FAILING HOPES
Next day Carl was still feeling unsteady and ill, but on the following
morning he felt well enough to guide Bob to the new apiary site, and
the two boys went off together. They returned full of enthusiasm.
“There must be half a square mile of basswood trees,” said Bob. “So
we’d have a double chance, if the berries failed.”
“Yes, and the best is that there’s a road going to the place,” Carl
added. “The old lumber road I told you about. It comes out on the road
to Morton, a mile or so from here. It would only need a day or two
with an ax to clear it out for a wagon to pass.”
“This yard is certainly getting crowded,” said Alice, thoughtfully.
“With all the new swarms, we’ll have over two hundred colonies soon,
and a hundred is as many as most locations will support. But what
about the expense of moving? It would cost six dollars a day to get a
team from Morton, and we’d have to build a honey-house there, too.”
“I believe it would pay us even if it cost a hundred dollars,” said
Carl. “But I suppose we can’t do anything till some one goes to Morton
and gets Mr. Farr’s permission to move them. The mortgage says they’re
not to be moved without permission.”
This was undoubtedly the case, and, as none of them had time to go to
the village just then, the matter was dropped temporarily. But new
events speedily made it a live issue again.
A little warm rain fell in the afternoon, and next morning the
honey-flow, which had been failing, began again profusely. And then,
suddenly, a riot of swarming broke out among the bees.
A slow, light honey-flow always induces more swarming than a heavy
one, and Alice had been nervous about the matter for some days. On
this morning she went out with Carl to examine a few of the hives, and
in the very first they found what they had feared to find—a cluster of
the peanut-shaped queen-cells. They were not quite sealed, but would
have been finished the next day, and the colony would have swarmed.
Carl cut them all out. This treatment usually delays swarming at any
rate for a week, till the colony can raise a fresh batch of cells. But
occasionally, when they have the swarming fever badly, they will
swarm, cells or not, and it is, moreover, very difficult to make sure
of destroying every cell on ten combs swarming with bees.
The next colony had three heavy supers of honey piled on top of the
brood-chamber, and when they got down to it at last they found no
signs of swarming. But the third colony had cells just started.
Growing uneasy, they went to look at the hive where the three-dollar
queen had been placed. They could not afford to let that queen lead
her bees away to the woods, but there was not much danger of it, for a
queen less than a year old seldom swarms.
But on opening the hive they found the brood-combs choked with honey,
few eggs laid, and swarming cells well under way.
“Why, this queen must be no good!” exclaimed Carl.
“No, it isn’t that,” replied Alice. “But a queen never lays well just
after she’s come out of the mailing-cage, and the bees have got ahead
of her and filled up the combs with honey where the brood should be.
The poor queen has no room left to lay in; she feels crowded and
that’s what gave them the idea of swarming.”
It was lucky they had discovered it in time. They cut out the
incipient queen-cells, gave empty combs, and felt sure that they had
made the colony safe. They were just proceeding to another of the
colonies where one of the new queens was, when, with a loud roaring, a
storm of bees began to volley out of a hive at the farthest end of the
yard.
They surged about wildly in the air for some time, and then settled in
a cluster on the tip of a small cedar where swarms had alighted
several times before. Alice kept an eye on them, while Carl hurried
off to the barn for fresh hives.
Before he could get back another swarm roared out of a second hive,
eddied about like a cloud of smoke, and finally settled. And then a
third hive swarmed.
When bees are in the mood for it, the flying of a single swarm will
sometimes start a perfect uproar of swarming throughout an apiary, and
colonies will become carried away by the excitement and swarm without
being normally ready for it. That seemed to be the case this time. Bob
came running out to help, but a fourth swarm was already in the air.
Then came two more, which united and settled in one enormous cluster,
the size of a large bucket. Bees fairly darkened the air; the
apiarists lost track of how many swarms were out or where they came
from, and the noise was like a small tornado.
The three rushed about frantically, gathering up such clustered swarms
as they could most easily reach, and Bob was instructed to dash a
dipperful of water right into the top of every colony that might be
likely to abscond. Such a drenching is an effectual check to swarming
for that day at any rate and does the bees no harm.
This vigorous treatment produced some quiet. No more swarms had
emerged for about fifteen minutes, when the familiar crescendo roar
sounded again, and Bob uttered a despairing yell. From the
three-dollar queen’s colony the bees were pouring out like steam from
an escape-valve.
