“The great work of the year is just beginning with us,” explained the bee-mistress. “In these first warm days of spring every hive must be opened and its condition ascertained. Those that are short of stores must be fed; backward colonies must be quickened to a sense of their responsibilities. Clean hives must be substituted for the old, winter-soiled dwellings. Queens that are past their prime will have to be dethroned, and their places filled by younger and more vigorous successors. But it is all typically women’s work. You have an old acquaintance with the lordly bee-master and his ways; now come and see how a woman manages.”
We passed over to the singing lady in the veil, and—from a safe distance—watched her at her work. Each frame, as it was raised out of the seething abyss of the hive, was turned upside down and carefully examined. A little vortex of bees swung round her head, shrilling vindictively. Those on the uplifted comb-frames hustled to and fro like frightened sheep, or crammed themselves head foremost into the empty cells, out of reach of the disturbing light.
“That is a queenless stock,” said the bee-mistress. “It is going to be united with another colony, where there is a young, high-mettled ruler in want of subjects.”
We watched the bee-gardener as she went to one of the neighbouring hives, subdued and opened it, drew out all the brood-combs, and brought them over in a carrying-rack, with the bees clustering in thousands all about them. Then a scent-diffuser was brought into play, and the fragrance of lavender-water came over to us, as the combs of both hives were quickly sprayed with the perfume, then lowered into the hive, a frame from each stock alternately. It was the old time-honoured plan for uniting bee-colonies, by impregnating them with the same odour, and so inducing the bees to live together peaceably, where otherwise a deadly war might ensue. But the whole operation was carried through with a neat celerity, and light, dexterous handling, I had never seen equalled by any man.
“That girl,” said the bee-mistress, as we moved away, “came to me out of a London office a year ago, anæmic, pale as the paper she typed on all day for a living. Now she is well and strong, and almost as brown as the bees she works among so willingly. All my girls here have come to me from time to time in the same way out of the towns, forsaking indoor employment that was surely stunting all growth of mind and body. And there are thousands who would do the same to-morrow, if only the chance could be given them.”
We stopped in the centre of the old orchard. Overhead the swelling fruit-buds glistened against the blue sky. Merry thrush-music rang out far and near. Sun and shadow, the song of the bees, laughing voices, a snatch of an old Sussex chantie, the perfume of violet-beds and nodding gillyflowers, all came over to us through the lichened tree-stems, in a flood of delicious colour and scent and sound. The bee-mistress turned to me, triumphantly.
“Would any sane woman,” she asked, “stop in the din and dirt of a smoky city, if she could come and work in a place like this? Bee-keeping for women! do you not see what a chance it opens up to poor toiling folk, pining for fresh air and sunshine, especially to the office-girl class, girls often of birth and refinement—just that kind of poor gentlewomen whose breeding and social station render them most difficult of all to help? And here is work for them, clean, intellectual, profitable; work that will keep them all day long in the open air; a healthy, happy country life, humanly within the reach of all.”
“What is wanted,” continued the bee-mistress, as we went slowly down the broad main-way of the honey-farm, “is for some great lady, rich in business ideas as well as in pocket, to take up the whole scheme, and to start a network of small bee-gardens for women over the whole land. Very large bee-farms are a mistake, I think, except in the most favourable districts. Bees work only within a radius of two or three miles at most, so that the number of hives that can be kept profitably in a given area has its definite limits. But there is still plenty of room everywhere for bee-farms of moderate size, conducted on the right principles; and there is no reason at all why they should not work together on the co-operative plan, sending all their produce to some convenient centre in each district, to be prepared and marketed for the common good.”
“But the whole outcome,” she went on, “of a scheme like this depends on the business qualities imported into it. Here, in the heart of the Sussex Weald, we labour together in the midst of almost ideal surroundings, but we never lose sight of the plain, commercial aspect of the thing. We study all the latest writings on our subject, experiment with all novelties, and keep ourselves well abreast of the times in every way. Our system is to make each hive show a clear, definite profit. The annual income is not, and can never be, a very large one, but we fare quite simply, and have sufficient for our needs. In any case, however, we have proved here that a few women, renting a small house and garden out in the country, can live together comfortably on the proceeds from their bees; and there is no reason in the world why the idea should not be carried out by others with equal success.”
We had made the round of the whole busy, murmuring enclosure, and had come again to the little door in the wall. Passing through and out once more into the world of merely masculine endeavour, the bee-mistress gave me a final word.