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Title: The Bee Hunter

Author: George Harold Edgell

Release date: July 10, 2021 [eBook #65820]
                Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Harvard University Press

Credits: Tim Lindell, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BEE HUNTER ***

_THE BEE HUNTER_




  _The_ BEE HUNTER

  By GEORGE HAROLD EDGELL

  [Illustration]

  1949

  HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
  CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS


  Copyright 1949
  BY GEORGE HAROLD EDGELL

  _Printed at_ UNIVERSITY PRESS, INC.
  CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U. S. A.

  LONDON: GEOFFREY CUMBERLEGE
  OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

[Illustration]




THE BEE HUNTER


This little treatise is in part the child of frustration, in part
the child of irritation. In a modest way, the writer has been an
author. The first book he ever wrote, an opus of several chapters,
was called “The Bee Hunter.” The writer was then eighteen. Submitted,
on the advice of the late Robert W. Chambers, to his publisher in New
York, the young author was surprised to learn that his manuscript was
rejected. The publisher tactfully pointed out that even the English
translation of Maurice Maeterlinck’s _La Vie des Abeilles_ had lost
money for its publisher.

The manuscript was put away to gather dust. I believe and trust now
that it is lost. It was terrible.

So much for the frustration. Now for the irritation. Being an unsung
author on the subject and, more important, a successful bee hunter
of fifty years’ experience, the writer has read a certain number of
articles on bee hunting. One appears every year or two. Starting with
two essays by John Burroughs, one fact is common to all. They are
written by men who never possibly could have found a bee tree, at least
by pursuing the methods they describe. Burroughs came nearest the
truth, but even he seems to have got his account from some farmer with
more imagination than experience. It is time for someone who has hunted
bees and found bee trees to write the facts. For bee hunting is rapidly
becoming a lost art.

The writer’s interest in the sport began at the age of ten when he
was initiated by an old Adirondacker who had sunk to driving his
grandfather’s mules in Newport, New Hampshire. George Smith, as I shall
call him, was a character, to the youngster as fabulous as Paul Bunyan.
He took his whiskey neat. He smoked and chewed at the same time and
could spit without removing the pipe from his mouth. His profanity
could take the bluing off a gun barrel. Withal, he was one of the
kindest and most generous of men and a mighty bee hunter before the
Lord, or the devil if one prefers. He introduced the boy to the simple
equipment necessary for the art, and though through the years I have
improved it slightly, the fundamentals of the few objects have remained
the same.

The most important item is the bee box. This one can make oneself if
one is clever, or employ a cabinetmaker to do it from specifications
if, like the writer, one is not. The box should be of wood, about five
and one-half inches long, three inches wide, and three inches deep.
The wood of an old-fashioned cigar box is an excellent material but if
used, the box should be left outdoors some time to weather, as bees
do not like the odor of tobacco. The box should be divided into two
compartments, the front one open with a hinged lid. In the lid there
should be a small glass window which can be darkened by a wooden slide.
Between the front and rear compartments there should be an opening at
the bottom two-thirds of an inch wide which can be opened and closed
by a wooden slide manipulated from the outside. The rear of the inside
compartment should be of glass, covered with a wooden slide which can
be raised on occasion to admit light to the compartment. The box should
be nicely and tightly constructed, shellacked after completion, and
lightproof. Remember, it will be out in all sorts of weather and the
older it is, and the more weathered it becomes, the better the bees
will like it.

[Illustration: A BEE BOX]

Provided with the box, the rest is easy. One needs a couple of
pieces of empty honeycomb cut square to drop easily into the front
compartment. The best is old, black comb from an old bee tree, but any
empty comb will do. For nectar it is not necessary to use real honey.
A syrup of common white sugar one-third, and water two-thirds, boiled
for fifteen minutes and then cooled, seems to be as tempting to bees
as real honey. If one keeps it so long that it begins to ferment, no
matter. Bees’ taste is not nice in such matters. Bees will cheerfully
work the fermented juice of a rotten pear. As a refinement, it is well
to provide oneself with a tiny bottle of the oil of anise. If used
sparingly, this will attract bees, and the faint odor on a bee’s feet
will attract others. When I say sparingly, I mean more than the word
ordinarily implies. The cork of the anise bottle rubbed on the comb
and the comb then licked with the tongue will provide anise enough for
one’s purpose. More will make the bees quite drunk, they will refuse to
suck but buzz around looking for the anise and eventually retire to the
flowers to sober up, and you will lose your line. To fill the comb, a
common eye dropper is very handy though not absolutely necessary. It is
handy, too, to have a stand made of an upright piece of wood such as a
four-foot section of a rake handle with a flat board nailed on top and
the lower end sharpened so it can easily be thrust in the ground, but a
stand can always be improvised using a young spruce cut off at the top
or a few stones pilfered from a stone wall. It is also handy to have
another small box with a lid, not a bee box, in which to carry small
objects. The paraphernalia is therefore very simple, and a good bee
hunter can get along if necessary with less. George Smith and I once
started a line using an empty 32 calibre cartridge box and a bit of
comb stolen dangerously from a nest of paper wasps. Finally it would be
well to have a cloth bag or knapsack in which the smaller articles may
be carried, leaving the hands free.

[Illustration: FILLING THE COMB

A medicine dropper is convenient when filling the piece of comb with
sugar syrup]

We are now ready to start but should consider the season. There is
no point in going bee hunting if one can find no bees. Bees begin to
work as soon as spring gets warm and continue until severe frost. This
can be proved by examining any hive on any warm day, but what the
bees are working on is another question. They are hard to find except
during some definite honey flow such as the white clover season or the
milkweed or the goldenrod. Especially the last two are favourable. On
the bee box I have used for a good many years, I have scribbled the
dates of the findings of fifty-six bee trees. Eighty per cent are in
July or September. Only occasionally does one occur in June or August
and practically never in October. July and September mean milkweed and
goldenrod to the bee hunter.

Let us assume that it is a warm day in mid-July and the milkweed
is in bloom. We find a patch and find it teeming with honey bees.
Incidentally the first step should be to learn what a honey bee looks
like. He resembles a refined and streamlined horsefly and is totally
unlike the fuzzy bumble bee that so many mistakenly regard as honey
bees. One’s first task is to catch a bee. This is done by bringing the
box up sharply under him with the lid open as he sits on the edge of
a bloom and slapping the lid home as he tumbles into the box. It is
not so hard as it sounds, especially if the bee is on a high bloom of
milkweed or goldenrod. It is essential that the bee be caught. During
the midst of a good honey flow a bee will never voluntarily abandon
the flowers and go to a comb, no matter with what aromatic lure you
may have anointed it. Forget for all time the accounts of writers
who drench a handkerchief with anise and throw it over a bush near a
stand with loaded comb. No bee would come near it. During a starvation
period when flowers are scarce, especially after the autumnal frosts,
a bee will light on the comb if he finds it. Ninety-nine times out of
a hundred, however, the bees will be somewhere else and no bee will
find the comb. There have been exceptions as I shall show, but the only
sensible procedure is to hunt bees during a honey flow when they are
easy to find, and introduce them into the box by violence.

