A Crisis in Royalty

I STOOD in my back garden one day last spring, looking meditatively upward at the roof. I like to do that on a sunny Sunday, while over the hills the distant peal of the church bells conveys to the soul a message of peaceful calm. There are long slits cut through the shingles on that roof on the east side, where the earliest rays of the morning sun strike in. Wooden ports frame them, projecting far enough, with a downward slant at their outer ends, to keep out rain; and above two of them a little cloud of insects danced like golden fairies in the sun — my bees.

High up in the air, safe from groundling enemies, the young bees were out in force, trying their wings and doing baby-stunts in aviation, as joyous and harmless as kittens. To watch them is hypnotic and always sends me off into meditative dreamland, as doubtless a cigar does one who smokes. Their hives were on benches in an attic room. To all intents and purposes their home was in the sloping summit of a cliff, and bees are great cave-lovers, always. So they were happy, and a constant stream of older bees whirled up across the housetop, bound for the western fields and woods; or, like bullets, shot downward easterly toward the market gardens in the little valley.

I had two hives up there: my original colony, and a young swarm from it of last year, with places provided for still further expansion; just enough for hobby-riding, not enough for ‘work’ in the matter of their care. Naturally, my interest was specially centred in Hive II: and right there, just then, my eyes were resting in time to see a phenomenon. From the wide entrance suddenly appeared a double bee, so to speak, which came down through the air in a long slant, alighted at my very feet, and separated into its component parts. One bee immediately flew away, with the air of a relief from an unpleasant duty done. The other one was dead, — very dead indeed. In a moment the whole occurrence was reënacted, but the bee which was left was living. Lifting it on my finger from the grass, it proved to be a young one, very scared and breathless but otherwise unharmed. In a moment it was able to fly back home.

That bee had got into the wrong hive, I mused, and being young and innocent was simply and considerately ‘fired.’ But the other was ‘Barabbas,’ caught red-handed, and so had received haute justice. Still—what were two bees doing in the wrong hive at almost the same moment, anyway? I gave a closer look, and lo! that swarm of dancing infantry all belonged to the parent hive. As they drifted somewhat in the wind I had supposed they belonged to both.

Evidently some catastrophe had occurred in Hive II. whereby its colony was weakened to the danger-point, and robbery was going on. Doubtless, had I been a professional beeman I should have seen signs of this before. As it was, I went up to that attic three steps at a time.

The tops of the runways leading from hive to outer world are covered with wire netting, expressly to permit observation. That of Hive I was all hurry and bustle. Old bees were going out on the dead run, often taking wing with impatient short flights. Others were coming home with thighs yellow with pollen. Young bees were everywhere; getting into the hustlers’ way; clustering for rest against the netting. In Hive II matters were very different. The bees went in and out languidly. Only now and then one took wing. No children were there to work for. The very colony itself was reduced to hundreds where there should have been thousands. The mother-queen was dead!

Thinking it over, it seemed evident that this must have happened during the winter. Had it been in the spring when young bees were hatching, the colony would have repaired the loss by selecting one of them for a course of royal education suited to the case. Then, in due time, the state would have had its duly appointed head. As it was, only an outside providence might save it from extinction, and that rôle manifestly devolved on me.

Playing providence has an interest of its own. Unguarded, it tends toward self-conceit. But when tempered by the memory of a past failure or two, it gives one much the zest of discovery so familiar to the experimenter in strange chemicals and flying-machines. There is seldom anything halfway about it. The result is usually either blank or bonanza. So I hied me to the telephone.

Surely these are progressive days! Think of ordering an Italian queen by telephone as one does a sack of sugar! We may yet get a chat by wireless telephone with pope or cardinal. Meanwhile, I was promised my queen by an early mail, and received much good advice withal, so I returned to my attic encouraged.

Hive II was unhappy, that was clear. Its inmates needed responsibilities to think about, to stop their brooding over misfortunes. They needed children to give them new courage. Who knows how much the happy hum of childhood helps in hive-life as in other homes! Then came another thought: the new young queen would enter a depleted home. It would be many days before her own progeny would be old enough to take their share in the work for a coming winter. Right here was additional need for outside providence. So I donned net and gloves, opened Hive II and removed a brood-frame. The cells were empty, as I had expected. The dispirited bees paid me no attention whatever, so I closed the hive softly and laid the frame aside. ‘ Opening,’ you will understand, meant simply lifting off the roof, and then a wire netting that rested on the top of the frames below.

