The Beatitudes of a Suburbanite

To begin with, I am a Suburbanite. “ A Commuter ” is the idiom in New York. How and why I became such does not matter. Let it suffice to say that my home is ten miles from the city, a two-anda-half-story house on eleven thousand feet of land, which includes a duodecimo edition of a garden. And to Madame I said one day, —

“ I mean to keep bees.”

Now, be it known that I never had been intimately acquainted with a beehive in my life. ” Hives ” of another sort I had known, and disapproved of, in toto. But a beehive from earliest youth had been associated with an idea of opulence: its product a luxury not unattainable, but an extravagance; its ways a mystery. In the little mountain village of my early days, no friend kept bees. There was a hive or two: square-looking white monuments rising marmot-like above a sea of orchard grass, which helped to keep intact the orchard fruits. “ Beware the Bee.” was written largely there, and to this day I know not whether the apples in those particular orchards were sweet or sour.

At certain times, farmers from beyond the circling hills drove sedately into town and sold honey to the village folk: large, rounded, pale-looking slabs of comb, deliciously sweet, with now and then a cell filled with pungent pollen that stung the tongue. Occasionally, too, a dead bee, like a fly in amber. And the rareness of their coming placed their ware at once a degree above the ordinary, and thus began the creation of the sentiment of the unattainable that in later years hung around it still. So, after I had added to my small estate raspberries, blackberries, strawberries, cherries, imperial gages, grafted pears, and had gathered a couple of bushels of Niagara grapes, I looked about me for other worlds to conquer; and thus began the obsession of the bee. That would be the crowning luxury of all.

For a year or two I thought of it, but silently. No — once each year I did express the wish that it might be done, then relapsed into silence. Eleven thousand feet of land with a house on it and no fence or hedge to divide it from neighbors was not best suited to the plan. Also, the village was a veritable nursery of children: the house with only one was rare; twenty rods away was one with nine. So, after I made that definite statement to Madame it developed that she did not regard it seriously. But that came later. Meanwhile, I had been reading up : namely, John Burroughs, Root’s A B C of Bee-Keeping, et cetera, but skipping Maeterlinck. That, I inferred, meant the poetry of the thing, and just now I wanted a shorthand version of prose; and thus equipped, I hied me to a beeman.

Where? Why, right in the busiest heart of the city! Two stories up, with a swarm of carpenter-shops, blacksmithshops, and other mechanics round about, there was a line of hives on a ledge outside the open windows, from which a steady stream of bees poured across the housetops toward the distant country; while the shop itself was piled ceilinghigh with hives, finished and unfinished, and a couple of them full of bees ready for shipment, bumbling behind a wire net. Here and there, aimlessly, a bee of golden hue wandered about the room above the heads of workmen, salesmen, customers, and no one gave him thought. To a beginner that was distinctly encouraging. It had such a friendly, comradeship aspect, in that busy hive of workers, to see the harmony between them. So I explained my plans, received approval, and bought a swarm of Italians with a wing-clipped queen. Also a “ smoker,” and some other things. Then I went home gleefully and told the household — and Madame was struck dumb! However, ’t was an accomplished fact.

In due time, the hive appeared, by express, and was carried up into the front attic. The expressman seemed unusually glad to make delivery. He had no faith. I had, in abundance; and with a bit and brace I bored a line of holes through the house-wall, level with the floor of the hive when on the attic floor. My thought was, to fit in a short wooden tunnel from holes to hive-entrance, shove the hive up to it, rip off the wire net that was nailed over the front of the hive, and with another shove make swift connection.

This tunnel was indeed an important feature of the scheme. Being in an attic, the housewall had no inner line of boarding, and of course the bare joists jutted out in rows from the outer wall for their whole width. The space between them was too narrow to permit the hive to be shoved clear in against the wall, and it would be a convenience often to have some free space all around the hive in any case. The alternative was a covered way, leading from the entrance holes in the wall back to the front door of my hive. Now, that front door, as is the case in modern hives, was as wide as the hive itself, and perhaps three-fourths of an inch high. I never accurately measured the latter dimension. If I found a stranger thus measuring my front door unauthorized I should be apt to make pointed inquiries, and I respected the dignity of my bees. Thus, by guess-work I had built a wooden box as wide as the hive-front, several inches high, and tapering some inches, enough to pass in between the joists to the wall, and thereby establish communication between the hive and the outer air. The bees could pass freely in and out at their honey-gathering, and — theoretically — could not get out into the attic where I was. But even an electric wire sometimes fails of insulation, much to the shocking of the unwary.

