The children's story of the bee;

Front matter

S-LBENSUSAN

New York

State College of Agriculture

Contents

INTRODUCTION ....

I. A RECOLLECTION

II. THE HIVE AND ITS ARRANGEMENT

Introduction

We know something, if not very much, of the world we Hve in, and have been taught that it is governed by many natural laws of a kind we do not always understand and by other laws that men have made for their own guidance. We read in the Book of Genesis that God gave Adam dominion over the beasts of the field, the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, and for many hundreds if not thousands of years people have thought that the birds, the beasts, the fishes and the insects live their lives without laws that may be compared in any way with those binding us. But quite early in the history of mankind our forefathers discovered that certain creatures Hve by rule almost as much as we do, and one of the first living things to attract their attention was, as far as we can tell, the honey-bee. The Book of Judges contains a reference to the bee. Some of our earliest writers studied the life of the bee or had been taught the story of its habits as far as such a story could be known, and thousands of years have passed since the first man set down in writing all that was known or believed about the wonderful insect that supplies us with our honey. But long before his time the bee-hive had been drawn upon the walls of Egyptian palaces. In the far-ofF days our knowledge was neither scientific nor exact. Few people studied the bee for themselves, and those who had the time and patience to do so were always affected by what they had been told, for they could not always see for themselves how far the stories of the hive's

INTRODUCTION 3

labours were true. The fault was due not only to their own defective observation but to the prevailing belief in miracles. In early days it was not easy to understand the mysterious life of the hive without calling upon something beyond man's ken to account for it in part if not altogether.

The bees could be seen labouring ceaselessly among the flowers and carrying what they had gathered to their homes ; at certain seasons of the year it was known that the hive would be full of honey. When the hive was rifled the extraordinary arrangement of the cells roused admiration and wonder among careful observers. Round the labours of the bee many charming stories were woven, some of them so happy that everybody must agree that it is a pity they are not true. Even to-day when the bees are under the closest observation, when inspection hives made with glass windows enable us to see so

B 2 much that goes on within, there are certain problems lying far too deep for us, problems that each man seeks to solve in the light of his own beliefs. Many rules exist in the great bee community for which we can find no explanation, but sufficient is known to correct many of the mistakes that obtained in days of old, and to give us a glimpse into one of the best-ordered communities of the world, in which the large majority of the inhabitants work by day and by night. They toil until the span of life is reduced from years to months, so devotedly that no temptation avails to turn the worker bee from her labour, and the worst to be said of her is that she seeks from time to time to lighten it at the expense of her neighbours. No holiday, save in the swarming time, comes to relieve the hard round of duty, neither is there in the hive any reward that we can discover save, perhaps, the consciousness of duty well done.

INTRODUCTION 5

The bee-hive is a remarkable and splendid organization. Within it we find every class of worker, including architects, builders, masons and servants of every degree, all living, thriving and pursuing their destiny in the smallest space possible, the greater part of them giving all they can and taking as little as they may, and working without any thought for their own comfort or for their own future, but solely for the purpose of leaving the great bee community at least as prosperous as they found it.

There is no community known to us in all the world wherein much more devotion to work prevails, wherein such a high standard of unselfishness is maintained, wherein the reward for a well-spent hfe is, as far as we can see, so small. Writing as a lover of bees, as one who has kept them in the country for many years and has watched the ordinary incidents of their life with close attention, I have chosen in parts of this book to set down the story of the hive as it might appear to some of its inhabitants. I do not seek to add to the store of knowledge that experts have collected, my effort is limited to rousing interest in the story of the bee among those who have never yet turned to consider it ; for the bee-hive might be found in many thousands of gardens where at present it has no place, and the store of honey our well-flowered country yields annually is not one hundredth part of what it could and would yield if the study of the bee were taken up by all who have the leisure to consider the remarkable possibilities of the hive. Many books far more comprehensive than this are at the service of the bee-keeper, important questions, merely indicated here, have been dealt with at length and with great skill elsewhere; but all knowledge must have a beginning, and these simple outlines of bee-life may serve

INTRODUCTION 7

to interest beginners and direct some attention to the authorities on the subject. Their works are best approached by those who have mastered the 'prentice work of the bee-man's craft and have developed the interest that will send them eagerly and gratefully to the books of men who write with more authority and experience than I possess. If we may believe the early historians there was more bee-keeping in these islands some centuries ago, when the printed book was unknown, than there is to-day, when so many counties have their own Bee-keepers' Association, when modern hives have reduced the labour of bee-keeping to a minimum and increased its profits threefold. Here, then, is the best excuse that can be offered for yet another contribution to the subject that has already taxed so many abler pens.

