AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE. 75 



quantity and quality of the booty would also betray 

 it. No doubt, also, there are plenty of gossips about 

 a hive that note and tell everything. " Oh, did you 

 see that ? Peggy Mel came in a few moments ago 

 in great haste, and one of the up-stairs packers says 

 she was loaded till she groaned with apple-blossom 

 honey which she deposited, and then rushed off again 

 like mad. Apple-blossom honey in October ! Fee, 

 fi, fo, f urn ! I smell something ! Let 's after." 



In about half an hour we have three well-defined 

 lines of bees established two to farm-houses and 

 one to the woods, and our box is being rapidly de- 

 pleted of its honey. About every fourth bee goes to 

 the woods, and now that they have learned the way 

 thoroughly they do not make the long preliminary 

 whirl above the box, but start directly from it. The 

 woods are rough and dense and the hill steep, and we 

 do not like to follow the line of bees until we have 

 tried at least to settle the problem as to the distance 

 they go into the woods whether the tree is on this 

 side of the ridge or into the depth of the forest on 

 the other side. So we shut up the box when it is 

 full of bees and carry it about three hundred yards 

 along the wall from which we are operating. When 

 liberated, the bees, as they always will in such cases, 

 go off in the same directions they have been going ; 

 they do not seem to know that they have been moved. 

 But other bees have followed our scent, arid it is not 

 many minutes before a second line to the woods is 

 established. This is called cross-lining the bees. The 



