Old-fashioned bee-keeping is not always a matter of straw. Box-hives, without, of course, the modern inside furniture, have been in use nearly as long as the straw skep; and the hives in the garden are of this ancient pattern. The old green hive is keeping well up to its reputation. Already it is the centre of a swirling crowd of bees, and, as you look, a dense black stream of them is pouring out of the entrance so fast and furiously that it is almost impossible to distinguish what they are. And the old wild trek-song is growing louder and deeper with every moment, a rich vibrant tenor note unlike any other sound in nature. There is no doubt at all of its import, as you stand in the wing-darkened sunshine, caught up in the excitement of it all, and feeling much as if you were facing a tearing sou’-west gale. Every bee of the twenty or thirty thousand volleying madly to and fro overhead, is singing her bravest and loudest. There is only one meaning to the whole gargantuan chorus. It is sheer jubilation melodised: a wild, glad song of freedom, as though not a bee amongst them had ever before set eyes on the sunshine and the wealth of an English May. The great door-key, a ponderous, antiquated piece of metal, beats out its clanging note, and the swarm lifts higher and higher into the blue. Gradually the sombre mist of bees draws closer together, looking now like a little dark cloud strayed from a forgotten summer storm. Now it sails slowly northward, and lightens, as the sunlight is caught by the beating wings as in a net of silver; and now it veers away into the very eye of the sun, and changes into black, revolving tracery again; whirring wheels within wheels of insect-life, spinning-wheels making thread to weave the garments of a whole nation, and humming as never spinning-wheels hummed before. But the beginning of the end is nigh; the time of singing is nearly over. The old beeman stops his weird tom-tomming, throws down key and pan, and points to the topmost branch of a young apple-sapling. You see a little black knot of bees clinging to it no larger than a pigeon’s egg. A moment later, and it has grown to the size of a double fist, and another moment sees it twice this size again, as the flying bees stream towards it from all directions. Now it is as big as a quart measure, and the branch is slowly bending down under its weight. In an incredibly short space of time the whole swarm has joined the cluster; they hang together in a long, brown, glistening, cigar-shaped mass, well-nigh touching the ground, and the wild, merry music is over for good.