Bee tree

“ I have often felled bee-trees whose honey was so clear that it could not be distinguished from a glass of water put by its side. If you are near home when you cut down a bee-tree, you drive the creatures, which have collected close by in a swarm round their queen, into a bag, take them home, and shake them out into a hollowed tree, nail a board at top and bottom, cut a hole in the lower board, and place it above-ground at a spot protected from the north wind. The bees at once set to work, continuing it winter and summer, and in a short time the hive is filled with honey and wax. ”

“ So all summer the bees worked away, and one day in the fall Mr. Brierly sent Father word that he would be over that week to take the honey. A few mornings later when I came in sight of the bee tree I stopped in amazement. The bee tree was gone! Instead of standing straight and tall like a soldier on guard, it lay flat on the ground. ”

“ The smoke of the boiling wax and honey serves the bees cruising over the prairie as a guide to the paper, and soon the busy gatherers arrive from all the bee-trees in the neighbourhood, load themselves as heavily as they can, and then go straight home in a direct line. The hunter now observes in which direction the greatest number of the insects swarm, because this leads him to expect a richer tree as well as a shorter distance to go. ”

“ To-day we passed one of these lofty trees bearing above twenty bees’ nests, among them four old ones 52 white with wax.1 As the country is full of tapangs, in which alone do the bees build their nests, the stories of the great amount of wax formerly procured in this district may be true. Why do the honey-bees generally build on one particular tree? Its being the finest in the forest is no good reason, perhaps there is something enticing in the bark. ”

“ The balls are full of honey. The wax and honey of this bee are of a dark color.
One kind of bee has no sting. Would you like that bee best?
The tree bee is also called the wild bee. This bee takes an old tree with a hollow trunk. It cleans out more and more of the old, dead wood, and builds nice combs.
A tall tree may be full of combs, from root to top. In such a tree, more than one swarm will live and work. Each swarm has its queen, and keeps in its own place.
Smoke makes bees fall, as if dead. People drive bees off with the smoke from a fire of wood or paper. ”

“ First Outline of "An Idyl of the Honey-Bee" A colony of bees increases our interest in a wood. The secret of the hidden golden store of honey is pleasing. The hunt is most interesting, especially in the autumn. Nature, as we tramp with luncheon and with bait, is in her greatest glory. We are stimulated by the odds against our finding the tree. Determining the direction of the tree is a problem. It is easy to catch the first bee and watch it devour the bait. ”

“ First a comb then a couple of small sticks crosswise to form a bee space. Continue this until all the combs are back in the tree, and as the top part of the log was not split off, the piece split from the side can be fit in, bark and flat stones can be used to form a covering that will keep the rain from getting in. By cutting the tree at this time of day thousands of bees are out in search of nectar and when they come home and find their home gone, will fly around in the air until becoming exhausted, and will then settle on the leaves and bushes in bunches and knots by the hundreds. ”

“ As a caution to my brother bee-keepers, I will say: Don't climb unless you are sure of your footing. On the 26th of last May, I was called on to hive a swarm of bees that had settled high up in an apple tree. Having been a great climber from childhood's days, I bounded up to the top of the tree, and sawed off the limb containing the swarm while I stood on a limb below. The additional weight of the bees and limb split off the one on which I stood, and down came Smith, bees and all—a distance of 22 feet. ”

“ Now, the form of the hive that man offers to the bee knows infinite variety, from the hollow tree or earthenware vessel still obtaining in Asia and Africa, and the familiar bell-shaped constructions of straw which we find in our farmers' kitchen-gardens or beneath their windows, lost beneath masses of sunflowers, phlox, and hollyhock, to what may really be termed the factory of the model apiarist of today. ”

“ Owners of fruit trees have noticed, in a season generally unfavourable for the orchard, that if during only one fine forenoon the bees had spread freely amongst the blossoms of a particular tree, that it would prove more fruitful than its fellows. ”

