“Now,” he continued, quite unconcernedly, “look what really happens. The bee makes two or three lunges before she gets the sting fairly home. Then the poison is injected. Now watch what she does afterwards. See! she has finished her work, and is turning round and round! The barbs are arranged spirally on the sting, and she is twisting it out corkscrew-fashion. Now she is free again! there she goes, you see, weapon and all; and ready to sting again if necessary.”
The crocus-filling operation was over now, and the bee-master took up his barrow and led the way to a row of hives in the sunniest part of the garden. He pulled up before the first of the hives, and lighted his smoking apparatus.
“These,” he said, as he fell to work, “have not been opened since October, and it is high time we saw how things are going with them.”
He drove a few strong puffs of smoke into the entrance of the hive and removed the lid. Three or four thicknesses of warm woollen quilting lay beneath. Under these a square of linen covered the tops of the frames, to which it had been firmly propolised by the bees. My friend began to peel this carefully off, beginning at one corner and using the smoker freely as the linen ripped away.
“This was a full-weight hive in the autumn,” he said, “so there was no need for candy-feeding. But they most be pretty near the end of their stores now. You see how they are all together on the three or four frames in the centre of the hive? The other combs are quite empty and deserted. And look how near they are clustering to the top of the bars! Bees always feed upwards, and that means we must begin spring-feeding right away.”
He turned to the barrow, on which was a large box, lined with warm material, and containing bar frames full of sealed honeycomb.
“These are extra combs from last summer. I keep them in a warm cupboard over the stove at about the same temperature as the hive we are going to put them into. But first they must be uncapped. Have you ever seen the Bingham used?”
From the inexhaustible barrow he produced the long knife with the broad, flat blade; and, poising the frame of honeycomb vertically on his knee, he removed the sheet of cell-caps with one dexterous cut, laying the honey bare from end to end. This frame was then lowered into the hive with the uncapped side close against the clustering bees. Another comb, similarly treated, was placed on the opposite flank of the cluster. Outside each of these a second full comb was as swiftly brought into position. Then the sliding inner walls of the brood-nest were pushed up close to the frame, and the quilts and roof restored. The whole seemed the work of a few moments at the outside.
“All this early spring work,” said the bee-master, as we moved to the next hive, “is based upon the recognition of one thing. In the south here the real great honey-flow comes all at once: very often the main honey-harvest for the year has to be won or lost during three short weeks of summer. The bees know this, and from the first days of spring they have only the one idea—to create an immense population, so that when the honey-flow begins there may be no lack of harvesters. But against this main idea there is another one—their ingrained and invincible caution. Not an egg will be laid nor a grub hatched unless there is reasonable chance of subsistence for it. The populace of the hive must be increased only in proportion to the amount of stores coming in. With a good spring, and the early honey plentiful, the queen will increase her production of eggs with every day, and the population of the hive will advance accordingly. But if, on the very brink of the great honey-flow, there comes, as is so often the case, a spell of cold windy weather, laying is stopped at once; and, if the cold continues, all hatching grubs are destroyed and the garrison put on half-rations. And so the work of months is undone.”
He stooped to bring his friendly pipe to my succour again, for a bee was trying to get down my collar in the most unnerving way, and another had apparently mistaken my mouth for the front-door of his hive. The intruders happily driven off, the master went back to his work and his talk together.