PEPACTON 



filled the rear. On every hand were precipices and 

 a wild confusion of rocks and trees. 



The cavity occupied by the bees was about three 

 feet and a half long and eight or ten inches in 

 diameter. With an axe we cut away one side of the 

 tree, and laid bare its curiously wrought heart of 

 honey. It was a most pleasing sight. What wind- 

 ing and devious ways the bees had through their 

 palace! What great masses and blocks of snow- 

 white comb there were! Where it was sealed up, 

 presenting that slightly dented, uneven surface, it 

 looked like some precious ore. When we carried 

 a large pailful of it out of the woods, it seemed still 

 more like ore. 



Your native bee-hunter predicates the distance 

 of the tree by the time the bee occupies in making 

 its first trip. But this is no certain guide. You are 

 always safe in calculating that the tree is inside of 

 a mile, and you need not as a rule look for your 

 bee's return under ten minutes. One day I picked 

 up a bee in an opening in the woods and gave it 

 honey, and it made three trips to my box with an 

 interval of about twelve minutes between them; it 

 returned alone each time ; the tree, which I after- 

 ward found, was about half a mile distant. 



In lining bees through the woods, the tactics of 



the hunter are to pause every twenty or thirty rods, 



lop away the branches or cut down the trees, and 



set the bees to work again. If they still go forward, 



78 



