AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE 



had partially grown over, but there was an opening 

 there that I did not see at the first glance. I was 

 about to pass on when a bee passed me making that 

 peculiar shrill, discordant hum that a bee makes 

 when besmeared with honey. I saw it alight in 

 the partially closed wound and crawl home ; then 

 came others and others, little bands and squads of 

 them, heavily freighted with honey from the box. 

 The tree was about twenty inches through and hol- 

 iow at the butt, or from the axe-mark down. This 

 space the bees had completely filled with honey. 

 With an axe we cut away the outer ring of live 

 wood and exposed the treasure. Despite the utmost 

 care, we wounded the comb so that little rills of 

 the golden liquid issued from the root of the tree 

 and trickled down the hill. 



The other bee-tree in the vicinity to which I have 

 referred we found one warm November day in less 

 than half an hour after entering the woods. It also 

 was a hemlock, that stood in a niche in a wall of 

 hoary, moss-covered rocks thirty feet high. The 

 tree hardly reached to the top of the precipice. The 

 bees entered a small hole at the root, which was 

 seven or eight feet from the ground. The position 

 was a striking one. Never did apiary have a finer 

 outlook or more rugged surroundings. A black, 

 wood-embraced lake lay at our feet; the long pan- 

 orama of the Catskills filled the far distance, and 

 the more broken outlines of the Shawangunk range 

 77 



