Bob immediately made a flying trip to Mobile, ordering a hundred new factory-made hives, a thousand more frames, and a hundred pounds of foundation, and bringing back with him fifty Italian queens, with another fifty to follow by mail.
All this made money vanish. The check for the shipment of honey arrived a week later, but it was for only $320 after all, and it was evident that, but for Joe’s investment, the enterprise never could have been put through.
“I wish you weren’t in it so heavily, Joe,” said Alice, as they were working together at the queen-rearing operations. “It makes me worried for fear you’ll lose. It’s all right for us to take risks; bees are our trade.”
“It’s going to be my trade too,” Joe responded cheerfully. “But we’re not going to lose. Besides,” he added mysteriously, “I couldn’t lose; it’s been worth it all just to have had—to have been—well, you know, just to have been through all this with you.”
Alice flushed a little under her bee-veil, opened another hive, and blew in smoke.
“We’ve had great luck,” she said. “I hope it lasts.”
It did last. There was no great nor heavy honey flow at Shomo, no forests of honey-trees, but a steady, unbroken light gathering of honey that caused the new colonies to build up marvelously. The new queens hatched and flew and began to lay. Once more the Harmans marveled at the rapidity of development of the bees in this Southern spring, untroubled by cold nights or sudden, sharp breaks in the honey flow as are usual in the North. By the middle of May all the fresh colonies were up to more than half the strength of a normal colony—quite strong enough for shipment; and after much anxious thought Bob gave orders for the freight-car to be left on the siding on the eighteenth.
The die was cast now, and everything had to be thought out in the minutest detail. Hastily they tacked screens of wire-gauze over the tops and bottoms of the hives; they cut out lumber and scantling for braces and crating in the car; they prepared barrels for water—for bees in transit must be sprayed frequently to keep them cool. Carl had volunteered to ride with the outfit, and he had to carry his own supply of food and drink, for, once in the car, he might not be able to leave it till he reached his destination.
The loading of the car occupied all day and half of the night, and drew a continuous, curious, and amused crowd of the village folk, whose universal opinion was that the “young Yankees” were insane to think of shipping bee-gums away up North by freight. The last hive was finally stowed and braced into place, and Carl went aboard with a big box of provisions, his barrels of water, a spray pump, a pair of blankets, and the prospect of a rough journey. The engine was already waiting; the car was coupled up to the train and the string of freight-cars rattled out, with Carl leaning out of the door and waving as long as he was in sight.
The rest of the party had already made their preparations, and were to leave by the passenger-train that night. Joe presented Sam with another hundred dollars—all that he dared spare, but with the promise of more in the autumn if things went well.