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And so, fishing and bee-hunting, eating berries and digging for roots, I wandered on all through the summer. I had no one place that I could think of as a home more than any other. I preferred not to stay near my father and mother, and so let myself wander, heading for the most part westward, and farther into the mountains as the summer grew, and then in the autumn turning south again.
"Hard hailstones lie not thicker on the plain, Nor shaken oaks such show'rs of acorns rain." It is quite certain he had never been bee-hunting. If he had, we should have had a fifth Georgic. Yet he seems to have known that bees sometimes escaped to the woods:
One day, while bee-hunting, I developed a line that went toward a farm-house 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.
This, by all the laws of bee-hunting, would be the place to find the nest; and, as I have said, we could easily have found it thus, had it not been for the trees.
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.
Then there are accidental resemblances in nature, such as the often-seen resemblance of knots of trees and of vegetables to the human form, and of a certain fungus to a part of man's anatomy. We have a fly that resembles a honey-bee. In my bee-hunting days I used to call it the "mock honey-bee." It would come up the wind on the scent of my bee box and hum about it precisely like a real bee.
"That's it, depend upon it, ma'am," replied Martin. "But what do you do all the summer time, Malachi?" "Why, ma'am, we take to our rifles then; there are the deer, and the lynx, and the wild cats, and squirrels, and the bear, and many other animals to look after; and sometimes we go bee-hunting, for the honey." "Pray tell us how you take the honey, Malachi."
If a hive is to be emptied and the bees destroyed, or a bee tree to be cut down, the act is described as 'taking up' the hive or tree," Burt explained. "By the way, Amy," he added, "we must give you a little bee-hunting experience in the mountains next October. It would make a jolly excursion.
Hence, when I go bee-hunting, I prefer to get to windward of the woods in which the swarm is supposed to have taken refuge. Bees, like the milkman, like to be near a spring. They do water their honey, especially in a dry time. The liquid is then of course thicker and sweeter, and will bear diluting. Hence, old bee-hunters look for bee-trees along creeks and near spring runs in the woods.
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 him 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.
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