Tickner Edwardes

“ If the towering elm-trees by the lane-side showed no fretting of amber in their greenery, nor the beeches sent down their steady rain of russet, there would still be one indubitable mark of the season—the voice of the hives themselves.
Rich and wavering and low in the sweet autumn sunlight, it comes over to you now with the very spirit of rest in every halting tone. There is work, of a kind, doing in the bee-garden. A steady tide of bees is stemming out from and home to every hive. ”

“ But the sudden clash of arms in the quiet of the hive has an extraordinary effect on the sluggish colony. The alarm spreads on every side. Wherever the wasp runs now she is met with snapping jaws and detaining embraces. As she rushes madly down the comb, she is continually pulled up in full flight by bees hanging on to her legs, her wings, her black waving antenna. A dozen times she shakes them all off, and speeds on, the spot of light and safety in the distance ever growing brighter and larger. But she seldom escapes with her life if affairs have reached this pass. ”

“ It must be a disturbing thing to those kindergarten moralists who hold the bee up to youth for an example of industry and prudence to learn that she is by no means an early riser; though, at this time of year, she is undoubtedly both wealthy and wise. For it is her very wisdom that now makes her a lie-abed. When the iron is hot, she will not be slow in striking. But it is nectar, not dewdrops, from which she makes her honey. Very wisely she waits until the sun has drunk up the dew from the clover-bells, and then she hurries forth to garner their undiluted sweets. ”

“ Among the beautiful things of the countryside, which are slowly but surely passing away, must be reckoned the old Bee Gardens—fragrant, sunny nooks of blossom, where the bees are housed only in the ancient straw skeps, and have their own way in everything, the work of the bee-keeper being little more than a placid looking-on at events of which it would have been heresy to doubt the finite perfection. ”

“ We were in the heart of the Sussex moorland, miles away from the nearest village, still farther from the great bee-farm where, at other times, the old man drove his thriving trade. But the bees were here—a million of them perhaps—all singing their loudest in the blossoming heather that stretched away on every side to the far horizon, under the sweltering August sun.
Getting the bees to the moors was always the chief event of the year down at the honey-farm. For days the waggons stood by the laneside, all ready to be loaded up with the best and most populous hives ”

“ But many of them succeed in conjuring up an almost ludicrous assumption of business. One comes driving out of the hive-entrance at a great pace, designedly, as you would think, going out of her way to bustle the few bees lounging there, as if the entrance-board were still thronged with the streaming crowd of summer days foregone. She stops an instant to rub her eyes clear of the hive-darkness; tries her wings a little to make sure of their powers for a heavy load; then, with a deep note like the twang of a guitar-string, launches out into the sun-steeped air. ”

“ With the whole garden alive with flashing wings, and resounding with the rich deep hubbub of the swarm, the bees forming the remnant of the old colony go about their usual business in perfect unconcern, lancing straight off into the sunshine towards the clover-fields, or winging busily homeward laden with honey and pollen, just as they have been doing for weeks past. And if the hive be opened at this time, it will show nothing unusual except that no queen will be found. ”

“ The darkness, far away as it seems, will not find all done that should be done on the bee-farm, toil as hard as we may. For these sudden hot days in spring often come singly, and every moment of them is precious. To-morrow the north wind may be keening under an iron-grey sky, and pallid wreaths of snow-flakes weighing down the almond-blossom. ”

“ They are the great pest of the bee-keeper in winter time. When the snow covers the ground, and the frost has driven all insect-life deep into the crevices of the trees, all the blue-caps for miles round trek to the bee-gardens. Of course, if the bees would only keep indoors they would be safe enough. But the same cause that drives the birds in lures the bees out. The snow reflects the sunlight up through the hive-entrances, and they think the bright days of spring have come, and out they flock to their death. And winter is just the time when every single bee is valuable. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Among the innumerable scraps of more or less erroneous information on hive-life, dished up by the popular newspapers in course of the year’s round, there is occasionally one which is sure to grip the curious reader’s attention. No one expects nowadays to read of the honey-bee without being set agape at the marvellous; but, really, when he is gravely told that the nurse-bees in a hive actually give the breast to their young, suckling them with a secreted liquid which is nothing more or less than milk, the ordinarily faithful newspaper student is entitled to be for once incredulous. ”

“ The light snow covered the path through the bee-farm, and whitened the roof of every hive. In the red winter twilight it looked more like a human city than ever, with its long double rows of miniature houses stretching away into the dusk on either hand, and its broad central thoroughfare, where the larger hives crowded shoulder to shoulder, casting their black shadows over the glimmering snow. ”

“ Maybe, way back in the times when England was a tropic country, tens of thousands o’ years ago, there was no call for them to live packed together in one dark chamber, as they do to-day. If the year was warm all the twelve months through, and flowers allers blooming, there ’ud be no need fer a winter-larder, nor fer any hives at all. Like as not each woman-bee lived by herself then, in some dry nook or other; made her little nest of comb, and brought up her own children, happy and comfortable. ”

“ They are by no means the obedient items of a common inexorable purpose. They are more like a crowd of people running in a street, all agog with excitement and curiosity, but not one of them knowing the cause of the general stampede. Sometimes a stock of bees will give visible sign of the approach of a swarming-fit for several days before the swarm actually issues. But, as often as not, no such manifestation is given. The hive, at least to the unexpert eye, seems in its normal condition right up to the moment when the great emigration takes place. ”

