A TWENTIETH CENTURY BEE-FARMER
IT was sunny spring in the bee-garden. The thick elder-hedge to the
north was full of young green leaf; everywhere the trim footways between
the hives were marked by yellow bands of crocus-bloom, and daffodils just
showing a golden promise of what they would be in a few warm days to
come. From a distance I had caught the fresh spring song of the hives,
and had seen the bee-master and his men at work in different quarters of
the mimic city. But now, drawing nearer, I observed they were intent on
what seemed to me a perfectly astounding enterprise. Each man held a
spoon in one hand and a bowl of what I now knew to be pea-flour in the
other, and I saw that they were busily engaged in filling the
crocus-blossoms up to the brim with this inestimable condiment. My
friend the bee-master looked up on my approach, and, as was his wont,
forestalled the inevitable questioning.
“This is another way of giving it,” he explained, “and the best of all in
the earliest part of the season. Instinct leads the bees to the flowers
for pollen-food when they will not look for it elsewhere; and as the
natural supply is very meagre, we just help them in this way.”
As he spoke I became rather unpleasantly aware of a change of manners on
the part of his winged people. First one and then another came harping
round, and, settling comfortably on my face, showed no inclination to
move again. In my ignorance I was for brushing them off, but the
bee-master came hurriedly to my rescue. He dislodged them with a few
gentle puffs from his tobacco-pipe.
“That is always their way in the spring-time,” he explained. “The warmth
of the skin attracts them, and the best thing to do is to take no notice.
If you had knocked them off you would probably have been stung.”
“Is it true that a bee can only sting once?” I asked him, as he bent
again over the crocus beds.
He laughed.
“What would be the good of a sword to a soldier,” he said, “if only one
blow could be struck with it? It is certainly true that the bee does not
usually sting a second time, but that is only because you are too hasty
with her. You brush her off before she has had time to complete her
business, and the barbed sting, holding in the wound, is torn away, and
the bee dies. But now watch how the thing works naturally.”
A bee had settled on his hand as he was speaking. He closed his fingers
gently over it, and forced it to sting.
“Now,” he continued, quite unconcernedly, “look what really happens. The
bee makes two or three lunges before she gets the sting fairly home.
Then the poison is injected. Now watch what she does afterwards. See!
she has finished her work, and is turning round and round! The barbs are
arranged spirally on the sting, and she is twisting it out
corkscrew-fashion. Now she is free again! there she goes, you see,
weapon and all; and ready to sting again if necessary.”
The crocus-filling operation was over now, and the bee-master took up his
barrow and led the way to a row of hives in the sunniest part of the
garden. He pulled up before the first of the hives, and lighted his
smoking apparatus.
“These,” he said, as he fell to work, “have not been opened since
October, and it is high time we saw how things are going with them.”
He drove a few strong puffs of smoke into the entrance of the hive and
removed the lid. Three or four thicknesses of warm woollen quilting lay
beneath. Under these a square of linen covered the tops of the frames,
to which it had been firmly propolised by the bees. My friend began to
peel this carefully off, beginning at one corner and using the smoker
freely as the linen ripped away.
“This was a full-weight hive in the autumn,” he said, “so there was no
need for candy-feeding. But they most be pretty near the end of their
stores now. You see how they are all together on the three or four
frames in the centre of the hive? The other combs are quite empty and
deserted. And look how near they are clustering to the top of the bars!
Bees always feed upwards, and that means we must begin spring-feeding
right away.”
He turned to the barrow, on which was a large box, lined with warm
material, and containing bar frames full of sealed honeycomb.
“These are extra combs from last summer. I keep them in a warm cupboard
over the stove at about the same temperature as the hive we are going to
put them into. But first they must be uncapped. Have you ever seen the
Bingham used?”
From the inexhaustible barrow he produced the long knife with the broad,
flat blade; and, poising the frame of honeycomb vertically on his knee,
he removed the sheet of cell-caps with one dexterous cut, laying the
honey bare from end to end. This frame was then lowered into the hive
with the uncapped side close against the clustering bees. Another comb,
similarly treated, was placed on the opposite flank of the cluster.
Outside each of these a second full comb was as swiftly brought into
position. Then the sliding inner walls of the brood-nest were pushed up
close to the frame, and the quilts and roof restored. The whole seemed
the work of a few moments at the outside.
“All this early spring work,” said the bee-master, as we moved to the
next hive, “is based upon the recognition of one thing. In the south
here the real great honey-flow comes all at once: very often the main
honey-harvest for the year has to be won or lost during three short weeks
of summer. The bees know this, and from the first days of spring they
have only the one idea—to create an immense population, so that when the
honey-flow begins there may be no lack of harvesters. But against this
main idea there is another one—their ingrained and invincible caution.
Not an egg will be laid nor a grub hatched unless there is reasonable
chance of subsistence for it. The populace of the hive must be increased
only in proportion to the amount of stores coming in. With a good
spring, and the early honey plentiful, the queen will increase her
production of eggs with every day, and the population of the hive will
advance accordingly. But if, on the very brink of the great honey-flow,
there comes, as is so often the case, a spell of cold windy weather,
laying is stopped at once; and, if the cold continues, all hatching grubs
are destroyed and the garrison put on half-rations. And so the work of
months is undone.”
He stooped to bring his friendly pipe to my succour again, for a bee was
trying to get down my collar in the most unnerving way, and another had
apparently mistaken my mouth for the front-door of his hive. The
intruders happily driven off, the master went back to his work and his
talk together.
“But it is just here that the art of the bee-keeper comes in. He must
prevent this interruption to progress by maintaining the confidence of
the bees in the season. He must create an artificial plenty until the
real prosperity begins. Yet, after all, he must never lose sight of the
main principle, of carrying out the ideas of the bees, not his own. In
good beemanship there is only one road to success: you must study to find
out what the bees intend to do, and then help them to do it. They call
us bee-masters, but bee-servants would be much the better name. The bees
have their definite plan of life, perfected through countless ages, and
nothing you can do will ever turn them from it. You can delay their
work, or you can even thwart it altogether, but no one has ever succeeded
in changing a single principle in bee-life. And so the best bee-master
is always the one who most exactly obeys the orders from the hive.”