CHAPTER XII
TAMING THE WILD BEES
Alice was, as Bob had predicted, “tickled to death” at the report and the plan that the boys brought back.
“Couldn’t possibly be anything better!” she exclaimed. “What a lucky thing we came South! With a permanent apiary down here, we can ship bees North every spring, enough to stock a hundred fresh hives, until we have—oh, the biggest bee-outfit in North America. Old Dick is going to make us all rich!”
“Maybe,” returned Carl, “but he’s going to make us poor first. Have you considered how much it’s going to cost to outfit this swamp yard?”
“The wax and honey we get from the old gums will pay for it,” said Alice optimistically.
That was what they all hoped, but they began to doubt when they made out a detailed list of what the enterprise was going to need. They would have to take a complete outfit of bee-keeper’s supplies, camp kit, and housekeeping outfit. The latter, indeed, could be borrowed from the plantation, but the apiary apparatus made a formidable list, and supplies were advancing in price. They had been through much this same experience in their first venture in the North; but there they had purchased a working outfit, while this apiary would have to be rebuilt from the ground up. Nothing but the bees themselves could be used.
Lumber to make the new hives, however, was an easy and cheap matter in that lumbering country. From a mill a few miles away Bob purchased dry cypress boards, cut and dressed to the proper width for the different parts of the hives, so that there was little to do but saw them into lengths and nail them together.
But the brood-frames, ten of them to each hive, carpenter’s tools, smokers, a small honey-extractor, wire-gauze, comb foundation, and the innumerable small articles for bee work had to be ordered from Mobile; and they spent anxious hours over the dealers’ catalogues, trying to select what they needed without spending more than they could afford. It was going to take more money than they had brought with them, that was certain, for they had never contemplated equipping a brand-new apiary in the South. They had to send to their Canadian bank for more money, and while they were waiting for it to arrive they borrowed two hundred dollars from Uncle Louis.
In the midst of this whirl of preparation Joe arrived unexpectedly.
“There really wasn’t much for me to do at the camp,” he explained. “Burnam was just keeping me out of kindness, and I cut it short. I was getting anxious to see those bees again. Are you going back to look them over?”
“We’ve done been, as you say down here,” replied Bob. “We’ve figured it all out. We’ve got things started. Look here!” and he led his cousin to see the pile of bright new lumber for hive-making.
“Enough for a couple of hundred ten-frame Langstroth hives,” said Alice. “We’ll ship it down on the steamboat and make them up on the spot. We’ve ordered about four hundred dollars’ worth of supplies from Mobile too, and the boat’ll bring them up to the bayou. The freight alone is going to be an item.”
“I can save you some of that,” said Joe, suddenly remembering the old flatboat he had seen abandoned up the river.
“I’ll send word to Sam to patch it up a little and float it down here,” he added to his explanation. “Sam’s been asking me almost every day when we-all are a-goin’ to go into the bee business. He’s got the bee-fever bad. I told him I couldn’t pay him any wages now, but he’s bound to come with me just the same. He’s mighty handy with tools and he can cook, and he’ll be mighty useful to us; and if things pan out well I’ll pay him something later. It’ll only be for a couple of months anyway.”
Bob thereupon outlined the new plan of a permanent apiary that they had settled upon.
“But I’m doubtful about taking Alice down there,” he said. “It’s dangerous—a regular hang-out for river pirates.”
“Well, she’ll be safer than any of us,” said Joe. “The worst of these gangs in this country wouldn’t molest a white girl. Besides, I don’t expect we’ll see any more of the houseboat men. They’re gone. They’ve cleaned up their rosin deal, and they won’t want to hang around that place any more. Even if they did turn up, they’d have no occasion to pick a quarrel with us. They wouldn’t recognize Bob or me; they never set eyes on us. We won’t have anything they’d want to steal, for they sure wouldn’t touch those bees. No, I think it’s perfectly safe; and there’ll be four of us anyway, all with guns. But I’m afraid it’ll be a rather rough proposition for a girl.”
“Not any worse than we had up North,” retorted Alice. “I can stand anything that Bob and Carl can, and I don’t know how they’d get along without me. They’d be lost! No, I’m going down with the rest of you when the steamboat goes.”
