CHAPTER IV. At the City Gates

AT THE CITY GATES

IN a village in Southern Sussex, close under the green brink of the Downs, there live two bee-keepers who represent, in their widely divergent methods and outlook, the extremes of beemanship as still extant in modern times.

The one dwells in a little ancient thatched cottage, set in the heart of an old-fashioned English garden, where dome-shaped hives of straw are dotted about at random amidst a wild growth of the old-fashioned English flowers. The other has built himself a trim villa on a hillside, topped with a sheltering crest of pine-wood; and here he has established a great modern honey-farm, replete with every device and system of management known to apiarian scientists throughout the two worlds.

One might suppose, on leaving the village street on a fine May morning and coming upon these two settlements in the open country beyond, that all the romance and old-world flavour of bee-keeping were inevitably to be found in the ancient bee-garden, where the droning music of the hives seems to originate in the thicket of blossoming lilac, and red-may, and veronica, the hives themselves being the last things one noticed in such a tangle of bright-hued flowers. To expect sentiment in the other quarter—a great cindered tract of country, with its long parallel rows of modern hives, all painted in various colours, its dwelling-house that might have been transplanted bodily from a well-to-do London suburb, and its line of outbuildings, with their bustle of business, and coughing oil-engine, and reverberation of hammer and saw—was to expect something evidently out-of-date and impossible. As well look for art in a Ghetto as to seek reverence for ancient bee-customs in a twentieth-century trading concern such as this, established to supply the market for honey just as a Manchester factory turns out calico and corduroy.

Many lovers of country life, peripatetic artists and chance pedestrians for the most part, came to the village with this notion firmly impressed upon them, and, visiting the old bee-garden and finding the old beautiful things there in abundance, went no farther, and became no wiser. They wandered round the crooked, red-tiled paths of the garden with its ancient proprietor; stooped under bowers of living gold and purple; waded through seas of scarlet poppy and blue forget-me-not and tawny mignonette; came upon old beehives in all sorts of shady, unpremeditated corners; and steeped themselves in mediævalism up to the eyes. The very song of the bees seemed to belong entirely to past days. None, surely, but a hopeless Vandal could put a colony of bees in one of the ugly square hives, and expect them to go honey-seeking in the old harmonious, happy way, sanctified of the ages. And so they never ventured up the hill to the great bee-farm, but kept to the garden below, and listened by the hour together to the quaint talk of its white-headed, smock-frocked owner, or stood valiantly at the foot of the ladder when he climbed up to dislodge a swarm from the moss-grown apple-boughs, or helped him to scour the new straw skeps with handfuls of mint and lavender, or beat out weird, unskilful music with the door-key on the old brass-pan when a swarm was high in the air.

Much could be learnt, it is true, from quiet days spent in the old bee-garden, especially in May, before the earliest swarms were ready to forsake the hives.

The first faculty to be acquired was that of wandering among the bees, or standing between their straw houses, undismayed at their incessant and often terrifying approaches. Whatever confidence one may place in bee-keepers’ assertions that their bees never sting, it is a bold man who can preserve entire equanimity when bees are settling continuously on his hands, his face, his clothing, and a whole flying squadron of them are shrilling vindictively about his ears. Nothing will come of it, he knows, if only he can keep still. But the tendency to turn and flee, or at least to beat off these minatory atoms with wildly waving arms, is all but irresistible for the novice. It is only their way, he is assured, of expressing or of satisfying their curiosity; and, this being done, they fly off harmlessly enough to give a good report of him to the ruling powers within the hive. But he knows that this report is sometimes anything but good. At least, there are a few luckless individuals in the world who dare not venture within a dozen yards of a beehive without being set upon unmercifully, and chased by an angry squad of these tart virgins for the space of a quarter-mile. Moreover, in certain states of the weather—when thunder is about, and the air is tense and still—bees will often sheath their barbed daggers in any human skin, even that of their owner, who has gone among them daily all the season unmolested. There is, therefore, a fateful element of chance in all near watching of beehives, a sensation of being under fire—fine discipline enough, but, for the timorous, hardly to be reckoned among the easy joys of existence.

These first deterrents, however, being happily overcome, the watcher is sure to be caught up, sooner or later, in the sheer fascination of the thing, and to find himself recklessly, almost breathlessly, looking on at what is nothing else than a great informing pageant of life.

He stands, as it were, a stranger at the gates of a city, inhabited by the most interesting, and in some respects the most advanced, people in the world. Of the inner life of the city, apart from the deep busy murmur that surges out to him, he learns nothing, and will learn nothing until he puts sentimental pride in his pocket, and makes pilgrimage to the great bee-farm on the hill. But here, in the meanwhile, is food enough to satisfy the keenest appetite for the marvellous. In and out through the yawning entrance-gate of the city, under the hot May sunshine, there are thousands of busy people coming and going. The broad threshold of the hive is completely hidden under opposing streams, the one setting out towards the fragrant fields and hedgerows, the other tumbling and seething in, almost every bee dragging after her some kind of mysterious treasure.

