THE HONEY THIEVES
WHERE the bee-garden lay, under its sheltering crest of pine-wood, the
April sunbeams seemed to gather, as water gathers in the lap of enclosing
hills. Out in the lane the sweet hot wind sang in the hedgerows, and the
white dust lifted under every footfall and went bowling merrily away on
the breeze. But once among the crowding hives, you were launched on a
still calm lake of sunshine, where the daffodils hardly swayed on their
slender stems; and the smoke from the bee-master’s pipe, as he came down
the red-tiled path, hung in the air behind him like blue gossamer spread
to catch the flying bees.
As usual, the old bee-man had an unexpected answer ready to the most
obvious question.
“When will the new honey begin to come in?” he said, repeating my
inquiry. “Well, the truth is honey never comes into the hives at all; it
only goes out. That’s the old mistake people are always falling into.
Good bees never gather honey: they leave that to the wicked ones. If I
had a hive of bees that took to honey-gathering, I should have to stop
them, or end them altogether. It would have to be either kill or cure.”
He took a quiet whiff or two, enjoying the effect of this seeming
paradox, then went on to explain.
“What the bees gather from the flowers,” said he, “is no more honey than
barley and hops are beer. Honey has to be manufactured, first in the
body of the bee, and then in the comb-cells. It must stand to brew in
the heat of the hive, just as the wort stands in the gyle-tun; and when
it is ready to be bunged down, before the bee adds the last little plate
of wax to the cell-capping, she turns herself about and, as I believe,
injects a drop of the poison from her sting—or seems to do so. Then it
is real honey, but not before. Now, about these bad bees, the
honey-gatherers—”
He stopped, putting his hand suddenly to his face. A bee had
unexpectedly fastened her sting into his cheek. At the same moment
another came at me like a spent shot from a gun, and struck home on my
own face. The old bee-man took a hurried survey of his hives.
“Why,” said he, “as luck, or ill-luck, will have it, I think I can show
you the honey-gatherers at work now. There’s only one thing that would
make my bees wild on such a morning as this; and we must find out where
the trouble is, and stop it.”
He was looking about him in every direction as he spoke; and at last, on
the farther side of the bee-garden, seemed to make out something amiss.
As we passed between the long rows of bee-dwellings every hive was the
centre of its own thronging busy life. From each there was a steady
stream of foragers setting outward into the brilliant sunshine, and as
constant a current homeward, as the bees returned heavily weighed down
under loads of golden pollen from the willows by the neighbouring
riverside. But round the hive, near which the bee-master presently came
to a halt, there was a very different scene enacting. The deep, rich
note of labour was replaced by an angry hubbub of war. The
alighting-board of the hive was covered with fighting bees; company
launched against company; single combats to the death; writhing masses of
bees locked together and tumbling furiously to the ground in every
direction. The soil about the hive was already thickly strewn with the
dead and dying: and the air, for yards round, was filled with the
piercing note of the fray. It seemed as hopeless to attempt to stop the
carnage as it was manifestly perilous to go near.
But the bee-master had his own short way with this, as with most other
difficulties. He took up a big watering-can and filled it hastily from
the butt close by.
“This hive is a weak stock,” he explained, “and it is being robbed by one
of the stronger ones. That is always the danger in spring. We must try
to drive the robbers home, and only one thing will do it. That is, a
heavy rainstorm; and as there is no chance of getting the real thing, we
must make one for ourselves.”
He strode into the thick of the flying bees, and raising the can above
his head, sent a steady cascade of water over the whole hive. The effect
was instantaneous. The fighting ceased at once. The marauding bees rose
on the wing and streamed away homeward. Those belonging to the attacked
hive scrambled into its friendly shelter, a bedraggled, sodden crew.
When at length all was quiet, the old bee-man fetched an armful of hay
and heaped it up before the hive, completely covering its entire front.
“If the robbers come back,” said he, “that will stop them going in, while
the bees inside can crawl to and fro if they wish. But at sunset we must
do away with the stock altogether by uniting it to another colony, and so
put temptation out of the robbers’ way. And now we must go and look for
the robbers’ den.”
He refilled his pipe, and led the way down the long thoroughfare of the
bee-city, examining every hive in turn as he passed.
“It is trouble of this kind,” he said, “that does more than anything else
to upset the instinct-theory of the old-fashioned naturalists, at least
as far as the honey-bee is concerned. Why should a whole houseful of
them suddenly break away from their old orderly industrious habits, and
take to thieving and violence? But so it often happens. There is
character, or the want of it, among bees just as there is in the human
race. Some are gentle and others vicious; some are hard workers early
and late, and others seem to take things easily, or to be subject to
unaccountable moods and caprices. Then the weather has an extraordinary
influence on the temper of most hives. On sunny, calm days, when the
glass is ‘set fair,’ and the clover in full bloom, the bees will take no
notice of any interference. The hives can be opened and manipulated
without the slightest fear of a sting. But if the glass is falling, or
the wind rising and backing, the bees will be often as spiteful as cats,
and as timid as squirrels. And there are times, just before a storm,
when to touch some hives would mean bringing the whole population out
upon you like a nest of hornets.”
He stopped by one of the hives, and laid his great sunburnt hand down
flat on the entrance-board. The bees took no account of the obstacle,
but ran to and fro over his fingers with perfect unconcern.
“And yet,” said he, “there are bees that follow none of these general
rules. Here is a stock which it is almost impossible to ruffle. You may
turn their home inside out, and they will go on working just as if
nothing had happened. They are famous honey-makers, while they keep to
it; but, like all mild-tempered bees, they are too fond of swarming, and
have to be put back into the hive two or three times before they settle
down to the season’s work.”
As he talked, he was looking about him carefully, and at last made a
short cut towards a hive standing a little apart from the rest. The bees
of this hive were behaving in a very different fashion from those we had
just inspected. They were running about the flight-board in an agitated
way, and the whole hive gave out a note of deep unrest. The old bee-man
puffed his “smoker” up into full draught, and set to work to open the
hive.
“These are the honey thieves,” he said, as he pulled off the coverings of
the hive and laid bare its rumbling, seething interior to the searching
sunlight, “and when once bees have taken to robbing their neighbours
there is only one way to cure them. You must exterminate the whole
brood. In the old days, a stock of bees with confirmed bad habits would
be taken to the sulphur-pit and settled at once for good and all. But
modern bee-keepers have a better and less wasteful way. Now, look out
for the queen!”
He was lifting out the comb-frames one by one, and subjecting them to a
close examination. At last, on one of the most crowded frames, he spied
the huge full-bodied queen, and lifted her off by the wings. Then he
closed the hive up again as expeditiously as possible.
“Now,” said he, as he ground the discredited monarch under his heel, “we
have stopped the mischief at the fountain-head. Of course, if we left
the bees to raise another queen for themselves, she would be of the same
blood as the first one, and her children would inherit the same
undesirable traits. But to-morrow, when the bees are thoroughly sobered
and frightened at the loss of their ruler, we will give them another
full-grown fertile queen of the best blood in the apiary. In three
weeks’ time the new population will begin to take over the citadel; and
in a month or two all the old bees will have died off, and with them the
last of the robber taint.”