CHAPTER XIII. Where the Bee Sucks

WHERE THE BEE SUCKS

IT is characteristic of those unlettered in bee-craft that they are often afraid when there is no danger, and will venture with the intrepidity that is born of ignorance where old experienced bee-keepers fear to tread.

Temper in bees is one of the most variable qualities in a creature made up of variabilities. There are times, when a summer storm is threatening and the air is charged with electricity, when to go among the bees is to court certain disaster; and there are other times, such as the full height of the honey-flow, when almost any liberties can be taken with bees, without fear of reprisals. And yet this is not always the rule. Much depends on their lineage and the purity of the strain, and, again, on the systems of the bee-master. Bees respond as readily as any other form of domestic stock to wise and considerate treatment. Handled in a firm, quiet, deliberate way, the most vicious colony can often be dealt with in perfect safety; while the mildest-natured bees will commonly meet fumbling indexterity with a prompt challenge to war.

Since the Italian bee was brought to England, some half-century ago, there is no doubt that the original English strain has been greatly modified. Some authorities, indeed, question whether there are any absolutely pure British bees left at all. The golden girdles of the Italian crop up in the most unlikely places, and the foreign blood seems to have got into the race in all but the remotest parts of the country. One must regret, although it is a vain regret now, that these undesirable aliens were ever allowed to set foot on the soil. Whatever naturally survives and thrives in a particular country, must be the most suitable thing for that country; and these southern races of the honey-bee seem to have brought back, to the detriment of our own stock, idiosyncrasies long ago bred out of the native race. Much of the nervous irritability and proneness to disease visible in the honey-bee of to-day is more or less directly traceable to the introduction of foreign blood; and the grand special advantage of the Italian bee—its much vaunted and widely advertised possession of a long tongue—has proved an entire myth. Numberless measurements undertaken by our leading scientific apiarians have proved that the Italian bee has a tongue no longer than any other, although most are willing to concede her the possession of a very long and ready sting indeed. But here we do her an injustice: a pure-bred Italian worker-bee is as good or as bad tempered as any other of her species. It is the first crosses with the native bee which display so much vindictive aggressiveness, and have given to the whole race its general bad name.

In the time of the great honey-flow—which in southern England begins in May, early or late, according to the season, and may endure for six weeks—it is a common thing in the country to see people turn back from the footpaths, running through the white-clover or sainfoin fields, because of the huge and terrifying uproar made by the foraging bees. When there is a large acreage under these crops, and the day is a fair one, this note reaches a volume hardly to be credited as a sound of work and peace. It is much more like the din of a great bee-war, and it is small wonder that the stranger, unlearned in the ways of the hives, should fear to go through what is very like a scene of battle and carnage.

And yet there is no time of year when the honey-bee is so little inclined to molest her human fellow-creatures as this. So long as the honey-weather holds—the warm nights when the nectar is secreted, and the rainless days when it can be gathered—she can hardly be induced to attack, even if her home is being turned inside out, and the sudden sunlight riddling its darkness through and through.

Until within comparatively recent years it was universally believed that honey was a pure, untouched secretion from the flowers; and that beyond gathering and storing it the bee had no part in its production. This idea, however, is a wholly mistaken one. Honey is a manufactured article, and differs in almost every way from the raw juices obtained from the various flower-crops. The nectar of flowers, before collection by the bee, seems to have hardly any of the constituents of ripe honey. Three-quarters of its bulk consists of plain water, in which about 20 per cent. of cane-sugar is dissolved, the rest being made up of essential oils and gums, which give it its distinctive flavour. But mature honey contains very little water, certainly never more than a sixth part of its bulk. Its sugar is almost entirely grape-sugar. It is decidedly acid, while the nectar is always neutral. And the oils and aromatic principles of the flower juices are matured and developed into the well-known honey flavour, which is like nothing else in the world.