“Oh! don’t let them go!” shrieked Alice.
Bob rushed up and dashed water into the entrance; Carl poured in a
volume of smoke, but nothing could stop them. There was already an
enormous cloud of bees circling over the hive, and the only thing now
was to wait till they had clustered. But they did not seem inclined to
cluster. The swarm drifted about uncertainly, here and there, now
high, now low, and finally began to edge toward the river.
Expecting that they would settle on the willows by the water, the
three apiarists followed it anxiously. But it did not settle. It went
over the trees, and out above the stream.
“They’re going across! They’re making straight for the woods!” cried
Alice. “That queen is lost!”
“No, they’ll surely cluster a little further on,” Bob exclaimed. “I’m
going to follow them up. We can’t lose that queen. I’ll bring them
back.”
He snatched up a grain sack that they had already been using in
collecting swarms, jumped into the boat and rowed himself across the
river.
The runaways did not travel very fast, and he could see the swarm
gyrating and drifting like a cloud of smoke over the trees. But it
moved too fast for him to keep up with it over that rough ground. He
kept it in sight for nearly a quarter of a mile, and then it faded
like mist into the sky.
It might be that the bees had already selected some hollow tree for
their new home, and had gone straight to it without clustering. This
sometimes happens, but very rarely; a swarm almost always settles and
hangs for some time, probably as a means of getting its force
together, ready for the final journey, and Bob felt sure that this
swarm would sooner or later settle on a branch.
He kept on, therefore, scrutinizing the trees carefully for a pendant
brown bunch. No such thing appeared, and though he stopped and
listened at every few rods he did not hear the humming drone that a
swarm keeps up for some time after it has settled.
He lost count of distance, stumbling along with his eyes in the air,
but he must have gone a mile from the apiary when he was stopped by a
savage, guttural grunt, apparently close by. Just ahead of him was a
dense clump of willows and alders fringing a small stream, and as he
gazed, he thought he saw the dim outline of an animal through the
shrubbery, something large and tall like a buck.
Anxious to get a look, Bob edged sideways and parted the willows a
little. He was thunderstruck to see a bull moose standing in the
shallow water and glaring at him.
Now he remembered having heard at Morton that moose had lately been
seen in this district. At one time they were plentiful; then for years
they had vanished, and were only beginning to reappear as they strayed
south from the great game-preserves to the north.
At most times of the year they are exceedingly shy and timid animals,
hard to get in view. Bob was amazed that this one had let him come up
so close, and he was edging forward to get a better look through the
tangle of under brush in front of him when the animal charged at him
furiously.
He jumped aside, found himself near a low-branched cedar, and
scrambled up it. He had just time to draw his legs out of reach when
the moose crashed into the tree with a force that jarred it to the
roots.
When Bob recovered his breath he had time to feel astonished and
indignant at this unprovoked attack. Bull moose are sometimes
dangerous in the rutting season of autumn, but never in early summer,
and the horns of this one had not yet quite outgrown their “velvet.”
But he was clearly in a murderous temper. He stamped, tore up the
earth and brushes around the cedar, gritted his teeth, and cocked his
eye upward at the bee-keeper with a baleful glare. Then, all at once,
Bob saw what was the matter.
The lower part of the bull’s right shoulder was mangled and torn with
wounds that were evidently not more than a day or two old. They might
have been made by the claws of a bear; more likely by a charge of
buckshot. Anyhow, they were enough to account for a good deal of bad
temper, for they must have caused intense pain.
But the bull’s hostility did not seem to last long. Bob was looking
upwards to see if he could climb higher in his tree, and when he
glanced down again the space beneath him was empty. The moose had
slipped silently away into the woods.
Whether he had really fled or was merely hiding in a near-by thicket
Bob could not tell. He hesitated to come down, and for some minutes he
sat dubiously in the branches, looking carefully about him for the
enemy. Then something caught his eye that gave him a joyful surprise.
About twenty yards away there was a great brownish lump clustered at
the tip of a low maple sapling, which bent slightly under the weight.
Bob stared at it intently. It was certainly a swarm of bees. It could
hardly be any other than the one he was chasing. If it had not been
for the bull moose he might not have seen them, for they were aside
from the straight line, and so near the ground that an elevated post
was needed to distinguish them.
