Jonathan had taken me to see the "bee tree" down in the "old John Lane
lot." Judging from the name, the spot must have been a clearing at one
time, but now it is one of the oldest pieces of woodland in the
locality. The bee tree, a huge chestnut, cut down thirty years ago for
its store of honey, is sinking back into the forest floor, but we could
still see its hollow heart and charred sides where the fire had been
made to smoke out the bees.
"Jonathan," I said, "I'd like to find some wild honey. It sounds so
good."
"No better than tame honey," said Jonathan.
"It sounds better. I'm sure it would be different scooped out of a tree
like this than done up neatly in pound squares."
"Tastes just the same," persisted Jonathan prosaically.
"Well, anyway, I want to find a bee tree. Let's go bee-hunting!"
"What's the use? You don't know a honeybee from a bumblebee."
"Well, you do, of course," I answered, tactfully.
Jonathan, mollified, became gracious. "I never went bee-hunting, but
I've heard the old fellows tell how it's done. But it takes all day."
"So much the better," I said.
And that night I looked through our books to find out what I could about
bees. Over the fireplace in what was once the "best parlor" is a long,
low cupboard with glass doors. Here Bibles, albums, and a few other
books have always been stored, and from this I pulled down a fat,
gilt-lettered volume called "The Household Friend." This book has
something to say about almost everything, and, sure enough, it had an
article on bees. But the Household Friend had obviously never gone
bee-hunting, and the only real information I got was that bees had four
wings and six legs.
"So has a fly," said Jonathan, when I came to him with this nugget of
wisdom.
The neighbors gave suggestions. "You want to go when the yeller-top's in
bloom," said one.
"Yellow-top?" I questioned, stupidly enough.
"Yes. Yeller-top--'t's in bloom now," with a comprehensive wave of the
hand.
"Oh, you mean goldenrod!"
"Well, I guess you call it that. Yeller-top we call it. You find one o'
them old back fields where the yeller-top's come in, 'n' you'll see bees
'nough."
Another friend told us that when we had caught our bee we must drop
honey on her back. This would send her to the hive to get her friends to
groom her off, and they would all return with her to see where the honey
came from. This sounded improbable, but we were in no position to
criticize our information.
As to the main points of procedure all our advisers agreed. We were to
put honey in an open box, catch a bee in it, and when she had loaded up
with honey, let her go, watch her flight and locate the direction of her
home. When she returned with friends for more honey, we were to shut
them in, carry the box on in the line of flight, and let them go again.
We were to keep this up until we reached the bee tree. It sounded
simple.
We got our box--two boxes, to be sure of our resources--baited them with
chunks of comb, and took along little window panes for covers. Then we
packed up luncheon and set out for an abandoned pasture in our woods
where we remembered the "yeller-top" grew thick. Our New England fall
mornings are cool, and as we walked up the shady wood road Jonathan
predicted that it would be no use to hunt bees. "They'll be so stiff
they can't crawl. Look at that lizard, now!" He stooped and touched a
little red newt lying among the pebbles of the roadway. The little
fellow seemed dead, but when Jonathan held him in the hollow of his hand
for a few moments he gradually thawed out, began to wriggle, and finally
dropped through between his fingers and scampered under a stone. "See?"
said Jonathan. "We'll have to thaw out every bee just that way."
But I had confidence that the sun would take the place of Jonathan's
hand, and refused to give up my hunt. From the main log-road we turned
off into a path, once a well-trodden way to the old ox pastures, but now
almost overgrown, and pushed on through brier and sweet-fern and
huckleberry and young birch, down across a little brook, and up again to
the "old Sharon lot," a long field framed in big woods and grown up to
sumac and brambles and goldenrod. It was warmer here, in the steady
sunshine, sheltered from the crisp wind by the tree walls around us, and
we began to look about hopefully for bees. At first Jonathan's gloomy
prognostications seemed justified--there was not a bee in sight. A few
wasps were stirring, trailing their long legs as they flew. Then one or
two "yellow jackets" appeared, and some black-and-white hornets. But as
the field grew warmer it grew populous, bumblebees hummed, and finally
some little soft brown bees arrived--surely the ones we wanted.
Cautiously Jonathan approached one, held his box under the goldenrod
clump, brought the glass down slowly from above--and the bee was ours.
She was a gentle little thing, and did not seem to resent her treatment
at all, but dropped down on to the honeycomb and fell to work. Jonathan
had providently cut a three-forked stick, and he now stuck this into the
ground and set the box on the forks so that it was about on a level with
the goldenrod tops. Then he carefully drew off the glass, and we sat
down to watch.
"Shouldn't you think she must have had enough?" I said, after a
while--"Oh! there she comes now!"
