TRAPPERS' CLAIMS 



and hilled the flowers so the bees would have to 

 work on bait he was ready for them. As 1 said 

 nearly every tree with a hole in it had his name 

 on it and it is very seldom that you hear of a 

 marked bee tree being desturbed. Before close 

 of the bee hunting season Sawyer went around 

 to all the trees that he had his name on, climbed 

 them, stuck some honey-comb inside of the tree 

 and smeared honey a'l around the hole so that 

 all the neighborhood bees would work on the 

 honey, passing in and out of the hole in the 

 hollow tree. This the bees will do late in the 

 Fall when the flowers are gone. After baiting 

 about sixty-five or seventy trees in this way, 

 having three or four live trees, genuine bee trees, 

 he announced his trees for sale and in a few 

 days he had his victim coming. Some settlers 

 from the ridges, hearing of the result of some of 

 Sawyer's bee trees, concluded there was a 

 chance for speculation, so some of them visited 

 the young bee hunter who had a shanty on 

 Buck's Ridge, with a view of buying some of his 



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