“ Be all this as it may: the course of our party of bee hunters is to make a wide circuit through the woody river bottoms, and the patches of forest on the prairies, marking, as they go out, every tree in which they have detected a hive. These marks are generally respected by any other bee hunter that should come upon their track. When they have marked sufficient to fill all their casks, they turn their faces homeward, cut down the trees as they proceed, and having loaded their wagon with honey and wax, return well pleased to the settlements. ”

“ The Rose Baye will verie hardlie bee encreased either by suckers or by layers, but must bee suffered to grow without lopping, topping or cutting. The Pyracantha or Prickly Corall tree may bee made to grow into a reasonable tall tree by shredding away the lower branches, or it may be suffered to grow lowe into an hedge bush, by suffering all the branches to grow continually, you may also propagate it by the suckers, or by laying downe the lower branches. ”

“ The world just now is full of orange blossoms and heavy with their odor. The honey from their yellow hearts is to be had for the asking and the bees are so busy that the trees fairly roar with the beat of their wings. Yet if I were butterfly or bee I should pass the heavy-scented groves for a flower which just now blooms profusely on the ridge. ”

“ They climb to the air and the sunlight again in grasses and ferns and airy little plants. They blossom into flowers, eye-gladdening, honey-yielding, color-mad clumps of bloom, from which not alone the bee drinks sweets. ”

“ See how the beeches which have sprung up on the declivity recline in nearly the angle of the hill, so that their upper branches are only a few feet from the soil; reminding us, in the midst of warmth and beauty, of the rough winds of winter and the blasting influence of the spray. The insect denizens of the heath and the wood are all on wing; see, there is the red bee, and there the blue butterfly, and yonder the burnet-moth with its wings of vermilion, and the large birdlike dragon-fly, and a thousand others besides, all beautiful and all happy. ”

“ In nearly all countries there are swarms of wild bees, which have their abode in the forest. Their hive is the hollow trunk of some aged tree. Here they build their cells and store their honey. The native flowers of the forest, of the valley, and the mountain, of the hill-side and the lawn, afford them a supply of their delicious food, not only for the daily meal, during the warm season, but for the stores of winter. ”

“ I want to say, that in speaking of entertaining the little feathered angel birds, in my flower garden, I also entertain them in beneficent ways unseen by me. For bees and birds are necessary and valuable for your flowers. The bees have panniers on their legs where they carry the pollen to the hives, and many a tiny bit of pollen falls from these well-packed panniers to fall into the heart of the blossom from which the bee is gathering nectar. ”

“ A little further from the haunts of picnic parties, we shall come upon beech woods that have not thus been abused by thoughtless jack-knives. From the ground, far up into the high tops, a close, beautiful garment of ashy grey bark clothes the tree. Saplings of all ages grow up among the big trees, for beeches grow in colonies. A soft radiance from these many pale tree trunks seems to lighten the woods paths, overshadowed by the dense foliage of the tree tops. ”

“ One day, standing on a street corner in a great city, I saw above the trucks and the traffic a line of bees carrying off sweets from some grocery or confectionery shop.
One looks upon the woods with a new interest when he suspects they hold a colony of bees. What a pleasing secret it is,—a tree with a heart of comb honey, a decayed oak or maple with a bit of Sicily or Mount Hymettus stowed away in its trunk or branches ”

“ In the first place, it must be recollected that a large proportion—in some cases the great bulk—of the honey gathered by bees is obtained from trees, as, for instance, the linden in Europe, the bass-wood and maple in America, and in this country the forest-trees, nearly all of which supply rich forage for the bee, and everywhere from fruit-trees in orchards. A large quantity is gathered from flowers and flowering shrubs reared in gardens; from clover and other plants grown for hay, and not for pasture ”

“ More bees quickly come, and it is not long before the line is well established. Now we have recourse to the same tactics we employed before, and move along the ridge to another field to get our cross line. But the bees still go in almost the same direction they did from the corn stout. The tree is then either on the top of the mountain or on the other or west side of it. We hesitate to make the plunge into the woods and seek to scale those precipices, for the eye can plainly see what is before us. As the afternoon sun gets lower, the bees are seen with wonderful distinctness. ”

