AN IDYL OF THE HONEY-BEE. (53 



of about twelve minutes between tLem ; it returned 

 alone each time ; the tree, which I afterward found, 

 was about half a mile distant. 



In lining bees through the woods, the tactics of fche 

 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, he goes 

 forward also and repeats his observations till the 

 tree is found or till the bees turn and come back 

 upon the trail. Then he knows he has passed the 

 tree, and he retraces his steps to a convenient dis- 

 tance and tries again, and thus quickly reduces the 

 space to be looked over till the swarm is traced 

 home. On one occasion, in a wild rocky wood, where 

 the surface alternated between deep gulfs and chasms* 

 filled with thick, heavy growths of timber and sharp, 

 precipitous, rocky ridges like a tempest tossed sea, I 

 carried my bees directly under their tree, and set 

 them to work from a high, exposed ledge of rocks not 

 thirty feet distant. One would have expected them 

 under such circumstances to have gone straight home, 

 as there were but few branches intervening, but they 

 did not ; they labored up through the trees and at- 

 tained an altitude above the woods as if they had 

 miles to travel, and thus baffled me for hours. Bee^ 

 Iwill always do this. They are acquainted with the 

 woods only from the top side, and from the air above » 

 they recognize home only by land-marks here, and ir 

 every instance they rise aloft to take their bearii 

 Think how familiar to them the topography of the 

 yorest summits must be — an umbrageous sea oi 

 plain where every mark and point is known. 



Another curious fact is that generally you will get 

 track of a bee-tree sooner when you are half a mile 



