Books: The Writings of John Burroughs
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John Burroughs >> The Writings of John Burroughs
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Yet the fact remains that the honey-bee is essentially a wild
creature, and never has been and cannot be thoroughly domesticated.
Its proper home is the woods, and thither every new swarm counts on
going; and thither many do go in spite of the care and watchfulness
of the bee-keeper. If the woods in any given locality are
deficient in trees with suitable cavities, the bees resort to all
sorts of makeshifts; they go into chimneys, into barns and
outhouses, under stones, into rocks, etc. Several chimneys in my
locality with disused flues are taken possession of by colonies of
bees nearly every season. One day, while bee-hunting, I developed a
line that went toward a farmhouse where I had reason to believe no
bees were kept. I followed it up and questioned the farmer about
his bees. He said he kept no bees, but that a swarm had taken
possession of his chimney, and another had gone under the
clapboards in the gable end of his house. He had taken a large lot
of honey out of both places the year before. Another farmer told
me that one day his family had seen a number of bees examining a
knothole in the side of his house; the next day, as they were
sitting down to dinner, their attention was attracted by a loud
humming noise, when they discovered a swarm of bees settling upon
the side of the house and pouring into the knothole. In subsequent
years other swarms came to the same place.
Apparently, every swarm of bees, before it leaves the parent hive,
sends out exploring parties to look up the future home. The woods
and groves are searched through and through, and no doubt the
privacy of many a squirrel and many a wood-mouse is intruded upon.
What cozy nooks and retreats they do spy out, so much more
attractive than the painted hive in the garden, so much cooler in
summer and so much warmer in winter!
The bee is in the main an honest citizen: she prefers legitimate to
illegitimate business; she is never an outlaw until her proper
sources of supply fail; she will not touch honey as long as honey-
yielding flowers can be found; she always prefers to go to the
fountain-head, and dislikes to take her sweets at second hand. But
in the fall, after the flowers have failed, she can be tempted.
The bee-hunter takes advantage of this fact; he betrays her with a
little honey. He wants to steal her stores, and he first
encourages her to steal his, then follows the thief home with her
booty. This is the whole trick of the bee-hunter. The bees never
suspect his game, else by taking a circuitous route they could
easily baffle him. But the honey-bee has absolutely no wit or
cunning outside of her special gifts as a gatherer and storer of
honey. She is a simple-minded creature, and can be imposed upon by
any novice. Yet it is not every novice that can find a bee-tree.
The sportsman may track his game to its retreat by the aid of his
dog, but in hunting the honey-bee one must be his own dog, and
track his game through an element in which it leaves no trail. It
is a task for a sharp, quick eye, and may test the resources of the
best woodcraft. One autumn, when I devoted much time to this
pursuit, as the best means of getting at nature and the open-air
exhilaration, my eye became so trained that bees were nearly as
easy to it as birds. I saw and heard bees wherever I went. One
day, standing on a street corner in a great city, I saw above the
trucks and the traffic a line of bees carrying off sweets from some
grocery or confectionery shop.
One looks upon the woods with a new interest when he suspects they
hold a colony of bees. What a pleasing secret it is,--a tree with a
heart of comb honey, a decayed oak or maple with a bit of Sicily or
Mount Hymettus stowed away in its trunk or branches; secret
chambers where lies hidden the wealth of ten thousand little
freebooters, great nuggets and wedges of precious ore gathered with
risk and labor from every field and wood about!
But if you would know the delights of bee-hunting, and how many
sweets such a trip yields besides honey, come with me some bright,
warm, late September or early October day. It is the golden season
of the year, and any errand or pursuit that takes us abroad upon
the hills or by the painted woods and along the amber-colored
streams at such a time is enough. So, with haversacks filled with
grapes and peaches and apples and a bottle of milk,--for we shall
not be home to dinner,--and armed with a compass, a hatchet, a
pail, and a box with a piece of comb honey neatly fitted into it,--
any box the size of your hand with a lid will do nearly as well as
the elaborate and ingenious contrivance of the regular bee-hunter,--
we sally forth. Our course at first lies along the highway under
great chestnut-trees whose nuts are just dropping, then through an
orchard and across a little creek, thence gently rising through a
long series of cultivated fields toward some high uplying land
behind which rises a rugged wooded ridge or mountain, the most
sightly point in all this section. Behind this ridge for several
miles the country is wild, wooded, and rocky, and is no doubt the
home of many swarms of wild bees. What a gleeful uproar the robins,
cedar-birds, high-holes, and cow blackbirds make amid the black
cherry-trees as we pass along! The raccoons, too, have been here
after black cherries, and we see their marks at various points.
