The Keeper of the Bees, page 16
So he squared his shoulders and with one hand he felt the money, with the other he felt his breast. He touched it deliberately, as probingly as he could through his clothing, and he discovered that since he had recovered from the strain of his tramp, it was not quite so tender as it had been. if he could earn money like that, if he had a garden of wonder to work in, if he could earn the Bee Master’s confidence, if he could daily make worth-while friends, if he had a wife, if there were going to be a child to bear his name, what was the use in dying? There might be something very well worth while that he could do in the world. At any rate, he could get an unlimited supply of interesting work and interesting amusement out of the bee garden and the little Scout.
So Jamie went to several stores and bought some things he needed with the assurance of a man who has the price in his pocket. Then he went home and for the first time in two years he changed his occupation; he was thinking about life instead of death.
He put away the things that he had bought and then headed straight toward the bench under the jacqueranda at the top of the blue garden. He found on the bench,
curled up like a kitten, the little Scout sound asleep. In an effort to step lightly that he might not disturb the child, his foot turned on a stone of the border that had rolled from place and the slight grinding awakened the little Scout. Instantly the youngster was up, smiling ingratiatingly, and stretching two sleep-misted eyes to the widest extent in an effort to prove that sleep had not touched them since the previous night, at any rate.
In further effort to prove that a Scout Master was always awake and fit, the youngster stepped forward and inquired brusquely: “Now what shall we do?”
Jamie sat down on the bench and drew the little Scout down beside him.
“I’m tired,” he said. “I’ve been in to visit the Bee Master and he is feeling fine. He sent you his love and he was very much pleased with your gift, and some day soon he wants you to come to see him.”
The little Scout nodded in acquiescence.
“But if you’re tired, what can we do?”
Jamie smiled.
“Must you have something active and vigorous to do every waking minute of your life?” he inquired. “Can’t you occasionally sit down and rest and commune with your soul? If you are so very anxious to do something, let me make a suggestion. I have everything to learn about bees that you already know. How would it work, if you have an hour to spare, to spend it on my education?” The little Scout studied Jamie intently.
“You mean that you want me to wise you up on all I know about bees, when there’s all the Bee Master’s books in there on the shelf to learn from?”
“But didn’t the Bee Master study out a world of things for himself? Didn’t he know enough to fill a book of things that he had figured out in a lifetime of experience with the bees? Maybe some of it was original with him. Maybe you know things that are not in the books.”
The little Scout chuckled.
“Well, there’s a good many things that are not in the books that we would like to know. Somebody has got to do a lot more studying about bees before everybody knows everything there is to know.”
“Well,” said Jamie, “suppose you begin wherever your fancy strikes you and tell me what you think I should know about bees.”
The little Scout leaned forward, laid a pair of hands, not so clean as usual, palm to palm and dropped them between a pair of knees that gave evidence of active service in recent contact with the earth. Then suddenly an intent little face with eyes of deep introspection was turned to Jamie.
“Guess,” said the little Scout, “guess the first question I ever asked the Bee Master about bees?”
‘“Why do you keep bees? suggested Jamie.
Slowly the little tan and brown head moved in negation. “Nope! You’re all wet!” said the little Scout. “You’re not even warm! First question I ever asked was, ‘Why is the bee garden blue?’ And I’ll have to tell you the answer because you would never guess it in a thousand years. The answer is, ‘Because of God.’”
Jamie’s face betrayed the astonishment he felt. His brow wrinkled in thought; his eyes narrowed. He stared at the little Scout and repeated softly: “‘Because of God’?”
“Yes,” said the little Scout. “That’s what makes bees so interesting. About half the things you’ll have to learn are because of God, and why the bee garden is blue is the very first thing. Now, you listen and I’ll tell you the reason.”
With uplifted hand to caution silence, slowly and deliberately, the little Scout repeated the explanation that had been given to the first question concerning bees.
