PEPACTON 



flies, ants. The bumblebees, which at this season 

 are hungry vagrants with no fixed place of abode, 

 would gorge themselves, then creep beneath the bits 

 of empty comb or fragments of bark and pass the 

 night, and renew the feast next day. The bum- 

 ble-bee is an insect of which the bee-hunter sees 

 much. There are all sorts and sizes of them. They 

 are dull and clumsy compared with the honey- 

 bee. Attracted in the fields by the bee-hunter's 

 box, they will come up the wind on the scent 

 and blunder into it in the most stupid, lubberly 

 fashion. 



The honey-bees that licked up our leavings on 

 the old stub belonged to a swarm, as it proved, 

 about half a mile farther down the ridge, and a few 

 days afterward fate overtook them, and their stores 

 in turn became the prey of another swarm in the 

 vicinity, which also tempted Providence and were 

 overwhelmed. The first-mentioned swarm I had 

 lined from several points, and was following up the 

 clew over rocks and through gullies, when I came 

 to where a large hemlock had been felled a few 

 years before, and a swarm taken from a cavity near 

 the top of it; fragments of the old comb were yet 

 to be seen. A few yards away stood another short, 

 squatty hemlock, and I said my bees ought to be 

 there. As I paused near it, I noticed where the 

 tree had been wounded with an axe a couple of feet 

 from the ground many years before. The wound 

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