ct to follow it until
someone gives us something superior.

The profits of bee hunting will depend on the ability of the man to
manipulate the bees after taking them from the tree. You must agree
with me that in cutting the tree, there is nearly always some of
the combs containing honey broken up and covered with dirt, and
this honey can never be classed as salable. Therefore, if we hunt
bees merely for what honey may be in the tree and leave the bees to
perish from starvation and cold, it were far better, from a moral
and financial point of view, to let the tree stand.

CHAPTER XI.

CUSTOMS AND OWNERSHIP OF WILD BEES.

There are customs in vogue among sportsmen that have been handed
down from generation to generation, that have almost become laws.
Indeed, we have heard it said that custom becomes law.

A hunter may wound a deer, follow it for a distance and find that
another hunter has shot and killed it. The question might arise as
to whom the deer belonged. A bee hunter may find a bee tree and
mark it and some other hunter might find it afterwards and cut it.
The same question might arise as to whom it legally belonged. If
sportsmen were to settle the disputes they would refer back to
custom and say the deer belonged to the one first wounding it,
providing the wound was of such nature that the one first wounding
it would have been pretty sure of getting it, by following on, and
they would also decide that the bee belonged to the one who first
found and marked it.

A custom that may seem to be founded on justice is pretty apt to be
followed by laws that may coincide with the custom. But we must
remember there are statute laws relating to the ownership of wild
animals and bees, and though we all band together as sportsmen, we
cannot abrogate nor set aside these laws already formed.

In my boyhood days, when I would find a bee, I was very slow to
tell any one just where it was for fear they might cut it. Was this
true sportsmanship? I think not. Some other bee hunter might hunt
for that bee a day or more and finding it would have reason to say
that I had deceived him and he could hardly be blamed if he cut it.
I have been used just this very way more than once, and felt like
retaliating by cutting a bee that was found prior by another party.
But am glad to say that I never did. Since I became more mature in
years I have had more confidence in my fellow sportsmen and now
after finding a bee tree the first t