[Illustration: CATCHING THE BEE

The bee will be scooped into the outer compartment and the lid snapped
shut simultaneously]

Having caught the bee in the outer compartment and verifying the fact
that he is there by looking in the window, the next step is to close
the window, darken the outer compartment, open the slide to admit him
to the rear and open the rear window. Seeing the light, the bee will
promptly go in there, seeking escape. Then one can close the rear
compartment and open the front so as to catch another bee. One can
start a line with one bee, but the chance of success is greater if one
has a dozen, and during a good honey flow, if the tree is not too far
away, these can be caught in ten minutes.

Provided with a dozen bees one is ready to start the line. Fill one of
the pieces of comb with syrup. Thrust in the stand if you have one.
Open the window into the outer compartment and the door between and
admit three or four bees to the part with the comb. They will come if
you open the window in front and darken the rear. Then put the box
down gently, darken the whole box, put your hat over it and leave it
still for three or four minutes. Meanwhile, fill the other comb.
After three or four minutes, place the box on the stand and gently
open the lid. If conditions are right, the bees will have found the
syrup and taken a load in the darkness. Sometimes one or two will not
have finished loading and will sit quietly until they are stuffed to
capacity. If they are loaded, they will fly comparatively slowly as
they take off to return to the hive. When they have left, repeat the
whole process and let out more bees until all have gone. You are now in
the stage of starting to establish the line.

[Illustration: TRAPPING THE BEE IN THE REAR COMPARTMENT

The slide on the side of the box is pulled to open the entrance to the
rear compartment, the rear window is opened, and the bee follows the
light into the rear compartment]

Where most of the nature fakers fall down conspicuously is in
describing how to establish a “bee line” giving the exact direction
of the bee tree. Actually, when a bee leaves for the first time he is
both suspicious and anxious to establish the position of the stand. He
leaves in slowly expanding spirals and figure eights. The hunter rolls
round on his back trying to follow the convolutions of the bee flight
in the air. Usually it ends by the bee flying between the eye and the
sun and thus being lost to view. If the hunter can establish when the
bee leaves for the first time, whether the tree is more north than
south or more east than west, he is doing well. It is not until a bee
has come and gone eight or ten times that he becomes familiar with the
stand, loses his suspicions, and, on taking off, goes in approximately
the direction of the tree thus at last creating a “bee line.”

[Illustration: LETTING OUT THE BEES

Two bee boxes are on the stand in this illustration. The lid of the
outer compartment of the top box has just been opened, and the bees are
about to emerge]

If conditions are right, of your dozen bees four or five will return
for a second load. Again if conditions are right, in an hour or two
these will communicate in some mysterious way with other workers in the
hive that there is free lunch obtainable and the number of bees on the
line will increase. Especially if the tree is near and the flowers
not too profuse, this will happen quickly. At best I have had a hundred
or more bees running my line half an hour after the first bee left.
At times, and this is a common occurrence, no bee will come back at
all. Sometimes the original bees will go back and forth but bring no
companions. Often the bees will refuse to suck at all but will return
on release to the flowers. When that happens, you had best pack up and
go home and wait for more propitious conditions.

Why bees will load sometimes and not others, fifty years of experience
has left unrevealed. In general, bees run better at the beginning
and end of a honey flow when the flowers are not too profuse and too
plentiful. Certainly if you are fortunate enough to catch a bee after
heavy frosts, yet on a warm day, you will probably establish a roaring
line in a short time. Why, however, sometimes bees will load eagerly
and sometimes ignore the comb is a mystery. No changes in the thickness
of the syrup, no substitution of true honey for the sugar, no aromatic
oils like anise applied to the comb will cause bees to suck if they do
not choose. They will often suck eagerly in the midst of the heaviest
goldenrod season and refuse to suck at other times when flowers are
scarce. Nothing is more frustrating than to catch box after box of
bees and find them unwilling to load. In such case there is nothing
to do but wait a week and try again. The most important quality for a
successful bee hunter is patience.

[Illustration: BEES ON THE COMB

The original bees have spread the word to their fellow-workers about
the “free lunch.” The box in this illustration is the one used for
storage of extra comb, the medicine dropper, the bottle of anise, etc.]

Let us assume, however, that conditions are favourable this July
morning. About ten minutes after the release of the first bee, a bee
comes back. This is one of the most exciting moments in the hunt. An
experienced hunter recognizes the sound of a honey bee instantly, but
for the last five minutes he has jumped at the sound of every doodle
bug that has flown by the stand. The behaviour of the returning bee is
very different from that of the departing one. He dashes in circles
round the stand, darts away again across the field until you think he
will not return, whizzes back to circle the stand again and finally, in
narrowing circles, poises above the comb like a helicopter, his buzz
still shrilling. One waits with bated breath. The buzz ceases. The bee
has come to rest and is loading. The line is started.

Soon others arrive, and the first comer departs. Once more you try
and take his line but once more he fools you as he leaves in widening
circles. However, one has got the general direction and can take a
position to see better. More information comes as each bee leaves. In
an hour’s time the comb may have twenty bees on it at once and the
arrivals and departures are frequent. Now the bees have begun to be
accustomed to the stand and frequently jump off and fly straight so
that in a good light the eye can follow one for fifty or a hundred
yards. Thus you establish your “bee line.” It is never exact, however.
No two bees have exactly the same idea as to the best way home. If,
for example, there is a large tree in the direction of the hive and
perhaps a hundred yards from the stand, one bee may bypass it to the
right, another to the left, and a third may lift and go over it. One is
constantly revising one’s decision as to the true line.

[Illustration: WATCHING THE BEES LEAVE THE COMB

The general direction of the bees’ flight has been established, and the
hunter has taken up a position a few feet from the stand (_arrow_) from
which he can easily follow the path of the bees in the air]

By now we are ready to time a bee and see how long he is gone. This
will give one a fair estimate of the distance from the stand to the
tree. A bee takes between one and two minutes to load and as much time
to unload. He may also have to crawl some distance in the tree to
reach the place to deposit his load. He flies at about the speed of a
human sprinter, say a quarter of a mile a minute. If he is gone eight
minutes, the tree is not too far away. If he is gone twelve minutes,
the hunter has a long job ahead. If he is gone four minutes, the tree
is very close. The longest I remember having a bee absent and still
being able to run a line and find the tree was fifteen minutes. The
shortest was two and one-half minutes, and then the tree was actually
in sight of the stand, though I did not know it at the time. Twenty
minutes is hopeless. No bee will bring others back at that distance,
and it is better to abandon the stand, move a mile or more in the
direction the bee has taken, catch more bees, and repeat the whole
process nearer the tree.

