long, lithe, and sinewy, with three score years of sunburn on his keen, gnarled face, and the sure stride of a mountain goat, the bee-master of warrilow struck you at once as a notable figure in any company.
warrilow is a little precipitous village tucked away under the green brink of the sussex downs; and the bee-farm lay on the southern slope of the hill, with a sheltering barrier of pine above, in which, all day long, the winter wind kept up an impotent complaining. but below, among the hives, nothing stirred in the frosty, sun-riddled air. now and again a solitary worker-bee darted up from a hive door, took a brisk turn or two in the dazzling light, then hurried home again to the warm cluster. but the flash and quiver of wings, and the drowsy song of summer days, were gone in the iron-bound january weather; and the bee-master was lounging idly to and fro in the great main-way of the waxen p. 18city, shot-gun under arm, and with apparently nothing more to do than to meditate over past achievements, or to plan out operations for the season to come.
as i approached, the sharp report of the gun rang out, and a little cloud of birds went chippering fearsomely away over the hedgerow. the old man watched them as they flew off dark against the snowy hillside. he threw out the cartridge-cases disgustedly.
“blue-tits!” said he. “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. in summer a few hundreds more or less make little difference, when in every hive young bees are maturing at the rate of several thousands a day to take the place of those that perish. but now every bee captured by the tits is an appreciable loss to the colony. they are all nurse-bees in the winter-hives, and on them depends the safe hatching-out of the first broods in the spring season. so the bee-keeper would do well to include a shot-gun among his paraphernalia, unless he is willing to feed all the starving tits of the countryside at the risk of his year’s harvest.”
“but the blue-cap,” he went on, “is not always content to wait for his breakfast until the bees voluntarily bring it to him. he has a trick of enticing them out of the hive which is often successful even in the coldest weather. come into the extracting-house yonder, and i may be able to show you what i mean.”
he led the way to a row of outbuildings which flanked the northern boundary of the garden and formed additional shelter from the blustering gale. a window of the extracting-house overlooked the whole extent of hives. opening this from within with as little noise as possible, the bee-master put a strong field-glass into my hand.
“now that we are out of sight,” he said, “the tits will soon be back again. there they come—whole families of them together! now watch that green hive over there under the apple-tree.”
looking through the glass, i saw that about a dozen tits had settled in the tree. their bright plumage contrasted vividly with the sober green and grey of the lichened boughs, as they swung themselves to and fro in the sunshine. but presently the boldest of them gave up this pretence of searching for food among the branches, and hopped down upon the alighting-board of the hive. at once two or three others followed him; and then began an ingenious piece of business. the little company fell to pecking at the hard wood with their bills, striking out a sharp ringing tattoo plainly audible even where we lay hidden. the old bee-man snorted contemptuously, and the cartridges slid home into the breech of his gun with a vicious snap.
“now keep an eye on the hive-entrance,” he said grimly.
the glass was a good one. now i could plainly make out a movement in this direction. the noise and vibration made by the birds outside had roused the slumbering colony to a sense of danger. about a dozen bees ran out to see what it all meant, and were immediately pounced upon. and then the gun spoke over my head. it was a shot into the air, but it served its harmless purpose. from every bush and tree there came over to us a dull whirr of wings like far-off thunder, as the blue marauders sped away for the open country, filling the air with their frightened jingling note.
perhaps of all cosy retreats from the winter blast it has ever been my good fortune to discover, the extracting-room on warrilow bee-farm was the brightest and most comfortable. in summer-time the whole life of the apiary centred here; and the stress and bustle, inevitable during the season of the great honey-flow, obscured its manifold possibilities. but in winter the extracting-machines were, for the most part, silent; and the natural serenity and cosiness of the place reasserted themselves triumphantly. from the open furnace-door a ruddy warmth and glow enriched every nook and corner of the long building. the walls were lined with shelves where the polished tin vessels, in which the surplus honey was stored, gave back the fire-shine in a hundred flickering points of amber light. the work of hive-making in the neighbouring sheds was going briskly forward, but the noise of hammering, the shrill hum of sawing and planing p. 21machinery, and the intermittent cough of the oil-engine reached us only as a subdued, tranquil murmur—the very voice of rest.
the bee-master closed the window behind its thick bee-proof curtains, and, putting his gun away in a corner, drew a comfortable high-backed settle near to the cheery blaze. then he disappeared for a moment, and returned with a dusty cobweb-shrouded bottle, which he carried in a wicker cradle as a butler would bear priceless old wine. the cork came out with a ringing jubilant report, and the pale, straw-coloured liquid foamed into the glasses like champagne. it stilled at once, leaving the whole inner surface of the glass veneered with golden bells. the old bee-man held it up critically against the light.
“the last of 19–,” he said, regretfully. “the finest mead year in this part of the country for many a decade back. most people have never tasted the old anglo-saxon drink that king alfred loved, and probably harold’s men made merry with on the eve of hastings. so they can’t be expected to know that metheglin varies with each season as much as wine from the grape.”
of the goodness of the liquor there admitted no question. it had the bouquet of a ripe ribston pippin, and the potency of east indian sherry thrice round the horn. but its flavour entirely eluded all attempt at comparison. there was a suggestive note of fine old perry about it, and a dim reminder of certain almost colourless rhenish wines, never imported, and only to be encountered in moments of rare and happy chance. yet neither of these parallels came within a sunbeam’s length of p. 22the truth about this immaculate honey-vintage of warrilow. pondering over the liquor thus, the thought came to me that nothing less than a supreme occasion could have warranted its production to-day. and this conjecture was immediately verified. the bee-master raised his glass above his head.
“to the bees of warrilow!” he said, lapsing into the broad sussex dialect, as he always did when much moved by his theme. “forty-one years ago to-day the first stock i ever owned was fixed up out there under the old codlin-tree; and now there are two hundred and twenty of them. ’twas before you were born, likely as not; and bee science has seen many changes since then. in those days there were nothing but the old straw skeps, and most bee-keepers knew as little about the inner life of their bees as we do of the bottom of the south pacific. now things are very different; but the improvement is mostly in the bee-keepers themselves. the bees are exactly as they always have been, and work on the same principles as they did in the time of solomon. they go their appointed way inexorably, and all the bee-master can do is to run on ahead and smooth the path a little for them. indeed, after forty odd years of bee-keeping, i doubt if the bees even realise that they are ‘kept’ at all. the bee-master’s work has little more to do with their progress than the organ-blower’s with the tune.”
“can you,” i asked him, as we parted, “after all these years of experience, lay down for beginners in beemanship one royal maxim of success above any other?”
p. 23he thought it over a little, the gun on his shoulder again.
“well, they might take warning from this same king solomon,” he said, “and beware the foreign feminine element. let british bee-keepers cease to import queen bees from italy and elsewhere, and stick to the good old english black. all my bees are of this strain, and mostly from one pure original sussex stock. the english black bee is a more generous honey-maker in indifferent seasons; she does not swarm so determinedly, under proper treatment, as the ligurians or carniolans; and, above all, though she is not so handsome as some of her continental rivals, she comes of a hardy northern race, and stands the ups and downs of the british winter better than any of the fantastic yellow-girdled crew from overseas.”
