CHAPTER ITI 
A TWENTIETH CENTURY BEE-FARMER 
T was sunny spring in the bee-garden. The 
thick elder-hedge to the north was full of 
young green leaf; everywhere the trim footways 
between the hives were marked by yellow bands 
of crocus-bloom, and daffodils just showing a 
golden promise of what they would be in a few 
warm days to come. From a distance I had 
caught the fresh spring song of the hives, and 
had seen the bee-master and his men at work in 
different quarters of the mimic city. But now, 
drawing nearer, I observed they were intent on 
what seemed to me a perfectly astounding enter- 
prise. Each man held a spoon in one hand and 
a bowl of what I now knew to be pea-flour in the 
other, and I saw that they were busily engaged in 
filling the crocus-blossoms up to the brim with this 
inestimable condiment. My friend the bee-master 
looked up on my approach, and, as was his wont, 
forestalled the inevitable questioning. 
“This is another way of giving it,’’ he 
explained, ‘‘ and the best of all in the earliest part 
of the season. Instinct leads the bees to the flowers 
for pollen-food when they will not look for it else- 
31 