In order to time a bee it is necessary to be able to identify an
individual. George Smith used to do this by extracting some seed or
pollen from the bud of a small mossy plant and sprinkling a little
of the green dust on the back of a bee. At best it was an uncertain
process as the dust was liable to be blown off before the bee’s
return, and even if not, was hard to see. I have evolved a simpler and
better system. To our equipment as already described, let us add a
small bottle of water, a tiny camel’s hair brush, and a piece of blue
carpenter’s chalk. With the blade of a penknife, scrape some dust from
the chalk onto the back of a smooth stone or the blade of a hand axe
if you carry one. Incidentally a small scout’s axe is a handy thing
to have for clearing brush, making stands, marking the bee tree when
you have found it, and blazing a trail from it if it is deep in the
woods and should be hard to find again. On the chalk dust, with the
brush, drop a few drops of water and stir till the water is coloured
blue. Then with the wet brush dab the rear of a loading bee. This must
be done deftly and gently. Bees do not like to be painted. A good
hunter can guess which bee is apt to be unreasonably phlegmatic and,
especially if one is loading from a half empty cell, with the shoulders
buried and his tail raised, he can be painted without disturbing him.
Once daubed, the new decoration does not annoy him in the least and is
not noticed by his fellows. When wet, the spot shows only slightly, but
by the time the bee returns, the chalk dust will be dry and will stand
out like a beacon so vivid that it can be spotted even before the bee
alights. We now have an identifiable bee and can time him.

Let us suppose he takes seven or eight minutes a trip to the tree and
back. One should time him two or three times to be accurate and not be
disturbed if the time varies a little. We now have a bee line and some
idea of the distance of the tree.

Now it is time to move. One might ask why, knowing the direction and
the approximate distance, one does not immediately hunt for the tree.
The answer is that there are ten thousand trees in the woods and only
one the bee tree. One can never be sure of the exact line or, with any
exactitude, the distance. Sometimes when one has narrowed the problem
to an area of a hundred yards square, it is hard to find the tree. So
once more the bee box is placed on the stand, a loaded comb dropped
into the front compartment and the lid left open. The spare comb should
be hidden carefully. Great ire on the part of the bees. They again
become suspicious and do not want to enter the box. As more arrive,
the air is filled with a disgusted humming. In time the temptation is
too great and one after another a bee drops down to the comb. When ten
or a dozen have done so, snap down the lid of the box and drive them
into the rear compartment as before. They are reluctant to go, but a
puff of cigarette smoke blown through a crack in the lid will send
them scurrying to the rear in search of purer air. Close the slide,
reopen the box, place it on the stand and catch another lot. Catch all
you can. Then pull up the stand, gather up your paraphernalia and move
three or four hundred yards down the line. Then set up the stand and
release the bees in batches of eight or ten.

This is another critical moment. Will the bees stand moving? If you
have mistaken the line and moved off it too far to the left or right,
the bees may not come back, and you will have to return to the first
stand and start over again. The same is true if the swarm is weak or
the flowers too tempting. The time seems interminable. I have a theory,
which I cannot prove, that on the first move the bees return to the
first stand before investigating the possibilities of the second.
Conditions are right on this day, however, and after a time we hear the
welcome hum of the first returning bee, quickly followed by a second
and a third. The bees will stand moving. Success seems assured.

Theoretically it is. All one has to do is to continue to move the bees
until the tree is reached or passed, in which case the line reverses
and proves that the tree is between the last and the next to the last
stands. If it were as simple as that, bee hunting would not be the art
and the fun that it is. In the first place, in order to reestablish a
line, the stand should be set up in a clearing. We have now reached the
woods and possibly no clearings are available. Released in the woods,
a bee circles up into the trees and disappears. Sometimes it is hard
to tell whether he goes forward or back. The moves have to be shorter.
Often if one moves beyond the tree, the bees will not come back, and
you have lost your line. Above all, the lining must be straight. If you
meet a swamp, you must go through it. If you meet a cliff, you must
go up it. If you meet a pond, you must go round it and set up at just
the right point on the opposite side. All this takes time. You must be
prepared to spend two or three days before finding the tree. Meanwhile,
as the tree draws near, the bees tumble out in greater numbers until
literally there are hundreds buzzing about and going back and forth,
and one has to refill the comb frequently.

This brings up another point: the danger of being stung. The newcomer
is apt to be terrified as the bees buzz round his head while the hunter
is tending the stand. The answer I can give categorically. There is
absolutely no danger whatever of being stung while running a line. The
bees are entirely friendly. They will fight among themselves if two
swarms are involved. They will fight a hornet if he has accidentally
found the comb. The hunter who is supplying them with free syrup they
would not think of molesting. The only possibility of getting stung
is some careless accident. I was once stung when a friendly bee had
lighted on my khaki shirt and, not noticing him, I put my arm down
and squeezed him against my side. Naturally, he let drive at my ribs.
The fault was mine, not his. One can even imprison a bee in one’s
cupped hands and he will crawl round and try to find his way out, but
if you do not squeeze him, he will not think of stinging you. I once
was lining a swarm in the middle of the goldenrod honey flow when a
terrific hailstorm came up and leveled all the flowers. The next day
the bees were desperate. Their bee pasture was gone and they were mad
for syrup. I soon had what seemed to be half the hive around me. They
came not in hundreds, but in thousands. Even to an old hunter it was
a little terrifying, but absolutely harmless. One had to exercise
caution. Feeling a curious tickling on the left side of my breast, I
discovered that some two dozen bees had found the anise bottle in my
shirt pocket and had gone in to investigate. It was quite a job to get
the anise bottle out and persuade the bees to come too, but I did it
without accident. The only danger to the amateur is that he lose his
head and try to slap a bee that he thinks is dangerously near his face.
If he does, he may be stung. He ought to be. It is worth repeating
because to the newcomer it seems incredible. There is absolutely no
danger of being stung while running a bee line.

