“All these slow, backward colonies,” said the bee-master, as he puffed away with his smoker, “will have to be treated after the same fashion. The work must be smartly done, or you will chill the brood; but, in uncapping the stores like this, right in the centre of the brood-nest, the effect on the stock is magical. The whole hive reeks with the smell of honey, and such evidence of prosperity is irresistible. To-morrow, if you come this way, you will see all these timorous bee-folk as busy as any in the garden.”
CHAPTER III
A TWENTIETH CENTURY BEE-FARMER
It was sunny spring in the bee-garden. The thick elder-hedge to the north was full of young green leaf; everywhere the trim footways between the hives were marked by yellow bands of crocus-bloom, and daffodils just showing a golden promise of what they would be in a few warm days to come. From a distance I had caught the fresh spring song of the hives, and had seen the bee-master and his men at work in different quarters of the mimic city. But now, drawing nearer, I observed they were intent on what seemed to me a perfectly astounding enterprise. Each man held a spoon in one hand and a bowl of what I now knew to be pea-flour in the other, and I saw that they were busily engaged in filling the crocus-blossoms up to the brim with this inestimable condiment. My friend the bee-master looked up on my approach, and, as was his wont, forestalled the inevitable questioning.
“This is another way of giving it,” he explained, “and the best of all in the earliest part of the season. Instinct leads the bees to the flowers for pollen-food when they will not look for it elsewhere; and as the natural supply is very meagre, we just help them in this way.”
As he spoke I became rather unpleasantly aware of a change of manners on the part of his winged people. First one and then another came harping round, and, settling comfortably on my face, showed no inclination to move again. In my ignorance I was for brushing them off, but the bee-master came hurriedly to my rescue. He dislodged them with a few gentle puffs from his tobacco-pipe.
“That is always their way in the spring-time,” he explained. “The warmth of the skin attracts them, and the best thing to do is to take no notice. If you had knocked them off you would probably have been stung.”
“Is it true that a bee can only sting once?” I asked him, as he bent again over the crocus beds.
He laughed.
“What would be the good of a sword to a soldier,” he said, “if only one blow could be struck with it? It is certainly true that the bee does not usually sting a second time, but that is only because you are too hasty with her. You brush her off before she has had time to complete her business, and the barbed sting, holding in the wound, is torn away, and the bee dies. But now watch how the thing works naturally.”
A bee had settled on his hand as he was speaking. He closed his fingers gently over it, and forced it to sting.