have given to the whole race its
general bad name.
In the time of the great honey-flow—which in southern England begins in
May, early or late, according to the season, and may endure for six
weeks—it is a common thing in the country to see people turn back from
the footpaths, running through the white-clover or sainfoin fields,
because of the huge and terrifying uproar made by the foraging bees.
When there is a large acreage under these crops, and the day is a fair
one, this note reaches a volume hardly to be credited as a sound of work
and peace. It is much more like the din of a great bee-war, and it is
small wonder that the stranger, unlearned in the ways of the hives,
should fear to go through what is very like a scene of battle and
carnage.
And yet there is no time of year when the honey-bee is so little inclined
to molest her human fellow-creatures as this. So long as the
honey-weather holds—the warm nights when the nectar is secreted, and the
rainless days when it can be gathered—she can hardly be induced to
attack, even if her home is being turned inside out, and the sudden
sunlight riddling its darkness through and through.
Until within comparatively recent years it was universally believed that
honey was a pure, untouched secretion from the flowers; and that beyond
gathering and storing it the bee had no part in its production. This
idea, however, is a wholly mistaken one. Honey is a manufactured
article, and differs in almost every way from the raw juices obtained
from the various flower-crops. The nectar of flowers, before collection
by the bee, seems to have hardly any of the constituents of ripe honey.
Three-quarters of its bulk consists of plain water, in which about 20 per
cent. of cane-sugar is dissolved, the rest being made up of essential
oils and gums, which give it its distinctive flavour. But mature honey
contains very little water, certainly never more than a sixth part of its
bulk. Its sugar is almost entirely grape-sugar. It is decidedly acid,
while the nectar is always neutral. And the oils and aromatic principles
of the flower juices are matured and developed into the well-known honey
flavour, which is like nothing else in the world.
It is certain that the process of manufacture begins directly the bee
draws the nectar from the flower-cup. As the liquid passes into the
honey-sac it is mingled with the acid secretion from the gland at the
base of the tongue. When the bee reaches the hive she does not pour her
burden direct into the cells, but passes it on to one of the house-bees,
who conveys it to the honey-vats. It is even probable that the nectar is
transferred a second time before it reaches the cell, although this point
is still undecided. The effect of such transference is to add more acid
properties to the original juice.
The honey seems to undergo a regular brewing process within the hive. It
is kept at a temperature of about 80° or 85°, and it is then that the
surplus water passes off into vapour. In this way the raw nectar loses
at least two-thirds of its natural bulk before it is finally converted
into honey. It is said that at the last moment, just before each cell is
stopped with an impervious covering of wax, the bee turns herself about,
and injects into the honey a drop of the poison from her sting; but there
seems to be not the slightest evidence in support of this. The contents
of the poison-sac are, it is true, mainly formic acid, which is a strong
preservative; and undoubtedly traces of formic acid are to be found in
all honeys. It has been, however, conclusively proved that this acid
finds its way into the honey from the glandular system of the bee, and
not through its sting.
The industry of the bee in nectar-gathering has always been a stock
subject for wonder, and it is commonly supposed that she is born with
full instinctive capabilities for her task. A little observation,
however, soon tends to upset this theory. The work of foraging has to be
learnt step by step, like every other species of skilled work in
hive-life. The young bee, setting out on her first flight, has all the
will to do well, and her imitative faculty is strongly developed; but she
seems to have very little else. Her first experiences are a succession
of blunders. She appears not to know for certain where to look for the
coveted sweets, and can be seen industriously searching the most unlikely
places—crevices in walls, tufts of grass, or the leaves of a plant
instead of its flowers. The fact that the nectar is hidden deep down in
the cup of the flower, beyond its pollen-bearing mechanism, seems to dawn
upon her only after much thought and many fruitless essays.
It has been proved that bees will go as far as two or even three miles in
their foraging journeys. The distance seems to vary according to the
nature of the country. Bees in hilly districts appear to venture only
short distances from home, while in flat country the foraging flights are
more extended. A bee-line has become proverbial for a straight course,
but it is doubtful whether the bee ever makes a perfectly direct flight
from point to point. The truth seems to be that there are well-defined
air-paths out from and home to every bee-garden, and that these are
continually thronged with bees going and returning throughout the working
hours of the day. These aërial thoroughfares lie high above all but the
tallest obstacles, so high indeed that the keenest sight will reveal
nothing. Only the busy song of the travellers can be heard, like a river
of music, far overhead.