As we draw nearer the tree, the moves are shorter and made more
quickly. Now there is no worry about losing the line. Indeed, the bees
not trapped will often follow the hunter on a short move and, as the
imprisoned bees are released, others, arriving from behind, will drop
on the comb. Now the hunter is convinced that the tree must be in
sight. Usually it isn’t. As soon as it is established that the line
still goes ahead, the hunter will go down the line, carefully examining
every likely tree. This gives him exercise, puts in the time, and
enables him to find a good place for the next stand if it is necessary
to establish one. Usually it is. At last, however, one of two things
happens. Either the hunter finds the tree or, after a move, the bees
will be a long time coming back, or, if it is a long move, though it
should not be, they may not come back at all. When bees have been
running well and suddenly are slow to return, it is suspicious and
auspicious. When the line is at last reestablished, the behaviour of
the bees is odd. They will circle off in all directions in the most
exasperating fashion. At last one or two will fly reasonably straight,
and it dawns on the hunter that the line has reversed itself and the
bees are going back. The tree is between this and the last stand. It is
only a matter now of looking carefully enough to discover the tree.

Even then one cannot consider the battle won. A bee tree can be
extraordinarily hard to find. The likeliest trees are maples, beeches,
and hemlocks, but the hunter must look everywhere. Smith used to have
a theory that if the bees rose high as they left the stand, the hole
was high in the air. If they pitched low, the hole was low. He also
pretended to guess the kind of tree that the bees were in by the colour
of the bees. Light-coloured bees were likely to be in a maple. Very
dark ones might be in a dead pine. There is something in all this but
not much. One time we were running a line of light-coloured bees that
pitched high, and I told Smith we had better look high up in maples.
His reply was:

“You look high in the maples and low in the cedars and up and down all
trunks and branches, hard wood and soft, big enough to hold a hive and
you can be sure of just one thing. When you do find them, they’ll be
where you don’t expect them.”

A sound aphorism and worth following. It was this same Smith one time
when we were fishing for trout and not finding them in one or two
favoured holes, tried elsewhere in less likely places and found them,
who said:

“If you want to catch fish, you’ve got to fish where the fish is, and
if they ain’t there, you fish where they ain’t and there they’ll be.”

Of course, the greatest thrill of the hunt comes when one finds the
tree. Sometimes it is abrupt, if the hole is in an unshaded limb or
bole in plain view. More often it is in a position where one has to
manoeuvre to see it, and the first warning comes when one sees the
flash of wings in the air and, in an agony of hope and doubt, moves
about until the hole can be seen and the presence of the swarm truly
verified. Even when the tree is pinned between two stands, it may take
a long time. I remember one tree that we had so pinned. I had with me
my son, who is a good bee hunter, a companion of his, and a couple of
rank amateurs. The five of us tramped the area between the two stands
for an hour before I found the hive. It was in a smallish swamp maple
that divided into two boles four feet above the ground. Neither hole
was big enough to hold bees, so we had passed it unsuspecting. In the
crotch where the boles divided was a hole and into this the bees were
dropping, making their home in the short trunk near the ground. After
we had found it we noted that we had actually trampled a path through
the ferns within fifteen feet of the tree.

[Illustration: THE BEE TREE

The bees have entered the hole indicated by the arrow in an otherwise
sound maple tree. Bees rarely choose a dead tree in which to make their
hive]

The commonest and most foolish question I am asked is how long it
takes to find a bee tree. According to my experience it is somewhere
between forty-three minutes and two years. I have already mentioned the
accident of setting up a stand within sight of the tree and finding it
in less than an hour. Another time it was not an accident but a well
calculated guess. In late September I was gunning in the Blue Mountain
Forest area in New Hampshire. The day was unseasonably warm. I found
no game, but observed a great many bees working the few goldenrod that
were left and some late asters. I well knew the terrain. A little to
the southwest was a small old sugar bush with large maples. To the
northwest but still near was another somewhat larger. Beyond and in all
directions had been pine forest that had recently been lumbered. There
would be almost no chance for bees to set up in that area and therefore
they must be in one of the two sugar groves. I went home, got my bee
box and started a line near the small sugar bush. The line came quickly
and I never moved. Following the line from the box, I found the bees in
the third tree I examined. It took less than three quarters of an hour.

Now for the other end of the scale. Years ago when I was still a
boy, Smith and I started a line that ran up the steep slope of the
southern-saddleback of Croydon Mountain. The timber was thick, the
slope at times ladder-like, and the hunting difficult. We made
several moves and then hunted for the tree. We could not find it and
eventually gave it up. The following summer we struck the same line and
hunted it again. Evidently the bees had wintered well, but still we
could not find the tree. The next summer we got the same line. By that
time our dander was up and we decided to find that tree. We ran a line
as well as possible. Then we began to examine the timber horizontally
back and forth across the line, blazing our paths to make sure that the
whole area was covered. After a time, I heard a yell and considerable
profanity accompanying it. It was below me, and I scrambled down the
steep slope. The profanity seemed to come from a clump of young spruce
out of which projected the old bole of a fallen maple. Smith had
stepped on the bole, slipped, and shot through the young spruces ending
with his legs on either side of the stump of the fallen tree. The bees
were in that. One could have passed within ten feet and not known that
there was anything there that could harbour a colony of bees. We had
our tree, but it had taken a little over two years to find it.

A word about cross lining. The literary experts seem always to find
their quarry by cross lining. They catch a bee, release it, and take
its line. Then they move a quarter of a mile, catch another and take
its line. By triangulation, where the two lines meet, there will be the
tree. _Pas plus difficile que ça!_ Unfortunately, as we have seen, one
cannot get even remotely an accurate line the first time a bee leaves.
Moreover, if one could, there would be a good chance that bee number
two came from another colony. One would get a line north and another
northwest, and where they met, there would be the tree. Nevertheless,
cross lining should not be ruled out. Sometimes one will get a line too
weak to be worth following. Trying in another place one may get another
weak line that seems to cross at a distance the first. If one goes to
about where the two seem to meet, there is a good chance that one will
be near a bee tree.

