The Woods-Rider by Frank Lillie Pollock - HTML preview

CHAPTER XVIII
 THE HARVEST

After the strenuous events of the last week the boys felt that they needed a rest, and they did nothing for two days. Carl had delivered the barge-load of rosin at Harper’s landing; and Harper had agreed to send a check to Joe as soon as the stuff could be remelted and weighed up. In the meantime, Uncle Louis volunteered to finance them a little; and he arranged for a credit at the bank at Shomo, where they were going to take the railroad.

He went over to Shomo himself with Bob and Joe to take the train, and Joe arranged for two large motor-trucks to handle the bees. At the same time he secured a cabin with a large lot just outside of the village for the temporary site of the apiary; and engaged board for the whole party at the local hotel.

The bees made three truck-loads, and Bob thoughtfully suggested that they break up the raft and take a load of the best of the lumber—an idea that turned out very valuable. For the apiary was entering upon a new stage now, in which each colony had to be turned into three, and there was a demand for new hives and lumber at every moment.

It was a race against time now, for it was already nearly the end of April, and unless the bees could be delivered in Canada by the last of May they would be of little use for the clover-bloom. Alice immediately started a vast number of queen-cells to be used for the new colonies, and as soon as these were well under way she split each colony in two by taking off the top story with its combs and bees to make a separate hive, dividing the forces as equally as possible.

To their great relief, Harper’s check arrived at this time, for the amount of $4200. Half of this indeed technically belonged to Mr. Burnam, but Uncle Louis had promised to arrange the matter so that the boys should have the use of it until Burnam’s debt was paid off. Joe immediately presented Sam with fifty silver dollars, a greater sum than the negro had ever seen before at one time.

“Dis yere bee-keepin’ is shorely one fine stunt!” Sam gasped, regardless that the bees had not had much to do with the acquisition of that money.

Bob immediately made a flying trip to Mobile, ordering a hundred new factory-made hives, a thousand more frames, and a hundred pounds of foundation, and bringing back with him fifty Italian queens, with another fifty to follow by mail.

All this made money vanish. The check for the shipment of honey arrived a week later, but it was for only $320 after all, and it was evident that, but for Joe’s investment, the enterprise never could have been put through.

“I wish you weren’t in it so heavily, Joe,” said Alice, as they were working together at the queen-rearing operations. “It makes me worried for fear you’ll lose. It’s all right for us to take risks; bees are our trade.”

“It’s going to be my trade too,” Joe responded cheerfully. “But we’re not going to lose. Besides,” he added mysteriously, “I couldn’t lose; it’s been worth it all just to have had—to have been—well, you know, just to have been through all this with you.”

Alice flushed a little under her bee-veil, opened another hive, and blew in smoke.

“We’ve had great luck,” she said. “I hope it lasts.”

It did last. There was no great nor heavy honey flow at Shomo, no forests of honey-trees, but a steady, unbroken light gathering of honey that caused the new colonies to build up marvelously. The new queens hatched and flew and began to lay. Once more the Harmans marveled at the rapidity of development of the bees in this Southern spring, untroubled by cold nights or sudden, sharp breaks in the honey flow as are usual in the North. By the middle of May all the fresh colonies were up to more than half the strength of a normal colony—quite strong enough for shipment; and after much anxious thought Bob gave orders for the freight-car to be left on the siding on the eighteenth.

The die was cast now, and everything had to be thought out in the minutest detail. Hastily they tacked screens of wire-gauze over the tops and bottoms of the hives; they cut out lumber and scantling for braces and crating in the car; they prepared barrels for water—for bees in transit must be sprayed frequently to keep them cool. Carl had volunteered to ride with the outfit, and he had to carry his own supply of food and drink, for, once in the car, he might not be able to leave it till he reached his destination.

The loading of the car occupied all day and half of the night, and drew a continuous, curious, and amused crowd of the village folk, whose universal opinion was that the “young Yankees” were insane to think of shipping bee-gums away up North by freight. The last hive was finally stowed and braced into place, and Carl went aboard with a big box of provisions, his barrels of water, a spray pump, a pair of blankets, and the prospect of a rough journey. The engine was already waiting; the car was coupled up to the train and the string of freight-cars rattled out, with Carl leaning out of the door and waving as long as he was in sight.

