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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Happy: The life of a bee
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Title: Happy: The life of a bee
Author: Walter Flavius McCaleb
Illustrator: Clement B. Davis
Release date: June 10, 2022 [eBook #68284]
Language: English
Original publication: United States: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1917
Credits: Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HAPPY: THE LIFE OF
A BEE ***
AS IT LOOKED TO HAPPY FROM THE KNOLL
HAPPY
The LIFE OF A BEE
by
Walter Flavius McCaleb
Illustrations
and Decorations
by
Clement B. Davis
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
Happy: the Life of a Bee
Copyright, 1917, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
Published April, 1917
D-R
To My Mother
Contents
CHAP. PAGE
Foreword 9
I. The Awakening 15
II. The Cell-house 20
III. Mysteries 24
IV. The First Flight 28
V. Robbery 34
VI. Crip 40
VII. Crip, the Wise 45
VIII. A Gleaner of Honey 50
IX. A Storm 56
X. The Aftermath 60
XI. The Fight with the Web-worms 65
XII. The Wounding of Crip 72
XIII. The Swarming Fever 77
XIV. Perils 86
XV. A Midnight Adventure 95
XVI. Tidings of Woe 101
XVII. The Death of the Queen 106
XVIII. Crip and the Impostor 112
XIX. Farewell 116
Foreword
Years ago, banished into the far Rio Grande region, I became a keeper of
bees. As a child I had loved them, even caressed them, and many a time have
I held them one and a hundred at once in my hands. I knew their every mind
and their wilful ways; I loved their sweet contrarieties, their happy acceptation
of the inevitable, and their joyous facing of life.
So it came about that, grown older, I returned to my old engagements, and,
far from human habitation, amid the wild, brush-set wilderness enveloping
Lake Espantoso, I built my house and brought my bees. And, too, there came
with me a little Shadow, and at his heels a shepherd-dog. There, in that land of
boundless spaces, we waited and watched and dreamed.
The years went by silently, uneventfully—day following day noiselessly, as
sounds die in the sea. Spring came with its bounty of flowers; and fast on the
trail of retreating winter they leaped forth in multitudes: daisy and phlox and
poppy and bluebonnet and Indian feather and anemone all tossed their heads
and flung their beautiful wings into the sunlight. The earth was sweet with the
wild, fresh sweetness of flowers. Even the cacti and the brush blossomed like
roses of Cashmere, hiding their thorns amid a profusion of loveliness.
Then the winter came, brief, primordial in its changes. The brown earth and
the brown-gray sweep of the horizon, stretching inimitably away, wakened in
rueful contrast to the riot of the vernal months.
Season after season went by until, indeed, I seemed but a ghost fluttering in
and out among the whirling days. Overhead a sky of perennial blue; in my face
the winds from every zone, and in my ears the somnolent sounds of the years
gone to dust. I was overwhelmed by the impalpable significance of the
primeval world—and by the mysterious unfoldings of life.
Hours at a time I sat amid my little brothers, the bees, now and again
catching up the harmonies of their existence and marveling much at the divine
rhythm of their speech. The longer I sat and brooded the more I grew into their
lives, until I seemed to know their every mood and to sound the mysteries of
their being.
They seemed to know me and to love me. Often in their flight, tired and
overladen, they would rest for a moment on my sleeve, and then away. Many a
one did I raise from the earth where he had fallen—all too like our fellow-
mortals—weighted down by burdens too heavy to bear. And how happy I was
to see them, with ever so little help, again take wing and fly heartened to their
homes. I have sometimes thought that, after all, men are but bees in their
ultimate essence.
Thus, with the passing years, I, a keeper of bees, came to be one of them;
and even now, though far distant, I wander in dreams through the open aisles
about which their white houses cluster, and through that sweet rose-garden.
My cottage was framed in roses. Clambering Maréschal Neills, yellow as the
sun; and Augusta Victorias, white as the snows of dead winters, leaned upon
the walls; and all about varieties innumerable and known only to my mother,
lifted their heads and prayed for the fulfilment of the law.
One rose there was of all roses the most beautiful. She called it the Queen
of the Prairie. Red it was as the blood of the martyrs; and, huge as a lotus leaf,
it blew the most wonderful of flowers. Here was my special pride. I loved it
because of her hands; I loved it because it aspired toward perfection.
Early in a morning now gone—a gorgeous spring dawning—I rose and went
into the garden, as was my wont. The sun had not yet risen, and there was in
the air a brooding, a sound of far-away symphonies. From rose to rose I
turned, until presently I came to the most marvelous of them all. Wonderful
beyond words, I drew it to me—a Queen of the Prairie. I breathed its fragrance,
thrilled at its beauty, when, with a start, I saw deep within the folds of its heart a
little bee, drowsing in sleep. I could but gaze and wonder, and while I gazed
one leg quivered a moment and then was still.
It is the story of his life that I would tell.
I plucked the rose and bore it away with me; and even now, as I write, its
crumbled leaves lie over him in a memorial urn; and I shall be happy if I have
truly caught the meaning of his life, which carried with it so much of the
sweetness of endeavor, so much of the joy of living, and so much of love for
the Kingdom of Light.
Beechhurst, Long Island,
March, 1917.
