198 THE BEE-MASTER OF WARRILOW 
humming of the bees overhead grew louder and 
louder. There were no flowers as yet to attract 
them, but in early April the dense canopy of honey- 
suckle here is always besieged with bees, directly the 
sun has warmed the clinging dewdrops. These were 
the water-carriers from the hives. Water at this 
time is one of the main necessities of bee-life. With 
it the workers are able to reduce the thick honey 
and the dry pollen to the right consistency for con- 
sumption, and can then generate the bee-milk with 
which the young larve are fed. Later on in the 
day the water-fetchers will crowd in hundreds to the 
oozy pond-side down in the valley—every bee-garden 
has its ancestral drinking-place invariably resorted 
to year after year. But thus early the pond-water 
is too cold for safe transport by so chilly a mortal 
as the little worker-bee; so Nature warms a tem- 
porary supply for her here where the dew trembles 
like drops of molten rainbow at the tip of each 
woodbine leaf. 
I drank myself a deep draught from the well that 
goes down a sheer sixty feet into the virgin chalk 
of the hillside, and fell to loitering through the 
garden ways. Though it was so early, the little oil- 
engine down below in the hive-making shed was 
already coughing shrilly through its vent-pipe, and 
the saw thrummiug. Here and there among the 
hives my men stooped at their work. The pony was 
harnessing to the cart, and would soon be plodding 
the three-mile-long road to the station with the 
day’s deliveries of honey. By all laws of duty I 
should be down there, taking my row of hives with 
the rest—master and men side by side like a string 
of turnip-hoers—busy at the spring examination 
