Rebirth in 1984, starting from beekeeping in the mountains

Chapter 3: Chasing the Bee Path and Locating the Nest
The second step of the plan is to find the bee route.

Bee path refers to the path that bees take to return to the hive.

Bees are social insects with a strict hierarchy. Worker bees are responsible for going out to collect nectar. After sucking the nectar, the worker bees do not digest it all themselves, but store it in honey sacs and then take it back to the hive.

Therefore, these bees that have fed their fill and then fly away from this area must be heading directly for the hive.

By following their flight paths, you can find the location of the beehive.

Of course, individual bees are very small, and if there are only a few of them, it would be extremely difficult to track them with the naked eye in this wilderness.

But what if there are dozens or hundreds of them?
Then it would be much easier to see the bee path clearly.

Especially for Fang Hongan now, it can be said that as long as he successfully lures the bees, finding the beehive is almost certain.

In his previous life, after his wife Lan Wenxiu died, Fang Hongan was devastated and lived like a zombie in Shiwan Village for two years. He finally chose to leave this sad place.

After leaving his hometown, he worked as a beggar, a laborer at a railway station, and a coal miner...

Over the past forty years, I have tried all kinds of low-level industries.

In the first few years of the 21st century, Fang Hongan lived in a apiary in the Qinling Mountains, helping others raise bees.

It was at that time that I learned the skill of finding wild beehives.

Follow the master of the bee farm and learn how to lure bees, track bee routes, and dig beehives...

After three years, Fang Hongan became a veteran in the apiary. Basically, whenever he took action, he rarely failed.

Back to the present, the bee trail in front of him has already begun to emerge. With Fang Hongan's experience, it is almost certain that he will start tracking it now.

However, there are still certain risks after all.

Under the current circumstances, Fang Hongan cannot afford any failure.

After thinking for a moment, Fang Hongan decided to wait a little longer.

And so, about five minutes passed.

Swarms of worker bees began to return to the nest, and the bee trail they left in the air was already quite obvious.

Seeing that the time was ripe, Fang Hongan picked up the bamboo basket again, picked up his luggage, followed the flight path of the worker bees, and quickly followed them.

It was not easy to cross Mashiling. Even though Fang Hongan was wearing a long coat and long pants and using a sickle to clear the way, he still had many scratches on his body from the thorny moss after walking for less than ten minutes. It was burning with pain, and he could clearly feel the blood oozing out of the wounds.

Fang Hongan didn't bother with such a minor injury. His eyes were fixed on the small black dots tracking in the air, and his steps didn't slow down at all.

A few minutes later, Fang Hongan couldn't help but show joy on his face when he saw the flying little figures suddenly start to fall after flying to a pile of rocks covered with thorny moss.

The fall is a sign of a nest falling, which means that the beehive should be in that pile of rocks.

but……

This dense thorny moss and rocks...

"It looks like... it's going to be a tough battle!"

Fang Hongan let out a long breath, tightened his grip on the sickle in his hand, and quickened his pace as he walked towards the pile of rocks.

Arriving at the pile of rocks, Fang Hongan stood and observed for a while, saw the direction in which a small group of worker bees landed, and determined the more precise location of the hive. Then he took out his sickle, cut through the thorny moss, and got into the pile of rocks. If the road is difficult to walk, then cut a path yourself.

Fang Hongan cut through the thorns along the way. He didn't know how long it had been before he heard a clear buzzing sound in his ears again.

Following the sound, Fang Hongan was shocked to find that among the rocks less than five meters in front of him, several figures in yellow and black were slowly falling down.

The swollen honey sac was the "guide worker bee" he was tracking.

Fang Hongan fixed his eyes on them and saw these worker bees slowly landing on the stone, then crawling all the way, and finally drilling into a crevice less than an finger wide.

This crack in the rock is inconspicuous even if you look closely. Even if ordinary people see it, they would never associate it with a beehive. How could they imagine that there is precious honey underneath it?

Fang Hongan looked around carefully along the crack in the stone, his expression relaxed, and the last bit of worry in his heart fell away.

The stones next to this crack are not big, and there are palm-sized gravel around it. As a result, it can be foreseen that digging should not be difficult.

“This luck is so good!”

Wild beehives are most common in cracks in rocks, but it would be a great fortune to come across one like this one among small broken stones.

If it was in the crack of a rock weighing more than a thousand pounds, even if he found it, Fang Hongan would only be able to watch helplessly with his current outfit.

While secretly rejoicing in his heart, Fang Hongan glanced around and quickly discovered another problem.

Although the straight-line distance was less than five meters, there happened to be a thorny moss with a trunk nearly as thick as a wrist growing on the route directly past. If I went straight past, I would have to deal with this big trouble.

After thinking for a moment, Fang Hongan finally chose to move forward in a curve and go around it from the side.

The process was surprisingly smooth. Although there was a protruding stone nearly two meters high after going around it, after climbing over the stone, there was a flat ground with only some thatch growing on it, and not even any prickly moss. The crevice in the stone that was the entrance and exit of the beehive was very close.

Fang Hongan put down the backpack behind him, first sorted out his clothes and gloves, then took out a hat from the backpack and put it on.

This bamboo hat is the most common bamboo rice dumpling leaf hat in rural areas these days. The frame is made of bamboo strips, and three layers of dried old rice dumpling leaves are woven into the inner layer. It cannot be said to be exquisite, but the waterproof effect is very good.

But the one on Fang Hongan’s head is a little different.

Besides being a bit old, there was also a circle of blue-gray gauze at the bottom edge of the hat.

This was sewn by Fang Hongan at Lan Wenxiu's request before he went out. The hat was the one hanging in the main room at home. As for the blue-gray gauze, it was cut from an old mosquito net.

Lan Wenxiu had very deft and beautiful needlework skills. Although time was tight, she sewed the clothes tightly and neatly, and the stitches were very beautiful. She also closed the bottom as Fang Hongan had asked.

The things that were hurriedly made were not inferior to the bee hats used by Fang Hongan in later generations.

After putting on the hat, the vision in front of him seemed to be filtered through a gray-blue filter. After Fang Hongan adjusted himself for a while, he picked up the sickle again and began to clean the prickly moss, thatch and gravel near the entrance of the hive.

Although gravel is much easier to dig, the beehive is usually at least half a meter deep, so digging it out is also a physical job.

buzzing...

The noise of digging quickly startled the bee colony.

At the entrance and exit, scout bees immediately flew out to investigate the situation. After sensing that the hive territory was invaded, these scout bees immediately flew straight towards Fang Hongan.

(End of this chapter)