86 AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE. 



and sharp, precipitous, rocky ridges like a tempest 

 tossed sea, I carried my bees directly under their 

 tree, and set them to work from a high, exposed 

 ledge of rocks not thirty feet distant. One would 

 have expected them under such circumstances to 

 have gone straight home, as there were but few 

 branches intervening, but they did not ; they labored 

 up through the trees and attained an altitude above 

 the woods as if they had miles to travel, and thus 

 baffled me for hours. Bees will always do this. 

 They are acquainted with the woods only from the 

 top side, and from the air above ; they recognize 

 home only by land-marks here, and in every instance 

 they rise aloft to take their bearings. Think how 

 familiar to them the topography of the forest sum- 

 mits must be an umbrageous sea or plain where 

 every mark and point is known. 



Another curious fact is that generally you will get 

 track of a bee-tree sooner when you are half a mile 

 from it than when you are only a few yards. Bees, 

 like us human insects, have little faith in the near at 

 hand ; they expect to make their fortune in a distant 

 field, they ar.e lured by the remote and the difficult, 

 and hence overlook the. flower and the sweet at their 

 very door. On several occasions I have unwittingly 

 set my box within a few paces of a bee-tree and 

 waited long for bees without getting them, when, on 

 removing to a distant field or opening in the woods 

 I have got a clew at once. 



I have a theory that when bees leave the 



