254 HUNTING THE HONEY-BEE 



low that it had been overlooked, to what proved to 

 be an eighty-pound bee-tree. My particular bee- 

 hunter was puzzled by a swarm this season which 

 he found at last in a fallen tree, and so was saved 

 the labor of much chopping. 



Like other mortals, the bee-hunter has his dis- 

 appointments, as when the bees that he has lined 

 through woods and across fields for a whole day, 

 perhaps, or even longer, lead him at last to the 

 sheltered hives of some farmhouse; or more than 

 this, when, having found his tree and put his mark 

 upon it, he goes at the first opportunity to cut it 

 and finds that he has been forestalled by some 

 freebooter, who has left him only the fallen tree, 

 some fragments of empty comb, and the forlorn 

 survivors of the harried swarm. 



When the stronghold of the bees is sapped by 

 the hunter's axe and topples down, in many cases 

 the garrison appears to be so overwhelmed by the 

 calamity as to offer little or no resistance; but often 

 the doughty little amazons fight so bravely for 

 home and honey, that their assailants are obliged 

 to smother them with a "smudge" of dead leaves 

 or straw before they can secure then- booty. 



The honey of the woods, though apt to be some- 

 what dirty, from the manner in which it is ob- 

 tained, is thought by many to be better than the 

 honey of the hives. I never knew one who loved 

 the woods much that did not find wild meat more 



