Frank Lillie Pollock

“ It went up and down steep hills, and for long stretches it was strewn with large, loose rocks, which made Alice’s tinware clash and jangle in the boxes as the wagon lurched along. It was impossible to go faster than a slow walk, and even then the riding was so rough that Bob and Alice got down and walked for much of the way.
The May morning was sunny and warm, and the highland air sparkling. The road ran between dense, tangled masses of second-growth spruce and hemlock, now and then broken by a wide burned slash, thick with raspberry canes. ”

“ All looked most promising, but both she and Carl knew that everything depended on the weather from day to day. For the honey-flow is the most capricious thing in the world. If the weather is too wet, the bees cannot work, and the honey is washed out of the blossoms. If it is too dry, the secretion of nectar in the flowers will cease altogether. A cold spell, too, will check the honey-flow, and high winds will dry it up. Often the clouding over of the sky, or a shift in the wind will produce a heavy flow or stop one. ”

“ They watched the bees work in the forenoon; they read and lounged lazily in the sun; and in the afternoon they went for a stroll up the river bank.
The stream was lined everywhere with willows and alders, all in flower and roaring with bees. Trout leaped from the water; once they scared up a pair of wild ducks, that went off with a great splashing and flutter. Several times they saw muskrats navigating along close to the shore, the apex of a long V ripple on the water, and once in a rick of drift logs they caught a glimpse of the slender, graceful form of a mink just diving into a hole. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The colony was a strong one, with scores of bees coming and going. Alice gently blew a little smoke across the entrance, driving in the guards; then she blew a stronger puff. A frightened roar arose within. Panic spread through the hive instantly, for smoke is the only thing that bees fear. Alice waited half a minute and then removed the cover and pulled off the canvas quilt.
A flood of bees surged up between the frames, but she drove them down with a puff of smoke before they could take wing. ”

“ Queen-rearing can only be carried on during a honey-flow, and while the good fireweed flow lasted, Alice raised several dozen queen-cells. All did not go smoothly, of course. Sometimes the bees refused to accept the artificial cells, tearing them down as fast as they were given; once a young queen hatched prematurely, and her royal jealousy immediately caused her to demolish all the rest of the cells on the frame, tearing out her young sisters and stinging them to death. ”

“ Carl had seen queen-cells often enough before, but he never ceased to regard them with amazement. He peeped into an unsealed cell, took out a little of the thick, white, royal jelly and tasted it on the end of a twig.
“Rich, thick, sour, and sweet all at once,” he commented. “It turns a worker into a queen. I wonder what it would do to me if I ate a lot of it.”
“You’d be a king,” said Alice, promptly. “Put those cells back. They’ll get chilled. And let’s go and catch that swarm.”
Carl had a number of hives prepared for such emergencies, each with ten new frames of foundation. ”

“ At last Carl, half in joke, began to recount Indian legends of the wendigo,—a giant, cannibal demon supposed to prey on hunters in the North,—until Alice implored him to stop.
“I shall be afraid to go to bed to-night,” she said. “Suppose I awoke and saw that great terrible thing looking in through the window at me!”
“Perhaps we’ll catch it in the trap,” Carl tried to reassure her. “Don’t be frightened, Allie. The wendigo doesn’t leave any tracks where it walks, and besides I don’t believe it would eat honey. It loves stronger stuff, like blood and bones.” ”

“ At most times of the year they are exceedingly shy and timid animals, hard to get in view. Bob was amazed that this one had let him come up so close, and he was edging forward to get a better look through the tangle of under brush in front of him when the animal charged at him furiously.
He jumped aside, found himself near a low-branched cedar, and scrambled up it. He had just time to draw his legs out of reach when the moose crashed into the tree with a force that jarred it to the roots. ”

“ Alice left the canvas quilts over the hives, but put on the summer board covers, and then they all went on to the next.
“These hives seem to me awfully light,” said Bob, as he lifted out the box with its bees. “They surely can’t have much honey.”
“I hope we don’t have to feed them,” Alice said, apprehensively. “Never mind; we’ll find out to-morrow. Let’s get them all unpacked to-day.”
Packing and unpacking the hives in fall and spring is the most monotonous and heavy task of the whole season, mere hard, fatiguing work, unrelieved as it is by any interest of skill and science. ”

