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LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY
LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY JOHN BURROUGHS PREFACE
I am aware that for the most part the title of my book is an allegory
rather than an actual description; but readers who have followed me
heretofore I trust will not be puzzled or misled in the present case
by any want of literalness in the matter of the title. If the name
carries with it a suggestion of the wild and delectable in nature of
the free and ungarnered harvests which the wilderness everywhere
affords to the observing eye and ear it will prove sufficiently
explicit for my purpose.
ESOPUS-ON-HUDSON N. Y.
CONTENTS
I. THE PASTORAL BEES
II. SHARP EYES
III. STRAWBERRIES
IV. IS IT GOING TO RAIN?
V. SPECKLED TROUT
VI. BIRDS AND BIRDS
VII. A BED OF BOUGHS
VIII. BIRDS'-NESTING
IX. THE HALCYON IN CANADA
INDEX
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
JOHN BURROUGHS
From a photograph
WHIP-POOR WILL
From a drawing by L. A. Fuertes
TROUT STREAM
From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason
YELLOW BIRCHES
From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason
LEDGES
From a photograph by Herbert W. Gleason
KINGFISHER (colored)
From a drawing by L. A. Fuertes
LOCUSTS AND WILD HONEY
I
THE PASTORAL BEES
The honey-bee goes forth from the hive in spring like the dove from
Noah's ark and it is not till after many days that she brings back the
olive leaf which in this case is a pellet of golden pollen upon each
hip usually obtained from the alder or the swamp willow. In a country
where maple sugar is made the bees get their first taste of sweet from
the sap as it flows from the spiles or as it dries and is condensed
upon the sides of the buckets. They will sometimes in their eagerness
come about the boiling-place and be overwhelmed by the steam and the
smoke. But bees appear to be more eager for bread in the spring than
for honey: their supply of this article perhaps does not keep as well
as their stores of the latter; hence fresh bread in the shape of new
pollen is diligently sought for. My bees get their first supplies from
the catkins of the willows. How quickly they find them out! If but one
catkin opens anywhere within range a bee is on hand that very hour to
rifle it and it is a most pleasing experience to stand near the hive
some mild April day and see them come pouring in with their little
baskets packed with this first fruitage of the spring. They will have
new bread now; they have been to mill in good earnest; see their dusty
coats and the golden grist they bring home with them.
When a bee brings pollen into the hive he advances to the cell in which
it is to be deposited and kicks it off as one might his overalls or
rubber boots making one foot help the other; then he walks off without
ever looking behind him; another bee one of the indoor hands comes
along and rams it down with his head and packs it into the cell as the
dairymaid packs butter into a firkin with a ladle.
The first spring wild-flowers whose sly faces among the dry leaves and
rocks are so welcome are rarely frequented by the bee. The anemone
the hepatica the bloodroot the arbutus the numerous violets the
spring beauty the corydalis etc. woo all lovers of nature but
seldom woo the honey-loving bee. The arbutus lying low and keeping
green all winter attains to perfume and honey but only once have I
seen it frequented by bees.
The first honey is perhaps obtained from the flowers of the red maple
and the golden willow. The latter sends forth a wild delicious
perfume. The sugar maple blooms a little later and from its silken
tassels a rich nectar is gathered. My bees will not label these
different varieties for me as I really wish they would. Honey from the
maple a tree so clean and wholesome and full of such virtues every
way would be something to put one's tongue to. Or that from the
blossoms of the apple the peach the cherry the quince the currant
--one would like a card of each of these varieties to note their
peculiar qualities. The apple-blossom is very important to the bees. A
single swarm has been known to gain twenty pounds in weight during its
continuance. Bees love the ripened fruit too and in August and
September will such themselves tipsy upon varieties such as the sops-
of-wine.