Chapter I

When you went into the orchard for the first time it was as hkely as not that the hives would escape your notice. The orchard itself would claim too much attention, for it stood upon a flat elevation commanding the river valley and looking down upon the meadows that sloped to the water. Then too it contained every kind of fruit-tree, and from the month of April, when the early blossoms came to greet the spring, down to November, when the last russet leaves were falling reluctantly to the ground, it boasted some beautiful aspects. Partly because the orchard was of recent growth and partly for the purpose of economy, the space between the trees was occupied ; between one row and its neighbour there were strawberries, another two rows of trees had an asparagus bed between them, a third sheltered the celery, while between the others there were bush fruits in plenty. But in one corner of the orchard there were half-a-dozen beehives of varying shapes and sizes, for their owner was not greatly concerned with late patterns and modern improvements. Hives new or old had to serve but one purpose, to keep a colony of bees thriving and well content, and to yield just enough honey to justify the trouble and care that went to their keep. The surrounding country was well adapted to the requirements of bees. Fruit-trees were plentiful and apple-trees played a considerable part in the orchards. One could not travel very far without passing clover or sainfoin fields, some meadows held the white clover that the bees love best of all. Then too in several of the most beautiful corners of the countryside lo THE STORY OF THE BEE

there were gardens carefully tended by skilled men who grew all manner of rare flowers, and these gardens, known only to their owners and their owners' friends, unseen by the rest of the country folk, had no barriers to set up against the bees, who were ever welcome visitors, and gave far more than they took away, by carrying pollen from flower to flower. Very few people troubled about honey in this remote spot many miles from the railway, and, as each swarm was born and went out into the world and lived its little life and died, it knew nothing of want or of lack of store. There was always enough and to spare. Wealth was scattered before the bee colony as it is scattered before settlers who make a new home in a virgin land, and, had the cottage folk known the reward that awaited those who took trouble with their bees, there would doubtless have been one or two hives in every garden. But in the days of which I write, and they have

A RECOLLECTION ii

not passed very long ago, the hard-working farm labourer knew nothing about bees except that they sting if they are touched. He had not learned that some bees will not even do as much as this, the difference between worker and drone had not been revealed to him, and he preferred to keep a pig because he found bacon more to his taste than honey and had never heard of a pig stinging anybody.

Sometimes in the summer when the bees swarmed — that is to say, when the old queen left the hive, attended by thousands of her faithful followers, to seek a new home — the swarm would settle on some bush or tree in a farm labourer's garden, and very often, if it had come from one of the orchard hives, there would be nobody to follow and claim it. The owner of the hives was not always in the country and the old gardener who looked after the place in his absence regarded bees with a certain amount of contempt because they had never learnt to grow the flowers they rifled. I do not think he knew anything about the good work that the bee does in fertiHzing some flowers, and if he did, he would not have thought it worth his while, or even his duty, to leave his beloved garden and hurry up hill, down dale, and over white dusty roads in search of a swarm of bees. Perhaps he would not even have known what to do had he found them. Doubtless swarms perished now and again from exposure, others found some hollow tree in the woods and hived there, while yet others, sending their scouts out for miles around, learned of empty hives in some far off neighbourhood and winged their way thither to the great content of the hiveowner. But in truth the bee colony in the orchard did not fare badly; a clever apiarist, a man who had studied bee culture under an expert, would doubtless have turned his half-dozen hives into a score and would have earned some fair return for his outlay and his labours. But in this case the owner of the hives had neither the time, the opportunity, nor ;the inclination to make bee-culture his chief work when he could leave London behind him and spend a quiet week or two in the country. And so it happened that an additional hive was only added at long intervals, and enough honey was left in the combs when winter came round to insure the colony against anxiety about the food supply in the days when the last flowers had faded, and the hives seemed to the undiscerning eye to be deserted by their inhabitants. To be sure there were fine warm days even in the winter months when a few bees would come out to enjoy the sunlight in the immediate neighbourhood of their home, to exercise their bodies and recover from the state of torpor in which they had been living since the cold weather came, before returning to settle on fresh comb. But these excursions were few and far between.