The outgoing bees start on their journey in two different fashions. Some emerge from the hive and rise at once on the wing, lancing straight off into the sunshine; and these are foragers, who have already made several journeys afield since the sun broke, hot and rosy, over the eastward hill. But others, essaying their first excursion for the day, creep out of the murmurous darkness of the hive, and come with a little impetuous rush to the edge of the alighting-board. Here they pause a moment to flutter their wings and rub their great eyes free of the hive-twilight. And then they lift into the air, hover an instant with their heads towards their dwelling, taking careful stock of it, sweep up into the blue, and volley away with the rest towards the distant hill-side, white with its bridal wreath of clover-bloom.

The homing bees move much more sedately. They come sailing in like bronze argosies laden to the water’s edge. Those bearing full sacs of clover-juice for the honey-making seldom carry an outside load of pollen as well. They have all to do in bringing their distended bodies to a safe anchorage on the entrance-board, and charge headlong into the hive, possessed of only one idea—to hand their garnered sweets over to the first house-bee they chance upon, and then to hurry out in search of another load. The pollen-bearers are impelled by the same white-hot energy; but their cargoes are infinitely more cumbersome, and demand a more leisurely pace. Some with panniers, heaped up with a deep orange-coloured material, must rest awhile on the threshold before gathering energy enough to drag their glowing burdens through the city gate. Others just fail to make the harbour, and sink down on to the grass below, to wait for the same freshet of strength that is finally to bring them into the security of the populous haven. Scores of them do not try for harbour at first tack, but, coming safely into the calm waters of the garden, rest awhile on the nearest leaf or blossom, panting and tremulous, until they are able to wear sail for the last reach home.

There is infinite diversity in the loads of these pollen-carrying bees. Hardly a colour, or shade of colour, in the rainbow fails to pass during every moment across the thronging way. Every bee carries a half-globe of this substance, beautifully rounded and shaped, on each of her two hind-legs. It is possible, by marking the colour of her burden, to tell with certainty what flower she has been plundering on each of her trips. This bright orange, which makes always the largest and heaviest bales in the stream of merchandise, is from the dandelions. From the gorse-flowers come loads of deep rich brown almost as weighty. The charlock, that mingles its useless, wanton beauty with every farm-crop, yields the bee interminable gold. White clover, red clover, sainfoin, all load up the little hive coolies with different shades of russet. From the apple-orchards come bursting panniers of pale yellow; the blackberry-blossom yields pollen of a delicate greenish-white. When summer comes, and the poppies make scarlet undertones amidst the wheat and barley, these winged merchant-women stream homeward with their pollen-baskets laden with funereal black.

But, if you watch a hive at work on any bright spring or summer morning, you will see single bees occasionally pass with loads whose source has never yet been fathomed. The lean, glistening, rufous stuff that is continually borne through the hustling crowd is resin gathered from poplar or pine, and used to glue the straw hive down to its base-board, or to stop up draughty crevices and useless corners, or, diluted into varnish, to paint the honeycombs with an acid-proof, preservative film. But now and then comes a bee with a load whose colour shines up like a danger-signal in darkness. Brilliant scarlet, or soft rose-crimson, or pale lavender, or gleaming white—who shall say in what far, forgotten nook of the country-side she has been adventuring, or what rare blossom she has chanced upon in the wilderness, and, despoiling it of its maiden treasure greedily, has quickened into duplication the beauty that was its reason for life?

Yet the greatest wonder about all this pollen-gathering is that each separate load has been taken entirely from one species of flower. The little half-spheres are packed into the pollen-cells indiscriminately, orange on brown, pale yellow mingled with green, or buff, or grey. But each pair of panniers, representing a single journey, contains the pollen-dust of one kind of blossom alone. Going out into an English lane or meadow to watch the bees at work, the first conviction borne in upon an observer is that the bees are darting about from flower to flower without other thought than to load up from any and every capable blossom that stands in their way. But closer scrutiny reveals a curious plan and order in this, as in everything else that the honey-bee undertakes. Tracing an individual bee in her progress along the flowery verge of the lane, you will soon see that she visits only one species of blossom. If she starts on hawthorn, it will be hawthorn all the way. If her load of willowherb-nectar or pollen is not yet a full one, she will overpass a score of tansy-knots or waving jungles of meadow-sweet, just as inviting and resourceful, apparently, to reach the one scanty patch of purple at the end of the lane.