“The bee garden is blue because blue is the ‘perfect color’ and bees are the most perfect of any insect in the way they live, and the most valuable on account of the work they do, and so blue would be the color they love best, and it is! If you don’t believe it, watch them. And because why—the nearest we come to a perfect insect loves a perfect color best, why, that’s because God made them as they are!”
The little Scout looked hard at Jamie and Jamie’s face was noncommittal.
“I guess you don’t get it,” ventured the youngster. “Well, wait a minute and you will. The first thing you’ve got to learn is some figures. Because you are big and maybe been to college, you ought to learn ’em if I can. For one thing, there’s four thousand five hundred different kinds of wild bees. That’s one thing for you to remember. Another thing is that one hundred thousand kinds of plants would not live any more if all these bees were blown away or burned up or something, because, you see, a plant has to grow where the wind carries its seed or a bird or a squirrel sows it, and if one plant happens to be a male and another happens to be a female, they can’t get up and walk to each other and do their courting and make their seeds come good, now can they? So they have to have something to carry the pollen back and forth to make the good seed.
“Now, here’s something to remember about a bee itself—say a worker bee, because it would be the one that would carry the pollen. First you can remember that in every one of the little tubes on its nose a worker has got five thousand smell hollows, so it is no wonder it can pick you out if you got a scent about you that isn’t right. Then, a worker bee has got six thousand eyes on each side of its head so it can see the flowers that it wants to get the pollen and the nectar from. And a worker bee has got two stomachs, a little one more inside for itself, and a way bigger one more on the outside for the hive. Back on its abdomen every worker bee has got four pockets to secrete wax, and every worker has got baskets on its legs to gather pollen in, besides the nectar that they carry in their stomach for the hive. Every one of them has got a good sharp sting that it can use if it doesn’t like your scent or if it thinks you are going to hurt it or do something you shouldn’t around the hive. Every one of them is covered with hair that is long for a bee and it is soft and fine and when the workers go down into Mr. Male Iris to get nectar for their two stomachs and to fill their pollen baskets, the hair all over them fills with the pollen, too, and it is the law, because of God, that when any bee starts out to gather nectar and pollen it never mixes one flower with another. If it starts on iris, it keeps right on going to iris. You can see it now, can’t you? When the worker bee gets the pollen from Mr. Iris all over his hair and then goes on to get pollen from Miss Iris, the hair is going to scatter the pollen for her, that’s going to make the good seed come, ’cause the bees do the flowers’ courting for them. That’s a reason besides honey as to why bees are so useful.
“One time I asked the Bee Master if I couldn’t see God and if I couldn’t touch Him, how I was going to know that He was here. And he said, ‘Because of the hair on a bee.’ So that’s one of the ways you can know.
“Then there are a lot of ways you find out about God on account of how He made Queen bees. A beehive is just full of miracles and signs and symbols and wonders. The Bee Master said so. But perhaps the biggest wonder in the whole hive is just about the Queen. There is a lot about God mixed up with a Queen bee. Workers may only live five or six weeks, but a Queen may live five or six years. She is away bigger than a worker and she looks different. She is long and slender and has bigger wings, and she has a big abdomen ’cause she may lay a million or two eggs. She has only about half as many eyes as a worker, ’cause she only needs them when she goes out to find her lover, or maybe a few times more when she has a great hive full of one hundred and twenty pounds of honey and so many bees they are in each other’s way. So, when she gets everything ready, she tells part of them to come with her to found a new hive, and leaves the others to refill the old hive after the Bee Master takes his share of the honey.
“The way a Queen comes to be a Queen, is this way: In a little cell all fixed up for it, the Queen bee of a hive puts an egg and she tells the workers ‘I want this egg to be a Queen.’ Then the workers get busy and make the royal jelly. That’s another thing the people who write the bee books haven’t found out. They don’t know just what royal jelly is or how it is made. But the workers know. God showed ’em how when He made ’em. So they make the royal jelly and they feed it to what comes from the egg that the Queen said should be another Queen. It grows to be a white nymph, and when a white nymph is ready to fly, it is a young Queen. With different food they feed what comes from each egg in each different cell and out of each cell there comes the thing that the Queen says she wants to come. For fear something might happen to a Queen, ’cause there can’t any hive get along without a Queen, she lays a whole lot of eggs that she says she wants made into Queens and then she lays quite a number for males and some for nurses and thousands and thousands for workers. Remember this: Bees make four different kinds of cells.