and might not have taken place at all if the hives had not looked out at the south and been well sheltered against > all the worst winds of winter. Only when the sun grew warm and blossoming time had come, were the bees seen to shake off their winter lethargy and venture out of the darkness they had known so long, to resume their life's labours. They seemed to know that their span of life was a very short one, not long enough to accomplish the work of the hive, and when once they had started upon the active labours of spring and summer they knew no holiday, no relaxation and no other reward than the knowledge that they had done their best. Of all the hives in the garden, the best and largest was a wooden one, painted brown with a preparation that the bees might have accepted more happily had they known that it kept the wood from rotting, and did not attract any of the creatures that are their enemies. It stood upon a frame under an old plum-tree that was never tired of yielding fruit in plenty, and the entrance to the hive looked out over a pleasant meadow and to certain farm lands across the valley where never a year passed without seeing some clover or sainfoin between the fields of corn. Year by year this hive would send one or two swarms away to seek their fortunes, but a good stock always remained, and with the close of summer there was never any lack of a few fine sections of golden honey to reward the bee-keeper. It is to this hive that I turned on a fine April morning when the instinct to learn something of its life could no longer be denied. I remember that it was one of the days that give the year's fourth month its good name, mild and warm and sunny, and when the first half-hour had passed I was for all future time, no matter how incompletely or unskilfully, an apiarist.

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The road to the hive is a long one, for one does not enter readily into the mysterious world, shrouded from observation by the wooden walls, neither is it even necessary to find out what is happening before becoming conscious of a very busy colony intent upon following its own plans and customs without reference to things lying outside the scope of duty. As you approach the hive, the resemblance to a great city, so often insisted upon by those who have written about the bee, is at once apparent. There is a dull humming noise that tells of activity, and on a very warm day one of the first things to be seen is the double file of bees stretching from the entrance to the hive to some distance in the open and busy working their wings at high pressure. It is easy to see that their business consists in supplying the interior of the hive with fresh air, and it is one of the surest signs of great activity and thriving life within. While winter suspended the work of the hive, the bees contrived to do without much ventilation. They lived in a state of suspended animation, breathing very little, keeping close to one another for the sake of warmth, and eating as seldom as might be because the limits of their food supply were known to one and all, and they understood that if they indulged their appetite too freely they would die of starvation.

But as soon as the first flowers have come back to the fields, thousands of bees are busily engaged in the unending search for honey and pollen. The activity of the hive has been resumed and with it there comes the increased demand for food and the corresponding supply. All manner of work is going on within, and of this we can get some hint as we wait by the side of the bees' home.' The worker-bees who provide the ventilation will be seen to keep quite clear of the entrance, and here a few bees are stationed apparently on sentry duty, perhaps to expel strangers, for although it is hard, if not impossible, for us to tell the hive to which a bee belongs unless we have distinct breeds of bees in the apiary, the bees themselves know the members of their own family, quite as well as the policemen on duty at the House of Commons know the members. No stranger would be permitted to enter the hive, even a queen-bee would be expelled or perhaps killed if she lighted on the front board. All through the long day the worker-bees are hurrying in from the fields heavily laden with the fruits of their labours, and as soon as they have emptied their precious store they are off again to seek a fresh one. Other bees that do not go afield at all may be seen coming from the hive laden with everything in the way of refuse, which is carefully taken beyond the immediate circle of their home. Now and again a bee comes staggering out bearing some dead companion who is also taken away for burial to a place that the bees themselves have selected. If the season were well advanced we should see some sign of the drones, the male bees who idle their summer through and are born in hundreds, that one may mate with some queen-bee, the mother of another hive. We know that when the autumn comes, the drones remaining in the hive are killed, consequently, in the early spring days when the young drones are not yet hatched, the worker-bees alone are in evidence. They are going on their long journeys in search of the particular plant they favour, for the experts tell us, and doubtless they know, that one bee never goes to several sorts of flower, but remains constant to its first choice until the changing season calls upon it to make another. While these bees go afield in this fashion, others are guarding the