The interval between the blooming of the fruit-trees and that of the
clover and the raspberry is bridged over in many localities by the
honey locust. What a delightful summer murmur these trees send forth at
this season! I know nothing about the quality of the honey but it
ought to keep well. But when the red raspberry blooms the fountains of
plenty are unsealed indeed; what a commotion about the hives then
especially in localities where it is extensively cultivated as in
places along the Hudson! The delicate white clover which begins to
bloom about the same time is neglected; even honey itself is passed by
for this modest colorless all but odorless flower. A field of these
berries in June sends forth a continuous murmur like that of an
enormous hive. The honey is not so white as that obtained from clover
but it is easier gathered; it is in shallow cups while that of the
clover is in deep tubes. The bees are up and at it before sunrise and
it takes a brisk shower to drive them in. But the clover blooms later
and blooms everywhere and is the staple source of supply of the finest
quality of honey. The red clover yields up its stores only to the
longer proboscis of the bumblebee else the bee pasturage of our
agricultural districts would be unequaled. I do not know from what the
famous honey of Chamouni in the Alps is made but it can hardly surpass
our best products. The snow-white honey of Anatolia in Asiatic Turkey
which is regularly sent to Constantinople for the use of the grand
seignior and the ladies of his seraglio is obtained from the cotton
plant which makes me think that the white clover does not flourish
there. The white clover is indigenous with us; its seeds seem latent in
the ground and the application of certain stimulants to the soil such
as wood ashes causes them to germinate and spring up.
The rose with all its beauty and perfume yields no honey to the bee
unless the wild species be sought by the bumblebee.
Among the humbler plants let me not forget the dandelion that so early
dots the sunny slopes and upon which the bee languidly grazes
wallowing to his knees in the golden but not over-succulent pasturage.
>From the blooming rye and wheat the bee gathers pollen also from the
obscure blossoms of Indian corn. Among weeds catnip is the great
favorite. It lasts nearly the whole season and yields richly. It could
no doubt be profitably cultivated in some localities and catnip honey
would be a novelty in the market. It would probably partake of the
aromatic properties of the plant from which it was derived.
Among your stores of honey gathered before midsummer you may chance
upon a card or mayhap only a square inch or two of comb in which the
liquid is as transparent as water of a delicious quality with a
slight flavor of mint. This is the product of the linden or basswood
of all the trees in our forest the one most beloved by the bees.
Melissa the goddess of honey has placed her seal upon this tree. The
wild swarms in the woods frequently reap a choice harvest from it. I
have seen a mountain-side thickly studded with it its straight tall
smooth light gray shaft carrying its deep green crown far aloft like
the tulip-tree or the maple.
In some of the Northwestern States there are large forests of it and
the amount of honey reported stored by strong 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 in the
hive is very precarious. They look like the giants the lords of the
swarm but they are really the tools. Their loud threatening hum has
no sting to back it up and their size and noise make them only the
more conspicuous marks for the birds. They are all candidates for the
favors of the queen a fatal felicity that is vouchsafed to but one.
Fatal I say for it is a singular fact in the history of bees that the
fecundation of the queen costs the male his life. Yet day after day the
drones go forth threading the mazes of the air in hopes of meeting her
whom to meet is death. The queen only leaves the hive once except when
she leads away the swarm and as she makes no appointment with the
male but wanders here and there drones enough are provided to meet
all the contingencies of the case.
One advantage at least results from this system of things: there is
no incontinence among the males in this republic!
Toward the close of the season say in July or August the fiat goes
forth that the drones must die; there is no further use for them. Then
the poor creatures how they are huddled and hustled about trying to
hide in corners and byways! There is no loud defiant humming now but
abject fear seizes them. They cower like hunted criminals. I have seen
a dozen or more of them wedge themselves into a small space between the
glass and the comb where the bees could not get hold of them or where
they seemed to be overlooked in the general slaughter. They will also
crawl outside and hide under the edges of the hive. But sooner or later
they are all killed or kicked out. The drone makes no resistance
except to pull back and try to get away; but (putting yourself in his
place) with one bee a-hold of your collar or the hair of your head and
another a-hold of each arm or leg and still another feeling for your
waistbands with his sting the odds are greatly against you.
