Read Ebook: Wilderness Honey by Pollock Frank Lillie Edwards H C Harry C Illustrator

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Ebook has 635 lines and 31106 words, and 13 pages

and before the apiarists saw it, it was besieged by a cloud of bees. They carried it by assault, too, after half an hour's fighting, killed the defenders, tore down most of the combs, and carried every drop of the honey away to their own hive.

Then they turned their attention to the hive standing next in the row, but this was a powerful colony, and the raiders got more than they bargained for. In a moment the entrance was covered with knots of furiously-fighting bees. Every robber was pounced upon the moment it alighted. The attack was beaten off, and for a time quiet reigned in the yard.

Day by day the raspberry bloom vanished, and no fresh buds were opening now. The time came at last when it was entirely gone, and all the thickets were covered with fruit. The basswood trees were full of buds--but would they yield nectar?

It was the middle of July. In two weeks they must pay five hundred dollars, with interest, and they did not have the money. Unless they could make it, the bees would be taken from them.

"If the basswood only yields as it should we'll manage it, after all," said Bob, trying to be optimistic.

Alas! the basswood flowered in the midst of a hot wave, when the whole land lay baked and panting. The bloom lasted only a day or two, dried up, and withered. Scarcely a bee had touched the blossoms.

The Harmans felt unspeakably gloomy and discouraged. The failure of their hopes, after so much anticipation, labor, and experience, was hard to bear.

"We may as well look the thing square in the face, Allie," said Carl one morning, when he was alone with his sister in the cabin. "The season's over, and it's a failure. I don't know how we'll save the bees."

"Surely we'll have money enough to pay Mr. Farr. We must save the bees if we starve ourselves, for they mean everything to us. How much money have we left?"

"About two hundred dollars. It has just melted away, with all the expenses of fresh supplies and sugar and then the cost of establishing the new yard, besides our own living."

"Well, surely we can get three hundred dollars' worth of honey, to make up enough for our payment. We can manage to live some way and rub along till another season comes."

"Well, that's what I wanted to talk about," went on Carl, earnestly. "You see, Bob's university work mustn't be interrupted on any account. He'll want to drop it, I know, to save the money, but we mustn't let him. We've got to find the money somehow. Now, I've been thinking that you might go back to Harman's Corners, where you could live in our old house for little or nothing, and I might get some kind of a job in Toronto."

"You're right," Alice agreed. "Bob must keep up his work. But I wouldn't stay at home all alone. I'd rather get a job in Toronto, too."

Then began a long discussion of plans, but they revealed nothing of all this to Bob. That very evening, however, Bob proposed that his sister take a walk with him.

"This investment hasn't panned out, Alice," he said, when they were well away from the cabin. "We're not going to make a cent profit this year. I blame myself for it, for I got you both into it."

"Nonsense, Bob!" returned Alice. "We were just as eager as you were. We all rushed into it, and we all knew that it was a gamble on the weather."

"Well, anyhow, I'm not going back to college next term. Carl will want me to, I know, but you must back me up. I couldn't use any money that way. We'll be hard up at the best, and I won't have you two rob yourselves for my support."

"Oh, Bob! You must go back!"

"Well, I won't. What's a year lost, anyhow. But I'm uncertain what to do. I could come up here and trap all winter. I'm sure I could make several hundred dollars, all clear profit; but trapping is a sort of gamble, too. Or I could get a job any time with the Toronto Electric Company at about fifteen a week. Trapping would be more fun, but the other would be surer, and I'd get a lot of practical experience. What do you think?"

"I don't know!" said Alice, half laughing and half crying. "Oh, I don't know, Bob. I think--I think we'd better harvest our honey first and see how it turns out."

And the next day they began to harvest the crop.

ROBBING THE ROBBER

It was the comb honey in the one-pound sections on which they were depending for an early sale at a fancy price, and naturally they wished to take this off first. The only place to pile and sort it was in the cabin, and they proceeded to turn the boys' bedroom into a storehouse. There was no furniture to take out; they merely removed the bedding, and laid boards over the bunk to make a platform. Carl nailed wire gauze over the window, and Bob constructed a rough screen for the outer door. With the bees in that fierce robbing humor the place must, above all things, be kept bee-tight.

It was a ticklish task to take off the supers, for the bees were intensely irritable, and a hive was no more than opened when a host of robbers collected, eager to pilfer a mouthful. The boys had to be quick in their movements. Bob opened the hive, and the moment the lid was up Carl drove great blasts of smoke into the super, at the same time keeping enough smoke in the surrounding air to repel the thieves. Bob then seized the super, knocked it on the ground to jar out the few bees left in it, and hurried with it to the cabin.

In the storeroom Alice was waiting to sort and grade the honey. The delicate sections were glued fast in the frames that held them, and had to be pried carefully out. The very finest sections, sealed white and smooth all over, were classed as "Fancy"; those of slightly rougher appearance ranked as "No. 1." A certain number of the rest might be saleable at a low price; the honey was just as good as the "Fancy," but their appearance was against them. But the larger part was worth nothing, except for the honey that could be obtained by the extractor.