HAPPY
THE LIFE OF A BEE
CHAPTER ONE
The Awakening
My name is “Happy”—at least that is what the bees have always called me;
and well I remember the first time I heard the word. I suppose I was joyfully
flapping my wings at having emerged, white and feeble, but a living being, from
the darkness of my cell, when I heard a queer, thin voice saying: “He[1] isn’t a
minute old, and yet what a fuss he’s making with his wings! Let’s call him
‘Happy’!”
All around I could hear little noises of approval; any number of strange faces
came hurrying to look me over; two or three actually jostled me, and one even
drew his tongue across my face—and for the first time I tasted honey. I found
out afterward that this was the customary salutation to all newly-born bees. Of
course I was too young to appreciate all they said and did, and I soon forgot
the jubilation, for I happened, in my wanderings, upon a cell brimming with
honey, and, without asking permission, I ate and ate until I could not hold
another mouthful.
Then a strange drowsiness seized me, and I scarcely knew which way to
turn. But I fell in with what I afterward learned were nurse bees, and they took
me in charge. Presently, hanging fast to the comb with my half-a-dozen legs, I
fell asleep.
Wonderful things had happened in a very few minutes. It seemed to me, as I
began to drowse and the light to fade, that once more I was falling asleep in
my cell, whence I had so shortly emerged. The something that had awakened
within me, that had caused me to turn round and round in my cell, and that had
cried gently in my ear, “See the light—cut your way through the door and live,”
sang me to sleep.
When I awoke, for a moment I imagined I was still in my cell. I thought I
could hear my neighbors, on all sides of me, biting at the wax doors that closed
them in, and that I could see the thin, transparent shutters giving way before
the eager heads which appeared in the doorways—tiny, whitish-black heads,
with huge eyes that slowly issued from the dungeon-like cells. I, too,
unconsciously trying my mandibles, must have been biting on the combs about
me, for presently I was stopped by an important-looking bee that cried, sharply,
“What are you about, youngster?”
He was rough to me, but I had learned that one must not bite the combs just
for the pleasure of biting; it began to dawn on me that it cost infinite labor to
build the thousands of little six-sided houses which, laid side by side, made up
the combs of our hive. And almost before I knew it, I came to have vast respect
for all the things I could see about me, for the things I felt lay out there in the
unexplored depths of our home, and for the things which existed only in the
consciousness of the colony.
I was still so young I walked but feebly; but everywhere I was greeted as a
brother. Some of the little fellows climbed over me in their hurry; some of them,
hustling about me, almost knocked me from the combs; and one actually
stopped me, mumbling something I could not understand; but his meaning was
soon made clear. I suppose he said:
“I see you are a novice; you have on your swaddling-clothes. This will never
do. I must clean you up.”
Whereat he proceeded, in spite of my protest, to lick me all over and to rub
my legs and body, saying, “This white powder must come off; you can’t stand
here looking like that; you must get busy and be a real bee!”
When he had finished with me I found that I was no longer so wobbly, that
my wings moved more freely, and, to my astonishment, a smart little bee came
up to me and said:
“I note that you are changed; you are no longer grayish-white, but look like
everybody else; your eyes are gray-black, a little delicate fuzz is in the middle
of your back, and beautiful alternating black and gold bands make up the rest
of your body. You look like a real somebody.”
Then he hurried on, and I heard him make the same speech to another bee.
Still heeding the small voice, I had gone but a little way on my round of
exploration when I plumped into the biggest bee! He was in such a hurry he
nearly ran me down. As he passed I saw on his two rearmost legs great balls
of yellow-looking stuff.
“Out of the way!” he called. “The bread-man! The bread-man!”
Every one seemed to have understood except me, and even I, a moment
later, heard the cry and gave way to a newly-arrived bread-man. Just what
character of bee he was I had yet to learn, and little did I then dream that I, too,
should one day be a bread-man, carrying great baskets of bread on my legs.
By this time I was again hungry, and presently, as I traversed a white strip of
comb, I came upon a great store—cell after cell, like a thousand open pots, full
to overflowing with honey. I was on the point of helping myself when I was
turned away.
“This is not to be eaten,” a worker said. “We are ripening it and soon it will be
sealed for the winter. On over there you will find some.”
He was busy and gave no further heed to me, but as I turned away I noticed
fully a hundred bees standing ever so still—fanning, fanning with their wings
the open cells to hasten the ripening processes. He left unanswered my wish
to know what the ripening of honey meant—and the winter.
As indicated by the worker, I soon found plenty of honey and quite gorged
myself. This time I took away with me a supply in my honey-sac. Again I felt
sleepy, and started back to my cell. Finally I reached it. I was dumfounded to
find that it had been over-hauled and that the bread-men had filled it with
shining yellow loaves. Wondering, I fell asleep hanging between the combs.
The last sound that I heard had been a long, low murmur, which afterward I
came to know to be the voice of my hive singing an immemorial hymn, a hymn,
I have been told, the bees have sung for a hundred times a thousand years.
[1] It is well known that all worker bees are females. But I have changed
Happy to the other sex. Here I have taken a liberty, warranted, I think,
under the circumstances.—The Author.
CHAPTER TWO
The Cell House
How long I slept I cannot say, but I was awakened by a sharp blow which
nearly knocked me from the combs. So nearly was I toppled over that I seized
the first thing my feet fell upon. I felt immediately, by the way I was being
dragged about, that I had grappled something dangerous; and imagine my
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