22 THE BEE-MASTER OF WARRILOW 
the truth about this immaculate honey-vintage of 
Warrilow. Pondering over the liquor thus, the 
thought came to me that nothing less than a 
supreme occasion could have warranted its 
production to-day. And this conjecture was immedi- 
ately verified. The bee-master raised his glass 
above his head. 
““To the Bees of Warrilow!’’ he said, lapsing 
into the broad Sussex dialect, as he always did when 
much moved by his theme. ‘‘ Forty-one years ago 
to-day the first stock I ever owned was fixed up out 
there under the old codlin-tree; and now there are 
two hundred and twenty of them. ’Twas before 
you were born, likely as not; and bee science has 
seen many changes since then. In those days there 
were nothing but the old straw skeps, and most 
bee-keepers knew as little about the inner life of 
their bees as we do of the bottom of the South 
Pacific. Now things are very different; but the 
improvement is mostly in the bee-keepers them- 
selves. The bees are exactly as they always have 
been, and work on the same principles as they did 
in the time of Solomon. They go their appointed 
way inexorably, and all the bee-master can do is to 
run on ahead and smooth the path a little for them. 
Indeed, after forty odd years of bee-keeping, I 
doubt if the bees even realise that they are ‘ kept ’ 
at all. The bee-master’s work has little more to 
do with their progress than the organ-blower’s 
with the tune.” 
‘Can you,” I asked him, as we parted, “‘ after all 
these years of experience, lay down for beginners 
in beemanship one royal maxim of success above 
any other? ” 