All went well with the installation up to a certain stage. Then — the wire net refused to rip. I had taken the precaution to don a home-made veil of mosquitonetting, and with wire-cutter and nippers I worked at that net till at last I got it slashed across and at least partly crumpled up. Then that hive just boiled over! Out of the gash in the net, which also in its obstinacy prevented close connection, a thousand bees poured in a yellow stream. Some made toward the light of the window, others made toward me; and as I was then gloveless, ’t was a difficult moment. Hundreds of young bees were running over the front of the hive, and congesting against the wall of the house along the rough studding, and what could be done must be done quickly. With swift hands I clutched that wire net and crushed it down, and at last got the hive close enough to the tunnel to stop the overflow. Then I rested a minute, and took thought. Those in the hive still had found their way to outer air, and so knew the way back to hive. The rest would be taught by them.

The older bees in plenty were about the window, and were getting out properly via the little “bee-escape ” which I had inserted in the netting of the screen. The younger ones were huddling together on the wall; they must be saved. So, still in faith of booklore, I went for them barehanded, armed with a pasteboard scoop hastily made from a box, and with that I shoveled them up by scores, carried them to the window, and shook them off, to find their way with the rest. It was now sundown, and I had fully twenty thousand bees, perhaps a quarter of which had thus been handled by me barehanded, and at last I received my first sting. One of my ears impinged against my head-net for a minute. An old bee impinged right there at the psychological moment. Possibly my ears are perceptibly longer than my estimate of them. The result was painful. I concluded to call the job done, for the day.

On the whole, the hive settled down quietly to work. But there was a leak in the fitting, somewhere. At intervals, a bee would appear, dazed from wandering under the floor of the room, would rise through a crack and make for the window. It was disconcerting, especially if one was feminine. There was no telling which particular crack or part of a crack in the flooring might not at any moment erupt a bee. So the room became unpopular save to the enthusiast responsible. That tunnel was to blame, and back of that, the crumpled net of the original bee-man, which evidently had caused an undiscovered aperture somewhere below. Eventually I ripped out the whole tunnel and built it over again. Then things were on a peace footing for a while.

They swarmed, one day, — an abortive swarm. I discovered them high up in the lofty maple in front of the house, just as I was starting off in the dusk of early morn, on my bicycle, for a fishing trip. Confident in the fact that the queen was wing-clipped and so not present, I kept on. The cluster of bees was still there early the next morning, but much smaller; and presently it melted away as they gave it up and returned to the hive. It was a warning, however, of what might be, so once more I donned my armor of headnet, sweater, rubber gloves; and with a little preliminary smoking and waiting, à la book, I lifted off the upper part of the hive — where the comb honey is made, (technically called the “ super ”) — and proceeded to lift out the brood-combs, one by one, while the bees hummed angrily around my head, thousands remaining, however, clinging fast to the combs. Then, with scissors, I cut out the queencells, and thus nipped in the bud any real swarming for some time to come, and restored the hive to its usual condition. The bees in the room, of course, found their way back to hive via the bee-escape in the window, as before. Three of them first found the way to my left ear.