The rest of the party had already made their preparations, and were to leave by the passenger-train that night. Joe presented Sam with another hundred dollars—all that he dared spare, but with the promise of more in the autumn if things went well.

“Thankee, Mr. Joe!” Sam exclaimed in great delight. “Dunno what I’ll do with all dis money, nohow. I’m a-goin’ hunt up more gums while you-all is away. Reckon I kin fin’ lots an’ lots ef I looks fer ’em. Dis yere woods-ridin’, bee-keepin’, rosin-stealin’ bizness is jes’ what suits me. You come back soon too, Miss Alice. I’ll be a-waitin’ fer you.”

It was with genuine regret that they bade goodby to their faithful black retainer, and boarded the train that night for the North. Three whole days were consumed in the journey; they must have passed Carl with the bees somewhere en route, but they did not see him; and they arrived in Ontario and at Harman’s Corners at last in a spell of chilly May weather that to Joe seemed appallingly like winter.

It was the first time he had ever been north of Tennessee, and all things were even more novel and surprising to him than Alabama had seemed to his cousins. The great, smooth, fertile farms, almost devoid of woods, the immense, solid barns, the trim neatness of the little village delighted him immensely, and he had never seen anything like the ocean of dandelions that spread in a yellow flood over the whole country.

There was not much time for mere admiration, however, for many things had to be done. Alice had left her fifty colonies of bees in the yard of the old Harman house; these had to be removed from their winter packing-cases and looked after. Immediately lumber for three hundred supers had to be bought for the new apiary, with three thousand frames and hundreds of pounds of foundation, and all these supplies had to be put together, while at the same time they had to secure and prepare two new locations for bee-yards, three or four miles away, to avoid keeping too many colonies in one spot, and overstocking the range.

In the midst of all this Carl arrived with his cargo. He looked considerably the worse for wear, and said that he had had little sleep during the six days’ journey; but the bees were in good condition and roaring under their wire screens. Bob had ordered two motor-trucks and two large wagons to meet the car; and after thirty hours of hard work the car-load of hives was finally set down on their permanent stands. They made three apiaries of more than a hundred colonies apiece—one at home and two on the land of friendly farmers three and four miles away.

“Got ’em here at last!” Alice exclaimed with satisfaction, looking at the serried rows of southern pine hives, on the yellow ground of dandelions, with a clump of flowering apple-trees at a little distance. “I don’t suppose any bees in the world ever did so much traveling or went through such adventures.”

“Yes, it’s hard to realize that these are the bees that stood out by Old Dick’s cabin,” said Joe.

“Remember the bayou and the mud and the titi and the dewberries? Wonder if they’ll know the honey-plants here when they see them.”

But the sagacious insects made no difficulty about that. For a single half-day they were confused and frightened, stirring out little, and circling their hives to establish their location; then they went energetically to work, and in another day they were pouring in and out of the hives, carrying honey and pollen from the dandelions and the fruit-bloom. The familiar, working roar rose from the yard.

The boys had secured two bicycles and visited the two “out-apiaries” almost daily. Alice confined herself mostly to the home yard, but sometimes inspected the others; for this was the really critical period. Clover-bloom would come within three weeks, and it was necessary to get all the colonies built up to their maximum strength to gather it.

“For it isn’t as you have it in the South,” she explained to Joe, “where there’s honey coming in all the time. It all comes from clover here, and it only lasts about a month. Everything has to be absolutely ready for it, and then it’s a wild rush and scramble, and then it’s all over.”

It sounded to Joe like an exciting speculation. The bees were certainly building up fast; the hives were full of young bees and brood, and the young queens were laying at a great rate. The bloom of dandelions and fruit-trees kept this stimulation up, but at last these came to an end, and there was a blank. There would be nothing more till the pink clover opened.

It was an anxious period. Many of the colonies were dangerously short of honey. They had brought little from the South, and with the heavy brood-rearing they had used up the dandelion-honey as fast as gathered. There was no help but to feed sugar. Bob brought in a small wagon-load of hundred-pound sacks from the grocer, and a hundred pounds did not go far. And this further expense was an alarming item. Bob suggested selling fifty colonies.

“Bees are high now,” he said. “We could get six or eight hundred dollars for fifty. It might be safer.”

