Nature's Serial Story

by Edward Payson Roe

With shy steps, and well protected, Amy approached the apiary, near which the old gentleman was sitting in placid fearlessness under the shade of a maple, the honey of whose spring blossoms was already in the hive. For a time she kept at a most respectful distance, but, as the bees did not notice her, she at last drew nearer, and removed her veil, and with the aid of her glass saw the indefatigable workers coming in and going out with such celerity that they seemed to be assuring each other that there were tons of honey now to be had for the gathering. The bees grew into large insects under her powerful lenses, and their forms and movements were very distinct. Suddenly from the entrance of one hive near Mr. Clifford, which she happened to be covering with her glass, she saw pouring out a perfect torrent of bees. She started back in affright, but Mr. Clifford told her to stand still, and she noted that he quietly kept his seat, while following through his gold-rimmed spectacles the swirling, swaying stream that rushed into the upper air. The combined hum smote the ear with its intensity. Each bee was describing circles with almost the swiftness of light, and there were such numbers that they formed a nebulous living mass. Involuntarily she crouched down in the grass. In a few moments, however, she saw the swarm draw together and cluster like a great black ball on a bough of a small pear-tree. The queen had alighted, and all her subjects gathered around her.

"Ah," chuckled the old gentleman, rising quietly, "they couldn't have been more sensible if they had been human—not half so sensible in that case, perhaps. I think you will have your swarm now without doubt. That's the beauty of these Italian bees when they are kept pure: they are so quiet and sensible. Come away now, until I return prepared to hive them."

The young girl obeyed with alacrity, and was almost trembling with excitement, to which fear as well as the novelty of the scene contributed not a little. Mr. Clifford soon returned, well protected and prepared for his work. Taking an empty hive, he placed it on the ground in a secluded spot, and laid before its entrances a broad, smooth board. Then he mounted a step-ladder, holding in his left hand a large tin pan, and gently brushed the bees into it as if they had been inanimate things. A sheet had first been spread beneath the pear-tree to catch those that did not fall into the pan. Touched thus gently and carefully, the immense vitality of the swarm remained dormant; but a rough, sudden movement would have transformed it instantly into a vengeful cloud of insects, each animated by the one impulse to use its stiletto. Corning down from the ladder he turned the pan toward Amy, and with her glass she saw that it was nearly half full of a crawling, seething mass that fairly made her shudder. But much experience rendered the old gentleman confident, and he only smiled as he carried the pan of bees to the empty hive, and poured them out on the board before it. The sheet was next gathered up and placed near the hive also, and then the old gentleman backed slowly and quietly away until he had joined Amy, to whom he said, "My part of the work is now done, and I think we shall soon see them enter the hive." He was right, for within twenty minutes every bee had disappeared within the new domicile. "To-night I will place the hive on the platform with the others, and to-morrow your bees will be at work for you, Amy. I don't wonder you are so interested, for of all insects I think bees take the palm. It is possible that the swarm will not fancy their new quarters, and will come out again, but it is not probable. Screened by this bush, you can watch in perfect safety;" and he left her well content, with her glass fixed on the apiary.

Having satisfied herself for the time with observing the workers coming and going, she went around to the white clover-field to see the process of gathering the honey. She had long since learned that bees while at work are harmless, unless so cornered that they sting in self-defence. Sitting on a rock at the edge of the clover-field, she listened to the drowsy monotone of innumerable wings. Then she bent her glass on a clover head, and it grew at once into a collection of little white tubes or jars in which from earth, air, and dew nature distilled the nectar that the bees were gathering. The intent workers stood on their heads and emptied these fragrant honey-jars with marvellous quickness. They knew when they were loaded, and in straight lines as geometrically true as the hexagon cells in which the honey would be stored they darted to their hives. When the day grew warm she returned to the house and read, with a wonder and delight which no fairy tale had ever produced, John Burroughs's paper, "The Pastoral Bees," which Webb had found for her before going to his work. To her childish credulity fairy lore had been more interesting than wonderful, but the instincts and habits of these children of nature touched on mysteries that can never be solved.

At dinner the experiences of the apiary were discussed, and Leonard asked, "Do you think the old-fashioned custom of beating tin pans and blowing horns influences a swarm to alight? The custom is still maintained by some people in the vicinity."

"I doubt it," said Webb. "It is no longer practiced by scientific bee-keepers, and yet it is founded on the principle that anything which disconcerts the bees may change their plans. It is said that water or dry earth thrown into a whirling swarm will sometimes cause it to alight or return to the hive."

