The children discover bees...and feast on the Chateau's honey...

| Friday, October 30, 2020

Dear Friend, 
 

We were roused early one morning to come outside, at once. The children, followed by the gardener, were insistent. Hanging from a plane tree on the lawn like an upside-down bell was a large black and brown object. About two feet deep, it was an essaim, a swarm of bees. It undulated slightly, flickering in the light. Remembering my own short-lived experience as an amateur beekeeper, the hairs rose on the back of my neck. The gardener and the children, on the other hand, were delighted. Monsieur Michel had called one his friends, who happened to be the local bee-man. Jean-Christophe arrived shortly, veiled, gloved and enthusiastic, carrying an empty abeiller. But it was too late. The eager bees had swarmed away in their search for a new home.
 
Like many French artisans, Monsieur l’apiculteur is a passionné. He proceeded to give us an introduction to his craft.

“I use only pure honey,” he said proudly, taking a pot of his honey from his capacious coat and holding it aloft. “Regardez, les enfants!” The sun shone through the clear golden liquid. Commercial honey producers, he went on, shaking his head sternly, heat their honey, mix it with water, and homogenize it to keep it liquid. Most disgraceful, they adulterate it with cane sugar. His honey, on the other hand, is in its raw state, just as the bees made it. 

The secret to good honey starts with careful hive management.
 
“My bees must eat well,” he declared, confirming our view that the French understand the Lord’s saying, “Man does not live by bread alone,” to mean that he also needs meat, wine, and a variety of other ingredients on the table.
 
Jean-Christophe transports his bees around the countryside, carefully choosing places to set down his ruches. He favors flowering apple orchards, chestnut groves, fields of sunflowers or buckwheat, carrot patches, and flower gardens in spring and summer.
 
As each flower has its own specific nectar, so too does each honey have its own composition of sugars – primarily levulose and glucose – as well as acids and minerals.  Each honey thus has a distinctive color and viscosity. Some honey remains clear and fluid for years. Some -- like that made from heather -- is almost stiff. And most honey eventually crystalizes, as the various sugars fall out of solution into a solid state.
 
“Après tout,” instructed Monsieur l’Apiculteur, “Bees make honey to feed themselves and their young. Like all substances made to be consumed, honey is unstable!” He continued his lecture.
 
Young Henry was fascinated by the physics. Jules and Maria were more interested in discovering that the Vikings – the Norsemen who brought mead, or hydromel, to Normandy – considered their honey-based drink to be the beverage of the gods. Little Edward was anxiously wondering if he would be allowed to eat some of it with bread and butter.
 
With a flourish, our bee-man opened the jar of honey. 

 « La plus pure et la plus éthérée d’une infinitie des fleurs, » he quoted. He inhaled deeply and held out the pot to the children.  
 « The most pure and most ethereal of an infinity of flowers! »

Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopédie represented the most modern techniques of bee-keeping in 1751. Note two men capturing a wild swarm from a tree...just as our bee-man tried to do.

The quotation comes from Diderot and d’Alembert’s famous Encyclopédie, first published in 1751. The vast compendium of knowledge and opinion started out as a translation project, based on Ephraim Chambers’ popular Cyclopaedia of the trades and mechanical arts. It rapidly became a manifesto for the French Enlightenment point of view. Science, technology, and rational thought, rather than government edicts, traditional beliefs, or religious practices, would lead to human improvement. Not surprisingly, the guiding principles of the Encyclopédie alarmed many elements of both Church and State.  It was censured and banned :
 
« Plusieurs maximes tendant à détruite l’autorité royale, à établir l’esprit d’indépendance et de révolte, et…à élever les fondements de l’erreur, de la corruption des mœurs, de l’irréligion et de l’incrédulité. »
 
It was hard to imagine, as we looked at the Encyclopédie’s article on Apiculture later on with the children, that its description of bee-keeping would provoke overly independent thinking, revolution, falling into sin, or flaunting of religious faith.

The remarkable Encyclopédie, from its distance of 270 years, teaches us in fascinating and still accurate detail how the bee sucks honey from the flower, stores it in its “second stomach,” and regurgitates it into the honeycomb. It describes how beekeepers extract and store honey for human consumption, with one major difference. In those days, most beekeepers understandably recommended killing the bees before extracting the honey. In 1772, a Swiss pastor invented la hausse, a second story above the active hive, where the bees would store excess honey. La hausse allows the beekeeper to lift frames of honeycomb out of the hive without – in principle -- disturbing the bees.

Having once kept a hive, I was doubtful. But the vision of the essaim hanging from our tree and the enthusiasm of our bee-man inspired more reading. In the library of old books at Courtomer, I fell upon the memoirs of Jean-François Marmontel, contributor of various articles in the Encyclopédie, and very likely the author of that on apiculture. In his charming Memoires, he describes his bee-keeping aunt. She had made a little Eden for bees in her garden. Around their hives, she planted fruit trees. She diverted a stream through it so they could have fresh water. She bordered the torrent with lavender and thyme. Like the Bee-man of Orn mentioned in last week’s letter, the bees flew around her in a cloud, seeming to know and trust her. When they got wet in a summer storm, she warmed them in her hands and dried them with her breath.

In the summer, the bees left the aunt’s garden to forage. As they flew back to their hives, the blue, gold, or red colors of the nectar were visible through the transparent skin of their crop. To the delight of her burgeoning naturalist of a nephew, the aunt could name the flowers from which the bees had gathered each particularly colored nectar.

As he wrote in poetic reminiscence of this remarkable lady,

“Peut-être dans l’amour de ma tante pour les abeilles y avait-il quelque illusion, comme il y en a dans tous les amours et l’intérêt qu’elle prenait à leurs jeunes essaims ressemblait beaucoup à celui d’une mère pour ces enfants.”

“Perhaps in the love of my aunt for the bees there was, as in all loves, some illusion; the interest she took in the young swarms was that of a mother for her children.”

Tempted by these poetic images to take up bee-keeping again, but wary of quelque illusion, I was relieved to accept the offer of our bee-man to set up hives at the edge of our woods. That afternoon at goûter, the children ate bread and butter and emptied the pot of honey left behind in thanks.

As winter closes in on this final October day, the bee-man’s hives are settled and quiet. Not for an industrious bee is the season of rain and dramatic cloudy skies, when golden chrysanthemums droop in the garden and the leaves are falling from the trees! But we are happy to remember how they buzzed around the apple blossoms last spring, as we dip a spoon into a pot of Jean-Christophe’s delicious honey.

A la semaine prochaine, au Chateau de Coutomer,

P.S. Just to remind you that we are taking reservations for 2021 and 2022. Monsieur Xavier is hard at work in the "petite maison de l'écurie" -- the little house in the old stable block -- repairing the original windows. Our son Henry has painted the front door...we look forward to your stay!