A BEE-MAN OF THE ’FORTIES
THE old bee-garden lay on the verge of the wood. Seen from a distance it
looked like a great white china bowl brimming over with roses; but a
nearer view changed the porcelain to a snowy barrier of hawthorn, and the
roses became blossoming apple-boughs, stretching up into the May
sunshine, where all the bees in the world seemed to have forgathered,
filling the air with their rich wild chant.
Coming into the old garden from the glare of the dusty road, the hives
themselves were the last thing to rivet attention. As you went up the
shady moss-grown path, perhaps the first impression you became gratefully
conscious of was the slow dim quiet of the place—a quiet that had in it
all the essentials of silence, and yet was really made up of a myriad
blended sounds. Then the sheer carmine of the tulips, in the sunny vista
beyond the orchard, came upon you like a trumpet-note through the shadowy
aisles of the trees; and after this, in turn, the flaming amber of the
marigolds, broad zones of forget-me-nots like strips of the blue sky
fallen, snow-drifts of arabis and starwort, purple pansy-spangles veering
to every breeze. And last of all you became gradually aware that every
bright nook or shade-dappled corner round you had its nestling bee-skep,
half hidden in the general riot of blossom, yet marked by the steadier,
deeper song of the homing bees.
To stand here, in the midst of the hives, of a fine May morning, side by
side with the old bee-man, and watch with him for the earliest swarms of
the year, was an experience that took one back far into another and a
kindlier century. There were certain hives in the garden, grey with age
and smothered in moss and lichen, that were the traditional
mother-colonies of all the rest. The old bee-keeper treasured them as
relics of his sturdy manhood, just as he did the percussion fowling-piece
over his mantel; and pointed to one in particular as being close on
thirty years old. Nowadays remorseless science has proved that the
individual life of the honey-bee extends to four or five months at most;
but the old bee-keeper firmly believed that some at least of the original
members of this colony still flourished in green old age deep in the
sombre corridors of the ancient skep. Bending down, he would point out
to you, among the crowd on the alighting-board, certain bees with
polished thorax and ragged wings worn almost to a stump. While the young
worker-bees were charging in and out of the hive at breakneck speed,
these superannuated amazons doddered about in the sunlight, with an
obvious and pathetic assumption of importance. They were really the last
survivors of the bygone winter’s brood. Their task of hatching the new
spring generation was over; and now, the power of flight denied to them,
they busied themselves in the work of sentinels at the gate, or in
grooming the young bees as they came out for their first adventure into
the far world of blossoming clover under the hill.
For modern apiculture, with its interchangeable comb-frames and
section-supers, and American notions generally, the old bee-keeper
harboured a fine contempt. In its place he had an exhaustless store of
original bee-knowledge, gathered throughout his sixty odd years of placid
life among the bees. His were all old-fashioned hives of straw, hackled
and potsherded just as they must have been any time since Saxon Alfred
burned the cakes. Each bee-colony had its separate three-legged stool,
and each leg stood in an earthen pan of water, impassable moat for ants
and “wood-li’s,” and such small honey-thieves. Why the hives were thus
dotted about in such admired but inconvenient disorder was a puzzle at
first, until you learned more of ancient bee-traditions. Wherever a
swarm settled—up in the pink-rosetted apple-boughs, under the eaves of
the old thatched cottage, or deep in the tangle of the hawthorn
hedge—there, on the nearest open ground beneath, was its inalienable,
predetermined home. When, as sometimes happened, the swarm went straight
away out of sight over the meadows, or sailed off like a pirouetting grey
cloud over the roof of the wood, the old bee-keeper never sought to
reclaim it for the garden.
[Picture: “The Bee-Master’s cottage”]
“’Tis gone to the shires fer change o’ air,” he would say, shielding his
bleak blue eyes with his hand, as he gazed after it. “’Twould be agen
natur’ to hike ’em back here along. An’ naught but ill-luck an’ worry
wi’out end.”
He never observed the skies for tokens of to-morrow’s weather, as did his
neighbours of the countryside. The bees were his weather-glass and
thermometer in one. If they hived very early after noon, though the sun
went down in clear gold and the summer night loomed like molten amethyst
under the starshine, he would prophesy rain before morning. And sure
enough you were wakened at dawn by a furious patter on the window, and
the booming of the south-west wind in the pine-clad crest of the hill.
But if the bees loitered afield far into the gusty crimson gloaming, and
the loud darkness that followed seemed only to bring added intensity to
the busy labour-note within the hives, no matter how the wind keened or
the griddle of black storm-cloud threatened, he would go on with his
evening task of watering his garden, sure of a morrow of cloudless heat
to come.
He knew all the sources of honey for miles around; and, by taste and
smell, could decide at once the particular crop from which each sample
had been gathered. He would discriminate between that from white clover
or sainfoin; the produce of the yellow charlock wastes; or the
orchard-honey, wherein it seemed the fragrance of cherry-bloom was always
to be differentiated from that of apple or damson or pear. He would tell
you when good honey had been spoilt by the grosser flavour of sunflower
or horse-chestnut; or when the detestable honey-dew had entered into its
composition; or, the super-caps having been removed too late in the
season, the bees had got at the early ivy-blossom, and so degraded all
the batch.
