The Bee-Master of Warrilow

by Tickner Edwardes

“This is pea-flour,” explained the master, “and it takes the place of pollen as food for the young bees, until the spring flowers open and the natural supply is available. This forms the first step in the bee-keeper’s work of patching up the defective English climate. From the beginning our policy is to deceive the queens into the belief that all is prosperity and progress outside. We keep all the hives well covered up, and contract the entrances, so that a high temperature is maintained within, and the queens imagine summer is already advancing. Then they see the pea-flour coming in plentifully, and conclude that the fields and hillsides are covered with flowers; for they never come out of the hives except at swarming-time, and must judge of the year by what they see around them. Then in a week or two we shall put the spring-feeders on, and give each hive as much syrup as the bees can take down; and this, again, leads the queens into the belief that the year’s food-supply has begun in earnest. The result is that the winter lethargy in the hive is soon completely overthrown, the queens begin to lay unrestrictedly, and the whole colony is forging on towards summer strength long before there is any natural reason for it.”

We were stooping down, watching the bees at the nearest hive. A little cloud of them was hovering in the sunshine, heads towards the entrance, keeping up a shrill jovial contented note as they flew. Others were roving round with a vagrant, workless air, singing a low desultory song as they trifled about among the crocuses, passing from gleaming white to rich purple, then to gold, and back again to white, just as the mood took them. In the hive itself there was evidently a kind of spring-cleaning well in progress. Hundreds of the bees were bringing out minute sand-coloured particles, which accumulated on the alighting-board visibly as we watched. Now and again a worker came backing out, dragging a dead bee laboriously after her. Instantly two or three others rushed to help in the task, and between them they tumbled the carcass over the edge of the footboard down among the grass below. Sometimes the burden was of a pure white colour, like the ghost of a bee, perfect in shape, with beady black eyes, and its colourless wings folded round it like a cerecloth. Then it seemed to be less weighty, and its carrier usually shouldered the gruesome thing, and flew away with it high up into the sunshine, and swiftly out of view.

“Those are the undertakers,” said the bee-master, ruminatively filling a pipe. “Their work is to carry the dead out of the hive. That last was one of the New Year’s brood, and they often die in the cell like that, especially at the beginning of the season. All that fine drift is the cell-cappings thrown down during the winter from time to time as the stores were broached, and every warm day sees them cleaning up the hive in this way. And now watch these others—these that are coming and going straight in and out of the hive.”

I followed the pointing pipe-stem. The alighting-stage was covered with a throng of bees, each busily intent on some particular task. But every now and then a bee emerged from the hive with a rush, elbowed her way excitedly through the crowd, and darted straight off into the sunshine without an instant’s pause. In the same way others were returning, and as swiftly disappearing into the hive.

“Those are the water-carriers,” explained the master. “Water is a constant need in bee-life almost the whole year round. It is used to soften the mixture of honey and pollen with which the young grubs and newly-hatched bees are fed; and the old bees require a lot of it to dilute their winter stores. The river is the traditional watering-place for my bees here, and in the summer it serves very well; but in the winter hundreds are lost either through cold or drowning. And so at this time we give them a water-supply close at home.”

He took up his pitcher, and led the way to the other end of the garden. Here, on a bench, he showed me a long row of glass jars full of water, standing mouth downward, each on its separate plate of blue china. The water was oozing out round the edges of the jars, and scores of the bees were drinking at it side by side, like cattle at a trough.

“We give it them lukewarm,” said the old bee-man, “and always mix salt with it. If we had sea-water here, nothing would be better; seaside bees often go down to the shore to drink, as you may prove for yourself on any fine day in summer. Why are all the plates blue? Bees are as fanciful in their ways as our own women-folk, and in nothing more than on the question of colour. Just this particular shade of light blue seems to attract them more than any other. Next to that, pure white is a favourite with them; but they have a pronounced dislike to anything brilliantly red, as all the old writers about bees noticed hundreds of years ago. If I were to put some of the drinking-jars on bright red saucers now, you would not see half as many bees on them as on the pale blue.”

We moved on to the extracting-house, whence the master now fetched his smoker, and a curious knife, with a broad and very keen-looking blade. He packed the tin nozzle of the smoker with rolled brown paper, lighted it, and, by means of the little bellows underneath, soon blew it up into full strength. Then he went to one of the quietest hives, where only a few bees were wandering aimlessly about, and sent a dense stream of smoke into the entrance. A moment later he had taken the roof and coverings off, and was lifting out the central comb-frames one by one, with the bees clinging in thousands all about them.

“Now,” he said, “we have come to what is really the most important operation of all in the bee-keeper’s work of stimulating his stocks for the coming season. Here in the centre of each comb you see the young brood; but all the cells above and around it are full of honey, still sealed over and untouched by the bees. The stock is behind time. The queen must be roused at once to her responsibilities, and here is one very simple and effective way of doing it.”

He took the knife, deftly shaved off the cappings from the honey-cells of each comb, and as quickly returned the frames, dripping with honey, to the brood-nest. In a few seconds the hive was comfortably packed down again, and he was looking round for the next languid stock.