“Do you suppose there are many of these fellows about the place?” asked Bob, somewhat disconcerted.
“I’m surprised to find this one,” Joe replied. “It’s rather too swampy a region for rattlers; they prefer the high land. I don’t think we’ll stir up any more.”
He used more caution, however, in clearing up the gum-yard, but did not encounter any more of the diamond-backs, though he started two or three small, harmless serpents, which he let go unmolested. By the end of the day he had all the berry-canes cut and piled in an enormous stack at a distance, and the ground cleared of rubbish. He had also picked out and removed all the dead and empty gums, and for the first time they were able to see exactly what they had.
There were seventy-eight gums containing bees, rather less than they had hoped for. But in addition to these, there must be almost as many more colonies living in hollow stumps and promiscuous places about the cabin, besides the bee-trees, of which there seemed to be an unlimited number. They did not care to establish more than a hundred and fifty new hives, and it was plain that the bees were not going to be lacking.
Nothing toward transferring the bees could be done until the new supplies came from Mobile, and it was two days more before the steamboat came up. She arrived about dawn, and stopped off the mouth of the bayou, awakening the apiarists by terrific blasts of her whistle. The boys dressed in haste and poled the flatboat down the stream, laying it alongside the steamer while the roustabouts transshipped the heavy crates. All the boat’s officers by this time knew about the bee enterprise of the young people from up North, and the boys received a good deal of good-natured jokes and chaffing when they went aboard to pay the freight. Then they pushed off; the steamboat resumed her course with a parting shriek; and the flatboat returned with its cargo up the bayou.
Alice had breakfast ready for them when they returned, and as soon as it was eaten they hauled the crates laboriously up to the shelter-shed. Without any delay they were ripped open, and the work began at once of nailing up frames.
There were two thousand frames, each made of four small pieces of wood, and they had to be put together with eight small nails. Afterwards the frame must be strung with wire to support the honeycomb, and lastly filled with a sheet of comb foundation—a thin sheet of pure beeswax stamped in a pattern like the base of a natural bee-comb. Upon this the bees build their cells, saving wax, saving time, and producing a more uniform and perfect comb than if the insects were left to build according to their pleasure.
There was work for everybody now. Everything that resembled a hammer was put into play, and there was an incessant rattle and tapping as frame after frame was nailed up, wired, filled with foundation, and put into the new hives. Five pairs of hands made rapid work, and as soon as a dozen hives were completely prepared Bob and Alice carried them into the apiary and started to drive the bees.
Neither of them had ever done such a thing before. Gum hives are unknown where they learned their bee-keeping; but they had carefully studied the method of procedure given in the books and hoped for luck.
Alice had unpacked and lighted one of the new smokers, and she approached the gum they had selected and blew smoke vigorously through its entrance hole. In terror the bees rushed inside, and, after waiting a few moments, Bob picked the gum up, set it a yard aside, and placed the new hive exactly where it had stood.