UNHAR.VESTED HONEY 225 



The creation of honey in the nectary of a flower is a 

 marvellously subtle alchemy. Flowers are not fertilised 

 unless sunshine and moisture are nicely compounded. 

 The pollen must be of an exact consistency before it can 

 reach its goal ; and it is plausibly conjectured that a like 

 niceness in the consistency of the honey is necessary for 

 the bee, if she is to get food as well as give it in the inter 

 change of benefits. There were periods one dry summer 

 (as gardeners noted intheirFrench beans) when the flowers 

 did not set ; and the defect was in the dryness of the air. 

 Even so there were periods when the bees failed alto 

 gether of their proper booty. The bee-keeper will not 

 reap a quarter of the better harvests he remembers, when 

 hive after hive yielded him eighty to a hundred pounds 

 of honey. 



The wasps, which announced to the quick-eyed mes 

 senger the feeble state of the bees, have themselves failed 

 to flourish. Most of us, at least in one neighbourhood, 

 saw queen wasps in multitude in the late spring. The 

 tale was certainly abnormal. More than this : we found 

 a nest or two at a date earlier than any in our records. 

 For myself, I found one in the last week of June, when 

 already a number of grubs had hatched. We anticipated 

 a host of greedy wasps among the plums ; and some 

 country folk (who have always an eye for what they 

 would not call teleology) went so far as to argue that a 

 good plum year meant a good wasp year; the insect 

 flourished when its food flourished. All the prognostics 

 were as vain as the Sybil s prophecies, written on blown 

 leaves. We have scarcely seen more worker wasps 

 among the plums than we saw queens on the mouldered 

 fence-posts. Was the campaign against the queens the 

 cause, or did the queens come out from winter quarters 

 too soon, under the temptation of a treacherous spring, 



P T.V.E. 



