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.
to say, however, that modern ideas of progress in bee-farming must inevitably rob the pursuit of all its old-world poetry and picturesqueness, would be to represent the case in an unnecessarily bad light. the latter-day beehive, it is true, has little more æsthetic value than a brighton bathing-machine; and the new class of bee-keepers, which is springing up all over the country, is composed mainly of people who have taken to the calling as they would to any other lucrative business, having, for the most part, nothing but a good-humoured contempt alike for the old-fashioned bee-keeper and the ancient traditions and superstitions of his craft.
nor can the inveterate, old-time skeppist himself—the man who obstinately shuts his eyes to all that is good and true in modern bee-science—be counted on to help in the preservation of the beautiful old gardens, or in keeping alive customs which have been handed down from generation to generation, almost unaltered, for literally thousands of years. here and there, in the remoter parts of the country, men can still be found who keep their bees much in the same way as bees were kept in the time of columella or virgil; and are content with as little profit. but these form a rapidly diminishing class. the advantages of modern methods are too overwhelmingly apparent. the old school must choose between the adoption of latter-day systems, or suffer the only alternative—that of total extinction at no very distant date.
luckily for english bee-keeping, there is a third class upon which the hopes of all who love the ancient ways and days, and yet recognise the absorbing interest and value of modern research in apiarian science, may legitimately rely. born and bred amongst the hives, and steeped from their earliest years in the lore of their skeppist forefathers, these interesting folk seem, nevertheless, imbued to the core with the very spirit of progress. while retaining an unlimited affection for all the quaint old methods in bee-keeping, they maintain themselves, unostentatiously, but very thoroughly, abreast of the times. nothing new is talked of in the world of bees that these people do not make trial of, and quietly adopt into their daily practice, if really serviceable; or as quietly discard, if the contrivance prove to have little else than novelty to recommend it.
as a rule, they are reserved, silent men, difficult of approach; and yet, when once on terms of familiarity, they make the most charming of companions. then they are ever ready to talk about their bees, or discuss the latest improvements in apiculture; to explain the intricacies of bee-life, as revealed by the foremost modern observers, or to dilate by the hour on the astounding delusions of mediæval times. but they all seem to possess one invariable characteristic—that of whole-hearted reverence for the customs of their immediate ancestors, their own fathers and grandfathers. in a long acquaintance with bee-men of this class, i have never yet met with one who could be trapped into any decided admission of defect in the old methods, which—to say truth—were often as senseless as they were futile, even when not directly contrary to the interest of the bee-owner, or the plain, obvious dictates of humanity. in this they form a refreshing contrast to the ultra-modern, pushing young apiculturist of to-day; and it is as a type of this class that the bee-master of warrilow is presented to the reader.