From the first it became apparent that there was going to be more honey than they had expected, and their hopes began to go nervously upward. When the opening of a hive showed a good super, with all its combs smooth and white, the boys chuckled, and Bob exulted in its weight as he lugged it into the house. Some colonies had as many as three supers like this, but many had only one or two, and some, where the colony had swarmed, only a worthless and unfinished set of combs.

Beside these, there were the extracting supers, containing a good deal of honey, but they did not intend to extract at once. The comb honey came first.

The piles of supers accumulated in the little room faster than Alice could remove the sections. With rising hope, the boys worked feverishly, and shortly after noon they carried in the last super. Then they set to work to assist Alice at the sorting and grading.

Every section had to be looked at and estimated, the propolis and wax scraped from the wood, and then placed carefully in the shipping-cases. The emptied supers were put outdoors; the supers with unfinished sections were set by themselves. All three worked hard that afternoon, and much of the next day, but it was not till nearly supper-time that they emptied the last super, and filled the last shipping case.

There were 3840 sections. Of these, 1200 ranked as "Fancy," and about 600 as "No. 1." Nearly 2000 sections were unsaleable.

"These we can eat ourselves," remarked Alice.

"We ought to get .50 a dozen for the best, and for the 'No. 1'," Bob estimated. "That comes to--"

"0," said Carl, who was a lightning calculator. "Why, that's not so bad! Then all those unsaleable sections must have at least a thousand pounds of honey in them that we can extract. Besides, there must be three or four hundred dollars' worth of extracted honey on the hives which we'll be able to sell later."

"Hurrah!" shouted Bob. "We'll pull through, after all."

"Yes, and with something to the good!" cried Alice.

In their relief and joy they joined hands and performed a wild dance around the shipping cases. It did not last long, though, for they were tired and stiff with bending over the supers; they were gummy with propolis and wax, and sticky with honey, and on the window was a cluster of bees the size of a small swarm, which had been carried in with the honey. After dark Carl brushed them off into a bucket, carried them out, and poured them down in front of a weak hive. They crawled gladly in, and as they all had their sacs full of honey, they were admitted. A honey-laden bee is always welcome to any hive.

The comb honey had to be sold at once, for the time was growing short. Bob proposed that he should go over to Morton and make the sale in Toronto by telegraph, or by long-distance telephone if he could get connections. It was a good plan, but Carl was anxious to be on hand to hear how the negotiations went; Alice was no less eager, and was, moreover, unwilling to be left alone at the cabin, so it ended in preparations for all of them to go to Morton and make the deal together.

"Above all things, we must be careful to leave the cabin bee-tight," Alice warned them. "Just fancy the bees finding a way in. They'd carry all that honey back to the hives before we got home."

So they plugged every chink in the logs most carefully with wet clay and moss, looked to the wire screens, and even blocked up the chimney. The cabin door they fastened with a big padlock and chain, and Alice packed up half a dozen of the best sections for a gift to Mr. Farr.

"No use trying to sweeten him," Bob warned her. "He'll take it, but he'll be as hard as nails with us all the same. He keeps business and friendship separate, you know."

"Anyway I'm going to take him the honey. I rather like him, you know," Alice persisted.

They went down in the boat, a slow and rather lazy drift with the current in the warm morning sunshine. About noon they reached Morton, and found that they could get telegraph connections at the railway station, and long-distance telephone at the hotel.

As a first step, Bob telegraphed to the headquarters of the Provincial Bee-keepers' Association to learn what the season had been throughout the country, and how prices were ranging. It was two o'clock in the afternoon before the reply came; the waiting had been something of a strain, and Bob looked nervous when he ripped open the yellow envelope, but then his face brightened.

"Splendid! Listen to this!" he cried.

"'Honey crop reported about one third normal throughout Ontario. Severe drought. Members advised to hold for good prices. Market firm.'"

"The drought must have been worse with them than it was with us," said Carl. "Well, prices are likely to go 'way up, and we ought to have a chance to make some money."

"It looks so," replied Bob, "and now I want you to let me do the negotiating. I'm an ignoramus at handling bees, but I think I can sell honey better than either of you."

"Who'll you sell it to?" asked Alice.

"I'm going to try Mr. Brown, of Brown & Son, you know, the wholesale grocery people. We used to buy a lot of stock from him for the store. I've often bought from him by long-distance, and I'll see if I can't sell to him the same way. Anyhow, I think he'll give us a square deal."

The telephone was not in a booth, but merely attached to the wall of the hotel office. However, there was no one in sight or hearing at the time, and they might as well have been in a private room. Bob called the long-distance connection, and after about fifteen minutes' waiting got a reply from the Toronto grocery dealers. Alice and Carl stood beside him, and listened breathlessly to the conversation.

"Is that Mr. Brown?" cried Bob. "This is Bob Harman--of Harman's Corners, you know. No, I'm not there just now. I'm running a bee-ranch up north. A bee-ranch. Honey-bees, you know. Yes. Yes, we have a lot of splendid comb-honey. Are you in the market?"

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