The boys were sure that Alice had been dreaming, but she was positive that she had both seen and heard some animal, and, in fact, was so nervous that they had difficulty in persuading her to go back to bed again. For some time, indeed, they were all wakeful and alert, but they slept at last. Shortly after daylight they were up again, and the first thing they did was to make another search of the ground among the hives. Sure enough, in a sandy corner of the yard Carl came upon a track. It was not very distinct, but it looked as if a bear might have made it.
“I was sure of it!” cried Alice, triumphantly.
“I believe it is a bear track,” said Bob. “If we’d only got a sight of him last night! But we must look out. A bear in this bee ranch might ruin us in one night. All this honey would seem to him like a gold mine.”
“Or a forest of bee-trees,” added Carl. “Yes, I think we ought to keep a fire burning in the yard every night, even if we have to get up two or three times to make it up. But isn’t it wonderful that this apiary hasn’t been destroyed long ago, if there are bears about?”
The morning air was sharp. No bees were flying till after nine o’clock. It was Friday, and Bob had to go back to Toronto on Monday, so that it was necessary to unpack the bees and go through them all if they were to have his help at this long and heavy task.
They decided to unpack them first, as it would be easier to examine them after they were out of the cumbersome winter cases, and after breakfast the boys began to bring out the wooden, summer hive covers that were stored in the barn with the rest of the supplies. Meanwhile Alice lighted two smokers and got the hats and veils ready. There were canvas gloves that they had brought from home, too, in case the bees should prove especially cross, and with all this apparatus they went out, ready for the first work on the new apiary.
The winter cases usually held two colonies, and were resting on stands of two by four scantling. Alice puffed on the smoker bellows till a strong white cloud poured from the nozzle, and then blew a strong blast into the entrance hole of each of the two hives in the first case. Panic-stricken, the bees rushed inside, and the boys at once dragged the heavy case a few feet out of the way. Lifting the cover, they threw off the cushions, and then lifted the hives out of the cases, setting them down so that the flying bees would find their entrances exactly where they had stood before. For a bee’s homing instinct depends mainly on location. A worker will come back three miles straight to her hive, but if that hive is pushed three feet aside, she may spend hours in trying to find it.
It was hard work. The cases were made of heavy lumber, and the boys had to carry them away and stack them up neatly. Even when the hives were out, the cases, with their sawdust packing, were as much as they cared to handle.
And this juggling with their homes naturally irritated the bees greatly. The summer hives, different in shape and color from the cases that they had been used to, did not look homelike to them. They failed to recognize them. They hung about uncertainly in the air; they tried to enter cases that had not yet been unpacked; and this caused fighting with the guards. Some of them followed the big red cases and tried to enter them again. They grew vicious and stung, so that the apiarists had to put on their gloves. But by degrees a few began to recognize the odor of their old homes, and set up the peculiar whirr that acts as a call to the whole colony. They flocked down on the entrances in clouds, and stood with heads down and wings vibrating fast in the air—fanning, as bee-keepers call it—which is their invariable way of expressing great joy.
Alice left the canvas quilts over the hives, but put on the summer board covers, and then they all went on to the next.