FEBRUARY AMONGST THE HIVES
THE midday sun shone warm from a cloudless sky. Up in the highest
elm-tops the south-west wind kept the chattering starlings gently
swinging, but below in the bee-garden scarce a breath moved under the
rich soft light.
As I lifted the latch of the garden-gate, the sharp click brought a
stooping figure erect in the midst of the hives; and the bee-master came
down the red-tiled winding path to meet me. He carried a box full of
some yellowish powdery substance in one hand, and a big pitcher of water
in the other; and as usual, his shirt-sleeves were tucked up to the
shoulder, baring his weather-browned arms to the morning sun.
“When do we begin the year’s bee-work?” he said, repeating my question
amusedly. “Why, we began on New Year’s morning. And last year’s work
was finished on Old Year’s night. If you go with the times, every day in
the year has its work on a modern bee-farm, either indoors or out.”
[Picture: “Brood-comb: showing two sizes of cell being made side by
side”]
“But it is on these first warm days of spring,” he continued, as I
followed him into the thick of the hives, “that outdoor work for the
bee-man starts in earnest. The bees began long ago. January was not out
before the first few eggs were laid right in the centre of the
brood-combs. And from now on, if only we manage properly, each
bee-colony will go on increasing until, in the height of the season,
every queen will be laying from two thousand to three thousand eggs a
day.”
He stopped and set down his box and his pitcher.
“If we manage properly. But there’s the rub. Success in bee-keeping is
all a question of numbers. The more worker-bees there are when the
honey-flow begins, the greater will be the honey-harvest. The whole art
of the bee-keeper consists in maintaining a steady increase in population
from the first moment the queens begin to lay in January, until the end
of May brings on the rush of the white clover, and every bee goes mad
with work from morning to night. Of course, in countries where the
climate is reasonable, and the year may be counted on to warm up steadily
month by month, all this is fairly easy; but with topsy-turvy weather,
such as we get in England, it is a vastly different matter. Just listen
to the bees now! And this is only February!’”
A deep vibrating murmur was upon the air. It came from all sides of us;
it rose from under foot, where the crocuses were blooming; it seemed to
fill the blue sky above with an ocean of sweet sound. The sunlight was
alive with scintillating points of light, like cast handfuls of diamonds,
as the bees darted hither and thither, or hovered in little joyous
companies round every hive. They swept to and fro between us; gambolled
about our heads; came with a sudden shrill menacing note and scrutinised
our mouths, our ears, our eyes, or settled on our hands and faces,
comfortably, and with no apparent haste to be gone. The bee-master noted
my growing uneasiness, not to say trepidation.
“Don’t be afraid,” he said. “It is only their companionableness. They
won’t sting—at least, not if you give them their way. But now come and
see what we are doing to help on the queens in their work.”
At different stations in the garden I had noticed some shallow wooden
trays standing among the hives. The old bee-man led the way to one of
these. Here the humming was louder and busier than ever. The tray was
full of fine wood-shavings, dusted over with the yellow powder from the
bee-master’s box; and scores of bees were at work in it, smothering
themselves from head to foot, and flying off like golden millers to the
hives.
“This is pea-flour,” explained the master, “and it takes the place of
pollen as food for the young bees, until the spring flowers open and the
natural supply is available. This forms the first step in the
bee-keeper’s work of patching up the defective English climate. From the
beginning our policy is to deceive the queens into the belief that all is
prosperity and progress outside. We keep all the hives well covered up,
and contract the entrances, so that a high temperature is maintained
within, and the queens imagine summer is already advancing. Then they
see the pea-flour coming in plentifully, and conclude that the fields and
hillsides are covered with flowers; for they never come out of the hives
except at swarming-time, and must judge of the year by what they see
around them. Then in a week or two we shall put the spring-feeders on,
and give each hive as much syrup as the bees can take down; and this,
again, leads the queens into the belief that the year’s food-supply has
begun in earnest. The result is that the winter lethargy in the hive is
soon completely overthrown, the queens begin to lay unrestrictedly, and
the whole colony is forging on towards summer strength long before there
is any natural reason for it.”