It is a singular fact also that the queen is made not born. If the
entire population of Spain or Great Britain were the offspring of one
mother it might be found necessary to hit upon some device by which a
royal baby could be manufactured out of an ordinary one or else give
up the fashion of royalty. All the bees in the hive have a common
parentage and the queen and the worker are the same in the egg and in
the chick; the patent of royalty is in the cell and in the food; the
cell being much larger and the food a peculiar stimulating kind of
jelly. In certain contingencies such as the loss of the queen with no
eggs in the royal cells the workers take the larva of an ordinary bee
enlarge the cell by taking in the two adjoining ones and nurse it and
stuff it and coddle it till at the end of sixteen days it comes out a
queen. But ordinarily in the natural course of events the young queen
is kept a prisoner in her cell till the old queen has left with the
swarm. Later on the unhatched queen is guarded against the reigning
queen who only wants an opportunity to murder every royal scion in the
hive. At this time both the queens the one a prisoner and the other at
large pipe defiance at each other a shrill fine trumpet-like note
that any ear will at once recognize. This challenge not being allowed
to be accepted by either party is followed in a day or two by the
abdication of the reigning queen; she leads out the swarm and her
successor is liberated by her keepers who in her time abdicates in
favor of the next younger. When the bees have decided that no more
swarms can issue the reigning queen is allowed to use her stiletto
upon her unhatched sisters. Cases have been known where two queens
issued at the same time when a mortal combat ensued encouraged by the
workers who formed a ring about them but showed no preference and
recognized the victor as the lawful sovereign. For these and many other
curious facts we are indebted to the blind Huber.
It is worthy of note that the position of the queen cells is always
vertical while that of the drones and workers is horizontal; majesty
stands on its head which fact may be a part of the secret.
The notion has always very generally prevailed that the queen of the
bees is an absolute ruler and issues her royal orders to willing
subjects. Hence Napoleon the First sprinkled the symbolic bees over the
imperial mantle that bore the arms of his dynasty; and in the country
of the Pharaohs the bee was used as the emblem of a people sweetly
submissive to the orders of its king. But the fact is a swarm of bees
is an absolute democracy and kings and despots can find no warrant in
their example. The power and authority are entirely vested in the great
mass the workers. They furnish all the brains and foresight of the
colony and administer its affairs. Their word is law and both king
and queen must obey. They regulate the swarming and give the signal
for the swarm to issue from the hive; they select and make ready the
tree in the woods and conduct the queen to it.
The peculiar office and sacredness of the queen consists in the fact
that she is the mother of the swarm and the bees love and cherish her
as a mother and not as a sovereign. She is the sole female bee in the
hive and the swarm clings to her because she is their life. Deprived
of their queen and of all brood from which to rear one the swarm
loses all heart and soon dies though there be an abundance of honey in
the hive.
The common bees will never use their sting upon the queen; if she is to
be disposed of they starve her to death; and the queen herself will
sting nothing but royalty--nothing but a rival queen.
The queen I say is the mother bee; it is undoubtedly complimenting
her to call her a queen and invest her with regal authority yet she is
a superb creature and looks every inch a queen. It is an event to
distinguish her amid the mass of bees when the swarm alights; it
awakens a thrill Before you have seen a queen you wonder if this or
that bee which seems a little larger than its fellows is not she but
when you once really set eyes upon her you do not doubt for a moment.
You know _that_ is the queen. That long elegant shining feminine-
looking creature can be none less than royalty. How beautifully her
body tapers how distinguished she looks how deliberate her movements!
The bees do not fall down before her but caress her and touch her
person. The drones or males are large bees too but coarse blunt
broad-shouldered masculine-looking. There is but one fact or incident
in the life of the queen that looks imperial and authoritative : Huber
relates that when the old queen is restrained in her movements by the
workers and prevented from destroying the young queens in their cells
she assumes a peculiar attitude and utters a note that strikes every
bee motionless and makes every head bow; while this sound lasts not a
bee stirs but all look abashed and humbled: yet whether the emotion is
one of fear or reverence or of sympathy with the distress of the
queen mother is hard to determine. The moment it ceases and she
advances again toward the royal cells the bees bite and pull and
insult her as before.