“ Every robber was pounced upon the moment it alighted. The attack was beaten off, and for a time quiet reigned in the yard.
Day by day the raspberry bloom vanished, and no fresh buds were opening now. The time came at last when it was entirely gone, and all the thickets were covered with fruit. The basswood trees were full of buds—but would they yield nectar?
It was the middle of July. In two weeks they must pay five hundred dollars, with interest, and they did not have the money. Unless they could make it, the bees would be taken from them. ”

“ Carl incautiously fed his first colony in the daytime and nearly precipitated a riot in the yard. The colony that had been given the syrup rushed out in wild excitement, flying into the air and returning. They knew that sweet was coming in from somewhere, but they did not yet comprehend the source. The bees from adjoining colonies, seeing this excitement, began to rush out likewise; some of them made their way into the feeding hive, finding the entrance unguarded in the commotion, and there was sharp fighting. ”

“ The grass grew greener daily; tulips were budding; and the bees were gathering honey profusely from the pussy-willows. Alice and Carl went through the hives, cleared out the winter’s dirt from the bottom-boards, spaced the combs properly, scraped away excrescences of wax and propolis. ”

“ Alice returned. “But did you notice the shape that colony was in. It was boiling full of bees from one side to the other. Black or not, it’ll get ten dollars’ worth of honey if there is any bloom in the woods this summer.”
“Oh, lots of them are like that,” Carl assured her. “See how they’re carrying pollen. But we must have a regular overhauling,—open every hive and go through it to see if they have honey enough to carry them through the spring, and what kind of queens they have, and everything. We must keep track of the internal condition of each one.” ”

“ In the darkness and confusion Rosalie had somehow vanished. They had searched and called. Larue, who was very fond of his children, and of this one in particular, was like a madman. After establishing his wife and the other child in safety, he searched the shore up and down the river and went into the woods, without finding any trace of the little girl. On the river he had met Bob and Alice, who told him that Carl had gone ashore, and the two boats had rowed up and down on the lookout, firing signals at intervals with Larue’s gun. ”

“ He had secured all the swarm, except for a few bees that flew about in wild dismay at this disappearance of their comrades.
Much elated, Bob turned back toward home. The sack hummed and stirred with the efforts of the angry insects to get out. But he had hardly gone ten yards when something stirred in the underbrush. He stopped, startled. The next instant a fearful bellow filled his ears, and the wounded bull burst through a curtain of evergreens. ”

“ He was a little, withered man, more than sixty years of age, with white hair, a straggly beard, gimlet eyes, and a not unkindly mouth.
“Well, here’s the young people that’s bought the bees,” he said, wrinkling up his face into a dry smile. “You expect to make a fortune outer ’em, hey, young lady? Well, I don’t say as you won’t. But you won’t get what you expect to get. Folks never does, not in anything.”
“Oh, we don’t expect much, Mr. Farr,” said Alice, laughing. ”

“ Their owners could no longer stroll about among the hives with impunity. The bees came into the cabin, attracted by one of the pails of candied honey, and would have carried every morsel of it away if they had been permitted. Robber bees were prowling about every hive, looking for a chance to steal a little sweet from some careless colony, but every entrance was alive with alert guards, and no bee was allowed to pass in without being examined and smelt all over. The robbers did get a foothold in one weak colony, however, and before the apiarists saw it, it was besieged by a cloud of bees. ”

“ When they removed the cover of the hive that had swarmed, the super was seen to be nearly empty of bees, though it contained a good deal of fresh honey. Lifting it off, they saw that the brood-chamber also appeared sadly depleted. Fully two-thirds of the bees had gone with the swarm.
“Isn’t there any way of keeping them from swarming, Alice?” asked Carl. “We’d get so much more honey if the colonies didn’t break in two like this.”
“None,” Alice replied, busy with the smoker. “Except by seeing that they always have plenty of storage room for honey. They don’t usually swarm till they get crowded. ”

