Chapter 50: Beekeeping and Thinking
The mighty, indifferent forces of nature have long shaped the course of civilization. A warm, humid era might allow a weak plateau people to rise, while a period of cold and drought could cause an empire to crumble. The goal of human progress is to minimize the impact of such accidents, and progress begins with thinking.
Chen Jian, unaware that a distant tribe had also sent out scouts, was focused on teaching his own people to think.
On the last rest day of the Taoyue ten-day week, he led a group of his tribespeople out with empty beehives to catch wild bees. Since they had already harvested from most of the nearby colonies, they had to venture further afield.
Bored on the march, he picked up a fallen wild pea. Pointing to its hilum with a smile, he posed a playful question: "When we plant these, do you think this little belly button should face up, or down?"
"Up, of course! You see how the leaves all grow upwards? They need leaves to grow!"
"No, down! The roots all grow downwards, and they need roots to grow."
The two factions argued, each certain they were right and unable to convince the other.
Finally, they turned back to Chen Jian. "Jian, which is it? Up or down?"
Chen Jian spread his hands. "I don't know either. How about this? Since arguing is getting us nowhere, we'll find out when we plant them. What's the wager for those who lose?"
These people were all convinced they were correct and shouted in unison, "Whoever loses has to help the winner clear an extra three hundred paces of land!"
"Alright, then. Everyone gather some seeds to take back. Yu Qian'er, you keep track of who said up and who said down."
"Okay."
Yu Qian'er carefully made a mental note, then quietly scurried up to Chen Jian's ear. "Brother, you must know the answer, don't you?"
Chen Jian smiled. "Then what do you say? Up or down?"
"I'm not going to guess. I'll wait until I plant one myself to find out." She shook her head with a sly smile and added quietly, "I used to think the meat closest to the coals cooked fastest. But the other day while roasting meat, I saw that the meat *above* the flames cooked quickest. I realized that what I thought might not be true; you have to see it with your own eyes."
Chen Jian was delighted. He asked Yu Qian'er to share this idea with the tribe. When she asked if he meant the part about roasting meat, he said no, he meant her final point.
To demonstrate Yu Qian'er's point, Chen Jian grabbed a handful of fallen poplar leaves. Poplar trees shed leaves outside of autumn, so it was a convenient opportunity to make a point he wanted his people to remember.
In a moment of still air, he tossed them into the sky and asked everyone to guess whether most would land face up or face down.
A flurry of bizarre answers followed. The leaves didn't take days to provide an answer, and soon enough, the tribespeople were surprised to find that the vast majority of leaves landed with their top side facing up.
"Why is that?" someone asked.
The tribespeople grabbed their own handfuls of leaves and threw them, marveling at this miraculous detail they had never noticed before.
Chen Jian smiled. "Why? I don't know either. But we first have to observe *that* they land face up before we can ask *why*. If we just assumed they landed face down and then tried to figure out the reason, we'd never find the true answer."
He flicked the pea in his hand. "It's the same with planting peas. If we guess wrong about which way the navel should face, all our effort will be for nothing. From now on, you must look with your eyes first before you start thinking about why things are the way they are. Don't just assume what you think is right."
The tribespeople lowered their heads, contemplating his words. Some might remember this lesson, while others might dismiss it as just a game.
But as long as some people remembered, that was enough. He didn't want his people making the same kind of assumptions that led to ridiculous conclusions later in history. For instance, the selective inbreeding used to purify the bloodlines of fine horses—mating a stallion with its aunt, for example—was condemned by a Song Dynasty scholar. The scholar took it for granted that this was a violation of heavenly principles and human ethics, triumphantly writing books claiming that the short-lived Five Dynasties period was a punishment for such practices. It was a joke of a conclusion, born from thinking without observing.
Of course, Chen Jian knew the orientation of the pea's hilum didn't matter, and his people would discover that soon enough. But an assumption reached through observation is different from one taken for granted. He hoped that, like a gentle rain soaking into the earth, he could subtly change the tribe's way of thinking, replacing assumption with reason.
Whether it was introducing a falsifiable god or teaching the distinction between assumption and fact, the process would be long and tedious.
It might take hundreds of years, but a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Today was the first step toward rational thought. When the beans sprouted, if the men learned not to take things for granted while hoeing the fields, that would be enough.
The tribespeople were still debating whether the pea's navel should face up or down when Wolf Skin, scouting ahead, ran back to report he had found a hive. The argument ceased instantly as everyone hurried forward with their empty beehive.
Before they even saw the hive, they could hear its hum. Chen Jian looked up and saw a wild comb, half the size of a man, hanging from the branch of a large tree. It was the season of blooming mountain flowers, and the bees were busy, flying in and out in an orderly fashion as they collected nectar.
Bees in this season only live for about half a month, so they're far more industrious than humans and won't waste time stinging people unless provoked.
The rest of the group retreated to a safe distance to watch. Chen Jian and a few others unafraid of stings approached the tree and opened the lid of their empty hive. He took a mouthful of the odd-tasting apricot wine and sprayed a fine mist towards the wild comb. Two men below held their empty beehive aloft, positioning it directly under the wild one.