It is certain that the process of manufacture begins directly the bee draws the nectar from the flower-cup. As the liquid passes into the honey-sac it is mingled with the acid secretion from the gland at the base of the tongue. When the bee reaches the hive she does not pour her burden direct into the cells, but passes it on to one of the house-bees, who conveys it to the honey-vats. It is even probable that the nectar is transferred a second time before it reaches the cell, although this point is still undecided. The effect of such transference is to add more acid properties to the original juice.

The honey seems to undergo a regular brewing process within the hive. It is kept at a temperature of about 80° or 85°, and it is then that the surplus water passes off into vapour. In this way the raw nectar loses at least two-thirds of its natural bulk before it is finally converted into honey. It is said that at the last moment, just before each cell is stopped with an impervious covering of wax, the bee turns herself about, and injects into the honey a drop of the poison from her sting; but there seems to be not the slightest evidence in support of this. The contents of the poison-sac are, it is true, mainly formic acid, which is a strong preservative; and undoubtedly traces of formic acid are to be found in all honeys. It has been, however, conclusively proved that this acid finds its way into the honey from the glandular system of the bee, and not through its sting.

The industry of the bee in nectar-gathering has always been a stock subject for wonder, and it is commonly supposed that she is born with full instinctive capabilities for her task. A little observation, however, soon tends to upset this theory. The work of foraging has to be learnt step by step, like every other species of skilled work in hive-life. The young bee, setting out on her first flight, has all the will to do well, and her imitative faculty is strongly developed; but she seems to have very little else. Her first experiences are a succession of blunders. She appears not to know for certain where to look for the coveted sweets, and can be seen industriously searching the most unlikely places—crevices in walls, tufts of grass, or the leaves of a plant instead of its flowers. The fact that the nectar is hidden deep down in the cup of the flower, beyond its pollen-bearing mechanism, seems to dawn upon her only after much thought and many fruitless essays.

It has been proved that bees will go as far as two or even three miles in their foraging journeys. The distance seems to vary according to the nature of the country. Bees in hilly districts appear to venture only short distances from home, while in flat country the foraging flights are more extended. A bee-line has become proverbial for a straight course, but it is doubtful whether the bee ever makes a perfectly direct flight from point to point. The truth seems to be that there are well-defined air-paths out from and home to every bee-garden, and that these are continually thronged with bees going and returning throughout the working hours of the day. These aërial thoroughfares lie high above all but the tallest obstacles, so high indeed that the keenest sight will reveal nothing. Only the busy song of the travellers can be heard, like a river of music, far overhead.

In the South Down country, where the isolated farms are each surrounded with their compact acreage of blossoming sheep-feed, and there is nothing but empty miles of close-cropped turf between, these bee-roads in the air can be easily found and studied. Walking over the springy, undulating grass in the quiet of a summer’s morning, a faint, far-off note breaks suddenly upon you like the twang of a harp-string high up in the blue. A step or two onward and you lose it; retracing your path, it peals out again. You can see nothing, strain your eyes as you will; but its cause is evident, and with a little trying you can presently make out the main direction of the flight, and see down in the hollow far below, the huddled roofs of a farmstead with a patchwork of fields about it, white with clover, or rose-red with sainfoin in fullest bloom.

Perhaps there is no honey in the world so fine as that to be obtained from these solitary Downland settlements. With the ordinary consumer honey is merely honey, and there is an end of the matter. But the beeman knows that the quality of honey varies as greatly as that of wine. He will tell you at first taste the crop from which it is gathered, whether it has one source or many, whether it is all flower-essence, or has been contaminated by the hateful honeydew, which is not honey at all. Down in the lowlands, except at certain rare seasons when only one crop is in flower, it is next to impossible to get honey absolutely from a single source. But here on the hills the bees are not tempted by glowing gardens with their feeble, washy sweets; nor are they led aside by the coarse-natured privet, or horse-chestnut, or sunflower. There is only one trencher to their banquet, but this is a vast, illimitable one. They have nothing to do but to wend out and home all day long between their hives and a single field.