“ There are three great tokens of the coming of spring in the country—the elm-blossom, the cry of the young lambs, and the first rich song of the awakening bees.
All three come together about the end of February or beginning of March, and break into the winter dearth and silence in much the same sudden, unpremeditated way. You look at the woodlands, cowering under the lash of the shrill north wind, and all seems bare and black and lifeless. But the wind dies down in a fiery sunset. With the darkness comes a warm breath out of the west. ”

“ Watching bees at work of a fair morning in May, nothing excites the wonder of the casual looker-on more than the mysterious burdens they are for ever bringing home upon their thighs; semi-globular packs, always gaily coloured, and often so heavy and cumbersome that the bee can hardly drag its weary way into the hive. This is pollen, to be stored in the cells, and afterwards kneaded up with honey as food for the young bees. ”

“ There is no clearer sign of bad beemanship nowadays than when a strong colony is allowed to weaken itself by swarming on the eve of the great honey-flow, just when strength and numbers are most needed. Of course, in the old days, the maxim held true enough. The straw skeps had room only for a certain number of bees, and when they became too crowded there was nothing for it but to let the colonies split up in the natural way. But the modern frame-hive, with its extending brood-chamber, does away with that necessity. ”

“ Modernism, rightly understood, is God’s fairest, most priceless gift to the universe. It is a crucible through which all things of true metal must pass to lose the accumulated dross of the ages, keeping their original pure substance, but taking the new shape required of them by latter-day needs. It is so with the old, dim windows of man’s faith; daily the glass is being taken out, smelted down, purified, replaced; we can see abroad into distances now never before visible. And so it must prove even with bee-keeping, which is one of the oldest human occupations in the world. ”

“ Then the sheer carmine of the tulips, in the sunny vista beyond the orchard, came upon you like a trumpet-note through the shadowy aisles of the trees; and after this, in turn, the flaming amber of the marigolds, broad zones of forget-me-nots like strips of the blue sky fallen, snow-drifts of arabis and starwort, p. 45purple pansy-spangles veering to every breeze. And last of all you became gradually aware that every bright nook or shade-dappled corner round you had its nestling bee-skep, half hidden in the general riot of blossom, yet marked by the steadier, deeper song of the homing bees. ”

“ Country wanderings towards the end of summer, even now when the twentieth century is two decades old, still bring to light many ancient and curious things. Within an hour of London, and side by side with the latest agricultural improvements, you can still see corn coming down to the old reaping-hook, still watch the plough-team of bullocks toiling over the hillside, still get that unholy whiff of sulphur in the bee-gardens where the old-fashioned skeppists are “taking up” their bees. ”

“ Its people are building, brewing, wax-making, scavenging, wet-nursing, being born and dying: it is all going on without pause or break inside those four reverberating walls, while you stand without in the dew-soaked grass and level sunbeams wondering how it is that all the world can be at full flood-tide of merry life and music while these mysterious hive people give scarce a sign. ”

“ The rapid growth of the swarm-cluster was always one of the most bewildering things to watch. From a little dark knot no bigger than the clenched hand, it swelled in a moment to the size of a half-gallon measure, growing in girth and length with inconceivable swiftness, until the branch began to droop under its weight. A minute more, and the last of the flying bees had joined the cluster; the stout apple-branch was bent almost double; and the completed swarm hung within a few inches of the ground, a long cigar-shaped mass gently swaying to and fro in the flickering light and shade. ”

“ Modern bee-science, it is true, gives us only an ugly utilitarian hive. It sweeps away all the bright, iridescent cobwebs in they path of bee-keeping, and substitutes hard fact for pretty fairy-tale. But the sum of it all is that the poor cottager gains, not twenty or thirty pounds at most of coarse, unsaleable sweet food from his hives, but perhaps hundredweights of pure, choice, section-honey, which, sold in the proper market, will clothe his children comfortably, and make it possible for them to lead decent human lives. ”

“ The bee-master, explaining to an interested novice the wonders of the modern bar-frame hive, often finds himself confronted by a very awkward question. He is at no loss for words, so long as he confines himself to an enumeration of the hive’s many advantages over the ancient straw skep—its elastic brood and honey chambers, its movable combs interchangeable with all other hives in the garden, its power of doubling and trebling both the number of worker-bees in a colony and the amount of harvested honey; above all, its control over sanitation and the breeding of unnecessary drones. ”

“ This state will often last a considerable time, and, in rare cases, will end by the bees trooping soberly back to the hive under just as mysterious a revulsion of feeling and resuming their old steady work. At other times the cloud of bees will suddenly rise high into the air and go straight off across country, disappearing in a few moments from the keenest view. But generally, after a short spell of this berserk frolic, the swarm seems gradually to unite under common direction. The dark network of flying bees overhead shrinks and grows denser. ”

“ In an average prosperous hive there are about thirty thousand of these little stunted, quick-witted worker-bees, not one of which but could have grown into a fully-developed mother-bee, twice the size, and laying her thousands of eggs a day, if only her early bringings-up had been different. But nature has doomed her to be an old maid from her very cradle, although she is born with all the instincts and capabilities for motherhood that you wonder at in a fully grown, prolific queen. ”

“ The whole building filled at once with a sweet penetrating odour, which might well have been the concentrated fragrance of every summer flower on the countryside.
“But of all the good things given us by the wise physician of the hive,” quoth the old bee-keeper, enthusiastically, “there is nothing so good as well-brewed metheglin. This is just as I have made it for forty years, and as my father made it long before that. Between us we have been brewing mead for more than a century. ”