66 3 BEES. 
So bees bear gravel stones, whose poising weight 
Steers through the whistling winds their steady flight ; ”’ 
or that when two colonies made war upon each other 
they issued forth from their hives led by their kings 
and fought in the air, strewing the ground with the 
dead and dying : — | 
‘*¢ Hard hailstones lie not thicker on the plain, 
Nor shaken oaks such show’rs of acorns rain.’’ 
It is quite certain he had never been bee-hunting. 
Tf he had, we should have had a fifth Georgic. Yet 
he seems to have known that bees sometimes escaped 
to the woods : — 
‘¢ Nor bees are lodged in hives alone, but found 
In chambers of their own beneath the ground: 
Their vaulted roofs are hung in pumices, 
And in the rotten trunks of hollow trees.”’ 
Wild honey is as near like tame as wild bees are 
like their brothers in the hive. The only difference is 
that wild honey is flavored with your adventure, which 
makes it a little more delectable than the domestic 
article. 
THE PASTORAL BEES. 
THE honey-bee goes forth from the hive in spring 
like the dove from Noah’s ark, and it is not till after 
many days that she brings back the olive leaf, which 
in this case is a pellet of golden pollen upon each hip, 
usually obtained from the alder or swamp willow. In 
a country where maple sugar is made, the bees get 
their first taste of sweet from the sap as it flows from _ 
the spiles, or as it dries and is condensed upon the 