entrance or supplying the air current or c 2 attending to the inner work of the hive, of which we can just see the few signs that have been mentioned. In the first fine days of activity and enthusiasm, many a worker-bee reaches the ledge of the hive so heavily laden that she can hardly manage to reach the store wherein she has to empty her treasure, but there are always helpers whose business would seem to consist in relieving their overladen sisters. They may sometimes be seen in the open taking charge of her store, while she herself, after resting for a few minutes on the ledge, sails away across the fields to resume her work. In the early spring time when the weather is very variable, the pace of Hfe is not very full, and the bees that have gone out so gaily in response to the first sign of fine weather may be compelled to retire again for some little time because a spell of cold wet days suspends their labour. Indeed, it would seem that the spring is a very critical time with the bee colony, particularly if the food supply has been greatly reduced and no supplies have been put down by the owner of the hives. Many a good stock of bees after weathering the winter quite successfully, fails in the early days of spring, although there is no excuse for the bee-keeper who allows this to happen, since syrup placed above the frames and water set down in shallow pans within easy reach of the hive will generally suffice to tide the colony over a bad time. If the noise, the deep humming noise, that is heard as one approaches the hive is constant, you may be sure that all is well within, but if the droning sound is faint or intermittent there is trouble.

For days together we shall see nothing but the workers. The queen remains invisible, the drones are not yet about and the sounds that greet our approach are maintained throughout day and night, for the worker-bee, though she does not labour in shifts like an ordinary workman, has some means of signalling when she is tired out and her place is at once taken by another. This would seem to be absolutely necessary where the air supply of the hive is concerned, for it may not be suspended for a moment. As we continue to visit the hives day after day in fine weather, our vision expands, we learn to see a dozen incidents of the hive's daily life that escaped our notice at first, to grasp the real significance of actions hitherto uninteresting, insignificant or obscure. Side by side with enlarging vision comes renewed interest ; the hour of the daily pilgrimage to bee land is awaited with anxiety and the old fear of bees, dating from nursery days, is shaken from its niche in our minds, never to be replaced. And through the long winter months the happy thoughts of a summer to come are associated with the knowledge that the bees will bring their wonderful work once more within the scope of our observation.

Chapter II The Hive And Its Arrangement

To many of us who see a hive set in some sunny garden corner well away from the trees whose shade might ichill it, the home of the bees is an abode of mystery. To our grandfathers and their forbears, the mystery was deeper still, for they had no accurate knowledge of the work that went on within, and the embroidery of fancy that they wove round the few facts in their possession excites our kindly laughter now. In the old days the bee-keeper was concerned with nothing more than the honey-store ; as soon as the summer was over, he suffocated his bees by burning sulphur under the skep and took their spoils with a good

conscience. Now-a-days a very different method is in vogue. In place of the straw skep where the swarm did its best in face of many difficulties, we have hives so cleverly contrived that, while the greater part of the bees' labour is rendered easy and rapid, the bee-master can deal with it at any point. He can open his hive and find out exactly the amount of progress the bees are making from day to day ; he can enlarge or contract the space at their command, can regulate the number of cells in which worker-bees and drones are born ; he can even limit the number of queen-cells and can do something, though not yet enough, to keep the colony from splitting itself up in swarming-time. He has learned, too, the meaning of the various sounds that may be heard in the hive, although the notes of the bee are far too shrill for the human ear to catch their full significance. But the bee-keeper has gathered enough to distinguish between the sound that tells of contentment and progress, the tumult that issues from a queenless hive and the excitement that precedes swarming, and this little knowledge is invaluable to him.

The old-fashioned skep to which many a bee-keeper who started work half-acentury ago still pays allegiance, is in many respects as inconvenient a construction as one could meet in a summer's day. That it has certain advantages is undeniable. Bee-keepers old and young are quick to admit that it preserves heat and keeps the brood-cells thriving. On the other hand, the bees themselves have an infinite amount of labour when their home is a skep. It is their business to make the comb as best they can without direction or assistance, to fix it securely to the walls of the roof and to preserve the parallel lines with no outside aid of the kind afforded by the modern hive. The comb cannot be adjusted, and doubtless a great deal is wasted every year after the bees have been destroyed, for the honey is always to be found near the roof and the lower parts of the comb are used for brood.