Our bee appeared on the edge of the box, staggering heavily. She rubbed
her legs, rubbed her wings, shook herself, girded up her loins, as it
were, and brushed the hair out of her eyes, and finally rose, turning on
herself in a close spiral which widened into larger and larger circles
above the box, and at length, after two or three wide sweeps where we
nearly lost track of her, she darted off in a "bee-line" for a tall
chestnut tree on a knoll to the westward.
"Will she come back?" we wondered. Five minutes--ten--fifteen--it seemed
an hour.
"She must have been a drone," said Jonathan.
"Or maybe she wasn't a honeybee at all," I suggested, gloomily. "She
might be just another kind of hornet--no, look! There she is!"
I could hardly have been more thrilled if my fairy godmother had
appeared on the goldenrod stalk and waved her wand at me. To think that
the bee really did play the game! I knelt and peered in over the side of
the box. Yes, there she was, all six feet in the honey, pumping away
with might and main through her little red tongue, or proboscis, or
whatever it was. We sank back among the weeds and waited for her to go.
As she rose, in the same spirals, and disappeared westward, Jonathan
said, "If she doesn't bring another one back with her this time, we'll
try dropping honey on her back. You wait here and be a landmark for the
bee while I try to catch another one in the other box."
I settled down comfortably under the yellow-top, and instantly I
realized what a pleasant thing it is to be a landmark. For one thing,
when you sit down in a field you get a very different point of view from
that when you stand. Goldenrod is different looked at from beneath, with
sky beyond it; sky is different seen through waving masses of yellow.
Moreover, when you sit still outdoors, the life of things comes to you;
when you are moving yourself, it evades you. Down among the weeds where
I sat, the sun was hot, but the breeze was cool, and it brought to me,
now the scent of wild grapes from an old stone wall, now the spicy
fragrance of little yellow apples on a gnarled old tree in the fence
corner, now the sharp tang of the goldenrod itself. The air was full of
the hum of bees, and soon I began to distinguish their different
tones--the deep, rich drone of the bumblebees, the higher singsong of
the honeybees, the snarl of the yellow-jacket, the jerky, nasal twang of
the black-and-white hornet. They began to come close around me; two
bumblebees hung on a frond of goldenrod so close to my face that I could
see the pollen dust on their fur. Crickets and grasshoppers chirped and
trilled beside me. All the little creatures seemed to have accepted
me--all but one black-and-white hornet, who left his proper pursuits,
whatever they may have been, to investigate me. He buzzed all around me
in an insistent, ill-bred way that was annoying. He examined my neck
and hair with unnecessary thoroughness, flew away, returned to begin all
over again, flew away and returned once more; but at last even he gave
up the matter and went off about his business.
Butterflies came fluttering past me:--big, rust-colored ones pointed in
black; pale russet and silver ones; dancing little yellow ones; big
black ones with blue-green spots, rather shabby and languid, as at the
end of a gay season. Darning-needles darted back and forth, with their
javelin-like flight, or mounted high by sudden steps, or lighted near
me, with that absolute rigidity that is the positive negation of
movement. A flying grasshopper creeping along through the tangle at my
feet rose and hung flutteringly over one spot, for no apparent reason,
and then, for no better reason, dropped suddenly and was still. A big
cicada with green head and rustling wings worked his way clumsily among
a pile of last year's goldenrod stalks, freed himself, and whirred away
with the harsh, strident buzz that dominates every other sound while it
lasts, and when it ceases makes the world seem wonderfully quiet.
Our bee had gone and come twice before Jonathan returned. "Hasn't she
brought anybody yet? Well, here goes!" He took a slender stem of
goldenrod, smeared it with honey, and gently lodged a drop on the bee's
back, just where she could not by any possible antics get it off for
herself. When the little thing flew she fairly reeled under her burden,
tumbled down on to a leaf, recovered herself, and at last flew off on
her old line.
"Now, let's go and cook luncheon," said Jonathan, "and leave her to work
it out."
"But how can I move? I'm a landmark."
"Oh, leave your handkerchief. Anything white will do."
So I tied my handkerchief to a goldenrod stalk, and we went back to the
brook. We made a fire on a flat stone, under which we could hear the
brook running, broiled our chops on long, forked sticks, broiled some
"beef-steak" mushrooms that we had found on a chestnut stump, and ended
with water from the spring under the giant birch tree. Blue jays came
noisily to investigate us; a yellow-hammer floated softly down to the
branch overhead, gave a little purring cluck of surprise, and flew off
again, with a flare of tawny-yellow wings. In the warmth of the Indian
summer noon the shade of the woods was pleasant, and I let Jonathan go
back to the bees while I lay on a dry slope above the brook and watched
the slim, tall chestnuts swaying in the wind. It is almost like being at
sea to lie in the woods and look up at the trees. Their waving tops seem
infinitely far away, but the sky beyond seems very near, and one can
almost feel the earth go round.