It is difficult to gauge with anything like approximate truth the amount of honey that one flowering crop will yield. But probably, when all conditions are most favourable, every acre of Dutch clover will produce about five pounds of pure honey for each day it is left standing in full bloom. The nectar is obviously secreted by the flower as an attraction to the bee, who, blundering into it with her pollen-smothered body, unconsciously effects its fertilisation. Directly this object is gained, the flow of nectar in each particular floret appears to cease, and the bee passes it by.

The student of old books on apiculture is often surprised to read so much in praise of honeydew, while in the modern bee-garden he hears of it nothing but hearty condemnation. He is told that directly the bees begin to gather honeydew the store-racks must be removed from the hives, or the good honey will be ruined both in colour and flavour. He is shown some dark, ill-looking, watery stuff carefully sealed up by the bees, and is informed that it is nearly all honeydew. But, he asks himself, can this be the same thing about which the old masters were led into such ardent eulogy? The truth is that when ancient and mediæval writers spoke of honeydew, they used the word as a general term for all that the bees gathered. Honey was all a dew, divinely rained down from the skies; and it is entirely of a piece with the all but universal lack of bee-knowledge down almost to the beginning of the nineteenth century, that so few should have guessed that the flowers themselves had anything to do with the matter. Virgil and the rest of the classics held absolute sway over all minds pretending to the least culture, and even the naturalists seem to have studied the wild life around them with no other object than to force facts into line with ancient poetic fantasies. The old writers explained the varying qualities of honey as being due to the influence of whatever stars happened to be in the ascendant at the time of its gathering, and the honey was good or bad according to whether this was favourable or unfavourable.

The quality and consistency of honey varies extraordinarily as between the different sources of true nectar; but there is no doubt that honeydew well merits the evil name it has gained with modern bee-keepers. There are, perhaps, three hundred distinct kinds of aphides known to English naturalists, and all these eject the sweet liquid which, under certain conditions, bees are tempted to gather. This honeydew varies in flavour according to the species of tree from whose sap it is derived. Probably much of it is only a sweet, slightly mawkish liquor, which, in its pure state, combines with the genuine honey without causing noticeable deterioration, at least to the unexpert taste and eye. But, unfortunately for bee-keepers, the oak is a great favourite with these parasites, no fewer than six varieties preying on this one tree alone. And oak-honeydew is a pestilent thing indeed.

It is commonly supposed that the first cold nights, that mark the beginning of the end of the honey season, stimulate the production of honeydew; for it is after a chilly night that bees are usually seen at work on the trees where the aphides abound. A much more likely theory, however, is that the cold does not accelerate the secretion of the honeydew, but cuts off the more legitimate resources of the hive just when they are in fullest activity; and so the huge armies of foragers are momentarily thrown out of work, and must seek new outlets for their energy. The secretion of true nectar takes place mainly at night, and requires a temperature of about 70°. Anything much lower than this means dearth on the morrow, no matter how fine and warm the weather may then prove.

The dark colour of aphis-syrup—a very little of which will ruin for market the finest honey—seems to be due as much to foreign matter as to its natural evil character. There is a peculiar growth on the bark of many trees where aphides congregate, which is known as soot-fungus. This and the honeydew get mingled together in a cimmerian slime, and, no doubt, the merest trace of it would serve to darken and spoil the purest honey. There seems to be no way for bee-keepers but to watch for the first chilly nights, as the honey-season draws towards its close; and then to be up early and get the surplus honey-chambers off the hives, before the bees have had a chance to spoil them. But the bee is no desperately early riser, for all her lofty place in the moral-maxim books. She generally waits until the morning sun has drunk up the night dews, and warmed the flower-calyces, before getting down to her work in earnest. The very early bees that may sometimes be seen winging out into the first light of a summer’s morning, are probably only water-carriers. The water-supply is the day’s first and last care with each hive in the breeding season. Every bee-garden seems to have its regular watering-place, generally on the oozy margin of some neighbouring pond; and here, in the early morning, and again towards late afternoon, the bees may be seen drinking in whole battalions, while the meridian hours of the day will find it all but deserted. Curiously, these water-fetching times coincide with the times when the nectar is least get-atable, or when the supply is exhausted for the day; which is another sidelight on honey-bee economics.