“Now, when the Queen has her hive full of honey and enough white nymphs to be sure that the hive will always have a Queen, and lots of bee bread to feed the nymphs and all the other bees that are shut up in the cradles, and when everything in the hive is just right, a thing happens that nobody understands about. Right here is where the Queen takes her Ladies of Honor and her architects and her masons who make the combs, and her workers who bring in the pollen and the nectar, and she takes some males and she takes some nurses, and she goes right away and leaves all the work that all of them have done so carefully.
The thing that nobody knows is who decides, or how it is decided, who shall stay in the hive and who shall go. But it looks like two thirds of them go with the old Queen.
“Before the old Queen starts to leave the hive with the swarm that goes with her, all of them except the Queen go to the honey vats and take honey to last them five or six days so they will not starve while they’re finding a new home, and so the wax that they can distil from the honey will be right along with them to lay the foundations for the cells to begin work in their new home.
“Then the Queen walks out of the hive, and the ones that are to go with her all come, too. She flies a little way and settles on an orange branch, or maybe on a fig, or a jacqueranda, and close around her come her Ladies of Honor and all her swarm that are taking care of her. They hide her away down among themselves so no bird can get her or hawk moth, or anything, and the scouts go out to hunt a new home. When the scouts go to hunt a home, they hunt a place in the rocks up in the canyon, or a big dead limb in a live oak, or a sycamore. But if the bee master is truly a bee master, he has known for several days, by how busy the hive is and by the things he hears the bees say to each other, that they are going to leave their home and find a new one. So, if he wants to keep his bees and make his garden get bigger and bigger, he has some hives standing back, all ready, and he watches, and when the Queen comes out of her door and starts to fly, he takes his bee drum and slow and easy and deep, drum, drum, drum, he beats it. The bees wonder what that strange sound is. They forget just what they were going to do and settle on the nearest limb and hide the Queen like I told you, and quick the bee master goes and gets his smoker and smokes them just a little bit to keep them quiet and easy. If he loves his bees, he doesn’t smoke them very much, because a bee hates smoke the worst of anything in the whole world.
“Then right quick he cuts off the branch or he sets the hive under it and with his hand strips off the bees and tumbles them in. He always has to be sure that he has the Queen and that she is all right. Then he takes the hive and sets it on a new stand and puts it in his bee garden. If he wants to he can put it right beside the hive the bees came from and they will not ever again go back in the hive that they lived in before. They will always stay with the Queen and live and work in the new hive. The Queen never in all her life goes out again unless she wants to found another new hive. Then she goes just the same as she did this time. So that is the way the bee master gets new hives of bees.
“Back in the old hive that’s left they are feeling pretty blue, because along comes the bee master and takes his share of the honey, and their beautiful Queen is gone, and the lovely golden boxes of comb that fill the hive almost full are empty except for what the bee master leaves, and everybody stands around and feels blue and waits. The workers don’t go out after nectar like I get from the Madonna lilies, nor for pollen. They won’t hardly even clean up after the lazy old drones. it is the bluest time the hive ’most ever knows. So they all go and they gather around the cells that the old Queen laid the eggs in to make more Queens. The old Queen knows when she leaves that out of one of these cells pretty quick there is going to come a new Queen. So just when everybody in the hive is getting pretty well discouraged, one of the white nymphs sticks up her head and eats open the lid of her cell and comes walking out. The nurses go rushing to her and help her clean up and comb her hair and polish her wings. They kiss her ’cause they are so glad to see her.