Watching bees at work of a fair morning in May, nothing excites the
wonder of the casual looker-on more than the mysterious burdens they are
for ever bringing home upon their thighs; semi-globular packs, always
gaily coloured, and often so heavy and cumbersome that the bee can hardly
drag its weary way into the hive. This is pollen, to be stored in the
cells, and afterwards kneaded up with honey as food for the young bees.
The old man could say at once by the colour from which flower each load
was obtained. The deep brown-gold panniers came from the gorse-bloom;
the pure snow-white from the hawthorns; the vivid yellow, always so big
and seemingly so weighty, had been filled in the buttercup meads. Now
and again, in early spring, a bee would come blundering home with a load
of pallid sea-green hue. This came from the gooseberry bushes. And
later, in summer, when the poppies began to throw their scarlet shuttles
in the corn, many of these airy cargoes would be of a rich velvety black.
But there was one kind which the old bee-man had never yet succeeded in
tracing to its flowery origin. He saw it only rarely, perhaps not a
dozen times in the season—a wonderful deep rose-crimson, singling out its
bearer, on her passage through the throng, as with twin danger-lamps,
doubly bright in the morning glow.
Keeping watch over the comings and goings of his bees was always his
favourite pastime, year in and year out; but it was in the later weeks of
May that his interest in them culminated. He had always had swarms in
May as far back as his memory could serve him; and the oldest hive in the
garden was generally the first to swarm. As a rule the bees gave
sufficient warning of their intended migration some hours before their
actual issue. The strenuous pell-mell business of the hive would come to
a sudden portentous halt. While a few of the bees still darted straight
off into the sunshine on their wonted errands, or returned with the usual
motley loads upon their thighs, the rest of the colony seemed to have
abandoned work altogether. From early morning they hung in a great brown
cluster all over the face of the hive, and down almost to the earth
beneath; a churning mass of insect-life that grew bigger and bigger with
every moment, glistening like wet seaweed in the morning sun. In the
cluster itself there was an uncanny silence. But out of the depths of
the hive came a low vibrating murmur, wholly distinct from its usual
note; and every now and again a faint shrill piping sound could be heard,
as the old queen worked herself up to swarming frenzy, vainly seeking the
while to reach the royal nursery where the rival who was to oust her from
her old dominion was even then steadily gnawing through her constraining
prison walls.
At these momentous times a quaint ceremonial was rigidly adhered to by
the old bee-master. First he brought out a pitcher of home-brewed ale,
from which all who were to assist in the swarm-taking were required to
drink, as at a solemn rite. The dressing of the skep was his next care.
A little of the beer was sprinkled over its interior, and then it was
carefully scoured out with a handful of balm and lavender and mint.
After this the skep was covered up and set aside in the shade; and the
old bee-keeper, carrying an ancient battered copper bowl in one gnarled
hand, and a great door-key in the other, would lead the way towards the
hive, his drab smock-frock mowing the scarlet tulip-heads down as he
went.
Sometimes the swarm went off without any preliminary warning, just as if
the skep had burst like a bombshell, volleying its living contents into
the sky. But oftener it went through the several stages of a regular
process. After much waiting and many false alarms, a peculiar stir would
come in the throng of bees cumbering the entrance to the hive. Thousands
rose on the wing, until the sunshine overhead was charged with them as
with countless fluttering atoms of silver-foil; and a wild joyous song
spread far and wide, overpowering all other sounds in the garden. Within
the hive the rich bass note had ceased; and a hissing noise, like a great
caldron boiling over, took its place, as the bees inside came pouring out
to join the carolling multitude above. Last of all came the queen.
Watching for her through the glittering gauzy atmosphere of flashing
wings, she was always strangely conspicuous, with her long pointed body
of brilliant chestnut-red. She came hustling forth; stopped for an
instant to comb her antenna on the edge of the foot-board; then soared
straight up into the blue, the whole swarm crowding deliriously in her
train.
Immediately the old bee-man commenced a weird tom-tomming on his metal
bowl. “Ringing the bees” was an exact science with him. They were
supposed to fly higher or lower according to the measure of the music;
and now the great door-key beat out a slow, stately chime like a
cathedral bell. Whether this ringing of the old-time skeppists had any
real influence on the movements of a swarm has never been absolutely
determined; but there was no doubt in this case of the bee-keeper’s
perfect faith in the process, or that the bees would commence their
descent and settle, usually in one of the apple trees, very soon after
the din began.
The rapid growth of the swarm-cluster was always one of the most
bewildering things to watch. From a little dark knot no bigger than the
clenched hand, it swelled in a moment to the size of a half-gallon
measure, growing in girth and length with inconceivable swiftness, until
the branch began to droop under its weight. A minute more, and the last
of the flying bees had joined the cluster; the stout apple-branch was
bent almost double; and the completed swarm hung within a few inches of
the ground, a long cigar-shaped mass gently swaying to and fro in the
flickering light and shade.
The joyous trek-song of the bees, and the clanging melody of key and
basin, died down together. The old murmuring, songful quiet closed over
the garden again, as water over a cast stone. To hive a swarm thus
easily within reach was a simple matter. Soon the old bee-man had got
all snugly inside the skep, and the hive in its self-appointed station.
And already the bees were settling down to work; hovering merrily about
it, or packed in the fragrant darkness busy at comb-building, or lancing
off to the clover-fields, eager to begin the task of provisioning the new
home.