Several crows are walking about a newly sowed wheat-field we pass
through, and we pause to note their graceful movements and glossy
coats. I have seen no bird walk the ground with just the same air
the crow does. It is not exactly pride; there is no strut or
swagger in it, though perhaps just a little condescension; it is
the contented, complaisant, and self-possessed gait of a lord over
his domains. All these acres are mine, he says, and all these
crops; men plow and sow for me, and I stay here or go there, and
find life sweet and good wherever I am. The hawk looks awkward and
out of place on the ground; the game-birds hurry and skulk; but the
crow is at home, and treads the earth as if there were none to
molest or make him afraid.
The crows we have always with us, but it is not every day or every
season that one sees an eagle. Hence I must preserve the memory of
one I saw the last day I went bee-hunting. As I was laboring up
the side of a mountain at the head of a valley, the noble bird
sprang from the top of a dry tree above me and came sailing
directly over my head. I saw him bend his eye down upon me, and I
could hear the low hum of his plumage as if the web of every quill
in his great wings vibrated in his strong, level flight. I watched
him as long as my eye could hold him. When he was fairly clear of
the mountain, he began that sweeping spiral movement in which he
climbs the sky. Up and up he went, without once breaking his
majestic poise, till he appeared to sight some far-off alien
geography, when he bent his course thitherward and gradually
vanished in the blue depths. The eagle is a bird of large ideas; he
embraces long distances; the continent is his home. I never look
upon one without emotion; I follow him with my eye as long as I
can. I think of Canada, of the Great Lakes, of the Rocky Mountains,
of the wild and sounding seacoast. The waters are his, and the
woods and the inaccessible cliffs. He pierces behind the veil of
the storm, and his joy is height and depth and vast spaces.
We go out of our way to touch at a spring run in the edge of the
woods, and are lucky to find a single scarlet lobelia lingering
there. It seems almost to light up the gloom with its intense bit
of color. Beside a ditch in a field beyond, we find the great blue
lobelia, and near it, amid the weeds and wild grasses and purple
asters, the most beautiful of our fall flowers, the fringed
gentian. What a rare and delicate, almost aristocratic look the
gentian has amid its coarse, unkempt surroundings!- It does not
lure the bee, but it lures and holds every passing human eye. If
we strike through the corner of yonder woods, where the ground is
moistened by hidden springs, and where there is a little opening
amid the trees, we shall find the closed gentian, a rare flower in
this locality. I had walked this way many times before I chanced
upon its retreat, and then I was following a line of bees. I lost
the bees, but I got the gentians. How curious this flower looks
with its deep blue petals folded together so tightly,--a bud and
yet a blossom! It is the nun among our wild flowers,--a form
closely veiled and cloaked. The buccaneer bumblebee sometimes
tries to rifle it of its sweets. I have seen the blossom with the
bee entombed in it. He had forced his way into the virgin corolla
as if determined to know its secret, but he had never returned with
the knowledge he had gained.