That would not be for nearly a week, and in the meantime Joe managed to get a message through to Sam, who was still at Burnam’s. The result was that a couple days later the negro arrived at Magnolia Landing in the old flatboat. He had patched it somewhat, but the old hull still leaked like a sieve, and Sam had navigated it standing knee-deep in water. But the immersion and swelling was already closing the cracks, and another bout of calking would probably make it nearly water-tight.
Joe spent all day working over it with Sam, capsizing it on the shore, and melting rosin and tar. It still leaked a trifle when they had done their best, but wet would not damage most of the cargo, and they hauled the freight down to the landing. It made a full load, a regular “Robinson Crusoe outfit,” as Carl said—the hive-lumber, odd-sized boards for repairs and making furniture, food supplies, cooking-utensils, the tent, bedding, tools, and weapons—and the new supplies from Mobile were still to come.
“I don’t know about our not having anything worth stealing!” Bob commented as he looked at the load.
Joe and Sam started on their voyage a day before the steamboat was expected, in order to arrive first with the supplies. But the boat came unexpectedly early; she passed the flatboat halfway down the river, and Joe waved back to his cousins leaning over the rail of the high deck. Bob and Carl were waiting for him at the mouth of the bayou, and they all poled and rowed the heavy craft up to the sloping shore where Old Dick’s cabin stood.
Apparently nobody had been there since their own last visit. The bees were flying freely. Alice had already inspected them and was eager to begin work.
“But the first thing to do is to fix up a place to live in,” she said. “And we can’t do anything till we clear these bees out of the cabin.”
Carl undertook the job. Well veiled and gloved, he carefully cut down the combs of the colony hanging on the ceiling, so carefully that he did not shake off the clustering bees. As he removed them he placed them in an old empty gum, finally carrying it outside and placing it near the old entrance through the wall, which he plugged up. By another day the bees would discover that their old home was outside instead of inside the cabin. By removing a board he was able to apply similar treatment to the swarm lodged inside the wall; and the one in the cupboard was easily handled. He simply pried the cupboard off the wall without opening it and carried it outside. But the colony in the chimney could not be reached, and much against his will, he was forced to destroy it by lighting a fire on the hearth and smoking it out, afterwards poking down the combs with a stick. Most of the flying bees escaped, and the next day he found a disconsolate cluster of them hanging on the outside of the chimney. Climbing on the roof he brushed them into a sack and poured them into one of the living gums.
Meanwhile Bob had been nailing wire gauze over the window to make it bee and mosquito-proof, and he repaired the door. Alice set to work at the interior with the broom. Sam and Joe were carrying lumber and outfit up from the flatboat, and the hillside was a busy place. The boat was unloaded, but daylight ended before they had time to put things in order, and they knocked off work for that day. With Sam as assistant cook, Alice fried bacon and eggs and made cornbread and coffee; they had brought butter and preserved peaches with them, and in the course of evicting the bees Carl had acquired several large chunks of honeycomb. It was dark and queer-flavored, and the expert apiarists did not think much of it, but Sam appreciated it hugely and ate most of it in the retired spot where he went away to devour his own supper. After the meal was over he brought water, washed up all the dishes, and restored order. Negro labor was a luxury to Alice, and Sam enjoyed the situation no less.
Apparently nobody had been there since their own last visit
“Dis here’s de life for me, Mr. Joe!” he whispered confidentially, sticky with honey. “Dis here bee bizness is a mighty fine stunt, yes-suh, it shorely is!”
Alice made up a bed for herself on the floor of the cabin that night, and the other members of the party disposed themselves as comfortably as they could on the ground outside. By another night they expected to have things more suitably arranged, and when the next day came to an end great things had indeed been effected.
The cabin had been well cleaned out, with a cot, a set of shelves, and a rough table built for Alice’s use. Adjoining the building Sam had put up a large shed, supported by poles, roofed ingeniously with a thatch of pine-boughs, broad palmetto-leaves, and Spanish moss which he guaranteed would turn water. Under this shelter they stowed the miscellaneous lumber and outfit, and here, too, the boys arranged their own sleeping-place, counting that it would be cooler than the little cabin. Sam was berthed at one end and the white boys at the other, on rough cots of boards and poles, raised two feet from the ground to keep off the snakes and red-bugs. They were high enough above the bayou to prevent mosquitoes from being very troublesome, unless a wind blew the wrong way.
