“I dunno,” said Blue Bob. “You never seen so much wax in your born days as we’ve got here. There’s mebbe three hundred dollars’ worth, when we git it all melted up. An’ then ain’t we got back our own stuff from Old Dick’s cabin that them Yankees stole too?”
This charge of stealing might have seemed more comical if the case had not been so desperate. But it was maddening to lie there in the palmetto and watch their precious apiary being destroyed. Four colonies had already been drowned and cut up, and the outlaws were now heaving a fifth into the water. A cloud of frightened and angry bees seethed up as the hive went under. Bob was amazed that the fellows had the courage to handle the bees so freely. They had not come off unscathed; their chief had a large swelling on the blue streak across his forehead, and Candler complained that his hand was getting stiff with “pizen,” but they seemed to be taking the whole thing as sport and went ahead in high spirits. But it was no sport for the owners of the bees.
“I can’t stand watching this!” Joe whispered. “Let’s give ’em a volley. We could wipe out the whole bunch.”
Bob looked over the scene of the wrecking doubtfully. Bees were flying in clouds, from the hives on the raft as well as from the broken-up hives. It is hard to drown a bee. The wet mass of stupefied insects on the ground was crawling, buzzing, drying off.
“Hold on a bit,” he whispered back. “There’ll be trouble in a minute. They won’t cut up many more hives.”
In fact, the bees were flying every moment more thickly. The cut-out lumps of honey were covered with plundering yellow bodies. Bees were darting from the hives on the raft, flying in circles, returning in excitement, smelling the spilt honey. The whole raft was beginning to stir and roar.
“These bees is comin’ round too thick,” Blue Bob remarked. He had been about to step on the raft for another hive for destruction, but he recoiled before the cloud of irritated insects. He made a jump aside and swore, slapping his neck, then retreated with some haste. Candler ventured forward, then drew back.
“We’ve done got ’em all roused up,” he said. “Let’s wait till they quiet down some.”
Bob grinned as he heard this. Quiet down! The disturbance would get worse every minute. The bees were suspicious, irritable from the continual jar and movement of the last two days; they had gathered no honey; and now they found sweet spilled on the ground and the air reeking with the smell of honey and wax. It completed their demoralization. Not quite sure where the honey was, they were already sniffing at one another’s hives, trying to force an entrance, trying to rob. Little yellow knots of fighting bees rolled on the planking, trying desperately to sting one another.
“The whole outfit’s going to go wild in a few minutes,” Bob muttered in Joe’s ear. “There’s going to be a robbing riot.”