After a refreshing walk of a couple of miles we reach a point where
we will make our first trial,--a high stone wall that runs parallel
with the wooded ridge referred to, and separated from it by a broad
field. There are bees at work there on that golden-rod, and it
requires but little manuvring to sweep one into our box. Almost
any other creature rudely and suddenly arrested in its career, and
clapped into a cage in this way, would show great confusion and
alarm. The bee is alarmed for a moment, but the bee has a passion
stronger than its love of life or fear of death, namely, desire for
honey, not simply to eat, but to carry home as booty. "Such rage
of honey in their bosom beats," says Virgil. It is quick to catch
the scent of honey in the box, and as quick to fall to filling
itself. We now set the box down upon the wall and gently remove
the cover. The bee is head and shoulders in one of the half-filled
cells, and is oblivious to everything else about it. Come rack,
come ruin, it will die at work. We step back a few paces, and sit
down upon the ground so as to bring the box against the blue sky as
a background. In two or three minutes the bee is seen rising
slowly and heavily from the box. It seems loath to leave so much
honey behind, and it marks the place well. It mounts aloft in a
rapidly increasing spiral, surveying the near and minute objects
first, then the larger and more distant, till, having circled above
the spot five or six times and taken all its bearings, it darts
away for home. It is a good eye that holds fast to the bee till it
is fairly off. Sometimes one's head will swim following it, and
often one's eyes are put out by the sun. This bee gradually drifts
down the hill, then strikes off toward a farmhouse half a mile away
where I know bees are kept. Then we try another and another, and
the third bee, much to our satisfaction, goes straight toward the
woods. We can see the brown speck against the darker background
for many yards. The regular bee-hunter professes to be able to
tell a wild bee from a tame one by the color, the former, he says,
being lighter. But there is no difference; they are alike in
color and in manner. Young bees are lighter than old, and that is
all there is of it. If a bee lived many years in the woods, it
would doubtless come to have some distinguishing marks, but the
life of a bee is only a few months at the farthest, and no change
is wrought in this brief time.
Our bees are all soon back, and more with them, for we have touched
the box here and there with the cork of a bottle of anise oil, and
this fragrant and pungent oil will attract bees half a mile or
more. When no flowers can be found, this is the quickest way to
obtain a bee.
It is a singular fact that when the bee first finds the hunter's
box, its first feeling is one of anger; it is as mad as a hornet;
its tone changes, it sounds its shrill war trumpet and darts to and
fro, and gives vent to its rage and indignation in no uncertain
manner. It seems to scent foul play at once. It says, "Here is
robbery; here is the spoil of some hive, maybe my own," and its
blood is up. But its ruling passion soon comes to the surface, its
avarice gets the better of its indignation, and it seems to say,
"Well, I had better take possession of this and carry it home." So
after many feints and approaches and dartings off with a loud angry
hum as if it would none of it, the bee settles down and fills
itself.
It does not entirely cool off and get soberly to work till it has
made two or three trips home with its booty. When other bees come,
even if all from the same swarm, they quarrel and dispute over the
box, and clip and dart at each other like bantam cocks. Apparently
the ill feeling which the sight of the honey awakens is not one of
jealousy or rivalry, but wrath.
A bee will usually make three or four trips from the hunter's box
before it brings back a companion. I suspect the bee does not tell
its fellows what it has found, but that they smell out the secret;
it doubtless bears some evidence with it upon its feet or proboscis
that it has been upon honeycomb and not upon flowers, and its
companions take the hint and follow, arriving always many seconds
behind. Then the quantity and quality of the booty would also
betray it. No doubt, also, there are plenty of gossips about a
hive that note and tell everything. "Oh, did you see that? Peggy
Mel came in a few moments ago in great haste, and one of the
upstairs packers says she was loaded till she groaned with apple-
blossom honey, which she deposited, and then rushed off again like
mad. Apple-blossom honey in October! Fee, fi, fo, fum! I smell
something! Let's after."
In about half an hour we have three well-defined lines of bees
established,--two to farmhouses and one to the woods, and our box
is being rapidly depleted of its honey. About every fourth bee
goes to the woods, and now that they have learned the way
thoroughly, they do not make the long preliminary whirl above the
box, but start directly from it. The woods are rough and dense and
the hill steep, and we do not like to follow the line of bees until
we have tried at least to settle the problem as to the distance
they go into the woods,--whether the tree is on this side of the
ridge or into the depth of the forest on the other side. So we
shut up the box when it is full of bees and carry it about three
hundred yards along the wall from which we are operating. When
liberated, the bees, as they always will in such cases, go off in
the same directions they have been going; they do not seem to know
that they have been moved. But other bees have followed our scent,
and it is not many minutes before a second line to the woods is
established. This is called cross-lining the bees. The new line
makes a sharp angle with the other line, and we know at once that
the tree is only a few rods in the woods. The two lines we have
established form two sides of a triangle, of which the wall is the
base; at the apex of the triangle, or where the two lines meet in
the woods, we are sure to find the tree. We quickly follow up
these lines, and where they cross each other on the side of the
hill we scan every tree closely. I pause at the foot of an oak and
examine a hole near the root; now the bees are in this tree and
their entrance is on the upper side near the ground not two feet
from the hole I peer into, and yet so quiet and secret is their
going and coming that I fail to discover them and pass on up the
hill. Failing in this direction, I return to the oak again, and
then perceive the bees going but in a small crack in the tree. The
bees do not know they are found out and that the game is in our
hands, and are as oblivious of our presence as if we were ants or
crickets. The indications are that the swarm is a small one, and
the store of honey trifling. In "taking up" a bee-tree it is usual
first to kill or stupefy the bees with the fumes of burning sulphur
or with tobacco smoke. But this course is impracticable on the
present occasion, so we boldly and ruthlessly assault the tree with
an axe we have procured. At the first blow the bees set up a loud
buzzing, but we have no mercy, and the side of the cavity is soon
cut away and the interior with its white-yellow mass of comb honey
is exposed, and not a bee strikes a blow in defense of its all.
