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Updated: May 28, 2025
Scarce was I settled, with a bramble down th' back o' my neck, and some honey-bees at work too nigh to my legs for my peace o' mind, when they come, and both a-chattering at th' same time like two magpies with slit tongues. "Thou didst!" quoth he. "That did I not!" quoth she. "Thou didst, and I can prove 't on thee!" quoth he, louder than afore.
Most honey-bees, however, in search of a home are wise enough to make choice of a hollow in a living tree, a considerable distance above the ground, when such places are to be had; then they are pretty secure, for though the smaller black and brown bears climb well, they are unable to break into strong hives while compelled to exert themselves to keep from falling, and at the same time to endure the stings of the fighting bees without having their paws free to rub them off.
Many of them were ten to twelve years old, and were as useless on the range as drones in autumn to a colony of honey-bees. Las Palomas boasted quite an arsenal of firearms, of every make and pattern, from a musket to a repeater. The outfit was divided into two squads, one going down nearly to Shepherd's, and the other beginning operations considerably above the Ganso.
The hum of his honey-bees roving through beds of spices, the loveliness of dark-eyed maidens treading the wine-press with ruddy feet, the laughter of young boys swinging in the vines and stained with the scented grapes, all the music that rings through his orange-groves, all the sunshine of the tropics caught in the glow of fruit and flower, in the blue of sky and sea, in the blinding whiteness of the shore and the amethystine evening, all come quivering over the western wave in the falls of his tuneful voice.
Swallows, martins, and swifts abounded; and as for insects, they were countless honey-bees, wild bees, humble-bees, varieties of wasps, butterflies an endless list. So common a plant as the arum did not seem to exist; on the other hand, ferns literally made up the hedges, growing in such quantities as to take the place of the grasses. There was, too, a great variety of moss and fungi.
In the forests of the Amazonian basin they did better because they often shot birds and plundered the hives of the wild honey-bees. In cutting the trail for the telegraph-line through the Juruena basin they lost every single one of the hundred and sixty mules with which they had started. Those men pay dear who build the first foundations of empire!
I was awake with the first rays of the sun mottling the bark and mold before the low entrance to my retreat. The rippling melody of a mocking-bird deluged the thicket. Honey-bees hovered and buzzed about my tree, perhaps investigating it with the idea of moving in and using it for a storehouse.
On inquiring how he expected to do this, he told me that he had discovered a nest of honey-bees in a wood a short distance from the house, and that twice on returning home late in the evening he had seen a shaggy beast, which he was sure was a bear, going in that direction, but that having no bullets in his pouch at the time, he did not wish to become better acquainted with it.
Then I noticed a couple of honey-bees spirting and humming about the open window in the sun. Feb. 11. Turning to the east, Sirius, as the shadows deepen'd, came forth in dazzling splendor. And great Orion; and a little to the north-east the big Dipper, standing on end. Feb. 20.
But the one with the bronze or copper bottom builds under a stone. I discovered its nest one day in this wise: I was lying on the ground in a field, watching a line of honey-bees to the woods, when my attention was arrested by one of these native bees flying about me in a curious, inquiring way.
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