In the South Down country, where the isolated farms are each surrounded
with their compact acreage of blossoming sheep-feed, and there is nothing
but empty miles of close-cropped turf between, these bee-roads in the air
can be easily found and studied. Walking over the springy, undulating
grass in the quiet of a summer’s morning, a faint, far-off note breaks
suddenly upon you like the twang of a harp-string high up in the blue. A
step or two onward and you lose it; retracing your path, it peals out
again. You can see nothing, strain your eyes as you will; but its cause
is evident, and with a little trying you can presently make out the main
direction of the flight, and see down in the hollow far below, the
huddled roofs of a farmstead with a patchwork of fields about it, white
with clover, or rose-red with sainfoin in fullest bloom.
Perhaps there is no honey in the world so fine as that to be obtained
from these solitary Downland settlements. With the ordinary consumer
honey is merely honey, and there is an end of the matter. But the beeman
knows that the quality of honey varies as greatly as that of wine. He
will tell you at first taste the crop from which it is gathered, whether
it has one source or many, whether it is all flower-essence, or has been
contaminated by the hateful honeydew, which is not honey at all. Down in
the lowlands, except at certain rare seasons when only one crop is in
flower, it is next to impossible to get honey absolutely from a single
source. But here on the hills the bees are not tempted by glowing
gardens with their feeble, washy sweets; nor are they led aside by the
coarse-natured privet, or horse-chestnut, or sunflower. There is only
one trencher to their banquet, but this is a vast, illimitable one. They
have nothing to do but to wend out and home all day long between their
hives and a single field.
It is difficult to gauge with anything like approximate truth the amount
of honey that one flowering crop will yield. But probably, when all
conditions are most favourable, every acre of Dutch clover will produce
about five pounds of pure honey for each day it is left standing in full
bloom. The nectar is obviously secreted by the flower as an attraction
to the bee, who, blundering into it with her pollen-smothered body,
unconsciously effects its fertilisation. Directly this object is gained,
the flow of nectar in each particular floret appears to cease, and the
bee passes it by.
The student of old books on apiculture is often surprised to read so much
in praise of honeydew, while in the modern bee-garden he hears of it
nothing but hearty condemnation. He is told that directly the bees begin
to gather honeydew the store-racks must be removed from the hives, or the
good honey will be ruined both in colour and flavour. He is shown some
dark, ill-looking, watery stuff carefully sealed up by the bees, and is
informed that it is nearly all honeydew. But, he asks himself, can this
be the same thing about which the old masters were led into such ardent
eulogy? The truth is that when ancient and mediæval writers spoke of
honeydew, they used the word as a general term for all that the bees
gathered. Honey was all a dew, divinely rained down from the skies; and
it is entirely of a piece with the all but universal lack of
bee-knowledge down almost to the beginning of the nineteenth century,
that so few should have guessed that the flowers themselves had anything
to do with the matter. Virgil and the rest of the classics held absolute
sway over all minds pretending to the least culture, and even the
naturalists seem to have studied the wild life around them with no other
object than to force facts into line with ancient poetic fantasies. The
old writers explained the varying qualities of honey as being due to the
influence of whatever stars happened to be in the ascendant at the time
of its gathering, and the honey was good or bad according to whether this
was favourable or unfavourable.
The quality and consistency of honey varies extraordinarily as between
the different sources of true nectar; but there is no doubt that honeydew
well merits the evil name it has gained with modern bee-keepers. There
are, perhaps, three hundred distinct kinds of aphides known to English
naturalists, and all these eject the sweet liquid which, under certain
conditions, bees are tempted to gather. This honeydew varies in flavour
according to the species of tree from whose sap it is derived. Probably
much of it is only a sweet, slightly mawkish liquor, which, in its pure
state, combines with the genuine honey without causing noticeable
deterioration, at least to the unexpert taste and eye. But,
unfortunately for bee-keepers, the oak is a great favourite with these
parasites, no fewer than six varieties preying on this one tree alone.
And oak-honeydew is a pestilent thing indeed.
It is commonly supposed that the first cold nights, that mark the
beginning of the end of the honey season, stimulate the production of
honeydew; for it is after a chilly night that bees are usually seen at
work on the trees where the aphides abound. A much more likely theory,
however, is that the cold does not accelerate the secretion of the
honeydew, but cuts off the more legitimate resources of the hive just
when they are in fullest activity; and so the huge armies of foragers are
momentarily thrown out of work, and must seek new outlets for their
energy. The secretion of true nectar takes place mainly at night, and
requires a temperature of about 70°. Anything much lower than this means
dearth on the morrow, no matter how fine and warm the weather may then
prove.