Then I lighted my smoker, puffed some smoke into Hive I, waited a moment, and repeated the process again and again. By that time every bee in the hive had her head deep in the most, available honey-cell, as far as the cells would go round, and was filling up with honey. It is a way they have when smoke-scared; and they then are too busy to think of stings. That done, I opened the hive.

I found a brood-frame nearly filled with cells already capped and sealed, each containing a young bee nearly ready to go out into the world, and act as nurse, etc., before being ready for field-work on its own account. Also, there were a few cells, each with its little white grub coiled in the bottom, — six-day old infants, just right for babying. Gently brushing off the protecting cluster of bees, I dropped the frame into the vacancy in the other hive and slipped the empty frame into the vacant place thus left in Hive I.

I had another object in view right there. That hive was evidently taking measures toward swarming — which I wanted to prevent. Already a line of queen-cells hung like stalactites along the lower edges of the frames, each looking much like a wax thimble. In bee circles, only the drone and the humble worker are given horizontal cradles. It is the prerogative of royal infancy to hang like a bat, head downward. And it occurred to me that by cut ting out those cells, and giving the queen a whole new frame to fill, she might find so much business ahead that it would change the current of thought into stay-at-home channels. The plan seemed good enough, in fact, to lead me a week later to exchange another pair of frames between the hives; and with the desired result. Hive I omitted swarming from its repertory that season.

Next day I looked into Hive II. There was an instant, angry buzz. Here was no more indifference! Up from both sides of that brood-frame boiled the bees, every one at the moment in the hive, ready to defend with life itself the children in their care. Other bees were coming home like streaks of sunlight from the fields, pollen-laden, and hurrying in along the runway as though going to a fire. So far, so good. That night the new queen came by mail, in her little cage of wood and wire, with half a dozen bees from her home to keep her company. I slipped the cage quickly in on the top of the broodframe and dropped the netted cover down. An alert guardian made a dash for the opening to get at me, but was too late, and in a moment dozens of bees were trying to get closer to that queen through the wire-guarded openings of the cage.

Now, the theory is, that the bees must have plenty of time to get acquainted. A too-early introduction would result in the death of the queen, in regicide in fact, for bees have summary ideas regarding pretenders to the throne without credentials. Their motto seems to be, ‘No Jacobite for me,’ and most zealously do they live up to it. Therefore, the way out of that cage is through a tunnel plugged with candy. By the time the candy is eaten through, friendly relations with the candidate for post of house-mother are expected to be established by sight and scent through the protecting netting.

For some reason, tunneling proved unexpectedly hard. For fully a week they dug, butted against the wires, and dug again, yet the task was not ended. It was not well to wait longer, so I ripped off the netting and replaced the cage. In an instant the inmates were loose. For a moment I saw the young queen, gentle, dainty, and slender, making her way unnoticed across the top of the frame. Then she was lost to sight. I had done what I could for her. The result now lay on the knees of the gods.

For fully half an hour I watched the runway like a lynx, for indications. Then I spied a bee tugging lustily at a dead one, and shouldering it a-down the shute as unconcernedly as a dockman might roll along a cotton-bale. A moment later I detected another calmly walking forth with the slow and steady tread of a dray-horse, dragging at the end of her sting another bee, already as dead as Pharaoh. Then I saw two more. Evidently the inhospitable little wretches had slaughtered those attendant bees who had accompanied their little queen from a far country to this realm. What had they done to her ?

Hive I was in the heart of the honeyflow. Full forty thousand bees were busy filling it; and on the morrow I must away for a two-weeks’ vacation.

So I piled three supers full of honeyboxes on that hive, bound to give them at least all the room they could reasonably ask for, and went my way.

Vacation sped, as vacation will, — and my first act on returning was to go straightway to Hive II and ascertain its status. It greeted me with an enthusiastic buzz. In miniature it was quite as busy as the other. In several of the frames I found scores of tiny grublets already in the cells, proving that the young queen had been accepted, and that she was ‘right on the job.’ And all summer long the golden clouds of young bees dancing above both entrances were a joy to see. Thus had special providence saved another queendom.

The net results? Oh, well — remember that I said it was a hobby. At least, I intended to. But if you will be thus insistent, I will say that the parent hive, which did not swarm, but kept busy at its honey-gathering instead, gave me that autumn some seventy pounds of beautiful comb-honey, sixty pounds of which were in full boxes, the rest in combs partly filled.

A writer in a current mazagine cites a story of one who said, ‘If I lived in the country I believe I would keep a bee. ’

I have.