A Bee-Man of the 'Forties. 



each load was obtained. The deep brown-gold panniers 

 came from the gorse-bloom ; the pure snow-white from the 

 hawthorns ; the vivid yellow, always so big and seemingly 

 so weighty, had been filled in the buttercup meads. Now 

 and again, in early spring, a bee would come blundering 

 home with a load of pallid sea-green hue. This came 

 from the gooseberry bushes. And later, in summer, when 

 the poppies began to throw their scarlet shuttles in the 

 corn, many of these airy cargoes would be of a rich velvety 

 black. But there was one kind which the old bee-man had 

 never yet succeeded in tracing to its flowery origin. He 

 saw it only rarely, perhaps not a dozen times in the season 

 — a wonderful deep rose-crimson, singling out its bearer, 

 on its passage through the throng, as with twin danger- 

 lamps, doubly bright in the morning glow. 



Keeping watch over the comings and goings of his bees 

 was always his favourite pastime, year in and year out ; 

 but it was in the later weeks of May that his interest in 

 them culminated. He had always had swarms in May as 

 far back as his memory could serve him ; and the oldest 

 hive in the garden was generally the first to swarm. As 

 a rule the bees gave sufficient warning of their intended 

 migration some hours before their actual issue. The 

 strenuous pell-mell business of the hive would come to a 

 sudden and portentous halt. While a few of the bees still 

 darted straight off into the sunshine on their wonted 

 errands, or returned with the usual motley loads upon their 

 thighs, the rest of the colony seemed to have abandoned 

 work altogether. From early morning they hung in a 

 great brown cluster all over the face of the hive, and down 

 almost to the earth beneath ; a churning mass of insect-life 

 that grew bigger and bigger with every moment, glisten- 

 ing like wet seaweed in the morning sun. In the cluster 

 itself there was an uncanny silence. But out of the depttis 

 of the hive came a low vibrating murmur, wholly distinct 

 from its usual note ; and every now and again a faint shrill 

 piping sound could be heard, as the old queen worked her- 

 self up to swarming frenzy, vainly seeking the while to 

 reach the royal nursery where the rival who was to oust 

 her from her old dominion was even then steadily gnawing 

 through her constraining prison walls. 



At these momentous times a quaint ceremonial was 

 c 33 



