ke the bees to have
some preliminary plan and understanding about the matter on both sides.

Bees will accommodate themselves to almost any quarters, yet no hive
seems to please them so well as a section of a hollow tree--"gums" as
they are called in the South and West where the sweet gum grows. In some
European countries the hive is always made from the trunk of a tree, a
suitable cavity being formed by boring. The old-fashioned straw hive is
picturesque, and a great favorite with the bees also.

The life of a swarm of bees is like an active and hazardous campaign
of an army; the ranks are being continually depleted, and continually
recruited. What adventures they have by flood and field, and what
hair-breadth escapes! A strong swarm during the honey season loses, on
an average, about four or five thousand per month, or one hundred and
fifty per day. They are overwhelmed by wind and rain, caught by spiders,
benumbed by cold, crushed by cattle, drowned in rivers and ponds, and
in many nameless ways cut off or disabled. In the spring the principal
mortality is from the cold. As the sun declines they get chilled before
they can reach home. Many fall down outside the hive, unable to get
in with their burden. One may see them come utterly spent and drop
hopelessly into the grass in front of their very doors. Before they can
rest the cold has stiffened them. I go out in April and May and pick
them up by the handfuls, their baskets loaded with pollen, and warm them
in the sun or in the house, or by the simple warmth of my hand, until
they can crawl into the hive. Heat is their life, and an apparently
lifeless bee may be revived by warming him. I have also picked them up
while rowing on the river and seen them safely to shore. It is amusing
to see them come hurrying home when there is a thunderstorm approaching.
They come piling in till the rain is upon them. Those that are overtaken
by the storm doubtless weather it as best they can in the sheltering
trees or grass. It is not probable that a bee ever gets lost by
wandering into strange and unknown parts. With their myriad eyes they
see everything; and then, their sense of locality is very acute, is,
indeed, one of their ruling traits. When a bee marks the place of his
hive, or of a bit of good pasturage in the fields or swamps, or of the
bee-hunter's box of honey on the hills or in the woods, he returns to it
as unerringly as fate.

Honey was a much more important article o