“’tis a good thing—life; but ye never know how good, really, till you’ve followed the bees to the heather.”
it was an old saying of the bee-master’s, and it came again slowly from his lips now, as he knelt by the camp-fire, watching the caress of the flames round the bubbling pot. 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 the exact moment of departure depended on one very uncertain factor. the white-clover crop was almost at an end. every day saw the acreage of sainfoin narrowing, as the sheep-folds closed in upon it, leaving nothing but bare yellow waste, where had been a rolling sea of crimson blossom. but the charlock lay on every hillside like cloth-of-gold. until harvest was done the fallows were safe from the ploughshare, and what proved little else than a troublesome weed to the farmer was like golden guineas growing to every keeper of bees.
but at last the new moon brought a sharp chilly night with it, and the long-awaited signal was given. coming down with the first grey glint of morning from the little room under the thatch, i found the bee-garden in a swither of commotion. a faint smell of carbolic was on the air, and the shadowy figures of the bee-master and his men were hurrying from hive to hive, taking off the super-racks that stood on many three and four stories high. the honey-barrows went to and fro groaning under their burdens; and the earliest bees, roused from their rest by this unwonted turmoil, filled the grey dusk with their high timorous note.
the bee-master came over to me in his white overalls, a weird apparition in the half-darkness.
“’tis the honey-dew,” he said, out of breath, as he passed by. “the first cold night of summer brings it out thick on every oak-leaf for miles around; and if we don’t get the supers off before the bees can gather it, the honey will be blackened and spoiled for market.”
he carried a curious bundle with him, an armful of fluttering pieces of calico, and i followed him as he went to work on a fresh row of hives. from each bee-dwelling the roof was thrown off, the inner coverings removed, and one of the squares of cloth—damped with the carbolic solution—quickly drawn over the topmost rack. a sudden fearsome buzzing uprose within, and then a sudden silence. there is nothing in the world a bee dreads more than the smell of carbolic acid. in a few seconds the super-racks were deserted, the bees crowding down into the lowest depths of the hives. the creaking barrows went down the long row in the track of the master, taking up the heavy racks as they passed. before the sun was well up over the hill-brow the last load had been safely gathered in, and the chosen hives were being piled into the waggons, ready for the long day’s journey to the moors.
all this was but a week ago; yet it might have been a week of years, so completely had these rose-red highland solitudes accepted our invasion, and absorbed us into their daily round of sun and song. here, in a green hollow of velvet turf, right in the heart of the wilderness, the camp had been pitched—the white bell-tents with their skirts drawn up, showing the spindle-legged field-bedsteads within; the filling-house, made of lath and gauze, where the racks could be emptied and recharged with the little white wood section-boxes, safe from marauding bees; the honey-store, with its bee-proof crates steadily mounting one upon the other, laden with rich brown heather-honey—the finest sweet-food in the world. and round the camp, in a vast spreading circle, stood the hives—a hundred or more—knee-deep in the rosy thicket, each facing outward, and each a whirling vortex of life from early dawn to the last amber gleam of sunset abiding under the flinching silver of the stars.
the camp-fire crackled and hissed, and the pot sent forth a savoury steam into the morning air. from the heather the deep chant of busy thousands came over on the wings of the breeze, bringing with it the very spirit of serene content. the bee-master rose and stirred the pot ruminatively.
“b’iled rabbit!” said he, looking up, with the light of old memories coming in his gnarled brown face. “and forty years ago, when i first came to the heather, it used to be b’iled rabbit too. we could set a snare in those days as well as now. but ’twas only a few hives then, a dozen or so of old straw skeps on a barrow, and naught but the starry night for a roof-tree, or a sack or two to keep off the rain. none of your women’s luxuries in those times!”
he looked round rather disparagingly at his own tent, with its plain truckle-bed, and tin wash-bowl, and other deplorable signs of effeminate self-indulgence.
“but there was one thing,” he went on, “one thing we used to bring to the moors that never comes now. and that was the basket of sulphur-rag. when the honey-flow is done, and the waggons come to fetch us home again, all the hives will go back to their places in the garden none the worse for their trip. but in the old days of bee-burning never a bee of all the lot returned from the moors. come a little way into the long grass yonder, and i’ll show ye the way of it.”
with a stick he threshed about in the dry bents, and soon lay bare a row of circular cavities in the ground. they were almost choked up with moss and the rank undergrowth of many years but originally they must have been each about ten inches broad by as many deep.