Why she should be at such pains to keep the pollen separate as she gathers it, only to get it inextricably mingled with every other kind in the storehouse at home, is a problem that none but a bee can solve. But all the honey-bee’s reasons and motives in life are made up of a curious blend of cold-drawn sense and sentiment; and it may be inferred that need and fancy have an equal influence in guiding her in this, as in everything else she does, from her cradle-cell to her grave. Not altogether without seriousness, it may be hazarded that quite as probable a reason for her way of pollen-gathering is that she deems a certain shade of colour makes a more becoming flying-robe, as that she keeps each load of pollen pure, unblended, because of some imperious, economic need of the hive. The factor of sex, in all observation of the ways of the honey-bee, is no more to be considered a negligible one than it is in the critical contemplation of the human species of hive.

All this incessant coming and going of the busy foragers is alluring enough to the looker-on, but there is evidence of many other activities equally interesting. The work of collecting nectar and pollen is obviously only a part of the duties of this self-immolated spinster-race. Here and there in the seething, hurrying crowd there are bees who do not move with the rest, but, anchored securely in the full force of the living current, with heads lowered and turned towards the hive, are engaged in fanning their wings, and this so swiftly that nothing of the wing but a little grey mist can be seen. Looking more carefully, you will make out that these bees are arranged in nearly regular rows, one behind the other, in open order, so that the conflicting tides of foragers can pass uninterruptedly between. If the watcher is bold enough to bring his ear down to the level of the hive, he will make out a steady hissing noise that rings clear above all the din and turmoil made by the incessant travellers to and fro. These rows of fanners are seen to stretch from the hive-door right to the edge of the footplate, but principally on one side; and still closer observation will reveal the fact that there is a regular system of relief among them. Though the general volume of sound never abates one jot, every few minutes one or another of these stationary bees moves away, her place being immediately taken by another, who settles down to the common task in line with the rest. The reason for all this is plain enough: the fanners are engaged in ventilating the hive, drawing a current of vitiated air through the entrance on one side, which flanks, but does not oppose, a corresponding current of pure air sucked in on the other.

All through the warm days of spring and summer this fanning squadron is constantly at work; nor does it cease with the darkness. Chill nights find the ranks weakened and reduced to perhaps only a few bees, or even to none at all when a cold snap of weather intervenes. But in the dog-days, or, as the ancients used to say, when Sirius, the honey-star, is shining, the deep sibilant note of these fanners rises, in a populous apiary, almost to the voice-strength of a gale of wind. To come out then under the stars of a summer night, and stand listening in the tense, fragrant darkness to this mighty note, is to get an impression of bee-life unattainable at any other season. In the daytime the sound is intermingled, overwhelmed, by the chorus of the flying bees. But now all are safely at home. Each hive is packed from floor to roof with tens of thousands of breathing, heat-producing creatures: the necessity for ventilation is quadrupled, and, far and wide in the bee-garden, the fanning armies are setting to their work with a will.

The freshman at this fascinating branch of nature-study, brought out into the quiet night to hear such gargantuan music, is always strangely affected by it, some natures incredibly so. In all the great placid void of darkened hill and dale around him, in the whole blue arch overhead, alive with the flinching silver of the stars, there is no sound but a chance trill of a nightingale, the bark of a shepherd’s dog on the distant upland, or, now and then, the droning song of a beetle passing invisibly by. All the world seems at rest, save these mysterious people in the hives; and with them the sound of labour is only redoubled. Bending down to the nearest hive in the darkness, the note comes up to one like the angry roar of the sea. A light brought cautiously to bear upon it, discloses the alighting-board covered with rows of bees, working, as it were, for their lives; while other bees continually wander in and out of the entrance—the sentries that guard it night and day, just as soldiers guarded the gates of human cities in olden times. The novice at bee-craft, even the most staid and matter-of-fact, is invariably plunged into marvelling silence at the sight. But if the night be exceptionally hot and oppressive, and the fanning army unusually large, the bee-master with an eye for dramatic effect generally finishes the tiro’s wonderment by showing him an old trick. He lowers the candle until the flame is just behind the squadron of ventilating bees, and at once all is darkness: the current of air drawn out of the hive has proved strong enough to extinguish the light.

It has been said that there are guard-bees who watch the hive-door day and night. To the unskilled human eye one bee looks very like another, and it is difficult to understand how, in the many thousands that pass, the guards manage to detect an intruder so unerringly, and to eject her with such unceremonious promptitude as is always shown. Probably it is not by sight alone that these occasional interlopers are singled out. The sense of smell in the honey-bee is extraordinarily acute, and this, no doubt, assists the guards in their difficult work. It is well known that a queen-bee must possess a very distinct odour, as her mere presence abroad, even when shut up in a box, will attract the drones from all quarters. In all likelihood the peculiar aroma from each queen-bee impregnates the whole colony, and thus the guard-bees are able at once to distinguish their own kin from that of alien stocks.

