CHAPTER VI.
BEES SWARMING—FABLE OF THE ANT AND GRASSHOPPER.
IT was just after the children’s dinner, one very hot day towards the end of May, that the gardener came to the verandah where the two little girls were sitting with their grandmamma, and said—
‘Please, ma’am, the bees are swarming.’
‘Swarming, grandmamma,’ said Alice and Beatrice, ‘what is that? May we come and see?’
Grandmamma gave leave, and they ran and put on their hats and followed their grandmamma into the garden, to that part where the bee-house was. When they came there, the gardener showed them a large black lump, that looked like a great bag, hanging from a rose-tree, and the rose-tree was bent down by the weight of it.
Grandmamma explained to the children that the black lump or mass was all bees; that there had been too many bees in the hive, so that there was not room enough for all of them to work, and that the hive was too hot in this very hot weather, and the queen bee wished to seek another home for herself, and had flown out accompanied by the older bees, leaving all the young ones and a young queen in the old hive with its store of honey.
When the queen bee had settled on this rose-tree, all the other bees that were flying about in the air had come to her, and collected round her, hanging one over another. Grandmamma told the children, too, that every bee had provided itself with a quantity of honey, in case they should not find a shelter that night, and were not able to provide themselves with food the next day; each bee carried a little bag of honey.
The children were very much interested in hearing this, and were not afraid, because grandmamma told them that the bees rarely sting people when they are swarming; so they went nearer, and liked to see the gardener take a board and place it on a flower-pot just under the rose-tree; then he took a hive and turned it up and held it under the swarm of bees, and he shook the rose-tree very sharply twice, and the lump of bees fell off into the hive, or at least the greater part of it: and the gardener turned the hive down with all the bees that were in it on to the board. A number of bees that had not fallen into the hive, began to buzz and fly about; but the gardener said—
‘If the queen bee is inside, and I think she is, the others will soon go to her.’
And he raised the hive a little on one side by putting a pebble under it, and thus made room enough for the bees to enter the hive.
Alice and Beatrice, seeing so many bees still flying about, thought that they were all coming out again; but the bees knew better; their queen was in the hive, and content with her new house, and all the bees went in by degrees, and soon but very few were seen flying about the hive.
The gardener said that he would leave the hive where it was till the evening, when he would move it into its proper place.
Whilst the gardener was thus busied, Beatrice cried out, ‘Look! look! what are those bees doing? Oh, grandmamma, do look at them!’
Grandmamma turned to look, and so did Alice, and they saw some bees pouring out of another hive, as if they were blown out of it, or shot from a gun. Out and out they came quicker and quicker, pouring thicker and thicker; and then they rose in the air, and spread about, and whirled round and round, flying higher and higher, and it seemed as if the whole air was filled with bees, and they made quite a noise when they flew, humming so loud. Grandmamma told the two children that this was a swarm from another hive, and added, ‘Now we must try and watch where they will settle, and we must follow them. I hope that they will not fly away, else we shall lose them.’
Alice and Beatrice looked on in great astonishment, and then followed their grandmamma, who would not call the gardener or ask him to follow this swarm, as he was still busy with the other.
‘Are you not afraid, grandmamma, that these bees will fly away, they fly so high and so far?’
‘No, dear; I think that they will settle soon, as they begin to fly lower and more together.’ And as she spoke, the cloud of bees came lower and lower, and soon a black mass was seen on an apple tree, just between two branches. The black mass grew larger and larger, till at last the number of flying bees became less, and they grew quiet. They covered the branch all round, and it looked as if something black had been put round the branch.
‘How will John get those bees? He cannot reach them, they are so high up.’
‘John will bring a ladder, and some one must hold the board and the hive for him.’
Alice ran to call the gardener, and told him of the second swarm.
John said, ‘That is your luck to-day, miss; two swarms on one day are very lucky. The weather is hot, and our hives are so full of brood, and so heavy, that I dare say they are glad enough to get rid of some of their numbers and go into a new hive.’
‘But have you another hive and a board ready, John?’ asked Alice.
‘Yes, miss, to be sure I have. I made ten new hives this winter, when I had nothing else to do, and I got the carpenter to cut me a dozen boards; so we have plenty for all the swarms that may come. Perhaps, miss, your grandmamma will like me to take the new Scotch hive which came last week, so I will bring that and a straw one, and ask her which is to be used.’
Alice went with John: and Alice carried the straw hive, and John carried the Scotch hive, which was an octagon, or eight-sided, wooden one, painted red, with glass windows and shutters; and he took two boards as well, and they both hastened to the kitchen garden, where the new swarm of bees had settled.
‘What luck the little ladies have, ma’am!’ said the gardener. ‘You promised them the second swarm; and what a fine one it is, much bigger than the one I have just hived!’
‘Yes, this is the children’s swarm, and I am glad that it is such a large one. But how will you take it, John? it is in such an awkward place.’
‘With the ladder, quite easy, ma’am; but,’ added John, looking up at it, ‘I can’t shake them off the branch, and shall have to take them as I can.’
John ran to fetch the ladder, which was close by against the wall, where he had been pruning some fruit trees.
