AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE. 59 
come back and commence operations in an opening 
in the woods well down on the side of the mountain, 
where we gave up the search. Our box is soon 
swarming with the eager bees, and they go back to- 
ward the summit we have passed. We follow back 
and establish a new line where the ground will per- 
mit; then another and still another, and yet the rid- 
dle is not solved. One time we are south of them, 
then north, then the bees get up through the trees 
and we cannot tell where they go. But after much 
searching, and after the mystery seems rather to 
deepen than to clear up, we chance to pause beside 
the old stump. A bee comes out of a small open- 
ing, like that made by ants in decayed wood, rubs its 
eyes and examines its antennw, as bees always do 
before leaving their hive, then takes flight. At the 
same instant several bees come by us loaded with our 
honey and settle home with that peculiar low com- 
placent buzz of the well-filled insect. Here then is 
our idyl, our bit of Virgil and Theocritus, in a de- 
cayed stump of a hemlock tree. We could tear it 
open with our hands, and a bear would find it an easy 
prize, and a rich one too, for we take from it fifty 
pounds of excellent honey. The bees have been 
here many years, and have of course sent out swarm 
after swarm into the wilds. They have protected 
themselves against the weather and strengthened 
their shaky habitation by a copious use of wax. 
When a bee-tree is thus “taken up” in the middle 
of the day, of course a good many bees are away from 
home and have not heard the news. - When they re- 
turn and find the ground flowing with honey, and 
piles of bleeding combs lying about, they apparently 
do not recognize the place, and their first instinct is 
