“That’s too good to be true,” said Carl, pessimistically.
“Not a bit of it!” cried Alice. “It’s our luck. Don’t we deserve it? I just knew we were going to get some more!”
In fact, after a single drying, chilly day, the honey flow began again almost with the vigor of the first days. A fresh crop of blossoms had come out with the rains, and the weather turned warm again, while the water-soaked ground provided moisture enough for continual honey secretion. The emptied combs in the supers began to fill once more with the water-clear nectar. The apiarists hardly dared to hope for this to last long. Every day they looked to see it stop; and they made no attempt to keep up with the bees by extracting. It was not likely, Bob argued, that they would do more than fill the supers at the most, and any excess would be put into the lower story anyhow, where it would be useful for next winter’s supplies.
But for a full ten days the flow of nectar continued without a break. The supers were filled, crammed, and the bees were building combs under the bottom-bars and in all the crevices they could reach, as well as storing freely in the lower chamber. Two or three colonies even swarmed, fairly crowded out, and disgusted with the lack of room. The bee-keepers, jubilant and uncertain, knew hardly what to do; and they were just making up their minds to extract some of the combs to give room when the honey flow dried up in a hot wave of three days. The thermometers went above ninety-five; the earth baked, and the clover blossoms turned brown and shriveled for the last time. The hot wave broke up in violent thunderstorms and rain, but there was no fresh bloom on the clover this time. The season was definitely over.
“I’m almost glad of it,” said Joe. “It was getting on my nerves, watching the weather and smelling the air every morning.”
“I wish we could have just another week,” Alice sighed, avariciously. “But never mind. Old Dick’s bees have done pretty well for us.”
There was no hurry now about extracting this last installment of the crop, and, besides, they had to wait for a fresh lot of sixty-pound tins. It was only when they began to take off the honey that they realized how large this last installment really was. Crowded for room, the bees had crammed their combs to the last possible degree. Never had any of them seen such great, thick, blocky combs, sealed like white slabs from top-bar to bottom-bar of the frame. Extracting the first few supers amazed them. A super usually contains about forty pounds of honey, but these were averaging at least fifty.
“And they’ve stored a lot in the brood-chamber,” said Bob. “I lifted some of them. They’re almost heavy enough for winter. We won’t need to do much feeding this fall.”
Bob and Carl were bringing in honey at the home yard, while Alice uncapped the combs as usual, and Joe tended the extractor and drew off honey into the tank. The boiler of the steam-heated honey-knife bubbled over its oil flame, and the jet hissed upon the dripping wax; stray bees buzzed against the window-screen, and the extractor roared and whirred.
“Yes, Old Dick’s outfit has done pretty well for us,” said Joe, pausing while Alice uncapped a fresh set of combs. “There’s a heavy super of honey like these on every one of our 340 colonies, I reckon. Say only three hundred. That makes—let’s see!”