PEPACTON 



to the woods, and now that they have learned the 

 way thoroughly, they do not make the long pre- 

 liminary 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 prob- 

 lem 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, and it is not many 

 minutes before a second line to the woods is estab- 

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

 new line makes a sharp angle with the other line, 

 and we know at once that the tree is only a few 

 rods in the woods. The two lines we have estab- 

 lished form two sides of a triangle, of which the 

 wall is the base ; at the apex of the triangle, or 

 where the two lines meet in the woods, we are sure 

 to find the tree. We quickly follow up these lines, 

 and where they cross each other on the side of 

 the hill we scan every tree closely. I pause at the 

 foot of an oak and examine a hole near the root; 

 now the bees are in this tree and their entrance 