We were stooping down, watching the bees at the nearest hive. A little
cloud of them was hovering in the sunshine, heads towards the entrance,
keeping up a shrill jovial contented note as they flew. Others were
roving round with a vagrant, workless air, singing a low desultory song
as they trifled about among the crocuses, passing from gleaming white to
rich purple, then to gold, and back again to white, just as the mood took
them. In the hive itself there was evidently a kind of spring-cleaning
well in progress. Hundreds of the bees were bringing out minute
sand-coloured particles, which accumulated on the alighting-board visibly
as we watched. Now and again a worker came backing out, dragging a dead
bee laboriously after her. Instantly two or three others rushed to help
in the task, and between them they tumbled the carcass over the edge of
the footboard down among the grass below. Sometimes the burden was of a
pure white colour, like the ghost of a bee, perfect in shape, with beady
black eyes, and its colourless wings folded round it like a cerecloth.
Then it seemed to be less weighty, and its carrier usually shouldered the
gruesome thing, and flew away with it high up into the sunshine, and
swiftly out of view.
“Those are the undertakers,” said the bee-master, ruminatively filling a
pipe. “Their work is to carry the dead out of the hive. That last was
one of the New Year’s brood, and they often die in the cell like that,
especially at the beginning of the season. All that fine drift is the
cell-cappings thrown down during the winter from time to time as the
stores were broached, and every warm day sees them cleaning up the hive
in this way. And now watch these others—these that are coming and going
straight in and out of the hive.”
I followed the pointing pipe-stem. The alighting-stage was covered with
a throng of bees, each busily intent on some particular task. But every
now and then a bee emerged from the hive with a rush, elbowed her way
excitedly through the crowd, and darted straight off into the sunshine
without an instant’s pause. In the same way others were returning, and
as swiftly disappearing into the hive.
“Those are the water-carriers,” explained the master. “Water is a
constant need in bee-life almost the whole year round. It is used to
soften the mixture of honey and pollen with which the young grubs and
newly-hatched bees are fed; and the old bees require a lot of it to
dilute their winter stores. The river is the traditional watering-place
for my bees here, and in the summer it serves very well; but in the
winter hundreds are lost either through cold or drowning. And so at this
time we give them a water-supply close at home.”
He took up his pitcher, and led the way to the other end of the garden.
Here, on a bench, he showed me a long row of glass jars full of water,
standing mouth downward, each on its separate plate of blue china. The
water was oozing out round the edges of the jars, and scores of the bees
were drinking at it side by side, like cattle at a trough.
“We give it them lukewarm,” said the old bee-man, “and always mix salt
with it. If we had sea-water here, nothing would be better; seaside bees
often go down to the shore to drink, as you may prove for yourself on any
fine day in summer. Why are all the plates blue? Bees are as fanciful
in their ways as our own women-folk, and in nothing more than on the
question of colour. Just this particular shade of light blue seems to
attract them more than any other. Next to that, pure white is a
favourite with them; but they have a pronounced dislike to anything
brilliantly red, as all the old writers about bees noticed hundreds of
years ago. If I were to put some of the drinking-jars on bright red
saucers now, you would not see half as many bees on them as on the pale
blue.”
We moved on to the extracting-house, whence the master now fetched his
smoker, and a curious knife, with a broad and very keen-looking blade.
He packed the tin nozzle of the smoker with rolled brown paper, lighted
it, and, by means of the little bellows underneath, soon blew it up into
full strength. Then he went to one of the quietest hives, where only a
few bees were wandering aimlessly about, and sent a dense stream of smoke
into the entrance. A moment later he had taken the roof and coverings
off, and was lifting out the central comb-frames one by one, with the
bees clinging in thousands all about them.
“Now,” he said, “we have come to what is really the most important
operation of all in the bee-keeper’s work of stimulating his stocks for
the coming season. Here in the centre of each comb you see the young
brood; but all the cells above and around it are full of honey, still
sealed over and untouched by the bees. The stock is behind time. The
queen must be roused at once to her responsibilities, and here is one
very simple and effective way of doing it.”
He took the knife, deftly shaved off the cappings from the honey-cells of
each comb, and as quickly returned the frames, dripping with honey, to
the brood-nest. In a few seconds the hive was comfortably packed down
again, and he was looking round for the next languid stock.
“All these slow, backward colonies,” said the bee-master, as he puffed
away with his smoker, “will have to be treated after the same fashion.
The work must be smartly done, or you will chill the brood; but, in
uncapping the stores like this, right in the centre of the brood-nest,
the effect on the stock is magical. The whole hive reeks with the smell
of honey, and such evidence of prosperity is irresistible. To-morrow, if
you come this way, you will see all these timorous bee-folk as busy as
any in the garden.”