HONEY-CRAFT OLD AND NEW | 19 
which, as all bee-men know, is the most important 
work of the year. But the very thought of opening 
hives, now in the first warm break of April weather 
or at any time, filled me with a strange loathing. 
So it never used to be, never could be, in the old 
days whose memory always comes flooding back 
to me at this season with such a clear call 
and such a hindrance to progress and duty. 
Then I had as little dreamed of opening a hive as 
opening a vein. I should have done no more than 
I was doing now—passing from one old straw skep 
to another through the sweet vernal sunshine, my 
boots scattering the dew from the grass as I went, 
and looking for signs that tell the bee-man nearly 
all he really needs to know. I shut my ears to the 
throaty song of the engine. I heard the cart drive 
away without a thought of scanning its load. I 
got me down in a little nook of red currant flowers 
under the wall, where the old straw hives were 
thickest, and gave myself up to idle dreams, dreams 
of the bees and bee-men of long ago. 
I should be splitting elder, thought I; splitting 
the long, straight wands to make feeding-troughs. 
I called to mind doing it, here on this self-same 
bench near upon fifty years ago, with my father, 
the woodman, sitting at my elbow learning me. 
We split the wands clean and true, scooped out 
the pith from each half, and dammed up its ends 
with clay. Then, with a handful of these crescent 
troughs and a can of syrup, we went the round of the 
garden together looking for stocks that were short 
of stores. When we found one, we pushed the 
hollow slip of elder gently into the hive-entrance as 
far as it would go, and filled it with syrup, filling it 