Let me illustrate with an amusing example. Three years ago I was bee
hunting on the hills not far from my home in New Hampshire. I got
a weak line nearly east and directly toward the little village of
Croydon Flat. I decided that I must have got onto a tame swarm, though
I could think of no one in Croydon Flat who kept bees. However, it
was obviously time to try another area and I drove to the Flat and
took a road northwest for a mile and a half, caught bees, and set up
a stand. I got a weak line southeast, again directly toward Croydon
Flat. I hunted up a friend who lived there, one Orrin Pillsbury, and
he assured me that nobody in the Flat kept bees. The village is tiny,
the intervale small, there is good hard wood timber near and no reason
why a wild swarm should not have located near the village. I caught
bees and set up in the vegetable garden back of Orrin’s house. I soon
had a good line northeast, but it went over the house, and since some
energetic bees flew over the house, others preferred to clear only
the ell and still others went round, we had no accurate line. I moved
across the village street to a field on the other side. The bees were
a long time coming back and when they did, they established a line
northwest. Here was a cross line with a vengeance. We investigated,
thinking the bees were in one of the elms of the village street. I
soon found them pouring in and out of a chimney on the house of one Cy
Cummings. Cy had two chimneys and he only used one. The bees had set
up in the other. That was one wild swarm I found that did me no good.
Cy obligingly let us into the house, but when I suggested opening the
disc in the second floor designed for the admission of a stove pipe, he
mutinied. That was not unreasonable as I could not have got my head in
to see, and the bees could have got out into the bedroom. Cy distrusts
bees. I believe subsequently he built a fire in the chimney and brought
down a mass of spoiled honey, dead bees, and melted wax. A great waste.

This brings up another point. The writer has been fortunate in that the
bulk of his hunting has been within the preserve of the Blue Mountain
Forest Association in Sullivan County, New Hampshire. There, if one
starts a line of bees, one can be sure it is a wild swarm. There are
no farms with domestic bees in the area. Most hunters, however, have
to hunt in country districts where there are farms, the owners of
which may well keep bees. It will be wise, therefore, before going
hunting, to ascertain the localities where tame bees are kept. Nothing
is more frustrating than to start a line, get it going well, run it
several moves, and end in a farmer’s backyard with the revelation that
a hard day’s work has done no more than adulterate his honey with a
half a pint of sugar syrup. This happened to me once, but it has not
happened again. New Hampshire is largely wooded, and if a line heads
for a deep woods on a mountain slope, one can be reasonably sure that
one is trailing a wild swarm. Do not, however, let that prevent you
from lining a wild swarm near a locality where there are tame bees.
Many wild swarms are simply once removed from the domestic variety.
Even a good apiarist often loses a colony when his bees swarm at an
inconvenient time, and the new colony may set up quarters not far
from the old. For years I refrained from starting a line from my own
lawn because of the presence a mile and a quarter away of a number
of colonies belonging to a gentleman known as Chicken Smith. Chicken
Smith’s bees used my flowers regularly. Then one day I decided to start
a line anyway just for interest and found a wild swarm in my own sugar
bush.

One question often asked is how much honey one gets from a bee tree.
The amount varies enormously. My record is ninety-seven pounds of
unstrained honey from one tree. It was not a large tree, but it had
a large hollow. It involved a terrific fight with the bees, as one
would expect, and both my companion and I were rather well stung, but
we filled a wash boiler with honey and then had to go home for more
containers. On the other hand, one may take up a tree and get only a
pound or two. I remember taking up an old rock maple. Its branches were
so wide that when we cut it down, it merely leaned on its elbows and
we had to cut it three times before we could get to the entrance to
the hive. The wood was so heavy and the grain so gnarled that a steel
wedge held against the wood and struck with a sledge, would bounce off.
To get into the hollow was about as easy as cracking a safe, and it
took three of us over three hours. Our reward was one piece of filled
comb smaller than the palm of my hand. It is all a gamble and part of
the fascination of the hunt. As an average, I should say one ought to
expect to get eighteen to twenty pounds of strained honey from a tree.

As to the number of moves, that varies from no move at all, as we have
seen, to a dozen or even more. The longest line I remember I started
years ago in the clearing at the base of Croydon Mountain. The line
took me up the steepest slope to the ridge just north of the summit.
Thence it carried over the ridge and down the opposite side. When it
came time to take up the tree, it was easier to come in from the north
than from the south along the line I had followed. It took me three
days, and I made fifteen moves. When bees are running well, one can
leave them in the late afternoon and pick them up again next day. On
leaving them, one fills every available piece of comb, weights the box
with a stone so it will not be blown off in case of a sudden wind, and
puts one piece of comb in the outer compartment with the lid propped
up only half an inch so that in case of rain at least one comb will
retain undiluted syrup. In spite of all this, when one returns next
day, usually every piece of comb is empty and the bees gone. It is hard
not to be discouraged, but there is no need to be. Fill the comb and
wait. In five, ten, or twenty minutes a bee will come for one more look
to see if a trifle of sweet may still be gleaned. He will load, depart,
and in half an hour you will have a roaring line once more.

Bee hunting brings some odd experiences. As boys, my brother and I were
bee hunting with Smith and found the bees in the base of a rock maple
on the edge of the woods, in a fissure not five feet from the ground.
It was late September and we decided to take up the tree forthwith. It
was not necessary to fell the tree, but merely to cut into the hollow
to get the honey. We had, however, no nets or gloves, so we built a
smudge to drive back and stupefy the bees while we were getting the
honey. We made a good haul and drove back to camp three miles away that
evening and had ourselves a Gargantuan meal of brook trout, flapjacks,
and new honey. After supper we went out to listen to the bugling of
the elk with which the preserve was stocked and, looking across the
valley, we saw a bright light. Our smudge had set fire to the tree.
We drove back and found the hollow interior a furnace. There was no
water available, and the fire had burned high up in the hollow. We
had no means to extinguish it, nor did we dare leave it for fear the
tree would fall and the fire spread. The elk were bugling merrily, and
in those days an old bull in the rutting season was quite capable of
attacking a man. We finally climbed onto a large branch of the nearest
maple and spent a restless night telling stories and waiting for the
fire to burn itself out. Fortunately, by morning it had.

Sometimes the attempt to find a tree is unusually baffling. One time
my son and I lined and cross lined a swarm until we narrowed the
search to two or three trees. The likeliest was a beech, but though we
occasionally got a glitter of wings in the air, we could not be sure
that we had the tree. It was not until we had gone home and returned
with a powerful pair of field glasses that we were able to distinguish
the bees in the foliage forty-five feet in the air and near enough the
hole to make us certain that we had our bee tree. The actual hole
itself we did not see until we felled the tree and took up the swarm.
Another time I had run the line to the top of a mountain and then the
line reversed itself. Between the two last stands there was nothing
but bull spruce not big enough to hold a colony, and moreover I had
never heard of bees in a spruce. Tree by tree I examined the terrain. I
finally found the bees dropping down into the roots of a spruce where
there was a hollow partly in the wood and partly in the ground where
the colony had settled. It was a miserable little swarm, and I never
bothered to take it up. The next summer it was gone, as I had expected
in the case of a foolish swarm that had selected so unsuitable an
habitation.