The dark colour of aphis-syrup—a very little of which will ruin for
market the finest honey—seems to be due as much to foreign matter as to
its natural evil character. There is a peculiar growth on the bark of
many trees where aphides congregate, which is known as soot-fungus. This
and the honeydew get mingled together in a cimmerian slime, and, no
doubt, the merest trace of it would serve to darken and spoil the purest
honey. There seems to be no way for bee-keepers but to watch for the
first chilly nights, as the honey-season draws towards its close; and
then to be up early and get the surplus honey-chambers off the hives,
before the bees have had a chance to spoil them. But the bee is no
desperately early riser, for all her lofty place in the moral-maxim
books. She generally waits until the morning sun has drunk up the night
dews, and warmed the flower-calyces, before getting down to her work in
earnest. The very early bees that may sometimes be seen winging out into
the first light of a summer’s morning, are probably only water-carriers.
The water-supply is the day’s first and last care with each hive in the
breeding season. Every bee-garden seems to have its regular
watering-place, generally on the oozy margin of some neighbouring pond;
and here, in the early morning, and again towards late afternoon, the
bees may be seen drinking in whole battalions, while the meridian hours
of the day will find it all but deserted. Curiously, these
water-fetching times coincide with the times when the nectar is least
get-atable, or when the supply is exhausted for the day; which is another
sidelight on honey-bee economics.
To follow the bees through their honey-harvesting season is to review
nearly the whole year’s natural growth and life. In southern England the
earliest nectar is drawn from the willows, which come into flower with
late March, but hold back their sweets until the first spate of fine hot
weather comes flooding in the track of the chilly northern gales. Of
willow-honey there may be much or little, according to the
night-temperatures. Generally it goes by fits and starts. For a day or
two here and there the trees may be crowded with bees, or they may be
deserted for weeks together. Whenever the sun shines, indeed, the trees
that stand up like torches of gold in the misty purple of budding woods,
are always full of the singing multitude; but these are only the
pollen-gatherers. The nectar-bearing willows are far less showy. Their
catkins are small, tight-girt tassels of green, and when a warm night has
brought them into profit, they attract all the noisy minstrels for miles
round. Bee-keepers generally seem to leave the willows out of their
calculations as a source of honey, but in riverside districts, and in
favourable seasons, they are not to be overlooked. It sometimes happens
that April comes in with a succession of mild sunny days and warm nights,
and then the hives may suddenly overflow with willow-honey. When the
yellow catkins fade out of sight, the willows are apt to fade out of
memory; and it does not seem to be commonly known that the female catkins
continue to secrete abundant nectar often up to the end of May.
[Picture: In the store-house: sealing up the new honey]
Good honey-years are scarce under the changing English skies; yet
Nature’s design for the hive-people is obviously to give an unbroken
succession of honey-yielding plants throughout the whole spring and
summer, and pollen whenever a bright break of sunshine may lure them out
of doors. The white-clover is seldom ready until the first week in June;
but, from the earliest willows in March until the last of the flowering
seed-crops is down in late July, there is abundance of provender, if only
the fickle sun will do its part in the matter. The clover, as farming
goes nowadays, is the great main source of honey, in southern England at
least; but the connoisseurs are at variance as to what yields the
absolute perfection of honey. Scotsmen are all of one mind, for a rare
chance, in this; and will hear of nothing but the heather, carefully
discriminating between the bell-heather, which is good, and the
ling-heather, which is immeasurably better. Yet there is a honey, or
rather a honey-blend, which far outstrips them all, though it is as rare
and almost as priceless as the once famous Comet vintages. It is to be
had only when the apple-blossom and the hawthorn come into full flower
together, and this is only when a chill April has delayed the one and a
summer-like May has forced on the other. Then, to the mellow refinement
of the apple-nectar, is added the delicate almond flavour of the
hawthorn, and the resulting honey is easily the finest sweetmeat in the
world.
Wonder is often expressed that one of the most generally cultivated
crops, the red-clover, is seldom visited by the honey-bee, although the
bumblebees fill it with their deep trombone-music at all times of the
day. It is true that the tongue of the hive-bee cannot reach to the
bottom of the long red-clover calyx, but this would not deter her if the
nectar were worth the gathering. She would cut through the petal at its
base, as she does with many other flowers, and so steal an effective
march on her better caparisoned rival. But red-clover nectar is poor in
consistency and coarse of flavour. When the main crop is in flower, it
would yield a practically unlimited amount of honey, but this is just the
time when the bee can employ herself more profitably elsewhere. After
the red-clover has been cut, a second growth springs up, bearing
flower-tubes less developed, and therefore shorter than those of the
first crop. But now other and better sources of supply are rapidly
failing. The bee—for whom, in prosperous times, nothing but the best is
good enough—must revise her tastes to meet her necessities. At this time
she is as busy as the rest in the red-clover fields. And when her
clearer, sweeter note is heard there, mingling its contralto with the
hoarser music of the bumblebee, it is a token that the heyday of the year
is past: the honey-chambers must be taken off the hives without delay.