The Ploughboy 



Now that I had learned the general direction 

 of the hive, I pushed on in search of it. I had 

 gone perhaps a quarter of a mile when I caught 

 another bee, which, after getting loaded, went 

 through the same performance of circling round 

 and round the honey-box, buzzing in front of 

 me and staring me in the face to be able to 

 recognize me; but as if the adjacent trees and 

 bushes were sufficiently well known, it simply 

 looked around at them and bolted off without 

 much dressing, indicating, I thought, that the 

 distance to the hive was not great. I followed 

 on and very soon discovered it in the bottom 

 log of a corn-field fence, but some lucky fellow 

 had discovered it before me and robbed it. 

 The robbers had chopped a large hole in the 

 log, taken out most of the honey, and left the 

 poor bees late in the fall, when winter was 

 approaching, to make haste to gather all the 

 honey they could from the latest flowers to 

 avoid starvation in the winter. 