Still watching the outside life of the hive in the old bee-garden, many other interesting things come to light. In such an establishment, even if it be only an old-fashioned straw skep, perhaps more than twenty thousand individuals are located; and obviously some regular system of cleaning and scavenging is indispensable. This work can be seen now, going on uninterruptedly in the midst of all the other busy enterprises. Every moment bees come labouring out, bearing particles of refuse, which they throw over the edge of the foot-board, and at once shoulder their way back for another load. Other bees appear, carrying the bodies of comrades who have died in the hive; and every now and then one comes struggling through the crowd, bearing high above her a strange and ghastly thing, perfect replica of herself, but white throughout, save for its black beady eyes. This is the unborn bee, dead in its cradle-cell. Infant mortality is an evil not yet overcome even by the doughty honey-bee, and many are carried out thus, especially in early spring. Watching these undertakers of the hive in their gruesome but necessary work, a singular fact can be noted. While all other debris is merely cast over the brink of the entrance-board, where it accumulates day by day on the grass below, these dead larvæ are never disposed of thus. They are carried right away, their bearers taking wing and flying straight off over the hedgerow, to drop them at harmless distance from the neighbourhood of the hive.

There is still another kind of work going briskly forward round the gates of the bee-city. Certain among these stay-at-home bees seem to exercise a sort of common overseership. They help those weighed down with too heavy a cargo to reach the city gates. If a lump of pollen is dropped in the general scuffle, these bees seize it and take it into the hive. Sometimes a bee comes eddying downward, smothered from head to foot with pollen, like a golden miller, and she is immediately pounced upon by these superintendents, and combed free of her incommodious treasure. Others see to the grooming of the young bees, about to essay their first flight. The youngster sits up, protruding her tongue to its fullest extent, while half a dozen bees gather round her, licking and stroking her on every side. At last her toilette is done, and she is liberated, when, with a little flutter of her wings, she lifts high into the blue air and sunshine and makes off with the rest to the clover-fields, glittering afar off in the joyous midday light.

For insensibly the hours have worn on—it is noon—and the tense thronging life, the deep rich labour-song, of the bee-garden seem to have reached their height. But suddenly a greater noise than ever arises on all sides: a steady stream of bees, larger and bulkier than the rest, is pouring out of every hive. The drones, the lazy brothers of these laborious vestals, have roused at last from their sleep, and are coming abroad for their daily flight. In twos and threes, in whole battalions, they hustle out, and begin their noontide gambols about the hive, filling the air with a gay, roistering song. In a little while they will be all gone to their revels, and the bee-garden will seem, by comparison, strangely quiet. But now the sudden accession of energy is unmistakable. With the awakening of the drones there seems to be a new spirit abroad. The air is no longer filled to overflowing with busy foragers. Many of these have joined the dance round the hives, so that each bee-dwelling is the centre of a singing, gambolling crowd, moved rather by a spirit of play, almost of idleness. But this brief moment of relaxation soon passes. The drones betake themselves to their marital pleasuring in the fields. The noisy midday symphony dies down to the old steady monotone of work. And the watcher at the gates of the bee-city turns to retrace his steps down the flower-garlanded way of the old pleasance, satiated with wonders, yet not satisfied, his curiosity only quickened a thousandfold for that which has been inexorably held from him, a glimpse of what is happening behind those baffling walls of straw.

Wending slowly homeward, and pondering, he asks himself many questions. What is the reason, the final outcome, of all this earnest, well-directed labour? What is done with the pollen that has been carried in all the morning long? Where there is obviously so much system, and unanimity, and ingenious division of endeavour, there cannot fail to be a supreme and governing intelligence to allot the part that each must play. This story of a queen—of a single bee, larger than all the rest, to whom all pay allegiance, and who spends her whole life in the dim labyrinth of the hive, like the Pope in the Vatican—is it a truth, or only a figment of the ignorant, bucolic brain? If this queen exist, if every hive have indeed its absolute monarch, who directs the whole complex life and policy of the bee-city, where in the scale of reasoning creatures must she be placed?

And then, if he be wise, the student will learn at last to give the picturesque old bee-garden its true appraisement. Ancient things conserve their beauty, and win the love of the right kind of lovers, more and more with every century that glides by. Only their usefulness, their import in the tide of human knowledge and progress, has gone with the years. It is so with the bee-garden under its Maytide robe of green leaves and rainbow blossoms. It is beautiful in its glad appearances, its echo of old voices, its odour of the sanctity in ancient ways and days. But it can tell us nothing of all we want to know. It can only ask us riddles to which we have no answers. For these we must set aside old fanciful scruples; turn our backs, once for all, on its enchantment and its sweetness; bend our steps unswervingly towards the great modern bee-farm on the hill.