382 THE ROLL OF THE SEASONS 



It was past the middle of last September when, for 

 companionship and remembrance of summer days, 

 we took our bees into the house. In Cyprus they 

 habitually keep bees under the same roof as the 

 dwelling-house. It must be pleasant to hear their 

 murmur in the wall and exchange with them the 

 confidences of the family and the city. It is a poor 

 thing to let them stay out in the field as some do, 

 far from the house, and often completely forgotten 

 for weeks together in the depth of winter. Ours 

 would have passed this winter in a skep in a cottage 

 garden, which is almost as good as living in the 

 cottage itself, if they had not been put in the 

 brimstone-pit and sent to sleep for ever. There 

 was not a bee moving on September 28, the day 

 when we called for the condemned bees. The next 

 hive was sending out rare foragers, but this was as 

 still as the grave. We thought there could be no 

 bees in it, but when the hive was turned upside-down, 

 it proved to have a greater population than the other. 

 We took but half of them and their young queen 

 into our little hive of four half-frames. We wished 

 to see how small a lot would come through the winter, 

 carefully treated. 



In their new quarters the bees that had thought 

 to have finished their summer's work awoke into new 

 activity. A change will always so energise the bees, 

 and some beekeepers use the fact to get the utmost 

 yield of honey from a hive. Ours, though living in 

 the room, were given flight under the window-sash 

 till the end of October. Till the end of September 

 they worked every day, some of them that had 

 evidently discovered a bed of balsam somewhere 