“Don’t do it,” said Joe. “There isn’t any money that could buy these bees, after all we’ve gone through to get them. No, we’ll go the whole hog—make or break!”

The bees were still building up, though more slowly now. On the twelfth of June Alice discovered the first clover-head open. Within the next day or two a perceptible pink began to show in the meadows, and then it turned suddenly chilly, with a cold rain.

The clover ceased to open and the bees to fly. For a whole week this lasted—a series of heavy, cold rains and chilly nights. To Joe it seemed a sort of nightmare; he grew disposed to think that real summer was unknown in Canada; but the world grew marvelously green under the drench, and the clover grew tall and rank.

“It’s holding the bees back,” said Alice, “but it’ll be all the better if it only does turn dry now. Only we can’t wait too long.”

The rain ceased at last. The sky cleared; a cold north wind blew. It was worse than the wet weather. Then, with the sudden shift of the Northern spring, the wind swung round to the southwest. A shower fell that night, but a warm one. It was warm and damp the next morning. The earth steamed.

“Honey weather at last!” Bob cried. “Now if it only holds!”

The bees were at work that day, though but little clover was fully out. For the next two days they probably got little more than they consumed; but then, as it seemed, the pastures and meadows turned pink and white with a rush.

Joe heard the roar of the bees that morning before he was up. Before thinking of breakfast they all went out to look at the apiary. The air was like a snowstorm of bees. The insects were piling into the hives by scores, dropping heavy-laden on the entrance-boards, rushing wildly out again for fresh loads. All the entrance-guards had been withdrawn. The honey flow was fully under way at last.

“Now we’re off to a good start,” said Carl joyfully. “It’s all a gamble on the weather now for the next month.”

“It’s a winning game. I just know the luck will hold,” Alice laughed.

Joe went out with Bob that day to look at the other yards. The same wild activity was visible at all of them. Clover was everywhere—in the meadows grown for hay, in the fields where alsike was raised for its seed, along the roadsides, in the pastures. The air was warm and damp, and as the boys passed along the road there was a gust of heavy, honey-laden sweetness blown from the fields with every breath of wind.

“I reckon Alice is right,” Joe remarked. “I never saw anything like this in my life. I don’t believe these Alabama bees will know what to do with it all.”

But the Alabama bees knew very well what to do with it. That night there was a heavy, contented roaring from all the hives in the yard, where the bees were arranging and ripening the honey gathered that day. Peeping into one of the supers, Alice found that they were already beginning to turn the foundation sheets into white comb and to put honey into them.

For six days this wild rush continued. The weather remained warm but not too hot, with heavy dews at night and a dampness in the air. Joe was thunderstruck at the flood of honey, so different from the slow, dribbling honey flows of the South. At the end of the week all the supers were built full of comb, nearly filled with honey, and the bees were commencing to seal over the earliest cells.

“They’ll need more room, and we haven’t any more supers to put on. They’re going to be crowded. Do you think they’ll get to swarming?” Bob asked apprehensively. Swarming fever would be no joke in that large apiary, disorganizing the whole honey season.

“Hives with a young queen seldom swarm,” said Alice. “Most of these queens were reared this spring. We’d better start to extract just as soon as any of the honey is sealed, though.”

The colonies which had been there all winter, however, mostly having queens a year or two old, did get to swarming. For several days they were kept busy watching for swarms, clipping queens, and cutting out swarming-cells. The new swarms increased the apiary by fifteen colonies, but they would cheerfully have done without this addition.

For the last few days the honey flow had slackened a little. The first bloom of the clover was waning. More rain was needed. A great part of the honey in the supers was sealed over white and smooth, and they set up the extracting outfit.

It was a much more elaborate affair than the makeshift outfit at Old Dick’s cabin. There was a large extractor that reversed automatically, a proper uncapping-box, several large tin storage-tanks, and an uncapping-knife kept hot by a jet of steam passed through the hollow blade. All this apparatus was much needed, for there was a great deal of honey already, and the supers from the “out-yards” all had to be hauled home for extracting and then taken back again.

The extracting-house was a former back kitchen, dry and clean, bee-tight, with screened windows and door, looking out upon the apiary. Bob and Carl went out early in the morning to one of the “out-yards” and returned towards noon with a load of combs. Leaving them for Alice and Joe to extract, they started after dinner to the other yard. They reported that the bees were cross; very little honey was coming in, and they had to sort out the finished combs in the supers from the unsealed ones.