As I lay there I heard a snapping of twigs and rustling of leaves. It
was the wrong direction for Jonathan, and I turned gently, expecting
nothing smaller than a deer--for deer are growing plentiful now in old
New England--and met the shameless face of a jerky little red squirrel!
He clung to a chestnut trunk and examined me, twitching all over the
while, then whisked himself upside down and looked at me from that
standpoint, mounted to a branch, clung to the under side and looked
again, pretended fright and vanished behind the limb, only to peer over
it the next moment to see what I looked like from there--all the time
clucking and burring like an alarm clock under a pillow.
The rude thing had broken the spell of quiet, and I got up, remembering
the bees, and wandered back to the sunny field, now palpitating with
waves of heat. Jonathan was nowhere to be seen, but as I approached the
box I discovered him beside it flat on his back among the weeds.
"Sh-h-h," he warned, "don't frighten them. There were a lot of them when
I got here and I've been watching their line. They all go straight for
that chestnut."
"What are you lying down for?" I asked.
"I had to. I nearly twisted my neck off following their circles. I'm no
owl."
I sat down near by and we watched a few more go, while others began to
arrive.
"That dab of honey did the work," said Jonathan. "We might as well begin
to follow up their line now."
Waiting till there were a dozen or more in the box, he gently slid on
the glass cover, laid a paper over it to darken it, and we set out. Ten
minutes' walking brought us past the big chestnut and out to a little
clearing. Jonathan set the box down on a big rock where it would show
up well, laid a handkerchief beside it, drew off the glass, and
crouched. A bunch of excited bees burst out and away, without noticing
their change of place. "They'll never find their way back there," said
Jonathan regretfully; "they'll go straight back to the Sharon lot."
But there were others in the box, still feeding, who had not been
disturbed by the move, and these he touched with honey drops. They
staggered off, one by one, orienting themselves properly as they rose,
and taking the same old line off to the westward. This was
disappointing. We had hoped to see them turn back, showing that we had
passed their home tree. However, there was nothing to do but sit and
wait for them. In six minutes they began to come back, in twos and
threes--evidently the honey drops on their shoulders had told the hive a
sufficiently alluring story. Again we waited until the box was well
filled with them, then closed it and went on westward. Two more moves
brought us to a half-cleared ridge from which we could see out across
country. To the westward, and sadly near, was the end of the big woods
and the beginning of pastures and farmland.
Jonathan scrutinized the farms dotting the slopes. "See that bunch of
red barns with a white house?" he said "That's Bill Morehead's. He keeps
bees. Bet we've got bees from his hive and they'll lead us plumb into
his back yard."
It did begin to seem probable, and we took up our box in some depression
of spirits. Two more stops, the bees still perversely flying westward,
and we emerged in pastures.
"Here's our last stop," said Jonathan. "If they don't go back into that
edge we've just left, they're Morehead's. There isn't another bit of
woods big enough to hold a bee tree for seven miles to the west of us."
There was no rock to set the box on, so we lay down on the turf;
Jonathan set the box on his chest, and partly slid the cover. He had by
this time learned the trick of making the bees, even the excited ones,
come out singly. We watched each one as she escaped, circle above us,
circle, circle against the clear blue of the afternoon sky, then dart
off--alas!--westward. As the last one flew we sat up, disconsolately,
and gazed across the pasture.
"Tame bees!" muttered Jonathan, in a tone of grief and disgust. "Tame
bees, down there in my old woodlots. It's trespass!"
"You might claim some of Morehead's honey," I suggested, "since you've
been feeding his bees. But, then," I reflected, "it wouldn't be wild
honey, and what I wanted was wild honey."
We rose dejectedly, and Jonathan picked up the box. "Aren't you going to
leave it for the bees?" I asked. "They'll be so disappointed when they
come back."
"They aren't the only ones to be disappointed," he remarked grimly.
"Here, we'll have mushrooms for supper, anyway." And he stooped to
collect a big puff-ball.
We walked home, our spirits gradually rising. After all, it is hard to
stay depressed under a blue fall sky, with a crisp wind blowing in your
face and the sense of completeness that comes of a long day out of
doors. And as we climbed the last long hill to the home farm we could
not help feeling cheerful.
"Bee-hunting is fun," I said, "even if they are tame bees."
"It's the best excuse for being a loafer that I've found yet," said
Jonathan; "I wonder the tramps don't all go into the business."
"And some day," I pursued hopefully, "we'll go again and find really
wild bees and really wild honey."
"It would taste just the same, you know," jeered Jonathan.
And I was so content with life that I let him have the last word.