Locusts and Wild Honey | Page 7

which held its head above my own. Plunging recklessly
forward, my course marked to those watching from below by the
agitated and wriggling grain, I emerged from the miniature forest just
in time to see the runaways disappearing over the top of the hill, some
fifty rods in advance of me. Lining them as well as I could, I soon
reached the hilltop, my breath utterly gone and the perspiration
streaming from every pore of my skin. On the other side the country
opened deep and wide. A large valley swept around to the north,
heavily wooded at its head and on its sides. It became evident at once
that the bees had made good their escape, and that whether they had
stopped on one side of the valley or the other, or had indeed cleared the
opposite mountain and gone into some unknown forest beyond, was
entirely problematical. I turned back, therefore, thinking of the
honey-laden tree that some of these forests would hold before the
falling of the leaf.
I heard of a youth in the neighborhood more lucky than myself on a
like occasion. It seems that he had got well in advance of the swarm,
whose route lay over a hill, as in my case, and as he neared the summit,
hat in hand, the bees had just come up and were all about him.
Presently he noticed them hovering about his straw hat, and alighting

on his arm; and in almost as brief a time as it takes to relate it, the
whole swarm had followed the queen into his hat. Being near a stone
wall, he coolly deposited his prize upon it, quickly disengaged himself
from the accommodating bees, and returned for a hive. The explanation
of this singular circumstance no doubt is, that the queen, unused to such
long and heavy flights, was obliged to alight from very exhaustion. It is
not very unusual for swarms to be thus found in remote fields, collected
upon a bush or branch of a tree.
When a swarm migrates to the woods in this manner, the individual
bees, as I have intimated, do not move in right lines or straight forward,
like a flock of birds, but round and round, like chaff in a whirlwind.
Unitedly they form a humming, revolving, nebulous mass, ten or
fifteen feet across, which keeps just high enough to clear all obstacles,
except in crossing deep valleys, when, of course, it may be very high.
The swarm seems to be guided by a line of couriers, which may be seen
(at least at the outset) constantly going and coming. As they take a
direct course, there is always some chance of following them to the tree,
unless they go a long distance, and some obstruction, like a wood or a
swamp or a high hill, intervenes,--enough chance, at any rate, to
stimulate the lookers-on to give vigorous chase as long as their wind
holds out. If the bees are successfully followed to their retreat, two
plans are feasible,--either to fell the tree at once, and seek to hive them,
perhaps bring them home in the section of the tree that contains the
cavity; or to leave the tree till fall, then invite your neighbors and go
and cut it, and see the ground flow with honey. The former course is
more business-like; but the latter is the one usually recommended by
one's friends and neighbors.
Perhaps nearly one third of all the runaway swarms leave when no one
is about, and hence are unseen and unheard, save, perchance, by some
distant laborers in the field, or by some youth plowing on the side of
the mountain, who hears an unusual humming noise, and sees the
swarm dimly whirling by overhead, and, maybe, gives chase; or he may
simply catch the sound, when he pauses, looks quickly around, but sees
nothing. When he comes in at night he tells how he heard or saw a
swarm of bees go over; and perhaps from beneath one of the hives in
the garden a black mass of bees has disappeared during the day.
They are not partial as to the kind of tree,--pine, hemlock, elm, birch,

maple, hickory,--any tree with a good cavity high up or low down. A
swarm of mine ran away from the new patent hive I gave them, and
took up their quarters in the hollow trunk of an old apple-tree across an
adjoining field. The entrance was a mouse-hole near the ground.
Another swarm in the neighborhood deserted their keeper, and went
into the cornice of an out-house that stood amid evergreens in the rear
of a large mansion. But there is no accounting for the taste of bees, as
Samson found when he discovered the swarm in the carcass, or