The Bee-Master of Warrilow

THE old bee-garden lay on the verge of the wood. Seen from a distance it looked like a great white china bowl brimming over with roses; but a nearer view changed the porcelain t...

It was an old saying of the bee-master’s, and it came again slowly from his lips now, as he knelt by the camp-fire, watching the caress of the flames round the bubbling pot. We...

THE midday sun shone warm from a cloudless sky. Up in the highest elm-tops the south-west wind kept the chattering starlings gently swinging, but below in the bee-garden scarce...

“QUEENS?” said the Bee-Master of Warrilow, as he filled his pipe with the blackest and strongest tobacco I had ever set eyes on; “queens? There are hundreds of hives here, as yo...

THE bee-master, explaining to an interested novice the wonders of the modern bar-frame hive, often finds himself confronted by a very awkward question. He is at no loss for word...

FROM the lane, where it dipped down between its rose-mantled hedges, nothing of the bee-garden could be seen. The dense barricade of briar and hawthorn hid all but the lichened...

“BOOKS,” said the Bee-Master of Warrilow, looking round through grey wreaths of tobacco-smoke at his crowded shelves, “books seem to tell ye most things ne’ersome-matter; but wh...

THE bee-mistress looked at my card, then put its owner under a like careful scrutiny. In the shady garden where we stood, the sunlight fell in quivering golden splashes round ou...

WE were in the great high-road of Warrilow bee-farm, and had stopped midway down in the heart of the waxen city. On every hand the hives stretched away in long trim rows, and th...

THE light snow covered the path through the bee-farm, and whitened the roof of every hive. In the red winter twilight it looked more like a human city than ever, with its long d...

THERE are few things more mystifying to the student of bee-life than the way in which winter is passed in the hive. Probably nineteen out of every twenty people, who take a mere...

WHEN professional breeders of the honey-bee have succeeded in producing the much-desired non-swarming race, and swarming has become a thing of the past, naturalists of the old “...

LONG, lithe, and sinewy, with three score years of sunburn on his keen, gnarled face, and the sure stride of a mountain goat, the Bee-Master of Warrilow struck you at once as a...

STANDING in the lane without, and looking up at the grey forbidding walls of the old abbey, you wondered how anything human could exist on the other side; but, once past the hea...

AMONG the innumerable scraps of more or less erroneous information on hive-life, dished up by the popular newspapers in course of the year’s round, there is occasionally one whi...

“IN that bit of forest,” said the bee-master, indicating a long stretch of neighbouring woodland with one comprehensive sweep of his thumb, “there are tons of honey waiting for...

THERE are three great tokens of the coming of spring in the country—the elm-blossom, the cry of the young lambs, and the first rich song of the awakening bees.

Yet no one could mistake their flight for the summer flight. It is not the straight-away eager rush up into the blue vault of the sunny morning—high away over hedgerow and villa...

THERE never comes, in early April, that first bright hot day which means the beginning of outdoor work on the bee-farm, but I fall to thinking of old times with a great longing...

STUDENTS of old books on the honey-bee—and perhaps there has been more written about bees during the last two thousand years than of all other creatures put together—do not quit...

THE sweet summer dusk was over the bee-farm. On every side, as I passed through, the starlight showed me the crowding roofs of the city of hives; and beyond these I could just m...

WHERE the bee-garden lay, under its sheltering crest of pine-wood, the April sunbeams seemed to gather, as water gathers in the lap of enclosing hills. Out in the lane the sweet...

IT was a strange procession coming up the red-tiled path of the bee garden. The bee-master led the way in his Sunday clothes, followed by a gorgeous footman, powdered and cockad...

STUDENTS of the ways of the honey-bee find many things to marvel at, but little to excite their wonder more than the unique system of ventilation established in the hive.

POPULAR beliefs as to the ways of the honey-bee, unlike those relating to many other insects, are surprisingly accurate, so far as they go. But, dealing with such a complex thin...

IN the hedgerow that surrounds the bee-garden the wrens and robins have been singing all the morning long. Still a few pale sulphur buds remain on the evening-primroses. The bal...

THE bee-keepers in English villages to-day are all familiar—too familiar at times—with the holiday-making stranger at the garden gate inquiring for honey. Somehow or other the d...

ON Warrilow Bee-Farm, where it lay under the green lip of the Sussex Downs, there was always food for wonder, whether the year was at its ebb or its flow. But in July of a good...

IF you go to the bee-garden early of a fine summer’s morning you will be struck by the singular quiet of the place. All the woods and hedgerows are ringing with busy life. The r...

IT was sunny spring in the bee-garden. The thick elder-hedge to the north was full of young green leaf; everywhere the trim footways between the hives were marked by yellow band...

COUNTRY wanderings towards the end of summer, even now when the twentieth century is two decades old, still bring to light many ancient and curious things. Within an hour of Lon...