if you go to the bee-garden early of a fine summer’s morning you will be struck by the singular quiet of the place. all the woods and hedgerows are ringing with busy life. the rooks are cawing homeward with already hours of strenuous work behind them. the cattle in the meadows are well through their first cud. but as yet the bee-city is as still as the sleeping village around it. now and again a bee drops down from the sky on a deserted hive-threshold with sleepy hum, and runs past the guards at the gate. but these are bees that have wandered too far afield overnight, tempted by the sunny warmth of the evening. the dusk has caught them, and obliterated their flying-marks. they have perforce camped out under some broad leaf, to be wakened by the earliest light of morning and hurry home with their belated loads.
the sun is well up over the hillbrow before the visible life of the bee-garden begins to rouse in earnest. the water-seekers are the first to appear. every hive has its traditional dipping-place, generally the oozy margin of some neighbouring pond, where the house-martins have been wheeling and crying since the first grey of dawn. now the bees’ clear undertone begins to mingle with the chippering chorus. in a little while there is a thin straight line of humming music stretched between the hives and the pond: it could not be straighter if a surveyor had made it with his level. again a little while, and this long searchlight of melody thrown out by the bee-garden veers to the north. you may track it straight over copse and meadow, seeing not a bee overhead, but guided unerringly by the arrow-flight of music, until, on the far hillside, it is lost in a perfect roar of sound. here the white-clover is in almost full blossom again: in southern england at least it is always the second crop of clover that yields the most plentiful harvest to the hives.
it must be a disturbing thing to those kindergarten moralists who hold the bee up to youth for an example of industry and prudence to learn that she is by no means an early riser; though, at this time of year, she is undoubtedly both wealthy and wise. for it is her very wisdom that now makes her a lie-abed. when the iron is hot, she will not be slow in striking. but it is nectar, not dewdrops, from which she makes her honey. very wisely she waits until the sun has drunk up the dew from the clover-bells, and then she hurries forth to garner their undiluted sweets. even then, perhaps, three-fourths of her burden will be carried uselessly. in the brewing-vats of the hive the nectar must stand and steam until three parts of its original bulk has evaporated, and its sugar has been inverted into grape-sugar. then it is honey, but not before. when we see the fanning-army at work by the entrance of a hive, it is not alone an undoubted passion for pure air that moves the bees to such ingenious activity. in the height of the honey season many pints of vaporised liquid must be given off by the maturing stores in the course of a day and night, and all this water must be got rid of. herein is shown the wisdom of the bee-master who makes the walls of his hives of a material that is a bad conductor of heat. it is a first necessity of health to the bees that the moisture in the air, which they are incessantly fanning out at this time, should not condense until it is safely wafted from the hive. a cold-walled hive can easily become a quagmire.
the bee-garden is quiet now in the sweet virgin light of the summer’s morning; but the thought of it as containing so many houses of sleep, true of the village with its thatched human dwellings, could not well be farther from the truth in regard to the village of hives. there is little sleep in a bee-hive in summer. of any common period of rest, of any quiet night when all but the sentinels at the gate are slumbering, of any general time of relaxation, there is absolutely none. each individual bee—forager or nurse, comb-builder or storekeeper—works until she can work no more, and then stops by the way, or crawls into the nearest empty cell for a brief siesta. but the life of the hive itself never halts, never wavers in summertime, night or day. go to it morning, noon, or night in the hot july season, and you will always find it driving onward unremittingly. the crowd is surging to and fro. there is ever the busy deep labour-note. its people are building, brewing, wax-making, scavenging, wet-nursing, being born and dying: it is all going on without pause or break inside those four reverberating walls, while you stand without in the dew-soaked grass and level sunbeams wondering how it is that all the world can be at full flood-tide of merry life and music while these mysterious hive people give scarce a sign.
it is at night chiefly that the combs are built. the wax, that is a secretion from the bees’ own bodies, will generate only under great heat, and the temperature of the hive is naturally greatest when all the family is at home. in the night also such works as transferring a large mass of honey from one comb to another are undertaken. it is curious to note that at night time the drones get together in the remotest parts of the hive, apparently to keep up the heat in these distant quarters, which are away from the main cluster of worker-bees. there is hardly another thing in creation, perhaps, with a worse name than the drone-bee. but like all bad things he is not so bad as he is represented. apart from his main and obvious use, the drone fulfils at least one very important office. his habit is not to leave his snug corner until close upon midday. thus, when every able-bodied worker bee is out foraging, the temperature of the hive is sustained by the presence of the drones, and the young bee-brood is in no danger of chilling.
though the supreme direction of all affairs in a bee-hive falls to the lot of the worker-bees, the queen-mother is second to none in industry. at this time of year she goes about her task with a dogged patience and assiduity pathetic to witness. she may have to supply from two thousand to three thousand brood-cells with eggs in the course of a single day, and she is for ever wandering through the crowded corridors of the hive looking for empty cradles. the old bee-masters believed that the queen was always accompanied in these unending promenades by exactly a dozen bees, whom they called the twelve apostles. it is true that whenever the queen stops in her march she is immediately surrounded by a number of bees, who form themselves into a ring, keeping their heads ceremoniously towards her. but close observation reveals the fact that the queen-bee is never followed about by a permanent retinue. when she moves to go on, the ring breaks and disperses before her; but the bees who gather round her on her next halt are those who happen to occupy the space of comb she has then reached.
the truth seems to be that she is passed from “hand to hand” over the combs of the brood-nest, and is stopped wherever a cell requires replenishing. each bee that she encounters on her path turns front and touches her gently with her antenna. the queen constantly returns these salutes as she moves, and it looks exactly as if she were going the rounds of her domain and collecting information. often she is stopped by half a dozen bees in a solid phalanx, and carefully headed off in a new direction. she looks into every cell as she goes, and when she has lowered her body into a cell, the apostles instantly gather about her, with strokings and caresses. but their number is seldom twelve. it varies according to the bulk and length of the queen herself, and is more often sixteen than a dozen.