This may seem singular, but it has nearly always been my
experience. When a swarm of bees are thus rudely assaulted with an
axe, they evidently think the end of the world has come, and, like
true misers as they are, each one seizes as much of the treasure as
it can hold; in other words, they all fall to and gorge themselves
with honey, and calmly await the issue. While in this condition
they make no defense, and will not sting unless taken hold of. In
fact, they are as harmless as flies. Bees are always to be managed
with boldness and decision. Any halfway measures, any timid poking
about, any feeble attempts to reach their honey, are sure to be
quickly resented. The popular notion that bees have a special
antipathy toward certain persons and a liking for certain others
has only this fact at the bottom of it: they will sting a person
who is afraid of them and goes skulking and dodging about, and they
will not sting a person who faces them boldly and has no dread of
them. They are like dogs. The way to disarm a vicious dog is to
show him you do not fear him; it is his turn to be afraid then. I
never had any dread of bees, and am seldom stung by them. I have
climbed up into a large chestnut that contained a swarm in one of
its cavities and chopped them out with an axe, being obliged at
times to pause and brush the bewildered bees from my hands and
face, and not been stung once. I have chopped a swarm out of an
apple-tree in June, and taken out the cards of honey and arranged
them in a hive, and then dipped out the bees with a dipper, and
taken the whole home with me in pretty good condition, with
scarcely any opposition on the part of the bees. In reaching your
hand into the cavity to detach and remove the comb you are pretty
sure to get stung, for when you touch the "business end" of a bee,
it will sting even though its head be off. But the bee carries the
antidote to its own poison. The best remedy for bee sting is
honey, and when your hands are besmeared with honey, as they are
sure to be on such occasions, the wound is scarcely more painful
than the prick of a pin. Assault your bee-tree, then, boldly with
your axe, and you will find that when the honey is exposed every
bee has surrendered, and the whole swarm is cowering in helpless
bewilderment and terror. Our tree yields only a few pounds of
honey, not enough to have lasted the swarm till January, but no
matter: we have the less burden to carry.
In the afternoon we go nearly half a mile farther along the ridge
to a corn-field that lies immediately in front of the highest point
of the mountain. The view is superb; the ripe autumn landscape
rolls away to the east, cut through by the great placid river; in
the extreme north the wall of the Catskills stands out clear and
strong, while in the south the mountains of the Highlands bound the
view. The day is warm, and the bees are very busy there in that
neglected corner of the field, rich in asters, fleabane, and
goldenrod. The corn has been cut, and upon a stout but a few rods
from the woods, which here drop quickly down from the precipitous
heights, we set up our bee-box, touched again with the pungent oil.
In a few moments a bee has found it; she comes up to leeward,
following the scent. On leaving the box, she goes straight toward
the woods. More bees quickly come, and it is not long before the
line is well established. Now we have recourse to the same tactics
we employed before, and move along the ridge to another field to
get our cross-line. But the bees still go in almost the same
direction they did from the corn stout. The tree is then either on
the top of the mountain or on the other or west side of it. We
hesitate to make the plunge into the woods and seek to scale those
precipices, for the eye can plainly see what is before us. As the
afternoon sun gets lower, the bees are seen with wonderful
distinctness. They fly toward and under the sun, and are in a
strong light, while the near woods which form the background are in
deep shadow. They look like large luminous motes. Their swiftly
vibrating, transparent wings surround their bodies with a shining
nimbus that makes them visible for a long distance. They seem
magnified many times. We see them bridge the little gulf between us
and the woods, then rise up over the treetops with their burdens,
swerving neither to the right hand nor to the left. It is almost
pathetic to see them labor so, climbing the mountain and
unwittingly guiding us to their treasures. When the sun gets down
so that his direction corresponds exactly with the course of the
bees, we make the plunge. It proves even harder climbing than we
had anticipated; the mountain is faced by a broken and irregular
wall of rock, up which we pull ourselves slowly and cautiously by
main strength. In half an hour, the perspiration streaming from
every pore, we reach the summit. The trees here are all small, a
second growth, and we are soon convinced the bees are not here.