They set up the tent also, but it, like the cabin, was to be used chiefly as a shelter from rain. Even the kitchen was outside, an oven of large stones which Sam brought laboriously nearly two hundred yards, and Alice’s few cooking-utensils hung on the outside of the cabin. On the shady side of the building Bob constructed a workbench, and as soon as the housekeeping arrangements could be rushed through they began to saw up and nail together the new bee-hives, with their covers and bottom-boards. This was highly expert work, for the parts had to be interchangeable and uniform to an eighth of an inch; and Bob and Carl attended to it, while Joe and Sam undertook to clear up the ground and lay the old gum-yard bare to the sun.
In spite of his enthusiasm for the “bee bizness,” Sam demurred at going into the blackberry-jungle where the old gums were hidden. He preferred to clear up the shrubbery and saplings about the cabin with an ax, and Joe therefore put on a veil and long-sleeved gloves, tied his trousers around his ankles, buttoned up his coat, and attacked the thicket with a heavy knife and a pair of pruning-clippers.
The bees, however, were working so well that they were not much disposed to molest him, except when he accidentally stumbled into one of the gums. This was frequently unavoidable, and after half an hour of work he had accumulated a considerable following of cross bees that hung in a cloud about his head, trying to get through the net veil. Secure in his armor, Joe was able to go ahead, but irritated bees began to pervade the whole place. Sam was stung twice, but he bore it heroically, only shifting his wood-cutting to a more remote spot.
As Joe cut away the thorny branches he raked them out and carried them away to a great pile back of the bee-yard. The old gums began to appear, showing how they had once stood in rows, but now irregular, fallen, rickety, rotten. The home-coming bees hovered in clouds overhead, failing to recognize the place at first. Joe did not find any bones of beasts or men, as the hunter Candler had said; but about the middle of the old yard he did make a find of some value. It was a great iron kettle, partly buried in the earth, and half full of a hard substance resembling dried mud. He heaved it loose and carried it out to show the others. It was as much as he could do to lift it.
“Just what we needed to melt our wax in!” exclaimed Carl. “We’ll get Sam to clean it out, and if it doesn’t leak—”
Alice was digging into the hard brown contents with a knife.
“That’s what it’s been used for before,” she said. “This stuff is beeswax. This must have been Old Dick’s wax melter.”
So it was, and the old kettle contained forty or fifty pounds of good beeswax, worth fifty cents a pound—probably the remains of the negro bee-keeper’s last “run,” and left behind by some oversight.
When he came near the farther end of the thicket Joe made a less agreeable discovery. Dislodging an empty and overturned log hive, a snake glided out, a snake about four feet long, a sliding streak of yellow-brown with a checkerboard pattern of black down its spine. It ran only a few feet, then piled itself into a heap, turned its flat head, and the tip of its tail sent out a swift, buzzing whirr.
Joe stepped hastily back and retreated toward the cabin for a weapon. He didn’t want to let that snake go; it was far too dangerous a neighbor to live. He didn’t wish to have Alice see it either; but he beckoned the boys, and they had a look at the rattlesnake—the first they had seen—before Joe blew its head to pieces with the shotgun.
“Do you suppose there are many of these fellows about the place?” asked Bob, somewhat disconcerted.
“I’m surprised to find this one,” Joe replied. “It’s rather too swampy a region for rattlers; they prefer the high land. I don’t think we’ll stir up any more.”
He used more caution, however, in clearing up the gum-yard, but did not encounter any more of the diamond-backs, though he started two or three small, harmless serpents, which he let go unmolested. By the end of the day he had all the berry-canes cut and piled in an enormous stack at a distance, and the ground cleared of rubbish. He had also picked out and removed all the dead and empty gums, and for the first time they were able to see exactly what they had.
There were seventy-eight gums containing bees, rather less than they had hoped for. But in addition to these, there must be almost as many more colonies living in hollow stumps and promiscuous places about the cabin, besides the bee-trees, of which there seemed to be an unlimited number. They did not care to establish more than a hundred and fifty new hives, and it was plain that the bees were not going to be lacking.