I always feel that I have missed some good fortune if I am away from
home when my bees swarm. What a delightful summer sound it is! how they
come pouring out of the hive twenty or thirty thousand bees each
striving to get out first! It is as when the dam gives way and lets the
waters loose; it is a flood of bees which breaks upward into the air
and becomes a maze of whirling black lines to the eye and a soft
chorus of myriad musical sounds to the ear. This way and that way they
drift now contracting now expanding rising sinking growing thick
about some branch or bush then dispersing and massing at some other
point till finally they begin to alight in earnest when in a few
moments the whole swarm is collected upon the branch forming a bunch
perhaps as large as a two-gallon measure. Here they will hang from one
to three or four hours or until a suitable tree in the woods is looked
up when if they have not been offered a hive in the mean time they
are up and off. In hiving them if any accident happens to the queen
the enterprise miscarries at once. One day I shook a swarm from a small
pear-tree into a tin pan set the pan down on a shawl spread beneath
the tree and put the hive over it. The bees presently all crawled up
into it and all seemed to go well for ten or fifteen minutes when I
observed that something was wrong; the bees began to buzz excitedly and
to rush about in a bewildered manner then they took to the wing and
all returned to the parent stock. On lifting up the pan I found
beneath it the queen with three or four other bees. She had been one of
the first to fall had missed the pan in her descent and I had set it
upon her. I conveyed her tenderly back to the hive but either the
accident terminated fatally with her or else the young queen had been
liberated in the interim and one of them had fallen in combat for it
was ten days before the swarm issued a second time.
No one to my knowledge has ever seen the bees house-hunting in the
woods. Yet there can be no doubt that they look up new quarters either
before or on the day the swarm issues. For all bees are wild bees and
incapable of domestication; that is the instinct to go back to nature
and take up again their wild abodes in the trees is never eradicated.
Years upon years of life in the apiary seem to have no appreciable
effect towards their final permanent domestication. That every new
swarm contemplates migrating to the woods seems confirmed by the fact
that they will only come out when the weather is favorable to such an
enterprise and that a passing cloud or a sudden wind after the bees
are in the air will usually drive them back into the parent hive. Or
an attack upon them with sand or gravel or loose earth or water will
quickly cause them to change their plans. I would not even say but
that when the bees are going off the apparently absurd practice now
entirely discredited by regular bee keepers but still resorted to by
unscientific folk of beating upon tin pans blowing horns and
creating an uproar generally might not be without good results.
Certainly not by drowning the "orders" of the queen but by impressing
the bees as with some unusual commotion in nature. Bees are easily
alarmed and disconcerted and I have known runaway swarms to be brought
down by a farmer plowing in the field who showered them with handfuls
of loose soil.
I love to see a swarm go off--if it is not mine and if mine must go
I want to be on hand to see the fun. It is a return to first principles
again by a very direct route. The past season I witnessed two such
escapes. One swarm had come out the day before and without alighting
had returned to the parent hive--some hitch in the plan perhaps or
may be the queen had found her wings too weak. The next day they came
out again and were hived. But something offended them or else the tree
in the woods--perhaps some royal old maple or birch holding its head
high above all others with snug spacious irregular chambers and
galleries--had too many attractions; for they were presently discovered
filling the air over the garden and whirling excitedly around.
Gradually they began to drift over the street; a moment more and they
had become separated from the other bees and drawing together in a
more compact mass or cloud away they went a humming flying vortex of
bees the queen in the centre and the swarm revolving around her as a
pivot--over meadows across creeks and swamps straight for the heart
of the mountain about a mile distant --slow at first so that the
youth who gave chase kept up with them but increasing their speed till
only a foxhound could have kept them in sight. I saw their pursuer
laboring up the side of the mountain; saw his white shirtsleeves gleam
as he entered the woods; but he returned a few hours afterward without
any clue as to the particular tree in which they had taken refuge out
of the ten thousand that covered the side of the mountain.
The other swarm came out about one o'clock of a hot July day and at
once showed symptoms that alarmed the keeper who however threw
neither dirt nor water. The house was situated on a steep side-hill.
Behind it the ground rose for a hundred rods or so at an angle of
nearly forty-five degrees and the prospect of having to chase them up
this hill if chase them we should promised a good trial of wind at
least; for it soon became evident that their course lay in this
direction. Determined to have a hand or rather a foot in the chase I
threw off my coat and hurried on before the swarm was yet fairly
organized and under way. The route soon led me into a field of standing
rye every spear of which held its head above my own. Plunging
recklessly forward my course marked to those watching from below by
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