"Your speaking of blowing horns," said Mr. Clifford, laughing, "recalls a hiving experience that occurred seventy years ago. I was a boy then, but was so punctured with stings on a June day like this that a vivid impression was made on my memory. We were expecting swarms every day. A neighbor, a quaint old man who lived very near, had gained the reputation of an expert at this business. I can see him now, with his high stove-pipe hat, and his gnarled, wrinkled visage, which he shrouded in a green veil when hiving a swarm. He was a good-hearted old fellow, but very rough in his talk. He had been to sea in early life, and profanity had become the characteristic of his vernacular. Well, word came one morning that the bees were swarming, and a minute later I aroused the old man, who was smoking and dozing on his porch. I don't believe you ever ran faster, Alf, than I did then. Hiving bees was the old fellow's hobby and pride, and he dived into his cottage, smashing his clay pipe on the way, with the haste of an attacked soldier seizing his weapons. In a moment he was out with all his paraphernalia. To me was given a fish-horn of portentous size and sound. The 'skips,' which were the old fashioned straw hives that the bears so often emptied for our forefathers, stood in a large door-yard, over which the swarm was circling. As we arrived on the scene the women were coming from the house with tin pans, and nearly all the family were out-of-doors. It so happened that an old white horse was grazing in the yard, and at this critical moment was near the end of the bench on which stood the hives. Coming up behind him, I thoughtlessly let off a terrific blast from my horn, at which he, terrified, kicked viciously. Over went a straw skip, and in a moment we had another swarm of bees on hand that we had not bargained for. Dropping my horn, I covered my face with my arm, and ran for life to the house, but I must have been stung twenty times before I escaped. The bees seemed everywhere, and as mad as hornets. Although half wild with pain, I had to laugh as I saw the old man frantically trying to adjust his veil, meanwhile almost dancing in his anguish. In half a minute he succumbed, and tore into a wood-shed. Everybody went to cover instantly except the white horse, and he had nowhere to go, but galloped around the yard as if possessed. This only made matters worse, for innocent as he was, the bees justly regarded him as the cause of all the trouble. At last, in his uncontrollable agony, he floundered over a stone wall, and disappeared. For an hour or two it was almost as much as one's life was worth to venture out. The old man, shrouded and mittened, at last crept off homeward to nurse his wounds and his wrath, and he made the air fairly sulphurous around him with his oaths. But that kind of sulphuric treatment did not affect the bees, for I observed from a window that at one point nearest the skips he began to run, and he kept up a lively pace until within his door. What became of the swarm we expected to hive I do not know. Probably it went to the woods. That night we destroyed the irate swarm whose skip had been kicked over, and peace was restored."

"If you had told that story at the breakfast-table," said Amy, as soon as the laugh caused by the old gentleman's account had subsided, "you could never have induced me to be present this morning, even at such a respectful distance."

"An old man who lives not far from us has wonderful success with bees," Leonard remarked. "He has over fifty hives in a space not more than twenty feet square, and I do not think there is a tenth of an acre in his whole lot, which is in the centre of a village. To this bare little plot his bees bring honey from every side, so that for his purpose he practically owns this entire region. He potters around them so much that, as far as he is concerned, they are as docile as barn-door fowls, and he says he minds a sting no more than a mosquito bite. There are half a dozen small trees and bushes in his little yard, and his bees are so accommodating that they rarely swarm elsewhere than on these low trees within a lew feet of the skips. He also places mullein stalks on a pole, and the swarms often cluster on them. He told me that on one day last summer he had ten swarms to look after, and that he hived them all; and he says that his wife is as good at the work as he is. On a pole which forms the corner of a little poultry-coop he keeps the record of the swarms of each season, and for last summer there are sixty-one notches. A year ago this month four swarms went into a barrel that stood in a corner of his yard, and he left them there. By fall they had filled the barrel with honey, and then, in his vernacular, he 'tuck it up'; that is, he killed the bees, and removed all the honey."

"That is the regular bee-phrase in this region. If a hive is to be emptied and the bees destroyed, or a bee tree to be cut down, the act is described as 'taking up' the hive or tree," Burt explained. "By the way, Amy," he added, "we must give you a little bee-hunting experience in the mountains next October. It would make a jolly excursion. We can leave you with a guard at some high point, when we strike a bee-line, and we might not be long in finding the tree."