THE PHYSICIAN IN THE HIVE
IT was a strange procession coming up the red-tiled path of the bee
garden. The bee-master led the way in his Sunday clothes, followed by a
gorgeous footman, powdered and cockaded, who carried an armful of wraps
and cushions. Behind him walked two more, supporting between them a kind
of carrying-chair, in which sat a florid old gentleman in a Scotch plaid
shawl; and behind these again strode a silk-hatted, black-frocked man
carefully regulating the progress of the cavalcade. Through the rain of
autumn leaves, on the brisk October morning, I could see, afar off, a
carriage waiting by the lane-side; a big old-fashioned family vehicle,
with cockaded servants, a pair of champing greys, and a glitter of gold
and scarlet on the panel, where the sunbeams struck on an elaborate
coat-of-arms.
The whole procession made for the extracting-house, and all work stopped
at its approach. The great centrifugal machine ceased its humming. The
doors of the packing-room were closed, shutting as the din of saw and
hammer. Over the stone floor in front of the furnace—where a big caldron
of metheglin was simmering—a carpet was hastily unrolled, and a
comfortable couch brought out and set close to the cheery blaze.
And now the strangest part of the proceedings commenced. The old
gentleman was brought in, partially disrobed, and transferred to the
couch by the fireside. He seemed in great trepidation about something.
He kept his gold eyeglasses turned on the bee-master, watching him with a
sort of terrified wonder, as the old bee-man produced a mysterious box,
with a lid of perforated zinc, and laid it on the table close by. From
my corner the whole scene was strongly reminiscent of the ogre’s kitchen
in the fairy-tale; and the muffled sounds from the packing-room might
have been the voice of the ogre himself, complaining at the lateness of
his dinner.
Now, at a word from the black-coated man, the bee-master opened his box.
A loud angry buzzing uprose, and about a dozen bees escaped into the air,
and flew straight for the window-glass. The bee-master followed them,
took one carefully by the wings, and brought it over to the old
gentleman. His apprehensions visibly redoubled. The doctor seized him
in an iron, professional grip.
“Just here, I think. Close under the shoulder-blade. Now, your lordship
. . . ”
Viciously the infuriated bee struck home. For eight or ten seconds she
worked her wicked will on the patient. Then, turning round and round,
she at last drew out her sting, and darted back to the window.
But the bee-master was ready with another of his living stilettos. Half
a dozen times the operation was repeated on various parts of the
suffering patient’s body. Then the old gentleman—who, by this time, had
passed from whimpering through the various stages of growing indignation
to sheer undisguised profanity—was restored to his apparel. The
procession was re-formed, and the bee-master conducted it to the waiting
carriage, with the same ceremony as before.
As we stood looking after the retreating vehicle, the old bee-man entered
into explanations.
“That,” said he, “is Lord H—, and he has been a martyr to rheumatism
these ten years back. I could have cured him long ago if he had only
come to me before, as I have done many a poor soul in these parts; but
he, and those like him, are the last to hear of the physician in the
hive. He will begin to get better now, as you will see. He is to be
brought here every fortnight; but in a month or two he will not need the
chair. And before the winter is out he will walk again as well as the
best of us.”
We went slowly back through the bee-farm. The working-song of the bees
seemed as loud as ever in the keen October sunshine. But the steady deep
note of summer was gone; and the peculiar bee-voice of autumn—shrill,
anxious, almost vindictive—rang out on every side.
“Of course,” continued the bee-master, “there is nothing new in this
treatment of rheumatism by bee-stings. It is literally as old as the
hills. Every bee-keeper for the last two thousand years has known of it.
But it is as much as a preventive as a cure that the acid in a bee’s
sting is valuable. The rarest thing in the world is to find a bee-keeper
suffering from rheumatism. And if every one kept bees, and got stung
occasionally, the doctors would soon have one ailment the less to trouble
about.”
“But,” he went on, “there is something much pleasanter and more valuable
to humanity, ill or well, to be got from the hives. And that is the
honey itself. Honey is good for old and young. If mothers were wise
they would never give their children any other sweet food. Pure ripe
honey is sugar with the most difficult and most important part of
digestion already accomplished by the bees. Moreover, it is a safe and
very gentle laxative. And probably, before each comb-cell is sealed up,
the bee injects a drop of acid from her sting. Anyway, honey has a
distinct aseptic property. That is why it is so good for sore throats or
chafed skins.”
We had got back to the extracting house, where the great caldron of
metheglin was still bubbling over the fire. The old bee-keeper relieved
himself of his stiff Sunday coat, donned his white linen overalls, and
fell to skimming the pot.
“There is another use,” said he, after a ruminative pause, “to which
honey might be put, if only doctors could be induced to seek curative
power in ancient homely things, as they do with the latest new poisons
from Germany. That is in the treatment of obesity. Fat people, who are
ordered to give up sugar, ought to use honey instead. In my time I have
persuaded many a one to try it, and the result has always been the same—a
steady reduction in weight, and better health all round. Then, again,
dyspeptic folk would find most of their troubles vanish if they
substituted the already half-digested honey wherever ordinary sugar forms
part of their diet. And did you ever try honey to sweeten tea or coffee?
Of course, it must be pure, and without any strongly-marked flavour; but
no one would ever return to sugar if once good honey had been tried in
this way, or in any kind of cookery where sugar is used.”
The bee-master ran his fingers through his hair, of which he had a
magnificent iron-grey crop. The fingers were undeniably sticky; but it
was an old habit of his, when in thoughtful mood, and the action seemed
to remind him of something. His eyes twinkled merrily.
“Now,” said he, “you are a writer for the papers, and you may therefore
want to go into the hair-restoring business some day. Well, here is a
recipe for you. It is nothing but honey and water, in equal parts, but
it is highly recommended by all the ancient writers on beemanship. Have
I tried it? Well, no; at least, not intentionally. But in extracting
honey it gets into most places, the hair not excepted. At any rate,
honey as a hair-restorer was one of the most famous nostrums of the
Middle Ages, and may return to popular favour even now. However, here is
something there can be no question about.”
He went to a cupboard, and brought out a jar full of a viscid yellow
substance.
“This,” he said, “is an embrocation, and it is the finest thing I know
for sprains and bruises. It is made of the wax from old combs, dissolved
in turpentine, and if we got nothing else from the hives bee-keeping
would yet be justified as a humanitarian calling. Its virtues may be in
the wax, or they may be due to the turpentine, but probably they lie in
another direction altogether. Bees collect a peculiar resinous matter
from pine trees and elsewhere, with which they varnish the whole surface
of their combs, and this may be the real curative element in the stuff.”
Now, with a glance at the clock, the bee-master went to the open door and
hailed his foreman in from his work about the garden. Between them they
lifted away the heavy caldron from the fire, and tilted its steaming
contents into a barrel close at hand. The whole building filled at once
with a sweet penetrating odour, which might well have been the
concentrated fragrance of every summer flower on the countryside.
“But of all the good things given us by the wise physician of the hive,”
quoth the old bee-keeper, enthusiastically, “there is nothing so good as
well-brewed metheglin. This is just as I have made it for forty years,
and as my father made it long before that. Between us we have been
brewing mead for more than a century. It is almost a lost art now; but
here in Sussex there are still a few antiquated folk who make it, and
some, even, who remember the old methers—the ancient cups it used to be
quaffed from. As an everyday drink for working-men, wholesome,
nourishing, cheering, there is nothing like it in or out of the Empire.”