The bees were at work that day, though but little clover was fully out. For the next two days they probably got little more than they consumed; but then, as it seemed, the pastures and meadows turned pink and white with a rush.
Joe heard the roar of the bees that morning before he was up. Before thinking of breakfast they all went out to look at the apiary. The air was like a snowstorm of bees. The insects were piling into the hives by scores, dropping heavy-laden on the entrance-boards, rushing wildly out again for fresh loads. All the entrance-guards had been withdrawn. The honey flow was fully under way at last.
“Now we’re off to a good start,” said Carl joyfully. “It’s all a gamble on the weather now for the next month.”
“It’s a winning game. I just know the luck will hold,” Alice laughed.
Joe went out with Bob that day to look at the other yards. The same wild activity was visible at all of them. Clover was everywhere—in the meadows grown for hay, in the fields where alsike was raised for its seed, along the roadsides, in the pastures. The air was warm and damp, and as the boys passed along the road there was a gust of heavy, honey-laden sweetness blown from the fields with every breath of wind.
“I reckon Alice is right,” Joe remarked. “I never saw anything like this in my life. I don’t believe these Alabama bees will know what to do with it all.”
But the Alabama bees knew very well what to do with it. That night there was a heavy, contented roaring from all the hives in the yard, where the bees were arranging and ripening the honey gathered that day. Peeping into one of the supers, Alice found that they were already beginning to turn the foundation sheets into white comb and to put honey into them.
For six days this wild rush continued. The weather remained warm but not too hot, with heavy dews at night and a dampness in the air. Joe was thunderstruck at the flood of honey, so different from the slow, dribbling honey flows of the South. At the end of the week all the supers were built full of comb, nearly filled with honey, and the bees were commencing to seal over the earliest cells.
“They’ll need more room, and we haven’t any more supers to put on. They’re going to be crowded. Do you think they’ll get to swarming?” Bob asked apprehensively. Swarming fever would be no joke in that large apiary, disorganizing the whole honey season.
“Hives with a young queen seldom swarm,” said Alice. “Most of these queens were reared this spring. We’d better start to extract just as soon as any of the honey is sealed, though.”