66 AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE. 



fly. In fact she was the epitome of the white man 

 himself. She has the white man's craftiness, his in- 

 dustry, his architectural skill, his neatness and love 

 of system, his foresight ; and above all, his eager, 

 miserly habits. The honey-bee's great ambition is to 

 be rich, to lay up great stores, to possess the sweet 

 of every flower that blooms. She is more than prov- 

 ident. Enough will not satisfy her ; she must have 

 all she can get by hook or by crook. She comes 

 from the oldest country, Asia, and thrives best in 

 the most fertile and long-settled lands. 



Yet the fact remains that the honey-bee is essen- 

 tially a wild creature, and never has been and can- 

 not be thoroughly domesticated. Its proper home is 

 the woods, and thither every new swarm counts on 

 going ; and thither many do go in spite of the care 

 and watchfulness of the bee-keeper. If the woods 

 in any given locality are deficient in trees with suit- 

 able cavities the bees resort to all sorts of make- 

 shifts ; they go into chimneys, into barns and out- 

 houses, under stones, into rocks, and so forth. Sev- 

 eral chimneys in my locality with disused flues are 

 taken possession of by colonies, of bees nearly every 

 season. ' One day while- bee-hunting I developed a 

 line that went toward a farm-house where I had rea- 

 son to believe no bees were kept. I followed it up 

 and questioned the farmer about his bees. He said 

 he kept no bees, but that a swarm had taken pos- 

 Bession of his chimney, and another had gone under 

 the clapboards in the gable end of his house. He 