Does one ever find a bee tree by accident? Yes, but very, very rarely.
I once was eating my luncheon beside a mountain brook and noticed a
honey bee loading water at a wet spot. He flew off and soon came back.
I got out my watch and timed him. He was gone two minutes. I rose and
went in the direction of his departure and found the tree fifty yards
away. This was without benefit of bee box or syrup, but did involve
lining of a sort. On the other hand, I once found a tree on top of a
mountain and, choosing a different way down, found another bee tree
two hundred yards from the first. My guess is that the older colony
had swarmed, and the new commune had decided to set up in the nearest
suitable place to the old. Another tree I found accidentally due to an
amusing mistake. My companion had had some experience in bee hunting,
and when I started out to catch some bees I asked her to fill the comb
for me so as to be ready when I returned with the bees. She did so,
however filling the comb from the anise bottle instead of the syrup
bottle. There was nothing for it but to go all the way home for fresh
comb and start over again. On the way back we discovered a large colony
of bees in a huge pine which we had passed unnoticed as we had gone out
the first time. These are the only trees I remember having discovered
by accident, and I have looked longingly into thousands of likely
trees. To find bees one must hunt them and not rely on chance.

Sometimes bees, for such sagacious insects, show remarkably little
sense in the abode they select. I once found a colony in a small dead
poplar (or popple I should prefer to call it) so weak and rotted that
I could have pushed it over with my weight. Those bees I decided to
save for pets. My wife, the farmer, and I drove that night to a place
a few hundred yards from the tree. The hole was about five feet up.
The family was all at home of course, and I plugged the hole with moss
to keep them there. Then we attached a rope to the tree as far up as
we could reach and sawed it off at the base, lowering it gently to the
ground. Then we cut off the top above the hollow which sheltered the
bees. The farmer and I easily carried it to the buckboard and brought
it home in triumph. I had already prepared a place for it in a tub sunk
in the ground and cement ready to puddle around it. Soon our bee tree
was standing erect in the cow pasture near the house with a saucepan
over the top to keep rain from seeping into the hollow. I unplugged the
hole and went to bed. Next morning I went out to see how my guests did.
They were six miles from where they had gone to bed the night before
and were quite untroubled by it. They had already organized perfectly.
The temperature of the hive apparently had risen, and a ring of fanners
was around the hole fanning air into the interior with their wings
where it was caught up by other fanners and driven through the hive.
The ventilation system was humming. The bees had already discovered the
small brook a few yards away, and a bucket brigade was busily fetching
water. The bulk of the workers had discovered my neighbor’s buckwheat
patch and were busily gathering nectar. I kept them for several years
and got much fun from watching them, nor did they ever show the
slightest resentment toward me for shifting their home. Eventually they
died in an unusually severe winter.

Apropos of starting a line without catching a bee, it can be done but
only by the rarest accident. I did it once. I had gone out to hunt
after the autumnal frosts, hoping to find a late flower or two on which
I could catch a bee. I went to a sheltered clearing and, leaving my
spare box open with the empty comb exposed on a boulder, I wandered
round the clearing searching for a bee. Finding none after fifteen or
twenty minutes, I returned to gather up my kit and found a bee buzzing
round the empty comb. He had found it by accident, having flown near
enough to get a scent of the comb and anise. I succeeded in filling the
dropper with syrup and squirting it onto the comb without frightening
the bee. He found the syrup promptly, loaded, and left. I then filled
the comb properly. I had hardly finished when the bee returned with
three friends. In fifteen minutes I had a roaring line, and in three
moves and about two hours I found the tree. This was a good example of
how well bees will run on a warm fall day after the flowers have gone
by. It is also the only example I remember of my being fortunate enough
to start a line in this way.

The most ancient bee tree I ever found was approximately twenty-four
hundred years old. My wife and I were examining the ruins of one of the
Greek temples at Selinunte, the ancient Selinus in southern Sicily.
Of one of the temples, all but two of the columns had been overthrown
by an earthquake. One of those standing had been terribly worn by the
hot sirocco wind that blows periodically from the African coast. In
order to preserve it, the top had been capped with cement, but there
was a large hollow underneath. As I neared it, some telepathic cell
in my brain began to signal “bees.” Without thinking what I did, I
stepped to the column and ran my eye up it as I would have done had I
been looking for a bee tree. At the top the members of a busy swarm
were pouring in and out from the hollow under the cement. That was a
bee tree I could not take up. I had a similar experience several years
later in the ruined abbey of San Galgano south of Siena in Tuscany.
The abbey was built by French Cistercians in the early thirteenth
century, and the walls and apse are still standing though the roof
has long since disappeared. The ruin is fenced off and locked, but a
neighboring peasant brings the key and admits one for a few _soldi_.
I was examining the alien architecture with a professional interest
when once more the bell rang in my brain and something said “bees.” I
ran my eye up one of the columns and soon saw so many bees coming and
going from an aperture in the triforium that the original colony must
have increased enormously in almost unconfined space. I turned to the
peasant and said:

“Ci sono api in quest’edificio.”

He answered:

“Si Signore, ma Lei è il primo che l’ha mai osservato.”

I also found a lively swarm in the triforium of the ruined abbey of
Jumièges in Normandy which antedated San Galgano by a hundred years. So
it is possible to combine the discovering of wild bees with the study
of the history of art.

Perhaps the tree I remember most vividly is the first one ever
discovered unaided. When I hunted with Smith, he was invariably the
one who first saw the bees. Since his death years ago, I have hunted
with many people and only twice has my companion seen the bees before
I did. There is something telepathic in the way an old hunter senses
the nearness of bees, though even he is often fooled. In order to
find a tree entirely on my own I had to escape from Smith’s tutelage.
The great day came when I was about fifteen. I caught bees in front
of my father’s house in Newport, N. H., and soon got a good line
running straight up the side of Coit Mountain. There was a long upland
pasture and beyond that the woods. Four moves took me to the forest
edge and timing and numbers both told me the tree was near. I went up
the line to look for the bees or for a clearing and soon found the
swarm in a good-sized rock maple. I have received a number of great
thrills in a long life, such as the notification that I had qualified
for my doctorate, the reception in New York harbour in late December
1918 after the first World War, the citation from the President on
receiving an honorary degree from Harvard, but, believe me, these
thrills are all in class B as compared to the one I got when I first
found a bee tree unaided.