The little girls were very impatient, and watched the gardener mount the ladder; then their grandmamma handed him the Scotch hive; and to their great astonishment, John said—
‘I must sweep these bees into the hive.’
The gardener fixed the wooden hive between the ladder and his own knee, and then with one rapid sweep with his hands, he threw the whole lump of bees into the hive, and turned the hive down on the board.
A great number of the bees flew off and rose again high up into the air, but John said—
‘Don’t be afraid, ma’am, they never sting when they are swarming.’
Alice and Beatrice began crying out, for the bees were flying all about their grandmamma; but John was soon down from the ladder, and taking the board with the hive upon it very gently, he placed them carefully on a garden bench close by, and raising one side of the hive a little, as he had done with the first swarm, he left the bees, and they all stood at a little distance and watched them.
The bees still rose in great numbers high into the air, and whirled about in great confusion, and John began to fear that the queen bee was not in the hive; but by degrees they began to cluster round the hive and cover it. For it seemed that one or two had found out that the queen was safely housed in the strange-looking box, and had told the news to the others, for they came lower, flying closer and closer, and crept all over it until they had found the entrance, and before a quarter of an hour had passed, there was scarcely a bee to be seen out of the hive.
‘You can leave them safely now, I think, John, till the evening, and then I shall like these two swarms to be placed in the new bee-house. And now you know, dear Alice and Beatrice, that the Ayrshire hive is yours, and all the honey the bees make will be yours too.’
The little girls were much pleased, and thanked their grandmamma well. Afterwards they returned slowly through the hot garden to the verandah, and they were very glad of its cool shade.
Their grandmamma told them a great deal about bees: that this immense family, of often twenty thousand bees, was obedient to one single bee, a queen bee, who was their mother and their queen, for whom they worked and gathered stores of honey, and whom they protected from all harm. Grandmamma told them how busy and industrious the bees were, how early they were up in the summer, and how many times they flew out and returned ladened with honey or with pollen which they take from the flowers, what distances they fly in search of flowers, and it has been proved that they will fly even several miles to gather honey.
She described to the children how carefully they laid up a store for the winter; and said that it was cruel of people to kill the bees to get the honey, instead of being content to take only what the bees can spare, which is often a great deal.
‘I never kill my bees, you know, and I have plenty of honey—indeed, much more than I want.’
‘I can say, “How doth the little busy bee!”’ said Beatrice, and her grandmamma let her repeat the whole of the little hymn, which Beatrice did very nicely, and grandmamma said, ‘You will soon see through the little windows of your new hive “how skilfully she builds her cells.” I will let you read about the cells in a nice book called “Homes without Hands.”
‘There is another insect,’ grandmamma went on, ‘which is very industrious, and lays up a large store of food for the winter, and that is the ant. There is a very pretty fable in French about the ant and the grasshopper, which, when you are older, I should like you to learn.’
‘But will you tell us about it, grandmamma?’ asked Alice.
‘Well then, my Alice, I will try, but I cannot tell it in the pretty and clever way it is told in French. It was thus: One cold stormy October, a grasshopper, who had skipped and chirped in the sun all through the summer time, came to an ant, and said, “Good Mrs. Ant, you have such a large store of corn and seed in your hill, will you spare me a little, for I am very hungry?”’
‘Now, though the ant was very industrious I am afraid that she was not very charitable, or perhaps she thought it was useless to feed lazy people who will not work; so she answered and said, “Pray, Mrs. Grasshopper, what did you do all the summer, while I was working hard, and laying in a store to keep my children through the winter?”’
‘“Oh, in summer I sang and chirped all the day long,” replied the grasshopper.
‘“Then I advise you,” said the ant, “to dance now;” and the ant went into her house in her hill, and left the grasshopper to die.
‘You know, both of you, what an ant-hill is, do not you?’
‘Yes, grandmamma, I remember those little mounds, which I wanted to kick to pieces to make the ants run about, and you would not let me, and told me that it was cruel. Now I understand that those ant-hills are the ants’ houses, where they live and lay up their food for the winter.’
‘You are quite right. Here in England the ant-hills are small, but in other countries they are as high as you are. When I first saw them in Russia, I could not believe that they were ant-hills; and the ants are very little larger than those here, and yet they can collect such quantities of earth and leaves, and can raise up such pyramids for their houses.’
‘The ants are not so good as the bees; they do not make anything for us, like those nice busy bees,’ said Alice. ‘I do not like them; and, besides, the ant was very cross to the poor grasshopper.’
‘The ant was certainly very uncharitable; but all animals act only in accordance with God’s laws. This is a fable to show the difference between industrious and idle people. God has taught all creatures who are to live through the winter, to labour and lay up stores; but the grasshopper and butterflies who flutter in the sunshine, and many other insects, by God’s will are made to live only for a short time, and therefore do not need to store food like the ant and the bee.
‘The industrious ant serves in the fable to show us that we ought all to work, and you know from the Bible, that God has ordained that man should earn his bread in the sweat of his brow, which means by working. The poor man works, or ought to work, with his hands, the gentleman, or the educated man, with his head; but work is ordered for all—for the queen in her palace, and for little children at school.’
