CHLOE AMONG THE BEES 39 
now you shall see our latter-day Eden, with its one 
unimportant omission.”’ 
As the door swung back to her touch, the 
murmur that was upon the air grew suddenly in 
force and volume. Looking through, I saw an old 
orchard, spacious, sun-riddled, carpeted with green; 
and, stretching away under the ancient apple-boughs, 
long, neat rows of hives, a hundred or more, all 
alive with bees, winnowing the March sunshine with 
their myriad wings. 
Here and there in the shade-dappled pleasance 
figures were moving about, busily at work among 
the hives, figures of women clad in trim holland 
blouses, and wearing bee-veils, through which only 
a dim guess at the face beneath could be hazarded. 
Laughter and talk went to and fro in the sun- 
steeped quiet of the place; and one of the fair bee- 
gardeners near at hand—young and pretty, I could 
have sworn, although her blue gauze veil disclosed 
provokingly little—was singing to herself, as she 
stooped over an open hive, and lifted the crowded 
brood-frames one by one up into the light of 
day. 
‘The great work of the year is just beginning 
with us,’? explained the bee-mistress. ‘‘In these 
first warm days of spring every hive must be opened 
and its condition ascertained. Those that are short 
of stores must be fed; backward colonies must be 
quickened to a sense of their responsibilities. 
Clean hives must be substituted for the old, winter- 
soiled dwellings. Queens that are past their prime 
will have to be dethroned, and their places filled by 
younger and more vigorous successors. But it is 
all typically women’s work. You have an old 
