and a few days afterward fate overtook them, and their stores in turn
became the prey of another swarm in the vicinity, which also tempted
Providence and were overwhelmed. The first mentioned swarm I had lined
from several points, and was following up the clew over rocks and
through gulleys, when I came to where a large hemlock had been felled
a few years before and a swarm taken from a cavity near the top of it;
fragments of the old comb were yet to be seen. A few yards away stood
another short, squatty hemlock, and I said my bees ought to be there.
As I paused near it I noticed where the tree had been wounded with an
ax a couple of feet from the ground many years before. The wound had
partially grown over, but there was an opening there that I did not see
at the first glance. I was about to pass on when a bee passed me
making that peculiar shrill, discordant hum that a bee makes when
besmeared with honey. I saw it alight in the partially closed wound
and crawl home; then came others and others, little bands and squads of
them heavily freighted with honey from the box. The tree was about
twenty inches through and hollow at the butt, or from the ax mark down.
This space the bees had completely filled with honey. With an ax we
cut away the outer ring of live wood and exposed the treasure. Despite
the utmost care, we wounded the comb so that little rills of the golden
liquid issued from the root of the tree and trickled down the hill.

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