CHLOE AMONG THE BEES
THE bee-mistress looked at my card, then put its owner under a like
careful scrutiny. In the shady garden where we stood, the sunlight fell
in quivering golden splashes round our feet. High overhead, in the
purple elm-blossom, the bees and the glad March wind made rival music.
Higher still a ripple of lark-song hung in the blue, and a score of rooks
were sailing by, filling the morning with their rich, deep clamour of
unrest.
The bee-mistress drew off her sting-proof gloves in thoughtful
deliberation.
“If I show you the bee-farm,” said she, eyeing me somewhat doubtfully,
“and let you see what women have done and are doing in an ideal feminine
industry, will you promise to write of us with seriousness? I mean, will
you undertake to deal with the matter for what it is—a plain, business
enterprise by business people—and not treat it flippantly, just because
no masculine creature has had a hand in it?”
“This is an attempt,” she went on—the needful assurances having been
given—“an attempt, and, we believe, a real solution to a very real
difficulty. There are thousands of educated women in the towns who have
to earn their own bread; and they do it usually by trying to compete with
men in walks of life for which they are wholly unsuited. Now, why do
they not come out into the pure air and quiet of the countryside, and
take up any one of several pursuits open there to a refined, well-bred
woman? Everywhere the labourers are forsaking the land and crowding into
the cities. That is a farmers’ problem, with which, of course, women
have nothing to do. The rough, heavy work in the cornfields must always
be done either by men or machinery. But there are certain employments,
even in the country, that women can invariably undertake better than men,
and bee-keeping is one of them. The work is light. It needs just that
delicacy and deftness of touch that only a woman can bring to it. It is
profitable. Above all, there is nothing about it, from first to last, of
an objectionable character, demanding masculine interference. In
poultry-farming, good as it is for women, there must always be a
stony-hearted man about the place to do unnameable necessary things in a
fluffy back-shed. But bee-keeping is clean, clever, humanising, open-air
work—essentially women’s work all through.”
She had led the way through the scented old-fashioned garden, towards a
gate in the farther wall, talking as she went. Now she paused, with her
hand on the latch.
“This,” she said, “we call the Transition Gate. It divides our work from
our play. On this side of it we have the tennis-court and the croquet,
and other games that women love, young or old. But it is all serious
business on the other side. And now you shall see our latter-day Eden,
with its one unimportant omission.”
As the door swung back to her touch, the murmur that was upon the air
grew suddenly in force and volume. Looking through, I saw an old
orchard, spacious, sun-riddled, carpeted with green; and, stretching away
under the ancient apple-boughs, long, neat rows of hives, a hundred or
more, all alive with bees, winnowing the March sunshine with their myriad
wings.
Here and there in the shade-dappled pleasance figures were moving about,
busily at work among the hives, figures of women clad in trim holland
blouses, and wearing bee-veils, through which only a dim guess at the
face beneath could be hazarded. Laughter and talk went to and fro in the
sun-steeped quiet of the place; and one of the fair bee-gardeners near at
hand—young and pretty, I could have sworn, although her blue gauze veil
disclosed provokingly little—was singing to herself, as she stooped over
an open hive, and lifted the crowded brood-frames one by one up into the
light of day.
“The great work of the year is just beginning with us,” explained the
bee-mistress. “In these first warm days of spring every hive must be
opened and its condition ascertained. Those that are short of stores
must be fed; backward colonies must be quickened to a sense of their
responsibilities. Clean hives must be substituted for the old,
winter-soiled dwellings. Queens that are past their prime will have to
be dethroned, and their places filled by younger and more vigorous
successors. But it is all typically women’s work. You have an old
acquaintance with the lordly bee-master and his ways; now come and see
how a woman manages.”
We passed over to the singing lady in the veil, and—from a safe
distance—watched her at her work. Each frame, as it was raised out of
the seething abyss of the hive, was turned upside down and carefully
examined. A little vortex of bees swung round her head, shrilling
vindictively. Those on the uplifted comb-frames hustled to and fro like
frightened sheep, or crammed themselves head foremost into the empty
cells, out of reach of the disturbing light.
