PEPACTON 



with a little honey. He wants to steal her stores, 

 and he first encourages her to steal his, then follows 

 the thief home with her booty. This is the whole 

 trick of the bee-hunter. The bees never suspect 

 his game, else by taking a circuitous route they 

 could easily baffle him. But the honey-bee has 

 absolutely no wit or cunning outside of her special 

 gifts as a gatherer and storer of honey. She is a 

 simple-minded creature, and can be imposed upon 

 by any novice. Yet it is not every novice that can 

 find a bee-tree. The sportsman may track his game 

 to its retreat by the aid of his dog, but in hunt- 

 ing the honey-bee one must be his own dog, and 

 track his game through an element in which it 

 leaves no trail. It is a task for a sharp, quick eye, 

 and may test the resources of the best woodcraft. 

 One autumn, when I devoted much time to this 

 pursuit, as the best means of getting at nature and 

 the open-air exhilaration, my eye became so trained 

 that bees were nearly as easy to it as birds. I saw 

 and heard bees wherever I went. One day, stand- 

 ing on a street corner in a great city, I saw above 

 the trucks and the traffic a line of bees carrying 

 off sweets from some grocery or confectionery shop. 

 One looks upon the woods with a new interest 

 when he suspects they hold a colony of bees. What 

 a pleasing secret it is, a tree with a heart of comb 

 honey, a decayed oak or maple with a bit of Sicily 

 or Mount Hymettus stowed away in its trunk or 



