of which the bee-hunter
sees much. There are all sorts and sizes of them. They are dull and
clumsy compared with the honey-bee. Attracted in the fields by the
bee-hunter's box, they will come up the wind on the scent and blunder
into it in the most stupid, lubberly fashion.

The honey-bee that licked up our leavings on the old stub belonged to a
swarm, as it proved, about half a mile farther down the ridge, and a few
days afterward fate overtook them, and their stores in turn became the
prey of another swarm in the vicinity, which also tempted Providence
and were overwhelmed. The first mentioned swarm I had lined from several
points, and was following up the clew over rocks and through gulleys,
when I came to where a large hemlock had been felled a few years before
and a swarm taken from a cavity near the top of it; fragments of the old
comb were yet to be seen. A few yards away stood another short, squatty
hemlock, and I said my bees ought to be there. As I paused near it I
noticed where the tree had been wounded with an ax a couple of feet from
the ground many years before. The wound had partially grown over, but
there was an opening there that I did not see at the first glance. I
was about to pass on when a bee passed me making that peculiar shrill,
discordant hum that a bee makes when besmeared with honey. I saw it
alight in the partially closed wound and crawl home; then came others
and others, little bands and squads of them heavily freighted with honey
from the box. The tree was about twenty inches through and hollow at
the butt, or from the ax mark down. This space the bees had completely
filled with honey. With an ax we cut away the outer ring of live wood
and exposed the treasure. Despite the utmost care, we wounded the comb
so that little rills of the golden liquid issued from the root of the
tree and trickled down the hill.

The other bee-tree in the vicinity, to which I have referred, we found
one warm November day in less than half an hour after entering the
woods. It also was a hemlock, that stood in a niche in a wall of hoary,
moss-covered rocks thirty feet high. The tree hardly reached to the top
of the precipice. The bees entered a small hole at the root, which was
seven or eight feet from the ground. The position was a striking one.
Never did apiary have a finer outlook or more rugged surroundings. A
black, wood-embraced lake lay at our feet; the long panorama of the
Catskills filled the far distance