The destruction of his bees was one of the regular autumn tasks of the bee-man in remote districts, but after a time a new figure sprang up in the countryside, and, in the autumn, cottagers would receive a friendly call from an itinerant who would offer to collect the honey for them in return for the bees it had been their custom to destroy. Naturally the offer was accepted and the bee-man would turn the old skep upside down, fix an empty one against it in quite an ingenious fashion with the aid of skewers, and then, by gentle drumming on the sides of the full skep, drive every bee into the new one. He would of course be careful to see that the queen did not stray to the right or to the left, but went straight to her appointed place. If she went right the others would follow, and it was his task to watch for her and see that she moved along the line followed by the workers in front. When the last of the swarm was in the new skep, the bee-man would cover it up and put it in a cart ; then with a sharp knife he would cut out the contents of the old skep and present its owners with the honey. Doubtless there were and still are many occasions when the bees carried away are worth more than the honey recovered for the hive's owners.

This practice still obtains in some parts of the country, but the introduction of hives with movable frames has revolutionized the bee-industry. The frames are interchangeable, and consequently the bee-keeper can strengthen weak hives, regulate the balance between drones and worker-bees, change queens, control the breeding of the queen or queens, and in every way fill the role of guide, philosopher and friend. He can tell, too, exactly what progress his colonies are making, and in the few weeks of the year when the honey-flow is at its greatest he can enlarge the quarters of his colonies and give them freshly prepared frames or boxes in which to store their honey. When these frames are filled they can be replaced without disturbance or damage, and so it happens that the bees can be kept working at full pressure and have their work devoted to the best end, /. e. to the accumulation of honey. If they were left to fill up all the available accommodation they would be forced to swarm, but the arrangement of the modern bee-hive enables the bees to work all through the season of the honey-flow.

We know now that the making of the wax gives far more trouble to the bee than the gathering of nectar, pollen and propolis. It is also far more expensive, for in order to make a pound of wax bees require very many pounds of honey. In another place we will deal with the methods by which wax is made in the hive ; it is only necessary now to make this passing reference to a problem that many bee-keepers elect to solve.

Now-a-days the bee-keeper is intent upon saving the time and labour of his colonies to the fullest possible extent. So he has taken advantage of a device as novel and ingenious in theory as it has proved successful in practice. He fills his frames with a long thin strip of prepared wax marked out in the size and shape of the ordinary brood-cell. Aided by this the bees can set to work at once ; their architects are faced by no difficulty ; indeed it may be that in years to come bees will lose their architects because man will have reduced the need for their employment well-nigh to vanishing point. The work of cell building aided by a frame foundation is plain, straightforward and simplified to a very great extent. Time and honey are saved, and yet the combs are the best that have ever been seen — straight, true and rehable, and carrying a minimum of drone-cells. When the time of the honey-flow is upon the land and the bees have filled the lower tier of frames with brood, a new range can be put on giving the hive a further storey. This will probably be filled with honey in a very little time, if the season be favourable and the hive a strong one, while, just because every part of the modern hive is interchangeable, a super that has been filled can be removed, another one put in its place, and the work continued until the honey-flow has come to an end. Then the last supers are taken off, the hive shrinks to its winter size and is packed round in some one of many fashions to keep it warm. Sufficient honey is left to provide for the use of the stock, and arrangements are made to give a little artificial food from time to time if necessary. Within the hive there is abiding peace and a silence that contrasts oddly with the sounds of summer. The fanners have ceased from their labours, the fruitfulness of the queen is at an end, and, no longer courted by her attendants, she wanders at her will over the comb, feeding as the others feed, from the common store. Her subjects would seem to have allowed their loyalty to shrink to nothing under the contracting influence of wintry weather. To us it seems but a little space of time has elapsed between the period of the honey-flow — when the hive was humming with the labour of fifty thousand workers — and the present hour, when silence reigns supreme and an attenuated stock lives very sparingly upon the stores that the bee-master has left in the hive. For the bees themselves the seasons have been long enough, and of the thousands that congregate round the frames there is not one save the queen herself who saw the coming of the spring.