A Taste for Honey by H. F. Heard Read Free Book Online Page A

they swooped. As soon as they were in range—which I had found by experimenting with my own bees—I started up my inaudible order to desist. ‘Heard melodies are sweet but those unheard are sweeter,’ certainly if they save your hives. Already my bees and the invaders were fighting, but, at the first needle scratch on the drum, I saw them fall apart. My own dropped down to their alighting boards. Of the enemy, some lit on the flowers and trees; others settled on the lawn. It was then that I picked up enough specimens to make all the tests which I’ve shown you.”
    â€œOne moment,” I said. Up to that time I had stood like an open-mouthed simpleton being shown an invention which might be magic or might be normal mechanism, for all he could decide. But now I was on my own ground or at least not far from it. “One moment. Isn’t there something wrong about all this? I’m rather interested in gramophones in my way and I sometimes read about them. I’ve understood that the best gramophone today will not record even the highest note audible to the fully hearing human ear. How about these super-notes?”
    â€œI’m glad you know about these matters,” he replied, “for it makes it more interesting for me to describe to you this ingenious little toy. Perhaps you know that Galton made a whistle which blows a note which we can’t hear but a dog will. That whistle set me on this line of research. You see the principle incorporated in that hollow rod on the far side of the machine by the drum. I won’t go into details, but what happens is that air vibrations too fine and high for the ordinary gramophone recording or disk to render are stepped down when we are recording and then, through this simple but ingenious mechanism, stepped up again, so that the high, rare note is recreated. The same principle has been applied to moving pictures—to take through a filter a black and, white film which would have all the tones, though not all the tints, of the color spectrum of visible light, and then to run this seemingly only black and white film through a complementary filter, when a colored film would be seen. The principle was tried out to photograph the Delhi Durbar of King George V, but until now synchronization has held it up. The difficulties with sound are not so great, so I overcame them without wasting too much time.”
    â€œWell,” I had to own, “that is, I must say, peculiarly ingenious. But what happened when the gramophone stopped? You couldn’t keep it on till nightfall?”
    â€œI own I was a little uneasy. I kept it going the length of a full record and swept into a sack all the enemy aliens I could. But, apart from requiring them for purposes of research, there was no need. Dr. Cheeseman is right. When an insect’s instinctive reaction has been completely thrown out, it cannot, as we do, recollect and carry on. It must go back to its original place, as a man after concussion often has post-lesion amnesia, sometimes of weeks or months or, in a number of well-known cases, of years. So, as they came to, those I hadn’t bagged made off and my own broods were free to carry on.”
    â€œDid they never come again?”
    â€œOnce or twice, but it looks as though some kind of conditioned reflex were being built up in them.”
    â€œWell, you’ll be free now. I don’t know whether you’ve heard, as we haven’t referred to the tragedy, but the coroner told Heregrove to destroy his hives. In the next week or so, at least, I presume the law will see that he has done so.”
    Mr. Mycroft looked at me.
    â€œI know more of bad men than of bad bees. Heregrove will get rid of the present hives, maybe. But, mark my words, he will not give up beekeeping and the new lot will not be less malignant, but more, if he can make them. A man like that gets the habit, the taste for malicious power. It grows, and it is harder to