A HERMIT'S WILD FRIENDS 



I forgot to say that when the first blow of 

 the ax falls, after the tree is down, the fierce 

 roar which the bees make would frighten a 

 nervous person out of his senses. I have seen 

 strong men cringe, and I can remember cases 



Hunting where fright led to flight ' 



Some persons are so nervous that they will 



not face the bees without protection. A 

 friend that lived near my farm in Maine, 

 came to me one morning with the story of a 

 wild swarm of bees, which he had not been 

 able to find, although he had at one time a 

 line to the hive. We started out to find this 

 swarm the twelfth day of September. The 

 eighth was noted for wind, and thousands 

 of forest trees had been turned up by the 

 roots. We found some bees near a highway. 

 They went due west into or over a bad swamp. 

 The swamp was nearly two miles wide, with 

 a bog on the west. The bog bordered Pick- 

 erel Pond on the south. We took some bees 

 around the swamp to the open bog. We 

 found that the bees kept on to the westward to 

 a pine ridge. After hunting two hours, I 