“ The chute was over a hundred feet long, and was a place which only a daring canoe-man would have dared to run. A portage would have been difficult, however, for the shore on both sides and for a long way back was choked with dense cedar thickets, a maze of fallen and standing trunks that was nearly impenetrable.
Carl stopped and cast his flies across the tail of the rapid, where he knew big fish were accustomed to lie. The day was unfavorable, however; after half an hour’s fishing he caught only two rather small trout, and he began to debate whether to return or to go through the jungle. ”

“ In this compartment was piled an enormous, disorderly heap of bee-supplies: extracting and comb-honey supers, empty combs and frames, several galvanized honey tanks, an extractor, some worn-out veils, a smoker, and an immense lot of odds and ends.
“I pulled this stuff around considerably when I was looking over it yesterday,” said Carl. “That’s why it’s in such a mess now. Seems to me we got our money’s worth, if quantity counts for anything.”
“A lot of it is probably worthless. Once it was a good working outfit, I suppose,” said Bob, as they contemplated the mass. ”

“ But I’ll tell you one thing—living up there wouldn’t cost us much. I must have seen fifty partridges on my way in, and the man that drove me told me that there are lots of deer, and now and then a bear. Once in a while a moose strays down from the North, and there must be ducks on the river. I know it’s swarming with trout. Of course we’d be taking a chance on the season. It’s generally either a feast or a famine with the bees—a big crop or a failure—but what do you say?”
“Take the chance! Take it!” cried Alice, jumping up in excitement.
“It does seem too good a thing to lose,” said Carl. ”

“ The fast loping trot of the wolf is deceptive, and Carl knew that the animal was moving almost as swiftly as a man could run. It could slip through the thickets with little trouble, but for himself the delay might be fatal.
He turned to the river. If he had had a canoe he would have risked the rapid without hesitating, for the water-way was the only one past this barrier. He thought of swimming down, but just then his eye fell upon a short, thick, pine log, half stranded and half afloat, close to him. ”

“ The barefooted children were at once stung by treading on the stupefied bees that crawled over the floor. Larue flung himself down on the bed and started up again instantly, with a loud ejaculation. There were bees in the bed, too. The woman took a broom and began to sweep the insects out, but the boys judged it more politic not to stay.
“Can you lend us a lantern?” inquired Bob. “We want to look into the barn. There’s some honey of ours there that we want to take away. When it’s gone, the bees will leave you alone.” ”

“ Harman had died four years earlier, and the three children were orphans, with what looked like a losing inheritance.
Alice was eighteen years old and had been keeping house for the family ever since her mother’s death. She was tall, brown-haired, and gray-eyed; an out-of-door girl, full of energy. She was a great chicken-raiser and an indefatigable gardener. The bees she had had for three years, starting with three hives, and had already acquired a very cheerful bank account of her own from the sale of honey. ”

“ Carl picked up his shotgun.
“Bob! What are you going to do?” exclaimed Alice.
“Get that honey back,” replied her brother shortly. “Going down the river.”
“Well, if you’re going, I’ll go too and paddle the boat.”
“No, you stay here, Allie. There won’t be any shooting, but this is no girl’s business. Stay here and get the bees out of here and things straightened up. We won’t be long—I hope!”
“No, you stay here, Allie. There won’t be any shooting, but this is no girl’s business”
Alice looked entreating and frightened, but Bob was immovable. ”

“ The bees are on a deserted backwoods farm, where nobody has lived for nearly a year. Goodness knows why anybody ever went there in the first place. But the bees are there all right—a hundred and eighty colonies, all packed outdoors in big sawdust cases. It was too cold to open the hives, but the bees were flying and seemed in good shape. Very few, if any, were dead. Then there’s a great heap of apparatus stored in the barn, a honey-extractor, empty combs, supers for comb-honey, smokers—a regular outfit, in fact. ”