“ Wild creepers flaunt their red and gold from the treetops, and the bumblebees and humming-birds make common cause in rifling the honey-laden trumpets. The air around the wild-plum and redhaw trees is vibrant with the beating wings of millions of wild bees, and the bee-birds feast to gluttony. ”

“ Apple-trees, gooseberry and currant-trees, and above all, raspberry-plants, are great favourites with bees; and as their blossoms come early in spring, they are most seasonable and productive. But your chief reliance must be on neighbouring acres of bean-fields and buckwheat or clover meadows, heather and furze, and hedge-blossoms. Lime-trees are very valuable; I wish people would allow thorn-hedges to blossom. Let me urge the cottager to use for the edging of his garden lemon-thyme instead of box or daisies. Do not fear keeping a dozen stocks. ”

“ There should, on the contrary, be a garden full of pleasant flowers as near as possible to the bees, as, though they will occasionally go even miles in quest of food, it is much better for them on every account to have it close at hand. Bees are particularly fond of the flowers of buck-wheat, and, though other plants may be more abundant in [Pg 381] honey, none are more useful in affording what is called bee-bread, or the substance on which the bees live while they are laying up their winter store. ”

“ Is it not odd that bees can make so much wax from their small wax-bags?
Did you ever find in the earth the nest of a humble-bee? The humble-bee queen works. Humble-bees dig holes in the earth with their front feet.
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When they have made a hall and a room, they make a nest. It is of grass, or leaves, or hay, cut fine. They lay eggs in the nest.
They make honey in large combs. The combs are more soft and dark than those which the hive bee makes. Field mice and moles eat these bees and their combs. ”

“ The finest beech-wood is that of Mark Ash. There you may see true beech-forms, the boles spangled with silver scales of lichen, and the roots—more fangs than roots—grasping the earth, feathered with the soft green down of moss.
But not in individual trees lies the beauty of the Forest, but in the masses of wood. There, in the long aisles, settles that depth of shade which no pencil can give, and that colouring which no canvas can retain, as the sunlight pierces through the green web of leaves, flinging, as it sets, a crown of gold round each tree-trunk. ”

“ It is found chiefly upon the oak, the elm, the maple, the plane, the sycamore, the lime, the hazel and the blackberry; occasionally also on the cherry, currant, and other fruit trees. Sometimes only one species of trees is affected at a time. The oak generally affords the largest quantity. At the season of its greatest abundance, the happy humming noise of the bees may be heard at a considerable distance from the trees, sometimes nearly equalling in loudness the united hum of swarming. ”

“ But notwithstanding these destroyers, a thousand swarms of bees may be pastured here for every one now gathering honey. The greater portion is still covered every season with a repressed growth of bee-flowers, for most of the species are annuals, and many of them are not relished by sheep or cattle, while the rapidity of their growth enables them to develop and mature their seeds before any foot has time to crush them. The ground is, therefore, kept sweet, and the race is perpetuated, though only as a suggestive shadow of the magnificence of its wildness. ”

“ We soon discovered them to be our neighbours of the next farm, in pursuit of a swarm of bees which was hovering in the air over their heads. The bees at length alighted on the tall pear-tree in our orchard, and hung in a bunch from one of the boughs. A ladder was got, and a man ascending, with gloves on his hands, and an apron tied over his head, swept them into a hive which was rubbed on the inside with honey and sweet herbs. ”

“ The trunks of the largest specimens are seven or eight feet thick, and about fifty feet high; the bark red and chocolate colored, the leaves plain, large, and glossy, like those of Magnolia grandiflora, while the flowers are yellowish-white, and urn-shaped, in well-proportioned panicles, from five to ten inches long. When in full bloom, a single tree seems to be visited at times by a whole hive of bees at once, and the deep hum of such a multitude makes the listener guess that more than the ordinary work of honey-winning must be going on. ”