54 PEPACTON 



white man's craftiness, his industry, his architectu- 

 ral skill, his neatness and love of system, his fore- 

 sight; and, above all, his eager, miserly habits. 

 The honey-bee's great ambition is to be rich, to lay 

 up great stores, to possess the sweet of every flower 

 that blooms. She is more than provident. Enough 

 will not satisfy her; she must have all she can get 

 by hook or by crook. She comes from the oldest 

 country, Asia, and thrives best in the most fertile 

 and long-settled lands. 



Yet the fact remains that the honey-bee is essen- 

 tially a wild creature, and never has been and can- 

 not be thoroughly domesticated. Its proper home 

 is the woods, and thither every new swarm counts 

 on going; and thither many do go in spite of the 

 care and watchfulness of the bee-keeper. If the 

 woods in any given locality are deficient in trees 

 with suitable cavities, the bees resort to all sorts of 

 makeshifts; they go into chimneys, into barns and 

 outhouses, under stones, into rocks, and so forth. 

 Several chimneys in my locality with disused flues 

 are taken possession of by colonies of bees nearly 

 every season. One day, while bee-hunting, I devel- 

 oped a line that went toward a farmhouse where I 

 had reason to believe no bees were kept. I fol- 

 lowed it up and questioned the farmer about his 

 bees. He said he kept no bees, but that a swarm 

 had taken possession of his chimney, and another 

 had gone under the clapboards in the gable end of 

 his house. He had taken a large lot of honey out 

 of both places the year before. Another farmer 



