Locusts and Wild Honey | Page 3

swarms in this section
during the time the tree is in bloom is quite incredible. As a shade and
ornamental tree the linden is fully equal to the maple, and, if it were as
extensively planted and cared for, our supplies of virgin honey would
be greatly increased. The famous honey of Lithuania in Russia is the
product of the linden.
It is a homely old stanza current among bee folk that
"A swarm of bees in May Is worth a load of hay; A swarm of bees in
June Is worth a silver spoon; But a swarm in July Is not worth a fly."
A swarm in May is indeed a treasure; it is, like an April baby, sure to
thrive, and will very likely itself send out a swarm a month or two later:
but a swarm in July is not to be despised; it will store no clover or
linden honey for the "grand seignior and the ladies of his seraglio," but
plenty of the rank and wholesome poor man's nectar, the sun-tanned
product of the plebeian buckwheat. Buckwheat honey is the black
sheep in this white flock, but there is spirit and character in it. It lays

hold of the taste in no equivocal manner, especially when at a winter
breakfast it meets its fellow, the russet buckwheat cake. Bread with
honey to cover it from the same stalk is double good fortune. It is not
black, either, but nut-brown, and belongs to the same class of goods as
Herrick's
"Nut-brown mirth and russet wit."
How the bees love it, and they bring the delicious odor of the blooming
plant to the hive with them, so that in the moist warm twilight the
apiary is redolent with the perfume of buckwheat.
Yet evidently it is not the perfume of any flower that attracts the bees;
they pay no attention to the sweet-scented lilac, or to heliotrope, but
work upon sumach, silkweed, and the hateful snapdragon. In
September they are hard pressed, and do well if they pick up enough
sweet to pay the running expenses of their establishment. The purple
asters and the goldenrod are about all that remain to them.
Bees will go three or four miles in quest of honey, but it is a great
advantage to move the hive near the good pasturage, as has been the
custom from the earliest times in the Old World. Some enterprising
person, taking a hint perhaps from the ancient Egyptians, who had
floating apiaries on the Nile, has tried the experiment of floating
several hundred colonies north on the Mississippi, starting from New
Orleans and following the opening season up, thus realizing a sort of
perpetual May or June, the chief attraction being the blossoms of the
river willow, which yield honey of rare excellence. Some of the bees
were no doubt left behind, but the amount of virgin honey secured must
have been very great. In September they should have begun the return
trip, following the retreating summer south.
It is the making of wax that costs with the bee. As with the poet, the
form, the receptacle, gives him more trouble than the sweet that fills it,
though, to be sure, there is always more or less empty comb in both
cases. The honey he can have for the gathering, but the wax he must
make himself,--must evolve from his own inner consciousness. When
wax is to be made, the wax-makers fill themselves with honey and
retire into their chamber for private meditation; it is like some solemn
religious rite: they take hold of hands, or hook themselves together in
long lines that hang in festoons from the top of the hive, and wait for
the miracle to transpire. After about twenty-four hours their patience is

rewarded, the honey is turned into wax, minute scales of which are
secreted from between the rings of the abdomen of each bee; this is
taken off and from it the comb is built up. It is calculated that about
twenty-five pounds of honey are used in elaborating one pound of
comb, to say nothing of the time that is lost. Hence the importance, in
an economical point of view, of a recent device by which the honey is
extracted and the comb returned intact to the bees. But honey without
the comb is the perfume without the rose,--it is sweet merely, and soon
degenerates into candy. Half the delectableness is in breaking down
these frail and exquisite walls yourself, and tasting the nectar before it
has lost its freshness by contact with the air. Then the comb is a sort of
shield or foil that prevents the tongue from being overwhelmed by the
first shock of the sweet.
The drones have the least enviable time of it. Their foothold