“these,” said the bee-master, with a shamefaced air of confession, “were the sulphur-pits. i dug them the first year i ever brought hives to the heather; and here, for twenty seasons or more, some of the finest and strongest stocks in sussex were regularly done to death. ’tis a drab tale to tell, but we knew no better then. to get the honey away from the bees looked well-nigh impossible with thousands of them clinging all over the combs. and it never occurred to any of us to try the other way, and get the bees to leave the honey. yet bee-driving, ’tis the simplest thing in the world, as every village lad knows to-day.”
we strolled out amongst the hives, and the bee-master began his leisurely morning round of inspection. in the bee-camp, life and work alike took their time from the slow march of the summer sun, deliberate, imperturbable, across the pathless heaven. the bees alone keep up the heat and burden of the day. while they were charging in and out of the hives, possessed with a perfect fury of labour, the long hours of sunshine went by for us in immemorial calm. like the steady rise and fall of a windless tide, darkness and day succeeded one another; and the morning splash in the dew-pond on the top of the hill, and the song by the camp-fire at night, seemed divided only by a dim formless span too uneventful and happy to be called by the old portentous name of time.
and yet every moment had its business, not to be delayed beyond its imminent season. down in the bee-farm the work of honey-harvesting always carried with it a certain stress and bustle. the great centrifugal extractor would be roaring half the night through, emptying the super-combs, which were to be put back into the hives on the morrow, and refilled by the bees. but here, on the moors, modern bee-science is powerless to hurry the work of the sunshine. the thick heather-honey defies the extracting-machine, and cannot be separated without destroying the comb. moorland honey—except where the wild sage is plentiful enough to thin down the heather sweets—must be left in the virgin comb; and the bee-man can do little more than look on as vigilantly as may be at the work of his singing battalions, and keep the storage-space of the hives always well in advance of their need.
yet there is one danger—contingent at all seasons of bee-life, but doubly to be guarded against during the critical time of the honey-flow.
as we loitered round the great circle, the old bee-keeper halted in the rear of every hive to watch the contending streams of workers, the one rippling out into the blue air and sunshine, the other setting more steadily homeward, each bee weighed down with her load of nectar and pale grey pollen, as she scrambled desperately through the opposing crowd and vanished into the seething darkness within. as we passed each hive, the old bee-man carefully noted its strength and spirit, comparing it with the condition of its neighbours on either hand. at last he stopped by one of the largest hives, and pointed to it significantly.
“can ye see aught amiss?” he asked, hastily rolling his shirt-sleeves up to the armpit.
i looked, but could detect nothing wrong. the multitude round the entrance to this hive seemed larger and busier than with any other, and the note within as deeply resonant.
“ay! they’re erpulous enough,” said the bee-master, as he lighted his tin-nozzled bellows-smoker and coaxed it into full blast. “but hark to the din! ’tis not work this time; ’tis mortal fear of something. flying strong? ah, but only a yard or two up, and back again. there’s trouble at hand, and they’ve only just found it out. the matter is, they have lost their queen.”
he was hurriedly removing the different parts of the hive as he spoke. a few quick puffs from the smoker were all that was needed at such a time. with no thought but for the tragedy that had come upon them, the bees were rushing madly to and fro in the hive, not paying the slightest attention to the fact that their house was falling asunder piecemeal and the sudden sunshine riddling it through and through, where had been nothing but cimmerian darkness before. under the steady slow hand of the master, the teeming section-racks came off one by one, until the lowest chamber—the nursery of the hive—was reached, and a note like imprisoned thunder in miniature burst out upon us.
the old bee-keeper lifted out the brood-frames, and subjected each to a lynx-eyed scrutiny. at last he dived his bare hand down into the thick of the bees, and brought up something to show me. it was the dead queen; twice the size of all the rest, with short oval wings and a shining red-gold body, strangely conspicuous among the score or so of dun-coloured workers which still crowded round her on the palm of his hand.
“in the old days,” said the bee-master, “before the movable-comb hive was invented, if the queen died like this, it would throw the whole colony out of gear for the rest of the season. three weeks must elapse before a new queen could be hatched and got ready for work; and then the honey-harvest would be over. but see how precious time can be saved under the modern system.”
he led the way to a hive which stood some distance apart from the rest. it was much smaller than the others, and consisted merely of a row of little boxes, each with its separate entrance, but all under one common roof. the old bee-man opened one of the compartments, and lifted out its single comb-frame, on which were clustered only a few hundred bees. searching among these with a wary forefinger, at last he seized one by the wings and held it up to view.
“this is a spare queen,” said he. “’tis always wise to bring a few to the heather, against any mischance. and now we’ll give her to the motherless bees; and in an hour or two the stock will be at work again as busily as ever.”
