AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE. 85 



us wa) * .he bees had through their palace ! What 

 great masses and blocks of snow-white comb there 

 were ! Where it was sealed up, presenting that slightly 

 dented, uneven surface, it looked like some precious 

 ore. When we carried a large pail full of it out of 

 the woods it seemed still more like ore. 



Your native bee-hunter predicates the distance of 

 the tree by the time the bee occupies in making its 

 first trip. But this is no certain guide. You are al- 

 ways safe in calculating that the tree is inside of a 

 mile, and you need not as a rule look for your bee's 

 return under ten minutes. One day I picked up a 

 bee in an opening in the woods and gave it honey, 

 and it made three trips to my box with an interval 

 ol about twelve minutes between them ; it returned 

 alone each time; the tree, which I afterward found, 

 was about half a mile distant. 



In lining bees through the woods the tactics of the 

 hunter are to pause every twenty or thirty rods, lop 

 away the branches or cut down the trees, and set the 

 bees to work again. If they still go forward, he goes 

 forward also and repeats his observations till the 

 tree is found or till the bees turn and come back 

 jpon the trail. Then he knows he has passed the 

 tree, and he retraces his steps to a convenient dis- 

 tance and tries again, and thus quickly reduces the 

 space to be looked over till the swarm is traced 

 home. On one occasion m a wild rocky wood, 

 where the surface alternated between deep gulfs and 

 chasms filled with thick, heavy growths of timber 