“That is a queenless stock,” said the bee-mistress. “It is going to be
united with another colony, where there is a young, high-mettled ruler in
want of subjects.”
We watched the bee-gardener as she went to one of the neighbouring hives,
subdued and opened it, drew out all the brood-combs, and brought them
over in a carrying-rack, with the bees clustering in thousands all about
them. Then a scent-diffuser was brought into play, and the fragrance of
lavender-water came over to us, as the combs of both hives were quickly
sprayed with the perfume, then lowered into the hive, a frame from each
stock alternately. It was the old time-honoured plan for uniting
bee-colonies, by impregnating them with the same odour, and so inducing
the bees to live together peaceably, where otherwise a deadly war might
ensue. But the whole operation was carried through with a neat celerity,
and light, dexterous handling, I had never seen equalled by any man.
“That girl,” said the bee-mistress, as we moved away, “came to me out of
a London office a year ago, anæmic, pale as the paper she typed on all
day for a living. Now she is well and strong, and almost as brown as the
bees she works among so willingly. All my girls here have come to me
from time to time in the same way out of the towns, forsaking indoor
employment that was surely stunting all growth of mind and body. And
there are thousands who would do the same to-morrow, if only the chance
could be given them.”
We stopped in the centre of the old orchard. Overhead the swelling
fruit-buds glistened against the blue sky. Merry thrush-music rang out
far and near. Sun and shadow, the song of the bees, laughing voices, a
snatch of an old Sussex chantie, the perfume of violet-beds and nodding
gillyflowers, all came over to us through the lichened tree-stems, in a
flood of delicious colour and scent and sound. The bee-mistress turned
to me, triumphantly.
“Would any sane woman,” she asked, “stop in the din and dirt of a smoky
city, if she could come and work in a place like this? Bee-keeping for
women! do you not see what a chance it opens up to poor toiling folk,
pining for fresh air and sunshine, especially to the office-girl class,
girls often of birth and refinement—just that kind of poor gentlewomen
whose breeding and social station render them most difficult of all to
help? And here is work for them, clean, intellectual, profitable; work
that will keep them all day long in the open air; a healthy, happy
country life, humanly within the reach of all.”
“What is wanted,” continued the bee-mistress, as we went slowly down the
broad main-way of the honey-farm, “is for some great lady, rich in
business ideas as well as in pocket, to take up the whole scheme, and to
start a network of small bee-gardens for women over the whole land. Very
large bee-farms are a mistake, I think, except in the most favourable
districts. Bees work only within a radius of two or three miles at most,
so that the number of hives that can be kept profitably in a given area
has its definite limits. But there is still plenty of room everywhere
for bee-farms of moderate size, conducted on the right principles; and
there is no reason at all why they should not work together on the
co-operative plan, sending all their produce to some convenient centre in
each district, to be prepared and marketed for the common good.”
“But the whole outcome,” she went on, “of a scheme like this depends on
the business qualities imported into it. Here, in the heart of the
Sussex Weald, we labour together in the midst of almost ideal
surroundings, but we never lose sight of the plain, commercial aspect of
the thing. We study all the latest writings on our subject, experiment
with all novelties, and keep ourselves well abreast of the times in every
way. Our system is to make each hive show a clear, definite profit. The
annual income is not, and can never be, a very large one, but we fare
quite simply, and have sufficient for our needs. In any case, however,
we have proved here that a few women, renting a small house and garden
out in the country, can live together comfortably on the proceeds from
their bees; and there is no reason in the world why the idea should not
be carried out by others with equal success.”
We had made the round of the whole busy, murmuring enclosure, and had
come again to the little door in the wall. Passing through and out once
more into the world of merely masculine endeavour, the bee-mistress gave
me a final word.
“You may think,” said she, “that what I advocate, though successful in
our own single instance, might prove impracticable on a widely extended
scale. Well, do you know that last year close upon three hundred and
fifty tons of honey were imported into Great Britain from foreign
sources, {43} just because our home apiculturists were unable to cope
with the national demand? And this being so, is it too much to think
that, if women would only band themselves together and take up
bee-keeping systematically, as we have done, all or most of that honey
could be produced—of infinitely better quality—here, on our own British
soil?”