580 
FOREST AND STREAM 
October, 1918 
BEE HUNTERS OFTHE SOUTHERN MOUNTAINS 
SERVING THEIR OWN PLEASURE AND TASTE FOR HONEY THE MOUNTAINEERS 
UNWITTINGLY DO A GOOD BIT TOWARD WAR-WINNING SUGAR CONSERVATION 
FENIMORE COOPER, in his fasci- 
# nating novel, “The Oak Openings,” de¬ 
scribes in minute detail the methods 
by which the pioneer bee-hunters of the 
American wilderness tracked the little 
honev-gatherers and despoiled their stores 
a hundred years ago. His hero of this 
story (the action of which takes place in 
the wilds of southern Michigan in the 
year 1812) is one Ben Boden, a bee-hunter 
by profession, who spent the summer in 
culling honey from the forests, and the 
winter in selling it among the settlements. 
Boden’s equipment, beside buckets and 
kegs for the storing of the honey, con¬ 
sisted of a small covered tin cup contain¬ 
ing liquid honey; a tiny wooden box con¬ 
taining empty honeycomb; a wooden plate, 
and a common tumbler of greenish glass. 
He always began his operations in one of 
the small prairies or “openings” in the oak 
forest, which gives the novel its name. 
Here he would place his platter on the 
ground, or on a rock or stump; take from 
the little box a piece of honeycomb not 
over an inch and a half in diameter, and 
put it on the plate; then from the covered 
tin vessel pour the cells of the comb about 
half full of honey. 
His next task was to search among the 
clover blossoms and other prairie flowers 
for a bee, which he would capture by plac¬ 
ing the tumbler over it, and sliding his 
hand across the mouth of the tumbler. 
Next he would set the tumbler, with its 
imprisoned bee, over the bit of honeycomb 
on the platter. Then he would cover tum¬ 
bler, platter and all for a moment with his 
coonskin cap. The darkness would quiet 
the bee from its frantic efforts to escape, 
and, lighting upon the comb of honey, it 
would bury its head in ,3 cell, and begin 
loading itself from this unlooked-for 
hoard. The advantage of this method was 
that within five minutes the bee would 
have taken on as much sweetness as it 
could carry, and would be ready to fly di- 
recetly to its hive. 
Noting this through the glass, the hunter 
would take away the tumbler, and the bee 
would rise in the air. After a half-circle 
or so to get its bearings, it would shoot 
away in a direct line—a “bee line”—for its 
home. Standing perfectly still, the hunter 
would note carefully all discernible land¬ 
marks in the line of its flight. 
He would then capture a few more bees, 
and repeat the process with each of them. 
Various ones, upon being released, might 
fly away in two or three different direc¬ 
tions, indicating that they came from as 
many different hives. The hunter would 
then move his outfit three hundred yards 
or so across the open, set it up, capture 
more bees, and take observations of their 
courses. 
This time, he would observe carefully 
the angle at which those courses crossed 
the courses of the first bees released. He 
By A. F. HARLOW 
would feel pretty certain that at the inter¬ 
section of these courses, he would find the 
trees containing the hives, with their rich 
store of honey. 
T HE mountaineer of the southern Ap¬ 
palachians has no such elaborate 
equipment for the tracking of bees 
as had Ben Boden; in fact, he has no 
equipment at all. He locates the tree, as 
A personal message to readers of Forest 
and Stream from the United States 
Food Administration 
GOOD sportsman, like a good 
soldier, studies the strategy of 
his game, and employs skilful tactics 
to win. 
****** 
Our game now is to save sugar. 
****** 
We have for ourselves only one- 
half of our normal household re¬ 
quirements. Yet out of that we must 
manage to send enough to England, 
France, and Italy to maintain their 
respective rations of 2 pounds, D/2 
pounds and 1 pound per person a 
month. 
****** 
To do this we must limit ourselves 
to 2 pounds per person per month for 
household use. Those of us who are 
clever and true sportsmen will do 
with less so we can add to the allot¬ 
ment distributed for canning. It is 
important to save the fruit crop. 
****** 
Of the other sweeteners in place 
of sugar which the U. S. Food Ad¬ 
ministration says we may use, honey 
and maple sugar may well figure in 
the diet of out-of-doors people. If 
you are fortunate enough to come 
upon a hoard of wild honey, so much 
the better. 
* * * * * * 
We have sent our sons into hand- 
to-hand struggle uhth the most brutal 
and selfish power on earth. Let us 
not through any selfishness on our 
part join the enemy against them. 
****** 
To take a grain of sugar over 2 
pounds is to rob our fighters. Let us 
play the game like the true sportsmen 
Americans are, share a/id share alike. 
he does most other things, in the crudest, 
most roundabout and most difficult way. 
It is manifestly impracticable to attempt 
to follow a bee from flower to flower un¬ 
til she gets ready to fly home to the hive. 
Therefore, the only thing to do is to watch 
the direction of her flight after she “takes 
water.” It is necessary for the bee to go 
out occasionally and bring in a cargo of 
water, in order to make the honey of the 
proper consistency and flavor. When the 
mountain man observes that a little sand 
spit or mud bank along the edge of his 
spring branch is a favorite place for bees 
to get their fill of water, he watches it 
carefully, and as they rise, notes the direc¬ 
tion of their flight. He stands there and 
impresses upon his mind all the landmarks 
along that curveless line—trees, rocks and 
cliffs. Tracking a bee in the level lands 
of southern Michigan in Ben Boden’s day 
was child’s play as compared with the pur¬ 
suit in these highlands. The trail may 
lead up mountains, across gulches a thou¬ 
sand feet deep, over cliffs, up or down 
steep slopes that are merely jagged rock 
piles, criss-crossed by fallen trees and 
laced with entanglements of laurel, rhodo¬ 
dendron, briers and poison ivy. 
With the characteristic patience of the 
mountaineer, the hunter works slowly 
along his straight line, as nearly as he can 
determine it, examining every tree within 
a broad path, because of a possible error 
in his calculations. 
“Have you found any bee-trees lately?” 
I asked Jim Durham one day. 
“No,” he replied, “but I’ve got two 
courses.” 
He had spent all his spare time for sev¬ 
eral weeks in following those two courses 
—but hadn’t yet found the trees. 
1 WAS present at the cutting of a tree 
on a mountain top which John Baxter 
had located by following the bees from 
a point nearly a mile away, and 1,500 feet 
lower down—the declivity including a cliff 
not far from 200 feet in height. 
Not all bee trees are located by track¬ 
ing their tenants. Arthur Francis discov¬ 
ered the tree whose cutting I shall pres¬ 
ently describe purely by accident. The 
mountain man’s sight is keen, and he is 
always on the alert for game of any sort. 
He quickly detects a hollow tree as he 
walks through the woods, and immediately 
casts his eye upward along the trunk to 
see whether there is an opening anywhere 1 
with bees crawling in and out thereof. 
Even if the entrance to the hive is fifty 
feet above the ground, it will hardly escape 
his sharp scrutiny. £ ,'j 
Old Hamp Lawson, an enthusiastic bee 
hunter of Walden’s Ridge, sometimes stops 
suddenly in the forest, and says, with a 
grin: “Now, thar’s a bee-tree close by 
hyar. See ef ye can find it;” and then 
he stands and watches our clumsy search, 
our craning and “rubbering” up Into the 
tree, with all the enjoyment of a child 
playing hide and seek. 
Having located the tree, the discoverer 
walks around it, examining the trunk care¬ 
fully to see if it bears any other man’s 
mark. If not, he hacks his own—gen¬ 
erally a rude cross—upon it with an axe, 
