"We had not been long in the camp, when a party set out in quest of a
bee-tree, and being curious to witness the sport, I gladly accepted
an invitation to accompany them. The party was headed by a veteran
bee-hunter, a tall lank fellow in homespun garb, that hung loosely
about his limbs, and a straw hat, shaped not unlike a bee-hive; a
comrade, equally uncouth in garb, and without a hat, straddled along
at his heels, with a long rifle on his shoulder. To these succeeded
half-a-dozen others, some with axes, and some with rifles; for no
one stirs from the camp without fire-arms, so that he may be ready
either for wild deer or wild Indian. After proceeding some distance,
we came to an open glade on the skirts of the forest. Here our leader
halted, and then advanced quietly to a low bush, on the top of which
I perceived a piece of honey-comb. This, I found, was the bait or
lure for the wild bees. Several were humming about it, and diving
into its cells. When they had laden themselves with honey, they would
rise up in the air, and dart off in one straight line, almost with
the velocity of a bullet. The hunters watched attentively the course
they took, and then set off in the same direction, stumbling along
over twisted roots and fallen trees, with their eyes turned up to the
sky. In this way they traced the honey-laden bees to their hive, in
the hollow trunk of a blasted oak, where, after buzzing about for a
moment, they entered a hole about sixty feet from the ground. Two of
the bee-hunters now plied their axes vigorously at the foot of the
tree, to level it with the ground. The mere spectators and amateurs,
in the meantime, drew off to a cautious distance, to be out of the
way of the falling of the tree and the vengeance of its inmates.
The jarring blows of the axe seemed to have no effect in alarming
or agitating this most industrious community. They continued to ply
at their usual occupations--some arriving full-freighted into port,
others sallying forth on new expeditions, like so many merchantmen in
a money-making metropolis, little suspicious of impending bankruptcy
and downfall; even a loud crack, which announced the disrupture of the
trunk, failed to divert their attention from the intense pursuit of
gain: at length down came the tree with a tremendous crash, bursting
open from end to end, and displacing all the hoarded treasures of
the commonwealth. One of the hunters immediately ran up with a wisp
of lighted hay, as a defence against the bees. The latter, however,
made no attack, and sought no revenge; they seemed stupified by the
catastrophe, and, unsuspicious of its cause, remained crawling and
buzzing about the ruins, without offering us any molestation. Every
one of the party now fell to, with spoon and hunting-knife, to scoop
out the flakes of honey-comb with which the hollow trunk was stored.
Some of them were of old date, and a deep brown colour; others were
beautifully white, and the honey in their cells was almost limpid.
Such of the combs as were entire were placed in camp-kettles, to be
conveyed to the encampment; those which had been shivered in the
fall were devoured upon the spot. Every stark bee-hunter was to be
seen with a rich morsel in his hand, dripping about his fingers, and
disappearing as rapidly as a cream-tart before the holiday appetite
of a schoolboy. Nor was it the bee-hunters alone that profited by the
downfall of this industrious community. As if the bees would carry
through the similitude of their hahits with those of laborious and
gainful man, I beheld numbers from rival hives, arriving on eager
wing, to enrich themselves with the ruins of their neighbours. These
busied themselves as eagerly and cheerily as so many wreckers on an
Indiaman that has been driven on shore--plunging into the cells of the
broken honey-combs, banqueting greedily on the spoil, and then winging
their way full-freighted to their homes. As to the poor proprietors
of the ruin, they seemed to have no heart to do anything, not even to
taste the nectar that flowed around them, but crawled backwards and
forwards, in vacant desolation, as I have seen a poor fellow, with his
hands in his pockets, whistling vacantly and despondingly about the
ruins of his house that had been burned. It is difficult to describe
the bewilderment and confusion of the bees of the bankrupt hive who
had been absent at the time of the catastrophe, and who arrived, from
time to time, with full cargoes from abroad. At first they wheeled
about in the air, in the place where the fallen tree had once reared
its head, astonished at finding all a vacuum. At length, as if
comprehending their disaster, they settled down in clusters on a dry
branch of a neighbouring tree, from whence they seemed to contemplate
the prostrate ruin, and to buzz forth doleful lamentations over the
downfall of their republic. It was a scene on which the 'melancholy
Jaques' might have moralised by the hour."--Tour in Prairies, ch. ix.