SHERWOOD HONEY FLOWS 225 



Being without them, my shortest way was not a "bee line" 

 but a road which followed their general direction and led to un- 

 cultivated fields, and also to a wood where I knew some basswood 

 trees grew. I went first to the wood and wandered about. The 

 basswood was not blooming well. I heard one or two bees flying 

 past and met another struggling among the leaves at my feet 

 with wings so torn that she could never reach home again. But 

 the feasting place I did not find here and I went down the road 

 toward home. At a turn in the road I heard a flying bee and then 

 another. They were going toward the wild fields which I had 

 quite forgotten and I followed on their trail along a path which 

 wound through fields of tall grass and weeds. On I went without 

 seeing or hearing a bee anywhere. I came to a fork in the path 

 and stopped, looking all about for some patch of clover or flying 

 bees. There was nothing, and I started down one path when 

 my collie, who had been silent all the while, barked and went the 

 other way. It seemed like the wrong direction, but not being 

 very hopeful of finding the bees at their feast that day, I followed 

 the dog. The sun was blazing upon the dry field and the heat 

 quivered in the intensely silent air. The paht led over a stone 

 wall into a field which was bordered with dense bushes' On 

 we went when suddenly I heard a sound in the heat and a rich, 

 heavy, spicy fragrance filled the air. It was .my children's voices 

 I heard, I had come upon them at last in their play! This, in- 

 deed, was their feasting place. All along the wall were large 

 clumps of staghom sumiac and such a mass of great soft yellow 

 cones rising from banks of green I had never seen before. The 

 air all about was quivering with bees in such ecstasy that I could 

 but stand by and gaze at these my children with delight equal, 

 perhaps, to their own. They were mad with the richly fragrant 

 wine that filled the hundreds of dainty yellow cups arranged in 

 smiling, nodding pyramids. Under the hot sun the nectar seemed 

 to flow continuously, filling each cup as soon as it was drained, 

 and the music of the bees at their feasting was of a beauty un- 

 believable. "So this is a honey flow," I cried as I walked on 

 down the path. Soon I came upon a whole grove of blooming 

 sumac reaching high above me, and along the little path that led 

 through it I walked, enchanted, among the fragrance and music. 



That evening after the last bees had come gliding in from the 

 fields deserted by the sun I walked from hive to hive waiting for 



