Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes, and Other PapersBurroughs, John
History
Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes, and Other Papers
Burroughs, John
Bees; Birds; Natural history -- Outdoor books
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, and the more broken outlines of the
Shawangunk range filled the rear. On every hand were precipices and a
wild confusion of rocks and trees.
The cavity occupied by the bees was about three feet and a half long and
eight or ten inches in diameter. With an ax we cut away one side of the
tree and laid bare its curiously wrought heart of honey. It was a most
pleasing sight. What winding and devious ways the bees had through their
palace! What great masses and blocks of snow-white comb there were!
Where it was sealed up, presenting that slightly dented, uneven surface,
it looked like some precious ore. When we carried a large pail full of
it out of the woods, it seemed still more like ore.
Your native bee-hunter predicates the distance of the tree by the time
the bee occupies in making its first trip. But this is no certain guide.
You are always safe in calculating that the tree is inside of a mile,
and you need not as a rule look for your bee's return under ten minutes.
One day I picked up a bee in an opening in the woods and gave it honey,
and it made three trips to my box with an interval of about twelve
minutes between them; it returned alone each time; the tree, which I
afterward found, was about half a mile distant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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