Chen Jian found some willow branches and tough grasses, tied them into a simple broom, and climbed up on the branch with Wolf Skin. A few vigilant guard bees immediately began circling them, uncertain whether to attack.
"Don't swat at them," he warned. "The more you hit them, the more they'll sting."
Resisting the urge to slap the buzzing insects out of the air, he used the small broom to sweep the bees clinging to the comb into the new hive below.
After spotting the queen bee wandering across the comb, preparing to lay eggs, the task became much simpler. He just needed to sweep her into the new box. With a few careful waves of his broom, the bees buzzed and scattered. He and Wolf Skin then shook the branch vigorously, dislodging the remaining bees. They used a stone knife to cut away the honeycombs, carefully placing them inside the prepared beehive.
He jumped down from the tree, covered the hive's opening with a layer of fiber cloth, and finally slid the wooden lid into place.
The cloud of bees buzzing outside, searching for their queen, was an intimidating sight, but for now, they were not aggressive.
They carefully set the new beehive on the ground with its entrance facing south, and everyone retreated.
Yu Qian'er pointed at the swirling cloud of bees. "When will they go back inside?"
"Don't worry," Chen Jian said. "They'll settle into their new home soon enough. We'll leave them for now and come back this evening. By then, all the bees that were out foraging will have returned, and we can carry the hive back."
He told Wolf Skin to take the others and continue searching for more wild colonies while he and a few tribespeople stayed to guard the captured one. Honey was an irresistible temptation for any bear in the forest; if they left it unattended, they might return to find the hive smashed to pieces.
To the tribe's delight, the bees behaved exactly as Chen Jian had predicted. Instead of flying away in a chaotic swarm, they began crawling one by one into their new home. Once the evening air cooled, the bees would settle down quietly for the night, making it safe to transport the hive without shaking them.
There were plenty of nectar sources near the village, so honey collection wouldn't be a problem. In the future, beekeeping would become one of the women's responsibilities.
Chen Jian planned to teach the women how to distinguish a queen bee from a drone so they could recognize them clearly.
A hive could not have two queens; when a new one was born, the old one would take a portion of the colony to find a new home. It was a bit like his own people—when the population grew large, a group would have to migrate.
He made a mental note to transplant a few willow trees near the village's apiary. When a new queen led a swarm, they often rested on a nearby tree while the colony gathered before flying off. If they swarmed, the women could use the same method to sweep the new queen and her followers into an empty hive, preventing them from escaping.
This was all simple enough to learn. Eventually, he could teach the women to recognize queen cells, allowing them to artificially control the number of colonies. The stronger the colony, the more honey and beeswax they could harvest.
He mused on the fact that a worker bee and a queen bee both hatch from identical fertilized eggs, yet their fates are entirely different. One is raised on a constant diet of royal jelly, while the other receives only a small amount before being switched to pollen. The worker bees responsible for feeding the larvae make this decision based on the size of the brood cell. They didn't consider if there were too many potential queens, so it was up to humans to artificially remove some of the queen cells to manage the hive.
Chen Jian did some calculations. The concepts were easy enough for his people to grasp; it was just a matter of distinguishing large from small, something even a child could learn.
It was just that while he had the general idea, he couldn't identify the specific species of bee. He wondered if they were ancestors of the Chinese honey bee or the Italian bee, species that had yet to be redistributed across the globe.
In his past life, he remembered that the Chinese honey bee had endured sufferings that mirrored those of the Chinese nation. Around the time of the Opium Wars, the Chinese bee met its nemesis: the Italian bee. The wingbeat frequency of the Italian bee was identical to that of a Chinese honey bee drone, so the guard bees would allow these foreign robbers to enter their hives freely. The first thing the intruders would do was kill the queen, then signal for their bandit accomplices to fly in and steal all the honey.
Sometimes, there were fateful coincidences in the world, and thinking about them always left him with a sense of melancholy.
"Hopefully, the bees of this world will have a different fate," he murmured, patting the side of the beehive.
Yu Qian'er overheard him but didn't understand what her brother meant. Just as she was about to ask, a sound came from the distant jungle.
Wolf Skin came running over, his voice tense. "Jian, there's smoke over the mountain."
In just two months, smoke had transformed from a sign of potential friends into a source of fear. The encounter with the Birch and Song tribe had taught them that there was something more terrifying than any wild beast: other upright-walking creatures just like themselves.
"What should we do?"
---
⭐ $5 Tier – Early Access!
Stay 50 chapters ahead of public releases on RoyalRoad and Scribble Hub.
Latest available chapter: 102.
Chapters are uploaded as soon as they're completed, so you'll always be ahead of the curve.
By joining, you'll be directly supporting the story while enjoying exclusive early access.
🔗 Patreon link is in My Profile/About.
⚠️ Please select your membership carefully, as I have multiple novels ongoing.
🍎 If you're on Apple, consider subscribing through your browser instead — it's cheaper for you, and I'll receive payments faster.