Litchi honey

Author: Shuo Yang

Yang Shuo (19 13— 1968) is a native of Penglai county, Shandong province. Modern writer. He is the author of Yang Shuo's Prose Collection, Selected Short Stories of Yang Shuo and the novel Three Thousand Jiang Lishan.

Flowers, birds, grass and insects, who painted in the world, used to love them. Bees are artists' pets, but I don't like them very much. It's ridiculous to say. When I was a child, I went up a tree to pick begonia flowers. I didn't want to be stung by bees and almost fell down. Adults told me that bees don't sting easily. They must have mistakenly thought you were going to hurt them. One bite, it ran out of life by itself, and it won't live long. I felt sorry for the bee and forgave it. But since then, whenever I see bees, my mood is very bumpy and always uncomfortable.

In April this year, I went to Conghua Hot Spring in Guangdong for a few days. Surrounded by mountains and holding a pool of spring water in my arms, the thick green scenery is simply a green landscape painting. The night I first went, it was cloudy, and I occasionally looked at the window. It's strange, why do so many black hills appear out of thin air in front of the building, one heavy and one heavy, and they keep ups and downs? I remember that there was a relatively flat garden in front of the building, not a mountain. What kind of illusion is this? At dawn, I couldn't help laughing. It turned out to be lychee trees all over the mountains, one after another. The leaves of each tree are dense and look like hills at night!

Litchi is perhaps the freshest and most beautiful fruit in the world. Su Dongpo wrote such a poem: "300 litchi a day, do not hesitate to be a Lingnan person", which shows the beauty of litchi. It happened that I came at a bad time. The tree is full of pale yellow flowers, which are not prominent. New tender leaves, reddish, look better than flowers. It takes about three months from flowering to fruit ripening. It seems that I can't wait to go to Conghua Hot Springs to eat fresh litchi.

It is time to eat fresh litchi honey. Some people may not have heard of this rare thing, right? There are as many litchi trees in Conghua as the sea in Wang Yang. In the flower season, bees are buzzing all over the place, so busy that they forget the morning and evening, and sometimes they take advantage of the moonlight to pick flowers and make honey. Litchi honey is characterized by pure color and rich nutrition. Most people who live in hot springs like to eat this honey to nourish their spirits. Enthusiastic comrades also got me two bottles. It's so sweet when you open the bottle; After drinking it for half a cup, the sweetness has a refreshing taste, a little fresh of litchi. Drinking such good honey will make you feel that life is sweet.

I don't feel moved. I want to see the bees that I have never liked very much.

Deep in the litchi forest, there is a corner of a white house, which is the beekeeping farm of Wenquan commune, but it has an interesting name, called "Beekeeping Building". Just as spring is coming, the flowers are in full bloom. As soon as you approach the "building", you will see swarms of bees coming in and out and flying around, which will make you think that perhaps bees are scrambling to build a new life.

The beekeeper Lao Liang led me into the building. Calling him Lao Liang is actually a very careful young man. Maybe Lao Liang wants me to go deep into the life of bees. Xiaoxixin opened a wooden beehive, separated by a row of boards, and each board was covered with bees. The queen bee is dark brown and very slim. Every bee is willing to feed it with the collected flower essence.

Lao Liang sighed and said softly, "Look at these little things, how obedient they are."

I asked, "How much honey can such a swarm of bees collect a year?"

Lao Liang said: "You can cut dozens of pounds. Bees like to work. Guangdong has fine weather and many flowers, and bees are not idle all year round. There is a lot of honey brewed, but you can only eat it yourself. Every time you cut honey, leave them some sugar, just enough for them to eat. They never quarrel and don't care about anything. They still continue to work and make honey. They work hard all day and all month ... "

I asked again, "Isn't there anything wrong with being so sweet?"

Lao Liang said, "Why not? You have to be careful of bugs and bumblebees crawling in. The thief bumblebee is the worst, and often falls into the hole of the hive. Specializing in bad things. "

I couldn't help laughing: "Oh! There are invaders in nature. How to deal with bumblebees? "

Lao Liang said, "Hurry! If you can't get rid of it, kill it. If you leave it there, it will kill the bees. "

I thought of a question and asked, "But how long can bees live?"

Lao Liang replied, "The queen bee can live for three years, and the worker bee can live for six months at most."

I said, "Life is so short. Don't you always have to clean up dead bees outside the hive? "

Lao Liang shook his head and said, "Never. Bees are very sensible When they live to the limit, they die quietly outside and never come back. "

My heart can't help trembling: what a lovely elf! I don't want anything from people, but I give them good things. Bees are brewing honey and life; Brew the sweetest life not for yourself, but for mankind. Bees are small; How noble bees are!

Through the litchi forest, I looked thoughtfully at the distant fields, where farmers were standing in paddy fields and Xinxin was planting rice seedlings diligently. They are building their own lives with labor, and they are actually brewing honey-for themselves, for others and for future generations.

That night, I had a strange dream that I became a little bee.