The finding had an amusing sequel. The hole was about eight feet up
the bole, too far to reach but near enough for the bees to be very
conscious of an intruder. I started proudly to blaze my initials on
the tree when I became conscious of a roar and the air seemed to grow
dark above me. I turned and ran just in time, nor did I return to
finish blazing the tree. Later, I related the event to George Smith who
covered me with contumely. That a man should find a tree and then be
driven off by the bees before he could blaze it, Smith regarded as a
disgrace. He assured me that he would take up the tree himself without
benefit of veil or gloves. I knew better than to argue, but on the
appointed time when he, my brother and I went to take up the tree, I
brought two veils and two pairs of gauntlets. When we got to the tree I
set about collecting dry stuff for a smudge, a matter which Smith said
was quite unnecessary. I was downhill from the tree when he went to
work. I heard the axe fall perhaps a half a dozen times, and then there
was a siren-like wail of profanity, and Smith came charging through the
woods, a stream of angry bees behind him like a comet’s tail. That was
one swarm which defeated the intrepid Smith. He borrowed my brother’s
net and gloves, my brother went off and hid in the woods, and with net
and glove protection and a smudge as well, we cut into the tree and
took up the swarm. We got sixty pounds of honey.

In this article I have alluded many times to “taking up” a bee tree.
The phrase may be colloquial, but it sticks. Smith never cut a bee
tree. He always “took it up.” Moreover, he always referred to a bee as
“he.” I am well aware that a working bee is a sterile female, but I
cannot bring myself to call it “she.” There is nothing feminine about a
working bee but its anatomy. “She” is “he” to me.

A word or two in more detail about the taking up of a bee tree may
not be amiss. It brings us face to face with one unpleasant fact: the
cruelty of the performance. For once a tree is taken up, the bees soon
die. It is done in the autumn, and the cold soon kills the bees. They
are deprived of food and shelter and have no time to gather more of the
one or repair the other. They have laboured hard and are pitilessly
robbed not only of the fruits of their labour, but of their very lives.
They have been friendly during the running, and one has acquired an
affection for them. How then can a reasonably tender-hearted person
bring himself to destroy them?

A reason I can give, though I do not maintain that it is an excuse.
Bees are perhaps the most thoroughly communistic creatures extant. The
individual counts for nothing. The spirit of the hive is all. I am told
that the life of a working bee during a heavy honey flow is only six or
eight weeks. The workers work themselves until they shortly die; the
hive is kept alive by the steady hatching of larvae who in turn carry
on the work and die. The queen, who alone of the colony lives several
years, has one nuptial flight and spends the rest of her life crawling
over the comb and dropping an egg into each cell. Though she, more than
anything else, is responsible for the spirit of the hive, she is more
of a slave than her workers. As autumnal cold descends, work stops,
and the bees torpidly cling together for warmth and maintain existence
by consuming their store of honey. In the spring work and laying start,
and the worn workers live just long enough to see the process started
once more and enough larvae hatched to replace them and assure the
continued existence of the hive. A bee will do everything for the hive;
nothing for a fellow bee. A bee from a strange swarm, alighting on the
comb, will be instantly attacked. On the other hand, if one tries the
experiment of killing a bee on the comb, pinning him with the blade of
a knife, he will set up a screaming buzz that sounds horribly anguished
even to the human ear--and his fellow worker, loading half an inch
away, will pay absolutely no attention to him. When a tree is taken up,
the spirit of the hive is killed then and there. The queen is usually
crushed or lost. The living thing that is the hive is extinguished, and
the individual bees become mere insects doomed to winter destruction
as are so many of the common flies. For the individual, the hunter has
merely hastened dissolution by a little. He has killed the hive with
the crash of the tree. I state this not as an apology, but as a fact,
an explanation of why one’s conscience does not trouble one after
taking up a tree. Illogical it may be, but it is true.

To return to the process. The days have lengthened, and October has
come. Frost has killed the flowers. The bees have gathered the maximum
of honey and will have begun to consume the store. It is time to take
up. For equipment you will need a couple of axes, a crosscut saw, a
sledge, and at least three stout steel wedges. Plenty of twine is
essential. Take as many bee nets as necessary. These can be made
extemporaneously out of black mosquito netting, but it is easier and
safer to get the regular professional beekeeper’s veils. For every
participant there should be a stout pair of linesman’s gauntlets. Wear
old clothes, dungarees or old riding trousers. You are sure to get
pretty well smeared with honey before you are done. Select a clear day
or an overcast one, but not one with a threat of rain. If any water
finds its way into the honey, it might as well be thrown away. It will
surely ferment and spoil. You will need help, one or, better yet, two
good woodsmen. In New Hampshire they are not hard to find. Probably
they are working for you on your own place or for your neighbour. A few
men have a rooted fear of bees and will be unavailable. The average
lumberman, if promised reasonable protection, will come along and face
the hard work for the fun. Taking up a bee tree is an exciting and
thrilling performance. Lastly, bring plenty of receptacles for the
honey. The humiliation of returning with five pounds of comb in a wash
boiler is nothing as compared to the exasperation of filling a couple
of buckets and finding you have no way of transporting the rest of the
honey that is left in the tree.

Thus equipped you sally forth, hunter, woodsmen, and usually one or
two camp followers in the way of guests or the curious. Your tree
has been marked with your initials and a trail blazed to it with
your hand axe so you have no difficulty in finding it. If it is on
your property, well and good. If not, your New Hampshire farmer is
usually a reasonable being if you treat him properly. A bee tree is
not valuable. The mere fact that it has a hollow generally proves
that it is not commercially valuable for anything but firewood, and
after it is felled, if the owner wants to work it up into firewood, he
is at liberty to do so. A proper approach and the promise of a jar or
two of honey will usually win you permission to take up the tree, and
the owner will come along to watch the fun. In all my many years of
experience, I have only once been refused permission to take up a bee
tree without payment.

Arriving at the tree a council of war will follow as to how best to
fell it. If you are wise, you will allow this decision to be made by
your woodsmen. If possible, it should be felled so that the hole is
on one side or on top. If possible, it should not be felled across
boulders, as it is very desirable not to have the hole split. Sometimes
a tree will be so leaning, however, that there is no choice in the
matter, and one must do the best one can. While the woodsmen are
chipping the trunk and beginning to saw, the hunter should gather moss,
the fronds of ferns, or other stuff to plug the hole when the tree is
brought down. As the saw bites deeper and the scarf widens, the top
of the tree will begin to sway. Now is the time for the hunter to don
his veil and gloves. Before putting on the veil, it is well to turn up
the collar of one’s jacket. It is not even an act of supererogation
to tie tightly some twine around one’s waist. I once had an ambitious
bee crawl up under my jacket, down through the band of my trousers, up
under my shirt and undershirt and sting me in the small of the back.
For protection of the legs, nothing is better than a light pair of
fisherman’s rubber boots. Failing them, tie the bottom of your trousers
or dungarees tightly round the tops of your shoes. Do _not_ wear low
shoes. My companion did that the time we took up the ninety-seven pound
tree. It was in a swamp and, in addition to the discomfort of wet feet,
he found that a couple of dozen bees, stupefied by the smudge, fell
into the water, revived, and relieved their feelings by swimming across
to his ankles and stinging them. The next day his legs looked as though
he had elephantiasis, and never thereafter could I get him to help me
take up a bee tree. He could not seem to comprehend that the fault was
his for wearing low shoes.

