They discussed it again the next day. The season was drawing on fast. If anything was to be done with the bees that spring it would have to be done at once. The result was that Bob and Carl decided that, while waiting for Joe to finish at Burnam’s, they should make a flying trip of investigation, to ascertain exactly how many bees were there and what could be done with them. Alice made a violent plea to go with them, on the ground that she could judge the bees better than anybody, but she got no support and had to give it up.
To save time, they took the steamer when she returned down the river again, three days later, and put Uncle Louis’s boat aboard as freight. It was late at night when the boat arrived at Magnolia, and some time before dawn when they were aroused to be put off at the River Island. They got into the rowboat, pulled up close to the land and waited there rather miserably in the darkness for more than an hour, uncertain just where they were.
Dawn revealed the low, swampy shores, looking monotonous and strange. Bob was still uncertain of his whereabouts, but they dropped slowly down the current and within half an hour arrived at the mouth of the bayou, which he recognized at once. Up the slow-flowing stream they rowed for a quarter of a mile, and then Bob pointed out the gray outlines of the cabin on the rising bank behind the thickets.
They drew the boat up and went ashore, Carl in a high state of expectation.
“No doubt about the bees, anyway!” he exclaimed.
It was a warm, damp morning and there was a deep roar of flying insects all about the old cabin. The bees were beginning their day’s work. Black specks seemed to be streaming up from the budding berry-thickets, circling through the air, shooting out over the woods. A returning bee, black as ink, its legs laden with whitish pollen, alighted gently on Bob’s coat-sleeve, rested a half-minute, and then proceeded to its hive.
“Sounds like home!” Bob remarked, listening to the humming wings.
The bulk of the old bee-yard, such as it was, evidently lay in the dense blackberry-patch which occupied nearly a quarter of an acre. Probably Old Dick had kept his apiary here in a clearing, and the berry-canes had swamped it, as they always swamp deserted land in the South. The stubs of a few small dead peach-trees rose above the jungle, but scarcely anything else was visible.
The boys had come provided with strong pruning-clippers and a hatchet to cut a path into this tangle, and Carl reached gingerly into the thorny growth and began to cut. He had taken out a handful or two of the stalks when he leaped away with a yell, brushing frantically at his face. A host of bees had boiled up from a log on the ground at his feet, vicious and fighting-mad at the disturbance.
Carl sheered away and got rid of his assailants, but he took the precaution to put on a bee-veil, and Bob followed his example, before they went any farther. The nest which Carl had disturbed was no “gum,” but merely a hollow log which a swarm must have taken possession of. He gave it a wide berth, but a few moments later he came upon a real bee-gum, overturned on its side, but still tenanted by its inhabitants. About the same time Bob uncovered three hives, made of rough plank, standing close together.