“Another thing that God has done in a beehive is not to let one young Queen come out alone, because when she gets all ready and fixed she is going to go out into the great big world to find her King, and if a bee bird or a king bird eats her up, why then the hive is in worse trouble than it was before. So maybe the same day, or a day or two later, another white nymph sticks up her head and eats her way out of her cell and comes walking out. But nobody goes to her or helps her very much, ’cause all of ’em are betting their money on the first one out.
“When the Queen that came out first sees another Queen has left her cell, it makes her awful mad. Right there the fight begins. They just go at it like I go at the Nice Child and Angel Face when I can see back in their eyes that they think maybe they’re going to mutiny on me. Only I stop when I got ’em licked. The young Queen doesn’t stop until she’s got the other Queen killed deader than anything and the workers carry her out to the bee cemetery.
“Then the young Queen wants to go on and kill every white nymph that’s sleeping in the rest of the cradles. Right then and there she wants to do it. But the workers and the scouts and the guards step up and they say, ‘No, you can’t do that. You have to go and find your King and come back ready to be the mother of the hive before you can do that.’
“So the young Queen rests up a few days and gets all ready, and one day when the weather is all bright and sunny, in the morning when the dew is on the flowers and the lark is on the wing and everything, like that morning Browning wrote about—the Bee Master made me learn it: that one about ‘God’s in His Heaven and all’s right in the world’; I expect your mother made you learn it, too—why, the new Queen goes to the door and she walks out of it backward. She goes away a little piece and she comes back to it three or four times. God told her to do that so she would be mighty sure when she came home from the first long flight she has ever made she would know her own door. When she is sure she knows where she belongs, why then she starts this flight, and God’s in the way she can fly, too, because she hasn’t had a chance to use her wings ever before. But when she does use them, she goes up and up, away up into the sky. She goes up higher than the trees. She goes up higher than the birds. She goes up so high that the men who write the books can’t ever see how high she does go.
“When she starts out, all through the line of the hives the something that the bee books call ‘the Spirit of the Hive,’ or Instinct, or Nature, but that the Bee Master says is just another name for God, tells all the male bees that a young Queen has gone out to search for a King. They can’t ride a milk-white charger to find her; they have got to use their wings. But they are some punkins on looks. They are big swaggery fellows. On their heads they wear helmets trimmed in black pearls, and tall plumes. They have yellow velvet belts and long mantles, and they walk over everybody in the hive. They don’t even pay much attention to the Queen—till they start out to court her. They have been a big nuisance all their lives. They won’t work a lick. They don’t go out and hunt any honey. They just walk up to the cells that the workers are filling and eat all they please. They go out and curl up in the tulips and in the lilies and wherever they can find a beautiful flower cradle and lie there and sleep in the sun for hours. Then they come back and eat some more, and they are too lazy to live like the other bees do, but the worker bees know the hive can’t go on without them, so they clean up after them. Nobody likes them very well, but nobody says a word because they are part of God’s plan. It’s all right for ’em to have a good time while they’ve got the chance; they don’t know a little bit about what’s coming to them.
“So when the young Queen goes out, all the males think they would like to court her, and from all the different hives they go swarming up after her. They spread their wings so wide and they fly so hard and fast that they get all swelled up and get more air inside them than they ever had before, and they get different from the way they were before they started. It takes a good, fine strong one to go as high as the Queen goes. Finally, when some of them get way up mighty close to Heaven, all alone up there, where the sky is blue and the day is sweet and everything is so nice and fine, the Queen says which one may be her King. Then they get married. They don’t have but a little bit of a honeymoon, for the Queen says she must go straight home and go to work. So she doesn’t even wait to say good-bye to the King; she just gives him a big push, so big and hard it kills him and he falls down to the ground, deader than anything. And she goes home and goes into the door, and she’s lucky if she gets home and gets in the door ’cause on account of birds and things. That’s why there are more white nymphs waiting, so that if the young Queen doesn’t come back, another one can be got ready and sent out. You see how it’s all fixed up from the beginning to keep things going? That’s why God’s in it, because it is such a wonderful plan, and it is things that men couldn’t do in any way at all. It takes just God to plan life for the bees.