The cut deepens. The tree sways wider. It begins to heave, and one
hears the first pistol-like reports of the cracking trunk. Slowly
at first then with rapid momentum the tree falls with a thunderous
roar. The axemen have snatched the saw from the cut and jumped back.
The hunter rushes in, his hands full of moss, finds the aperture and
plugs it before the bees can escape. At least he tries to. Sometimes
he misses a subsidiary aperture, and some bees escape to enliven the
proceedings. Sometimes the bole splits at the hollow and nothing can
be done about that. Usually the hole can be plugged, and one can take
one’s time preparing to open the hollow.

The woodsmen now put on their nets and gloves, if indeed they have not
done so just before felling the tree. All debate as to whether the
hollow extends above or below the hole, often a matter of guesswork.
Then the saw comes into play again. The lumbermen cut deep scarves
above and below the area where the honey is supposed to be. When rotten
wood (and at times honey!) shows on the blade, one can be sure the
hollow is entered. Then a wedge is placed at the base of one of the
scarves and driven home with the sledge. Another, parallel to it, is
driven in further down, and a third parallel at the lower scarf. As the
wedges are driven home, the bole will split and a great section may be
lifted off like a lid, exposing the honey and the bees. Of course, I
am describing an ideal performance. Often the tree makes trouble, has
to be sawed several times, and the opening enlarged with the axe. As
the crack widens under the impact of the wedges, the bees pour out, and
the fight is on. They will attack viciously, and one is aware of the
ping of bees dashing themselves against the wire netting of the veil.
If one has taken proper precautions, one is safe, though, to be honest,
one usually gets stung once or twice in taking up the tree. Humans
vary in susceptibility to bee stings. I am lucky in that they trouble
me little, and usually the swellings are slight. On the other hand, my
brother when once stung in the back of the hand, found his arm next
morning thrice its normal size to the armpit. Those so constituted had
better stop at home when a tree is taken up.

Once the fight is on it is well to get at the honey as soon as
possible. Once the comb is well broken, the bees lose most of their
fight. They will dash around in a bewildered way, bunch up on a bush,
gorge themselves with spilled honey, and generally give evidence that
the spirit of the hive is dead. Only a few doughty fighters will
continue the battle. The comb will be in layers, up and down the
length of the hollow, sometimes in pieces two or two and one-half
feet long, with spaces between to admit the workers. In describing
the equipment I neglected to add a large iron spoon and a couple of
table knives. Usually it is necessary to cut the comb to get it into
convenient sizes, and a good deal of honey will escape and run down
into the hollow whence it can be spooned out and added to the spoil
in the boiler. If a certain amount of chips, dead wood, and even dead
bees and larvae are included, do not be disturbed. It will all be
strained anyway. I have long since given up trying to save wild honey
in the comb. When the last available drop is garnered, gather up your
equipment and retreat. A hundred yards away and you are quite safe and
can doff the nets and gloves that by this time are unbearably hot and
sticky. Then you have your first taste of delicious honey.

Either wild honey is more tasty than the domestic variety or one’s
exertions have made it seem so. My guests have always agreed that
my wild honey is more aromatic than any one can buy. I imagine the
answer is that strained wild honey is a blend, while domestic honey is
generally of one variety. The taste of honey varies widely according
to the flowers from which it is made. Clover honey, foolishly the
most prized, is the most insipid. Golden rod honey is golden yellow
and spicy. Buckwheat honey is, if anything, too pungent and heavy as
molasses. The honey of Provence, made from wild thyme, has a special
piney taste. In straining wild honey no attempt is made to separate the
varieties, and the result is a blend, varying somewhat according to
tree or season, but always more interesting than the domestic variety.
Having sampled your honey and found it good, you can now go home and
weigh your spoil. Unless, indeed, you have more than one tree to take
up. I have taken up four in a day.

The rest is an epilogue. The straining of the honey is a matter for the
distaff side. My wife makes large bags of cheesecloth, and the comb is
broken up and introduced into these. They are then hung over pans in a
warm kitchen. The honey drips slowly into the pans. One fears that a
lot will be wasted, but not so. In thirty-six hours or more the comb
will be dry beeswax, and the honey can be run off from the pans into
glass jars. When sealed, the honey will keep indefinitely. After a
while it will sugar into a kind of paste. I like this better for eating
than the liquid variety, but if anyone disagrees, it is necessary only
to place the jar in warm water for a while, and the honey will return
to its liquid state.

So much for bee hunting and how it is done. This account has one
virtue, perhaps only one: it is true. It is based on experience, and
there is nothing in it that I have not done myself. I have relied on
nothing that I have been told; there is no hearsay. I have made no
attempt to discuss the life of the bee and the fascinating details of
its domestic economy. For the curious in these matters, I recommend
Maeterlinck’s _Life of the Bees_. I imagine what he says is true, but
I cannot prove it by my own certain knowledge. It is certainly very
beautiful and perhaps it is more important for a poet to make a thing
beautiful than to make it true. These matters are not of my concern.
For a more factual but equally fascinating account, I recommend _Bees’
Ways_ by George de Clyver Curtis.

I have also tried very hard to avoid purple passages. It has not been
easy. Bee hunting is one of the most fascinating of sports, and one
could go on describing different illuminating episodes for many pages.
The sport combines almost everything that is desirable. It is played
out of doors. It requires exercise both of the muscles and the brain.
It is a sport of brawn and of craft. It can be played alone. Moreover,
it can be played at any tempo. Time was when I could scramble up and
down Croydon Mountain like a squirrel and could push the pace. That I
can no longer do, but I can move more slowly, consider more carefully,
draw on the craft and knowledge of long experience and find as many
trees as when I was young and impetuous. The sport is one of infinite
variety, of suspense, disappointment, perseverance, and triumph. You go
out into the fields. Before you is a wooded mountain with ten thousand
trees. One of those trees is a bee tree. With a very simple equipment
you set out to find it, pitting your skill and your knowledge against
the wiles of probably the most intelligent insect in the world. You
try. You fail. You try again. You succeed. Your ostensible object is
honey. It is the least of your rewards. The reward is when, after hours
or days of trial and error, your eye catches the flash of wings in the
tree and once more you are able to say checkmate in one of the most
difficult, complicated, and fascinating games in the world.




TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:


  Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

  Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.

  Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.



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