Nothing toward transferring the bees could be done until the new supplies came from Mobile, and it was two days more before the steamboat came up. She arrived about dawn, and stopped off the mouth of the bayou, awakening the apiarists by terrific blasts of her whistle. The boys dressed in haste and poled the flatboat down the stream, laying it alongside the steamer while the roustabouts transshipped the heavy crates. All the boat’s officers by this time knew about the bee enterprise of the young people from up North, and the boys received a good deal of good-natured jokes and chaffing when they went aboard to pay the freight. Then they pushed off; the steamboat resumed her course with a parting shriek; and the flatboat returned with its cargo up the bayou.
Alice had breakfast ready for them when they returned, and as soon as it was eaten they hauled the crates laboriously up to the shelter-shed. Without any delay they were ripped open, and the work began at once of nailing up frames.
There were two thousand frames, each made of four small pieces of wood, and they had to be put together with eight small nails. Afterwards the frame must be strung with wire to support the honeycomb, and lastly filled with a sheet of comb foundation—a thin sheet of pure beeswax stamped in a pattern like the base of a natural bee-comb. Upon this the bees build their cells, saving wax, saving time, and producing a more uniform and perfect comb than if the insects were left to build according to their pleasure.
There was work for everybody now. Everything that resembled a hammer was put into play, and there was an incessant rattle and tapping as frame after frame was nailed up, wired, filled with foundation, and put into the new hives. Five pairs of hands made rapid work, and as soon as a dozen hives were completely prepared Bob and Alice carried them into the apiary and started to drive the bees.
Neither of them had ever done such a thing before. Gum hives are unknown where they learned their bee-keeping; but they had carefully studied the method of procedure given in the books and hoped for luck.
Alice had unpacked and lighted one of the new smokers, and she approached the gum they had selected and blew smoke vigorously through its entrance hole. In terror the bees rushed inside, and, after waiting a few moments, Bob picked the gum up, set it a yard aside, and placed the new hive exactly where it had stood.
With a hatchet he knocked the board top off the gum and placed a wooden box over it, made to fit closely. Then he and Alice began to blow smoke into the bottom of the gum and to pound on it with sticks and the hatchet.
The bees within were fairly subdued with fright, and began to leave the combs and crawl upwards to escape the smoke and the drumming. In about five minutes a peep showed that the small box was almost filled with a clustered, frightened mass of bees, too demoralized to fly, and capable of being poured like water. Bob quickly dumped this cluster on the entrance of the new hive, and, after some hesitation, the insects began to crawl into the unfamiliar home, glad of a refuge anywhere.
Alice meanwhile reached down into the gum with a long knife and cut out a large slab of comb containing brood and honey. This she tied into an empty frame and placed it in the hive, so that the bees should find at least some relic of their former home. While she was doing this Bob pointed quickly.
“There’s the queen!”
A slender-bodied insect, twice the length of an ordinary bee, had emerged from the mass and was crawling slowly and with dignity into the hive entrance. A stream of workers was already following her, and in a moment or two all the crowd of bees on the entrance board began to put down their heads and vibrate their wings rapidly, in token of joy at seeing signs of readjustment after the catastrophe that had befallen them. The returning bees in the air also, who had hesitated in wild consternation at seeing their old home gone and this strange edifice in its place, now began to alight and venture in to deposit their honey or pollen.
“They’ll be all right now,” said Bob with satisfaction. “They’ll start building on that foundation, and if the honey-flow keeps up they’ll be a good colony in four weeks.”
What bees were left in the old gum they knocked out without much ceremony, and Bob split the gum in two with the hatchet. Alice selected two or three good smooth sheets of comb containing sealed-over brood, presently to hatch into young bees, and tied them into frames which she added to the ones in the hive. Then Bob carried away the wrecked gum and handed it over to Carl, who cut out the rest of the combs, saving out such as contained honey enough to be worth extracting, and throwing the rest aside for melting into wax.
Elated with their initial success, Bob and Alice attacked a second gum. But this one did not go so smoothly. The bees were reluctant to leave their combs and go into the upper box. It took fifteen minutes of pounding and smoking to get a cluster of any size, and then they refused to stay in the new hive. They ran in and ran out again, took wing, and numbers of them detected their old gum and made desperate efforts to get into it again. Bob had to split the gum to pieces before they could get nearly all the bees out of it, and there, almost by accident, they espied the queen, in a corner of the black, crooked combs, surrounded by a knot of her bees who would not leave her. Alice picked her up and placed her in the new hive, whereupon the commotion quieted down.