Then down we go on the other side, clambering down the rocky
stairways till we reach quite a broad plateau that forms something
like the shoulder of the mountain. On the brink of this there are
many large hemlocks, and we scan them closely and rap upon them
with our axe. But not a bee is seen or heard; we do not seem as
near the tree as we were in the fields below; yet, if some divinity
would only whisper the fact to us, we are within a few rods of the
coveted prize, which is not in one of the large hemlocks or oaks
that absorb our attention, but in an old stub or stump not six feet
high, and which we have seen and passed several times without
giving it a thought. We go farther down the mountain and beat
about to the right and left, and get entangled in brush and
arrested by precipices, and finally, as the day is nearly spent,
give up the search and leave the woods quite baffled, but resolved
to return on the morrow. The next day we come back and commence
operations in an opening in the woods well down on the side of the
mountain where we gave up the search. Our box is soon swarming
with the eager bees, and they go back toward the summit we have
passed. We follow back and establish a new line, where the ground
will permit; then another and still another, and yet the riddle is
not solved. One time we are south of them, then north, then the
bees get up through the trees and we cannot tell where they go.
But after much searching, and after the mystery seems rather to
deepen than to clear up, we chance to pause beside the old stump.
A bee comes out of a small opening like that made by ants in
decayed wood, rubs its eyes and examines its antennæ, as bees
always do before leaving their hive, then takes flight. At the
same instant several bees come by us loaded with our honey and
settle home with that peculiar low, complacent buzz of the well-
filled insect. Here then, is our idyl, our bit of Virgil and
Theocritus, in a decayed stump of a hemlock-tree. We could tear it
open with our hands, and a bear would find it an easy prize, and a
rich one, too, for we take from it fifty pounds of excellent honey.
The bees have been here many years, and have of course sent out
swarm after swarm into the wilds. they have protected themselves
against the weather and strengthened their shaky habitation by a
copious use of wax.
When a bee-tree is thus "taken up" in the middle of the day, of
course a good many bees are away from home and have not heard the
news. When they return and find the ground flowing with honey, and
plies of bleeding combs lying about, they apparently do not
recognize the place, and their first instinct is to fall to and
fill themselves; this done, their next thought is to carry it home,
so they rise up slowly through the branches of the trees till they
have attained an altitude that enables them to survey the scene,
when they seem to say, "Why, THIS is home," and down they come
again; beholding the wreck and ruins once more, they still thinking
there is some mistake, and get up a second or a third time and then
drop back pitifully as before. It is the most pathetic sight of
all, the surviving and bewildered bees struggling to save a few
drops of their wasted treasures.
Presently, if there is another swarm in the woods, robber bees
appear. You may know them by their saucy, chiding, devil-may-care
hum. It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, and they make the
most of the misfortune of their neighbors, and thereby pave the way
for their own ruin. The hunter marks their course, and the next
day looks them up. On this occasion the day was hot and the honey
very fragrant, and a line of bees was soon established south-
southwest. Though there was much refuse honey in the old stub, and
though little golden rills trickled down the hill from it, and the
near branches and saplings were besmeared with it where we wiped
our murderous hands, yet not a drop was wasted. It was a feast to
which not only honey bees came, but bumblebees, wasps, hornets,
flies, ants. The bumblebees, which at this season are hungry
vagrants with no fixed place of abode, would gorge themselves, then
creep beneath the bits of empty comb or fragments of bark and pass
the night, and renew the feast next day. The bumble-bee is an
insect of which the bee-hunter sees much. There are all sorts and
sizes of them. They are dull and clumsy compared with the honeybee.
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.
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