When pleasure and profit can be combined, time runs swiftly and the heart
feels happy.
It is enjoyment to stand by one's bee-hives and watch the intense and
untiring work of one's bees. It is like standing at a window in Cheapside,
and watching the counter-currents of human beings that ceaselessly
traverse its pavement; only, instead of faces grooved with cares and pale
with anxieties, we do not see issuing from their hives or returning home
a single bee that seems bowed down with trouble or fretful about the
future. Each bee, from the queen down to the sentinel at the gate, seems
to have heard the Master's words,--"Take no thought" (_i.e._, irritating
care) "for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of
itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
Bees rarely fail to become acquainted with a kind and affectionate master.
I have stood in the midst of thousands returning home after their day's
work, and seen them resting on me, brushing their wings and bodies, and,
thereby refreshed and recruited, they enter their home and deposit their
sweet burdens. They do not forget little acts of kindness shown them, and
rarely fail to show gratitude,--an example Christians would do well to
copy. I have sat for hours by my hives with glass windows, and watched
the orderly and beautiful array in which some give wax, others build it
into forms of strength and beauty, others clear away incidental dirt,
others pour honey into the warehouses, others carry out their dead, and
all reverently and loyally attend to the instructions of their queen.
Relays of ventilators, joining the tips of their wings and making
fanners, take up their position at the doors, and send in currents of
fresh air. Others are placed as sentries on the bee-board, who, like
faithful soldiers, repel wasps and moths, and die rather than desert the
post of duty. There is not an idle bee in a hive, if one may except the
drones after their mission is ended. _Fruges consumere nati_; they meet
with the consequences which all idle and unproductive citizens provoke.
They, however, may be regarded as the exceptional inmates. The bees do not
fail to understand their relations, and therefore they get rid of them as
soon as they cease to contribute to the wealth or comfort or protection
of the hive. They become in June and July the mere hangers-on--the fat,
lazy monks, who believe that everybody is made to work for them, while
they are excused helping anybody. But the bountiful Creator has left no
place for indolence in this world of ours; it would be too disastrous an
example to be permitted with impunity. The bees accordingly turn them out
to starve, or garrote them as they catch them, and at all risk get rid of
the incumbrance. Do idle young men deserve better treatment?
A hive in June is a perfect study, a model of order, work, neatness, and
beauty; it is rich in interest to everyone who has an hour to spare. About
nine o'clock at night you cannot do better than listen for a quarter of
an hour by your hives, and you will hear an oratorio sweeter and richer
than you ever heard in Exeter Hall. Treble, tenor, and bass are blended
in richest harmony; sometimes it sounds as the distant hum of a great
city, and at other times as if the apiarian choristers were attempting
the hallelujahs which will swell from earth to heaven when all things are
put right, and bee and bird and every living thing sing joyously together
the jubilant anthem peal, "Great and marvellous are thy works. Lord God
Almighty. Just and true are thy ways, thou King of nations."
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