NIGHT ON A HONEY-FARM
THE sweet summer dusk was over the bee-farm. On every side, as I passed
through, the starlight showed me the crowding roofs of the city of hives;
and beyond these I could just make out the dim outline of the
extracting-house, with a cheerful glow of lamplight streaming out from
window and door. The rumble of machinery and the voices of the
bee-master and his men grew louder as I approached. A great business
seemed to be going forward within. In the centre of the building stood a
strange-looking engine, like a brewer’s vat on legs. It was eight or
nine feet broad and some five feet high; and a big horizontal wheel lay
within the great circle, completely filling its whole circumference. As
I entered, the wheel was going round with a deep reverberating noise as
fast as two strong men could work the gearing; and the bee-master stood
close by, carefully timing the operation.
“Halt!” he shouted. The great wheel-of-fortune stopped. A long iron bar
was pulled down and the wheel rose out of the vat. Now I could see that
its whole outer periphery was covered with frames of honeycomb, each in
its separate gauze-wire cage. The bee-master tugged a lever. The
cages—there must have been twenty-five or thirty of them—turned over
simultaneously like single leaves of a book, bringing the other side of
each comb into place. The wheel dropped down once more, and swung round
again on its giddy journey. From my place by the door I could hear the
honey driving out against the sides of the vat like heavy rain.
“Halt!” cried the bee-master again. Once more the big wheel rose,
glistening and dripping, into the yellow lamplight. And now a trolley
was pushed up laden with more honeycomb ready for extraction. The
wire-net cages were opened, the empty combs taken out, and full ones
deftly put in their place. The wheel plunged down again into its
mellifluous cavern, and began its deep song once more. The bee-master
gave up his post to the foreman, and came towards me, wiping the honey
from his hands. He was very proud of his big extractor, and quite
willing to explain the whole process. “In the old days,” he said, “the
only way to get the honey from the comb was to press it out. You could
not obtain your honey without destroying the comb, which at this season
of the year is worth very much more than the honey itself; for if the
combs can be emptied and restored perfect to the hive, the bees will fill
them again immediately, without having to waste valuable time in the
height of the honey-flow by stopping to make new combs. And when the
bees are wax-making they are not only prevented from gathering honey, but
have to consume their own stores. While they are making one pound of
comb they will eat seventeen or eighteen pounds of honey. So the man who
hit upon the idea of drawing the honey from the comb by centrifugal force
did a splendid thing for modern bee-farming. English honey was nothing
until the extractor came and changed bee-keeping from a mere hobby into
an important industry. But come and see how the thing is done from the
beginning.”
[Picture: “The Wax Makers”]
He led the way towards one end of the building. Here three or four men
were at work at a long table surrounded by great stacks of honeycombs in
their oblong wooden frames. The bee-master took up one of these.
“This,” he explained, “is the bar-frame just as it comes from the hive.
Ten of them side by side exactly fill a box that goes over the hive
proper. The queen stays below in the brood-nest, but the worker bees
come to the top to store the honey. Then, every two or three days, when
the honey-flow is at its fullest, we open the super, take out the sealed
combs, and put in combs that have been emptied by the extractor. In a
few days these also are filled and capped by the bees, and are replaced
by more empty combs in the same way; and so it goes on to the end of the
honey-harvest.”
We stood for a minute or two watching the work at the table. It went on
at an extraordinary pace. Each workman seized one of the frames and
poised it vertically over a shallow metal tray. Then, from a vessel of
steaming hot water that stood at his elbow, he drew the long, flat-headed
Bingham knife, and with one swift slithering cut removed the whole of the
cell-tappings from the surface of the comb. At once the knife was thrown
back into its smoking bath, and a second one taken out, with which the
other side of the comb was treated. Then the comb was hung in the rack
of the trolley, and the keen hot blades went to work on another frame.
As each trolley was fully loaded it was whisked off to the
extracting-machine and another took its place.
“All this work,” explained the bee-master, as we passed on, “is done
after dark, because in the daytime the bees would smell the honey and
would besiege us. So we cannot begin extracting until they are all
safely hived for the night.” He stopped before a row of bulky cylinders.
“These,” he said, “are the honey ripeners. Each of them holds about
twenty gallons, and all the honey is kept here for three or four days to
mature before it is ready for market. If we were to send it out at once
it would ferment and spoil. In the top of each drum there are fine wire
strainers, and the honey must run through these, and finally through
thick flannel, before it gets into the cylinder. Then, when it is ripe,
it is drawn off and bottled.”
One of the big cylinders was being tapped at the moment. A workman came
up with a kind of gardener’s water-tank on wheels. The valve of the
honey-vat was opened, and the rich fluid came gushing out like liquid
amber. “This is all white-clover honey,” said the bee-master, tasting it
critically. “The next vat there ought to be pure sainfoin. Sometimes
the honey has a distinct almond flavour; that is when hawthorn is
abundant. Honey varies as much as wine. It is good or bad according to
the soil and the season. Where the horse-chestnut is plentiful the honey
has generally a rank taste. But this is a sheep-farmers’ country, where
they grow thousands of acres of rape and lucerne and clover for
sheep-feed; and nothing could be better for the bees.”
By this time the gardener’s barrow was full to the brim. We followed it
as it was trundled heavily away to another part of the building. Here a
little company of women were busy filling the neat glass jars, with their
bright screw-covers of tin; pasting on the label of the big London
stores, whither most of the honey was sent; and packing the jars into
their travelling-cases ready for the railway-van in the morning. The
whole place reeked with the smell of new honey and the faint,
indescribable odour of the hives. As we passed out of the busy scene of
the extracting-house into the moist dark night again, this peculiar
fragrance struck upon us overpoweringly. The slow wind was setting our
way, and the pungent odour from the hives came up on it with a solid,
almost stifling, effect.
“They are fanning hard to-night,” said the bee-master, as we stopped
halfway down the garden. “Listen to the noise they’re making!”
The moon was just tilting over the tree-tops. In its dim light the place
looked double its actual size. We seemed to stand in the midst of a
great town of bee-dwellings, stretching vaguely away into the darkness.
And from every hive there rose the clear deep murmur of the ventilating
bees.
The bee-master lighted his lantern, and held it down close to the
entrance of the nearest hive.
“Look how they form up in rows, one behind the others with their heads to
the hive; and all fanning with their wings! They are drawing the hot air
out. Inside there is another regiment of them, but those are facing the
opposite way, and drawing the cool air in. And so they keep the hive
always at the right temperature for honey-making, and for hatching out
the young bees.”
“Who was it,” he asked ruminatively, as the gate of the bee-farm closed
at last behind us, and we were walking homeward through the glimmering
dusk of the lane—“who was it first spoke of the ‘busy bee’? Busy! ’Tis
not the word for it! Why, from the moment she is born to the day she
dies the bee never rests nor sleeps! It is hard work night and day, from
the cradle-cell to the grave; and in the honey-season she dies of it
after a month or so. It is only the drone that rests. He is very like
some humans I know of his own sex; he lives an idle life, and leaves the
work to the womenkind. But the drone has to pay for it in the end, for
the drudging woman-bee revolts sooner or later. And then she kills him.
In bee-life the drone always dies a violent death; but in human
life—well, it seems to me a little bee-justice wouldn’t be amiss with
some of them.”