He was desperately anxious to secure them now, for there was no
telling when they might take wing again. He waited for some ten
minutes very impatiently. No sign nor sound came from the moose, and
Bob slid to earth and hastened toward the little maple.
The little tree had sagged over so that the swarm hung no higher than
his shoulders, and it could be captured in the neatest possible
manner. He carefully slipped the mouth of his sack over the swarm till
the whole cluster was inside. Then he gathered the sack around the
branch they hung by, and shook it violently. There was a sudden roar,
and a heavy weight dropped into the sack. He had secured all the
swarm, except for a few bees that flew about in wild dismay at this
disappearance of their comrades.
Much elated, Bob turned back toward home. The sack hummed and stirred
with the efforts of the angry insects to get out. But he had hardly
gone ten yards when something stirred in the underbrush. He stopped,
startled. The next instant a fearful bellow filled his ears, and the
wounded bull burst through a curtain of evergreens.
Bob turned and ran as fast as he could, still clinging to the sack.
Luckily the bull was somewhat lame from his wound and not in his
regular racing form. At is was, Bob was almost run down; he saved
himself only by leaping aside and changing his direction. All the time
he kept on the lookout for a tree that he could climb, and he clung
tightly to the sack. He was determined not to drop it except as a last
resort, for the mouth was not tied, and the bees would escape at once.
The hoofs of the bull clattered behind him. He dodged wildly again,
swerved behind a tree, and caught sight of a dead hemlock trunk that
was spiked with short branches, and leaned at a decided angle.
It was almost as easy to climb as a ladder, and Bob scrambled up to
safety, still carrying his swarm.
The bull’s disappointed fury was now uncontrollable. He roared
frightfully; his black mane stood stiffly on end, and he gritted and
gnashed his teeth. Probably by this time he had got Bob thoroughly
associated with the pain that he was suffering, and it was too much
for him to be twice checked in his revenge.
He reared up with his fore feet against the trunk of the hemlock. Then
he drew back a few yards and charged into it with such force that, to
Bob’s horror, it gave slightly and leaned even farther over than
before. Evidently the roots were rotten and held insecurely. It was no
place of safety after all.
Again the bull crashed into the trunk, and this time, with an ominous
creaking, it went over more than a foot.
This result seemed to encourage the bull greatly. He rammed his head
against the trunk and pushed hard. Bob heard the rotten roots
snapping. Pausing now and again to glance up at Bob with what seemed a
gleam of savage triumph in his eye, the bull continued to butt and
push.
Bob clung in his tree panic-stricken, while it swayed over farther and
farther. In a few seconds he would surely be hurled under the brute’s
hoofs. Then it flashed upon him that he had one weapon left, and a
terrible one. He disliked to use it, even to save his life, but
another charge of the bull, and a heavy lurch of the almost uprooted
tree convinced him that he must not hesitate.
He held the sack directly over the bull’s head, and shook out the
swarm. At the same time he ducked quickly, and snatched his coat up to
cover his own face.
There was a hissing roar as though from a burst steam-pipe, and he
felt a dozen burning stings on his hands. Then he heard a sudden,
astonished snort from the bull and a sound of furious trampling.
He ventured to peep through an opening in his coat. The air round him
was full of bees, and the bull’s face and head seemed covered with a
surging brown mass. Thousands of bees were clinging and stinging
pitilessly, while the animal rushed about, fiercely shaking its head
and bellowing with pain and fury.
Blindly it started to bolt, and collided heavily with a tree. It made
a fresh start and splashed into the brook. From the sounds it seemed
to be rolling in the water. Probably it got rid of some of its
tormentors in this way, but certainly not of all. It dashed out of the
creek, bolted past Bob’s tree, knots of maddened bees still clinging
to its hide, and crashed through the underbrush, straight away into
the woods. There was no doubt that it was gone this time, for Bob
could hear its smashing rush fully half a mile away.
Bob was stung a good deal himself, but this seemed a very light
matter. He slipped to the ground and lost no time in finding a safer
place, for the air was still full of savagely-excited bees. Here he
remained for half an hour, picking the stings out of his skin, and
waiting till he considered it safe to go home.
He might as well recover the sack, he thought, before he left, and he
went to get it, regretting bitterly the loss of the swarm. No doubt it
had saved his life; it could not be helped; but still it was a shame
to lose Alice’s three-dollar bee.