“We’ve only got a beginning of a crop yet,” said Bob. “It all depends now on whether we get rain. If not—it’s all over.”

Joe and Alice worked hard all that day, but had not finished when the others came back with a fresh load. The next morning all four of them embarked on the task, and finished up the lot, which Carl took back to the out-yards alone, leaving Bob to take off honey from the home ranch.

It rained hard that afternoon, forcing him to stop outdoor work but filling their spirits with renewed hope. They worked in the sticky room, full of the smell of the fresh honey, over the whirling extractor, and watched the rain pouring down the window, till the tanks were all full and they had to draw the contents off into tins.

The crates of sixty-pound tins had been stored in readiness for some time, and they worked till late that night, drawing off the honey and crating the honey up again for shipment.

“Ninety tins full,” said Bob, counting them when they had finished. “We ought to get eighteen cents; that’ll make close to a thousand dollars. And this rain’ll start the honey flow again.”

They did not get eighteen cents a pound, though. Next morning Bob telegraphed two of the principal honey-dealers of Toronto, and sixteen cents was the best offer he could get. And at this price he shipped it.

They were disappointed, too, in the effect of the rain. High winds succeeded it; the clover bloomed afresh, but there was no honey in the blossoms, dried up by the breeze. Every morning the Harmans watched the skies with almost agonizing interest. The slightest change in the weather might be worth thousands. Another day of violent rain came, and then once more the fickle clover began to yield.

It yielded slowly and spasmodically at first, a heavy day and then a light one. Then it ceased altogether, and with sinking hearts they began to believe that the season was a failure after all. Then the temperature rose; hot, muggy days came, with heavy dews, and the roar and rush in the bee-yard began again.

Within four days they had to take out all the combs that had not before been handled, and extract them. Scarcely had they packed this honey when the formerly emptied ones were found full again. They were sealed within a few days more, and for day after day the extractor was hardly ever idle. Alice uncapped honey till her hands blistered. The uncapping-box had been filled many times with wax, and when they canned up the last lot of honey they found it more than twice as much as the former shipment. There were 185 sixty-pound tins which went to the city, and this time the market had improved slightly and they got seventeen cents a pound.

“Nineteen hundred dollars,” Carl calculated. “Well, it’s not a great crop, but we’ve more than covered expenses. And we still have the bees.”

“Surely it isn’t all over?” exclaimed Joe.

“Just about,” said Bob, who had been studying the clover and the weather-signs. “All we’ll get now will be a few pickings.”

All things must, in fact, come to an end, and the clover-heads were turning brown. Few fresh ones were developing, and there seemed to be no honey in those few. The bees worked energetically still, but the supers did not show much result from it; and by degrees they slackened in their efforts and hung outside their hives in great, brown, murmuring masses.

“Might as well take the supers off and call it finished,” said Alice, rather sadly. They had really no reason to complain, but with a first-class season they might easily have taken off twice as much.

A rainy period set in, however, before they could take off the supers, and for a week both the bees and the apiarists were scarcely ever able to go out undrenched. It rained every day, a soaking, steady rain that produced a wonderful hay-crop that year and made the wheat tall and heavy-headed. Then it cleared. Going out to investigate the nearest clover-field Carl came back reporting a fresh crop of bloom about to open.

“I do believe it’s going to begin all over again!” he exclaimed.

“That’s too good to be true,” said Carl, pessimistically.

“Not a bit of it!” cried Alice. “It’s our luck. Don’t we deserve it? I just knew we were going to get some more!”

In fact, after a single drying, chilly day, the honey flow began again almost with the vigor of the first days. A fresh crop of blossoms had come out with the rains, and the weather turned warm again, while the water-soaked ground provided moisture enough for continual honey secretion. The emptied combs in the supers began to fill once more with the water-clear nectar. The apiarists hardly dared to hope for this to last long. Every day they looked to see it stop; and they made no attempt to keep up with the bees by extracting. It was not likely, Bob argued, that they would do more than fill the supers at the most, and any excess would be put into the lower story anyhow, where it would be useful for next winter’s supplies.

