182 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 
When you have once lived among hives it is a 
sore thing to be without their music. On warm 
days, winter and summer alike, there is always 
this drowsy, dreamy song in the air; and dancing 
without the fiddlers is no more depressing an 
occupation than, to a beeman, is loitering in a 
garden of mere silent vegetables and flowers. 
Sitting now under the bower of apple-blossoms 
and watching for the swarms, the full sweet note 
from the hives comes over to you like the very 
voice of serene content. It pervades the sun- 
shine. It gently qualifies the slow wind in the 
tree-tops. It lifts and falls like the lilt of a far-off 
summer sea. This is the labour-song: the song 
of the swarm is very different. To the trained 
ear the ceesura that presently comes in the midst” 
of the music is as clear as a pistol-shot, though 
you may detect no change. The old bee-keeper 
stops short in his wandering tale about famous 
honey-years of half a lifetime back, seizes key and 
pan, and hurries across the garden. It is the old 
green hive again, he tells you, as you press hard 
upon his heels—it is always the old green hive 
that has swarmed the earliest every May for years 
back. And forthwith the key and pan begin their 
clattering ding-dong melody. 
Old-fashioned bee-keeping is not always a 
matter of straw. Box-hives, without, of course, the 
modern inside furniture, have been in use nearly 
as long as the straw skep; and the hives in the 