The third gum proved very weak in bees and hardly likely to build up into a colony of any value. Then came several good ones, and the pile of cut-out wax and honeycomb grew rapidly.
The carpenters meanwhile were preparing the new hives faster than the apiarists could use them. A great stack of the prepared boxes was ready, and the whole party turned in to help at the transferring.
Carl and Joe worked at one gum while Bob and Alice treated another, and Sam, muffled in a heavy gauze veil, stood ready to fetch and carry. This made progress rapid. By the latter part of the afternoon forty of the old gums had been transferred to the modern hives, and the whole place was so overrun with irritated and confused bees that they decided to stop work for the day.
The intention had been to put all these full honeycombs through the extractor; in fact, they had counted rather heavily upon the thousand pounds or so of honey that they were going to get from the gums. But by degrees it began to be clear that this was an illusion. The gums had less honey than they had expected, and it had to be cut out in broken bits and irregular lumps that the extractor could not handle. The honey was dark and dirty besides, full of crushed brood and sand and pollen.
“Not worth bothering with,” said Carl in disgust. “What’ll we do with it? Unless we get it out of the combs it’ll make a mess when we try to melt up the wax.”
“Can’t we-all eat it?” Sam suggested. He had been surreptitiously slipping lumps of comb under his veil all the afternoon.
“Don’t worry, Sam. You’ll get all you can eat,” said Alice. “We’ll spread the rest of the combs over the ground and let the bees rob it out. They’ll carry it back to the new hives, and we’ll get it just the same.”
As long as the light lasted they worked at preparing new hives and frames for the next day. Even after that, Bob undertook to continue nailing frames by the light of fat-pine torches, but the flare drew such intolerable numbers of all kinds of nocturnal gnats, flies, and moths, to say nothing of bees, that he had to give it up.
Honey seemed to be coming in freely the next morning. The new hives had recovered from their confusion and were settling down to work, making the best of what must have seemed to them a terrible catastrophe. The honey flow was so good, in fact, that the bees refused to touch the exposed pile of combs. When honey is to be had in the flowers, bees will refuse to take it in any other way; and Alice’s plan of having the old combs “robbed out” had to be postponed till the harvest was less good.
That day they transferred all the rest of Old Dick’s gums, and Alice looked with immense pride at the trim, modern apiary that had replaced the wreck. Another day cleaned up about thirty of the colonies scattered about in stumps and hollow logs. The honey flow continued strong. The dewberry was in bloom now, and the slopes were all white with the little flowering vines. From morning to night there was a steady roar from the bee-yard, and, looking into some of the first transferred hives, Alice found that the bees had built out all their foundation into comb. Already the queen had deposited eggs in some of it, while the bees were putting honey in the rest—thin, colorless nectar just gathered from the dewberry-blossoms.
“At this rate they’re going to need top stories in a week,” said Alice. “We’ll have to get a lot of supers ready. Maybe we’ll have to send for more supplies.”
“Knock on wood,” Carl advised. “Everything’s gone too smooth so far.”
Alice refused to knock. The sun went down cloudy that night, and a breeze rose, blowing up from the swamps, and bringing hordes of mosquitoes upon it. That was a distressing night. Alice was protected by the screened window and door of her cabin, but the boys found it impossible to sleep. Sam finally built a choking smudge of damp wood, and they all sat beside it, half suffocated, dozing at intervals; until toward morning rain came down in torrents. It drove off or dissolved the mosquitoes, and in time soaked through Sam’s supposedly waterproof shelter. They were forced to take refuge in the tent until the rain ceased shortly after dawn.
It had brought a change in the weather. The wind had turned to the north; it was cool, and the secretion of honey had ceased. The bees were cross and restless. Shortly after sunrise they discovered the pile of cut-out honeycomb, and a riot of robbing ensued. The heap of wax was entirely obscured by the clouds of insects all trying to get at the honey. The apiary was full of flying bees, aware that honey was coming from somewhere, but not yet knowing its source, darting toward the woods and returning, and trying to rob one another’s hives. Excited with the plundering, they grew cross. The apiarists had to put on veils to cross the yard; and in the midst of the uproar Bob, happening to glance down the slope, saw a boat run up to the shore, and a man get out of it. He started up the bank, carrying a gun over his shoulder. Bob touched Carl’s arm and pointed.
“Candler, I declare!” Carl exclaimed.