But for a full ten days the flow of nectar continued without a break. The supers were filled, crammed, and the bees were building combs under the bottom-bars and in all the crevices they could reach, as well as storing freely in the lower chamber. Two or three colonies even swarmed, fairly crowded out, and disgusted with the lack of room. The bee-keepers, jubilant and uncertain, knew hardly what to do; and they were just making up their minds to extract some of the combs to give room when the honey flow dried up in a hot wave of three days. The thermometers went above ninety-five; the earth baked, and the clover blossoms turned brown and shriveled for the last time. The hot wave broke up in violent thunderstorms and rain, but there was no fresh bloom on the clover this time. The season was definitely over.

“I’m almost glad of it,” said Joe. “It was getting on my nerves, watching the weather and smelling the air every morning.”

“I wish we could have just another week,” Alice sighed, avariciously. “But never mind. Old Dick’s bees have done pretty well for us.”

There was no hurry now about extracting this last installment of the crop, and, besides, they had to wait for a fresh lot of sixty-pound tins. It was only when they began to take off the honey that they realized how large this last installment really was. Crowded for room, the bees had crammed their combs to the last possible degree. Never had any of them seen such great, thick, blocky combs, sealed like white slabs from top-bar to bottom-bar of the frame. Extracting the first few supers amazed them. A super usually contains about forty pounds of honey, but these were averaging at least fifty.

“And they’ve stored a lot in the brood-chamber,” said Bob. “I lifted some of them. They’re almost heavy enough for winter. We won’t need to do much feeding this fall.”

Bob and Carl were bringing in honey at the home yard, while Alice uncapped the combs as usual, and Joe tended the extractor and drew off honey into the tank. The boiler of the steam-heated honey-knife bubbled over its oil flame, and the jet hissed upon the dripping wax; stray bees buzzed against the window-screen, and the extractor roared and whirred.

“Yes, Old Dick’s outfit has done pretty well for us,” said Joe, pausing while Alice uncapped a fresh set of combs. “There’s a heavy super of honey like these on every one of our 340 colonies, I reckon. Say only three hundred. That makes—let’s see!”

Taking a pencil, he began to figure on the board wall.

“Fifteen thousand pounds. And at sixteen cents a pound—” he ciphered again—“that makes two-thousand four hundred dollars. And we’ve already shipped a little less than three thousand dollars’ worth. Over five thousand dollars, Alice, at the lowest reckoning! Hurrah for the swamp bees!”

“The pizen bees!” said Alice, laughing. “Yes, I hardly hoped for anything better. It’ll be a nice lump to divide, even after we pay back what you put into it.”

“Pay back? I don’t want you to pay back anything,” Joe protested. “That was an investment, and I’m drawing my dividends.”

Alice laid down the hot knife that sent a hissing spurt of steam from the tip of its blade.

“We never could have got through without your investment, Joe,” she said earnestly. “I can’t tell you how glad I am that it’s turned out right. It was mostly on your account that I was anxious. But you’re not going to stay here. You’re going back South when the season is over, and—”

“I hope we’ll all go South,” said Joe. “Sam is going to look up a lot more gums for us, and maybe we can repeat this deal—without any river pirates next time. Anyhow, we can start a yard of bees down there, and ship up a lot by express every spring, as we first thought of doing. We’ll get together the biggest apiary in the North—a thousand colonies, maybe. I’m not going to ride the turpentine woods any more.”

He stopped, and suddenly put one hand over Alice’s honey-smeared hand on the edge of the extracting-box.

“Don’t you see, Alice,” he added, “that I want to stay around where you are—just as long as you want to have me?”

Alice hesitated, flushing; then impulsively she put her other hand over Joe’s brown and sticky one.

“I expect I’ll want you a long time, Joe!” she said.

A sudden noise at the door made Alice hurriedly snatch up the knife again. Carl kicked the door open and came in, veiled and gloved, lugging a heavy super of combs.

“See here what I found in one of the combs!” he exclaimed. He set down the super and held out a brown lump. “It was in one of the combs that came from the South. The bees had built a ball of wax around it. They didn’t like it, I guess. A souvenir of the old bayou, eh?”

Joe took up the lump of beeswax, which Carl had pinched open. In its center was a conical dark object, encysted in the wax, buried as the bees will do with an object which they dislike but are unable to remove entirely. He picked out the hard little lump and held it up.

It was a flattened leaden bullet.

THE END