82 BEES. 



the tree that contains the cavity ; or to leave the tree 

 till fall, then invite your neighbors, and go and cut 

 it, and see the ground flow with honey. The former 

 course is more business-like ; but the latter is the 

 one usually recommended by one's friends and neigh- 

 bors. 



Perhaps nearly one third of all the runaway swarms 

 Heave when no one is about, and hence are unseen and 

 raiheard, save, perchance, by some distant laborers in 

 the field, or by some youth ploughing on the side of 

 the mountain, who hears an unusual humming noise, 

 and sees the swarm dimly whirling by overhead, and, 

 >aiay be, gives chase ; or he may simply catch the 

 sound, when he pauses, looks quickly around, but sees 

 nothing. When he comes in at night he tells how 

 he heard or saw a swarm of bees go over ; and, per- 

 haps from beneath one of the hives in the garden a 

 black mass of bees has disappeared during the day. 



They are not partial as to the kind of tree, — pine, 

 hemlock, elm, birch, maple, hickory, — any tree with 

 a good cavity high up or low down. A swarm of 

 mine ran away from the new patent hive I gave them, 

 and took up their quarters in the hollow trunk of an 

 old apple-tree across an adjoining field. The entrance 

 was a mouse-hole near the ground. 



Another swarm in the neighborhood deserted their 

 keeper and went into the cornice of an out-house that 

 stood amid evergreens in the rear of a large mansion. 

 But there is no accounting for the taste of bees, as 

 Samson found when he discovered the swarm in the 

 carcass, or more probably the skeleton, of the lion he 

 had slain. 



In any given locality, especially in the more wooded 

 and mountainous districts, the number of swarms that 