This was on Saturday. On Sunday friends came up from another city in their auto, for a visit. As we sat on the piazza that ear of mine was a local attraction, a landmark. To the hand, it felt as big as a dinner-plate, and an inch thick. Covered with wet plaster, it was a whited sepulchre giving no indication of the burning wrath within. Then down from the hive above came one of those elder bees and drove straight at my head. I dodged, and smote him, and he curled up on the floor. But soon came another, and another, till I found it expedient to put on my head-net; for those bees were the honey-gatherers, and not to be regarded lightly. And there I sat for an hour or more, with from two to a dozen angry bees poised on a level with my eyes, now and then making a dash and buzzing away in futile rage; while, back on the piazza, my friends sat and laughed and laughed. The bees never went near them! I was the centre of their enmity; though they did take time to attack our little girl once or twice, driving her into the house. They kept up their feud with me for several weeks, till I lost all patience, armed myself with a narrow shingle, and swatted the next bee that came within reach. In a day or two I thus ended the careers of a dozen or more and with them the feud ended.

Winter came, and with a hint from the paper wasp I cased the hive in newspapers, an inch thick, leaving the entrance open to the outer air. What honey they had made was in the main hive, although a comb or two had been started in the super. So they thus wintered, a long, cold winter, often zero in that room. It still was doubtful whether my fad was not a failure, and Madame was still disapproving. Then summer came.

With the first flowers the bees became in evidence. To forestall matters a little, never before did we have such a splendid crop of plums and crab-apples as we had that summer; due, I became convinced, to the fertilizing visits of those bees from flower to flower; and I failed not to remind Madame of that as she gazed contentedly at her hundreds of jars of preserves and apple-jelly, in the fall. But she still was scornful of bees and all their ways.

In June, in fact, they swarmed in earnest. In a stream they poured out and massed on a limb fifty feet up from the ground, a swarm as large as a bushel measure I was ill that day, and in any case thought I had no use for another swarm (I’m wiser now!), so sent a message to a neighbor that he might have it if he could get it. Madame, meanwhile, was utterly scandalized at such immoral conduct. She regarded it, through some oblique train of reasoning, as a family disgrace to have bees that would swarm in the front yard, above the public street. It was unheard of in her annals. It would make our name a byword and reproach! And she refused to be comforted.

The man came, by proxy, his chauffeur whizzing up in a hurry in an auto, and for the next hour or two we had as interesting a view from our screened piazza as one might care to see. The chauffeur was more eager than wise. Instead of clipping the limb and lowering the mass with a cord he shook the bees off, and down they came slithering through the twigs, thus breaking the formation, and back they all went to the limb again. Twenty times at least he did this, descending each time clear to the ground to learn results — that witless wight! till at last a lucky shake sent down the queen, and that was the beginning of the end. A hive was set over her, and most of the bees in due time went in to her and were carried away. Then the rest settled down to work; but first, I went through the hive again for queen-cells. One swarm they must have. After that, it was my turn.

Under the wire-net cap of the hive I could see the bees were busy in the super. Vague reports of possible honey in the fall judiciously were allowed to filter out. “ Speech sweeter than honey in the comb ” became a figure of speech in daily rhetoric. Finally I brought home another super and slipped it on under the first one. The bees still went up to the top one, and had not finished work there in the fall. Long since I had slid in a sheet of zinc, full of holes too small for drone or queen to pass through, thus letting into the comb-boxes only workers. Now I slipped in between the supers a board with a bee-escape in it, and next day there was not a bee left in the upper super. Then I opened the hive.

With an air of unconcern, as of everyday affairs, I came downstairs and placed on the dining-table a pound of honey, filled to the very edge, not one empty cell therein. The finished result!

There was admiration, of course. Due praise was becomingly received; but it was veiled with a certain household air of reserve, as of suspended judgment. The very air conveyed the subtle suggestion —“ one pound of honey is all very well; but was it worth while? ” Next week I produced another. Like wax before the fire, the reserve began to melt. We have now finished the sixteenth pound; and many weeks ago all hints that we would better give away that hive came to a sudden end. It is now March, and I lately opened the top of the hive to see how matters were therein. A bee promptly came up to look into the matter from her point of view. Her attitude was energetic, and she wore an aspect of being hasty-minded. I made a snap-judgment that all was well, and closed the hive without delay — and carried down the seventeenth box for the Sunday’s dinner.

So much for bees in an attic.

And as a curious commentary on the absorption of humanity in its own affairs, I will add that not six families in the town are even now aware that I am keeping bees at all.