II.—BEE-KEEPING A SOURCE OF ENJOYMENT.
W
WHEN pleasure and profit can be combined, time runs swiftly and the heart feels happy.
It is enjoyment to stand by one's bee-hives and watch the intense and untiring work of one's bees. It is like standing at a window in Cheapside, and watching the counter-currents of human beings that ceaselessly traverse its pavement; only, instead of faces grooved with cares and pale with anxieties, we do not see issuing from their hives or returning home a single bee that seems bowed down with trouble or fretful about the future. Each bee, from the queen down to the sentinel atthe gate, seems to have heard the Master's words,—"Take no thought" (i.e., irritating care) "for the morrow, for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof."
Bees rarely fail to become acquainted with a kind and affectionate master. I have stood in the midst of thousands returning home after their day's work, and seen them resting on me, brushing their wings and bodies, and, thereby refreshed and recruited, they enter their home and deposit their sweet burdens. They do not forget little acts of kindness shown them, and rarely fail to show gratitude,—an example Christians would do well to copy. I have sat for hours by my hives with glass windows, and watched the orderly and beautiful array in which some give wax, others build it into forms of strength and beauty, others clear away incidental dirt, others pour honey into the warehouses, others carry out their dead, and all reverently and loyally attend to the instructions of their queen. Relays of ventilators, joining the tipsof their wings and making fanners, take up their position at the doors, and send in currents of fresh air. Others are placed as sentries on the bee-board, who, like faithful soldiers, repel wasps and moths, and die rather than desert the post of duty. There is not an idle bee in a hive, if one may except the drones after their mission is ended.Fruges consumere nati; they meet with the consequences which all idle and unproductive citizens provoke. They, however, may be regarded as the exceptional inmates. The bees do not fail to understand their relations, and therefore they get rid of them as soon as they cease to contribute to the wealth or comfort or protection of the hive. They become in June and July the mere hangers-on—the fat, lazy monks, who believe that everybody is made to work for them, while they are excused helping anybody. But the bountiful Creator has left no place for indolence in this world of ours; it would be too disastrous an example to be permitted with impunity. The bees accordingly turn them out to starve, or garrote them as they catch them, andat all risk get rid of the incumbrance. Do idle young men deserve better treatment?
A hive in June is a perfect study, a model of order, work, neatness, and beauty; it is rich in interest to everyone who has an hour to spare. About nine o'clock at night you cannot do better than listen for a quarter of an hour by your hives, and you will hear an oratorio sweeter and richer than you ever heard in Exeter Hall. Treble, tenor, and bass are blended in richest harmony; sometimes it sounds as the distant hum of a great city, and at other times as if the apiarian choristers were attempting the hallelujahs which will swell from earth to heaven when all things are put right, and bee and bird and every living thing sing joyously together the jubilant anthem peal, "Great and marvellous are thy works. Lord God Almighty. Just and true are thy ways, thou King of nations."