But as he approached his former perch he was surprised to find that
the bees had collected again. Not all of them, indeed; instead of the
big swarm, there was now only about a quart of bees in a little bunch
on a cedar twig. But they would hardly have gathered there if the
queen had not been with them, and Bob bent over the cluster and looked
at it closely.
They had got over their stinging fury now. He was able to scrutinize
them carefully, and in a few seconds he made out the slender, graceful
body of the yellow, Italian queen, as she crawled about among her
bees. Full of delight, he slipped the sack over it, shook the bees
off, and started hastily for home. More than half were lost, to be
sure, but he would have sacrificed all the rest of the swarm to have
saved the queen.
He reached the river without seeing anything more of the bull, ferried
himself across, and went up to the apiary, where Carl and Alice were
still working hard.
“I’ve got ’em!” he cried triumphantly as he appeared.
“Got them!” his brother exclaimed. “Looks as if they’d got you!”
Bob’s face was indeed a shocking sight. A bee-keeper usually becomes
hardened to stings, so that they do not cause swellings; but Bob had
not yet become sufficiently inoculated. There were big lumps on his
forehead, one eye was nearly closed, his chin was lopsided, and both
his hands were somewhat puffed. But he was highly elated at having
recovered the swarm with the valuable queen, which they at once
carefully restored to a hive.
“There, old lady!” said Carl, as he saw the yellow queen creep into
the hive with her bees, “you’ve had enough wild life now, and you’d
better settle down to business.”
Bob gave them a brief account of what had happened, while he helped
them sort out the swarms, but in the course of another hour his eye
closed so badly that he was obliged to retire to the cabin. Several
more swarms had come out while he had been gone, but all of them had
been recovered, and by that night they had twenty-eight new colonies
more than they had bought.
The apiary was certainly far too crowded, and doubtless there would be
still more swarming before the season was over. Some of them ought to
be moved to another spot, and the sooner this could be done the
better.
The next day was hot and dry. No honey appeared to be coming in, and
no swarms went out, and early the following morning Carl paddled the
boat down to Morton.
He had no difficulty in securing Mr. Farr’s written consent to moving
part of the bees to the new location by the lake. He ordered a
two-horse team and hayrack to come out to the apiary the next day, and
came home with a roll of wire gauze and several papers of tacks.
It took a day to clear away the bushes and brush from the old road,
but it was ready when the wagon arrived from Morton, and they moved
fifty colonies the next night, in two loads. The next morning they
moved another load by daylight. It was hard, tedious work to load and
unload the heavy hives, and the wagon had to move slowly all the way.
It was dangerous work, too; though the entrances of the hives were
closed with wire gauze, an aperture might develop through which the
bees could rush out, and the result would probably be stung horses, a
runaway, and a line of smashed hives scattered along the road. One of
the boys walked with a lighted smoker beside the load all the way, on
the watch for possible trouble, and they all breathed much more freely
when the hives were off the wagon.
They set them on large stones a few rods back from the water. Later
they could make regular stands for them, and before another season, of
course, they would have to build a small house for extracting and
storing the apparatus.
For the present they contented themselves with a tiny hut no bigger
than a piano-case, built of rough logs, in which to store tools and a
few frames, extra hives, and odds and ends. Most of the colonies in
the new yard were old ones that had swarmed and were weak in bees.
They would gather no more surplus honey and would need little
attention this year, but would build up strong for the next season.
The day of the swarming riot was the last really good day of the
raspberry bloom. The effect of the shower had been transient. The
weather turned hot and dry. The honey dried up in the flowers, and the
discouraged bees worked only for an hour or two early every morning.
“If it would only rain—really rain hard!” groaned Alice.
“Unless it does, the honey-flow is certainly at an end,” said Carl,
anxiously. “The berry bloom won’t last long in this drought and I’m
certain there’s nothing like a thousand dollars’ worth of honey in the
supers now.”
“No—or five hundred,” added Bob.
In fact, the earliest raspberry blossoms were now replaced by green
fruit. If rain should fall in time, the later bloom might last for a
week more, and there was the basswood flowering still to come. But the
weather remained hot and dry, and there was no dew at night. Alice’s
garden withered, though she watered it every evening. Twice clouds
rolled up from the south, and they heard thunder. It must have rained
within ten miles, but not a drop fell at the apiary.
“Even half an hour’s shower would mean a couple of days’ honey-flow,”
said Bob.
