As I approached, the sharp report of the gun rang out, and a little cloud of birds went chippering fearsomely away over the hedgerow. The old man watched them as they flew off dark against the snowy hillside. He threw out the cartridge-cases disgustedly.
“Blue-tits!” said he. “They are the great pest of the bee-keeper in winter time. When the snow covers the ground, and the frost has driven all insect-life deep into the crevices of the trees, all the blue-caps for miles round trek to the bee-gardens. Of course, if the bees would only keep indoors they would be safe enough. But the same cause that drives the birds in lures the bees out. The snow reflects the sunlight up through the hive-entrances, and they think the bright days of spring have come, and out they flock to their death. And winter is just the time when every single bee is valuable. In summer a few hundreds more or less make little difference, when in every hive young bees are maturing at the rate of several thousands a day to take the place of those that perish. But now every bee captured by the tits is an appreciable loss to the colony. They are all nurse-bees in the winter-hives, and on them depends the safe hatching-out of the first broods in the spring season. So the bee-keeper would do well to include a shot-gun among his paraphernalia, unless he is willing to feed all the starving tits of the countryside at the risk of his year’s harvest.”
“But the blue-cap,” he went on, “is not always content to wait for his breakfast until the bees voluntarily bring it to him. He has a trick of enticing them out of the hive which is often successful even in the coldest weather. Come into the extracting-house yonder, and I may be able to show you what I mean.”
He led the way to a row of outbuildings which flanked the northern boundary of the garden and formed additional shelter from the blustering gale. A window of the extracting-house overlooked the whole extent of hives. Opening this from within with as little noise as possible, the bee-master put a strong field-glass into my hand.
“Now that we are out of sight,” he said, “the tits will soon be back again. There they come—whole families of them together! Now watch that green hive over there under the apple-tree.”