To follow the bees through their honey-harvesting season is to review nearly the whole year’s natural growth and life. In southern England the earliest nectar is drawn from the willows, which come into flower with late March, but hold back their sweets until the first spate of fine hot weather comes flooding in the track of the chilly northern gales. Of willow-honey there may be much or little, according to the night-temperatures. Generally it goes by fits and starts. For a day or two here and there the trees may be crowded with bees, or they may be deserted for weeks together. Whenever the sun shines, indeed, the trees that stand up like torches of gold in the misty purple of budding woods, are always full of the singing multitude; but these are only the pollen-gatherers. The nectar-bearing willows are far less showy. Their catkins are small, tight-girt tassels of green, and when a warm night has brought them into profit, they attract all the noisy minstrels for miles round. Bee-keepers generally seem to leave the willows out of their calculations as a source of honey, but in riverside districts, and in favourable seasons, they are not to be overlooked. It sometimes happens that April comes in with a succession of mild sunny days and warm nights, and then the hives may suddenly overflow with willow-honey. When the yellow catkins fade out of sight, the willows are apt to fade out of memory; and it does not seem to be commonly known that the female catkins continue to secrete abundant nectar often up to the end of May.

Good honey-years are scarce under the changing English skies; yet Nature’s design for the hive-people is obviously to give an unbroken succession of honey-yielding plants throughout the whole spring and summer, and pollen whenever a bright break of sunshine may lure them out of doors. The white-clover is seldom ready until the first week in June; but, from the earliest willows in March until the last of the flowering seed-crops is down in late July, there is abundance of provender, if only the fickle sun will do its part in the matter. The clover, as farming goes nowadays, is the great main source of honey, in southern England at least; but the connoisseurs are at variance as to what yields the absolute perfection of honey. Scotsmen are all of one mind, for a rare chance, in this; and will hear of nothing but the heather, carefully discriminating between the bell-heather, which is good, and the ling-heather, which is immeasurably better. Yet there is a honey, or rather a honey-blend, which far outstrips them all, though it is as rare and almost as priceless as the once famous Comet vintages. It is to be had only when the apple-blossom and the hawthorn come into full flower together, and this is only when a chill April has delayed the one and a summer-like May has forced on the other. Then, to the mellow refinement of the apple-nectar, is added the delicate almond flavour of the hawthorn, and the resulting honey is easily the finest sweetmeat in the world.

Wonder is often expressed that one of the most generally cultivated crops, the red-clover, is seldom visited by the honey-bee, although the bumblebees fill it with their deep trombone-music at all times of the day. It is true that the tongue of the hive-bee cannot reach to the bottom of the long red-clover calyx, but this would not deter her if the nectar were worth the gathering. She would cut through the petal at its base, as she does with many other flowers, and so steal an effective march on her better caparisoned rival. But red-clover nectar is poor in consistency and coarse of flavour. When the main crop is in flower, it would yield a practically unlimited amount of honey, but this is just the time when the bee can employ herself more profitably elsewhere. After the red-clover has been cut, a second growth springs up, bearing flower-tubes less developed, and therefore shorter than those of the first crop. But now other and better sources of supply are rapidly failing. The bee—for whom, in prosperous times, nothing but the best is good enough—must revise her tastes to meet her necessities. At this time she is as busy as the rest in the red-clover fields. And when her clearer, sweeter note is heard there, mingling its contralto with the hoarser music of the bumblebee, it is a token that the heyday of the year is past: the honey-chambers must be taken off the hives without delay.