But it did not come. Now and again a little moisture in the air set
the bees working for an hour or two, but most of the time they were
idle. As usual in a honey dearth they became bad-tempered. Their
owners could no longer stroll about among the hives with impunity. The
bees came into the cabin, attracted by one of the pails of candied
honey, and would have carried every morsel of it away if they had been
permitted. Robber bees were prowling about every hive, looking for a
chance to steal a little sweet from some careless colony, but every
entrance was alive with alert guards, and no bee was allowed to pass
in without being examined and smelt all over. The robbers did get a
foothold in one weak colony, however, and before the apiarists saw it,
it was besieged by a cloud of bees. They carried it by assault, too,
after half an hour’s fighting, killed the defenders, tore down most of
the combs, and carried every drop of the honey away to their own hive.
Then they turned their attention to the hive standing next in the row,
but this was a powerful colony, and the raiders got more than they
bargained for. In a moment the entrance was covered with knots of
furiously-fighting bees. Every robber was pounced upon the moment it
alighted. The attack was beaten off, and for a time quiet reigned in
the yard.
Day by day the raspberry bloom vanished, and no fresh buds were
opening now. The time came at last when it was entirely gone, and all
the thickets were covered with fruit. The basswood trees were full of
buds—but would they yield nectar?
It was the middle of July. In two weeks they must pay five hundred
dollars, with interest, and they did not have the money. Unless they
could make it, the bees would be taken from them.
“If the basswood only yields as it should we’ll manage it, after all,”
said Bob, trying to be optimistic.
Alas! the basswood flowered in the midst of a hot wave, when the whole
land lay baked and panting. The bloom lasted only a day or two, dried
up, and withered. Scarcely a bee had touched the blossoms.
The Harmans felt unspeakably gloomy and discouraged. The failure of
their hopes, after so much anticipation, labor, and experience, was
hard to bear.
“We may as well look the thing square in the face, Allie,” said Carl
one morning, when he was alone with his sister in the cabin. “The
season’s over, and it’s a failure. I don’t know how we’ll save the
bees.”
“Surely we’ll have money enough to pay Mr. Farr. We must save the bees
if we starve ourselves, for they mean everything to us. How much money
have we left?”
“About two hundred dollars. It has just melted away, with all the
expenses of fresh supplies and sugar and then the cost of establishing
the new yard, besides our own living.”
“Well, surely we can get three hundred dollars’ worth of honey, to
make up enough for our payment. We can manage to live some way and rub
along till another season comes.”
“Well, that’s what I wanted to talk about,” went on Carl, earnestly.
“You see, Bob’s university work mustn’t be interrupted on any account.
He’ll want to drop it, I know, to save the money, but we mustn’t let
him. We’ve got to find the money somehow. Now, I’ve been thinking that
you might go back to Harman’s Corners, where you could live in our old
house for little or nothing, and I might get some kind of a job in
Toronto.”
“You’re right,” Alice agreed. “Bob must keep up his work. But I
wouldn’t stay at home all alone. I’d rather get a job in Toronto,
too.”
Then began a long discussion of plans, but they revealed nothing of
all this to Bob. That very evening, however, Bob proposed that his
sister take a walk with him.
“This investment hasn’t panned out, Alice,” he said, when they were
well away from the cabin. “We’re not going to make a cent profit this
year. I blame myself for it, for I got you both into it.”
“Nonsense, Bob!” returned Alice. “We were just as eager as you were.
We all rushed into it, and we all knew that it was a gamble on the
weather.”
“Well, anyhow, I’m not going back to college next term. Carl will want
me to, I know, but you must back me up. I couldn’t use any money that
way. We’ll be hard up at the best, and I won’t have you two rob
yourselves for my support.”
“Oh, Bob! You must go back!”
“Well, I won’t. What’s a year lost, anyhow. But I’m uncertain what to
do. I could come up here and trap all winter. I’m sure I could make
several hundred dollars, all clear profit; but trapping is a sort of
gamble, too. Or I could get a job any time with the Toronto Electric
Company at about fifteen a week. Trapping would be more fun, but the
other would be surer, and I’d get a lot of practical experience. What
do you think?”
“I don’t know!” said Alice, half laughing and half crying. “Oh, I
don’t know, Bob. I think—I think we’d better harvest our honey first
and see how it turns out.”
And the next day they began to harvest the crop.