Part 1
_THE BEE HUNTER_
_The_ BEE HUNTER
By GEORGE HAROLD EDGELL
1949
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
Copyright 1949 BY GEORGE HAROLD EDGELL
_Printed at_ UNIVERSITY PRESS, INC. CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U. S. A.
LONDON: GEOFFREY CUMBERLEGE OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
THE BEE HUNTER
This little treatise is in part the child of frustration, in part the child of irritation. In a modest way, the writer has been an author. The first book he ever wrote, an opus of several chapters, was called “The Bee Hunter.” The writer was then eighteen. Submitted, on the advice of the late Robert W. Chambers, to his publisher in New York, the young author was surprised to learn that his manuscript was rejected. The publisher tactfully pointed out that even the English translation of Maurice Maeterlinck’s _La Vie des Abeilles_ had lost money for its publisher.
The manuscript was put away to gather dust. I believe and trust now that it is lost. It was terrible.
So much for the frustration. Now for the irritation. Being an unsung author on the subject and, more important, a successful bee hunter of fifty years’ experience, the writer has read a certain number of articles on bee hunting. One appears every year or two. Starting with two essays by John Burroughs, one fact is common to all. They are written by men who never possibly could have found a bee tree, at least by pursuing the methods they describe. Burroughs came nearest the truth, but even he seems to have got his account from some farmer with more imagination than experience. It is time for someone who has hunted bees and found bee trees to write the facts. For bee hunting is rapidly becoming a lost art.
The writer’s interest in the sport began at the age of ten when he was initiated by an old Adirondacker who had sunk to driving his grandfather’s mules in Newport, New Hampshire. George Smith, as I shall call him, was a character, to the youngster as fabulous as Paul Bunyan. He took his whiskey neat. He smoked and chewed at the same time and could spit without removing the pipe from his mouth. His profanity could take the bluing off a gun barrel. Withal, he was one of the kindest and most generous of men and a mighty bee hunter before the Lord, or the devil if one prefers. He introduced the boy to the simple equipment necessary for the art, and though through the years I have improved it slightly, the fundamentals of the few objects have remained the same.
The most important item is the bee box. This one can make oneself if one is clever, or employ a cabinetmaker to do it from specifications if, like the writer, one is not. The box should be of wood, about five and one-half inches long, three inches wide, and three inches deep. The wood of an old-fashioned cigar box is an excellent material but if used, the box should be left outdoors some time to weather, as bees do not like the odor of tobacco. The box should be divided into two compartments, the front one open with a hinged lid. In the lid there should be a small glass window which can be darkened by a wooden slide. Between the front and rear compartments there should be an opening at the bottom two-thirds of an inch wide which can be opened and closed by a wooden slide manipulated from the outside. The rear of the inside compartment should be of glass, covered with a wooden slide which can be raised on occasion to admit light to the compartment. The box should be nicely and tightly constructed, shellacked after completion, and lightproof. Remember, it will be out in all sorts of weather and the older it is, and the more weathered it becomes, the better the bees will like it.
Provided with the box, the rest is easy. One needs a couple of pieces of empty honeycomb cut square to drop easily into the front compartment. The best is old, black comb from an old bee tree, but any empty comb will do. For nectar it is not necessary to use real honey. A syrup of common white sugar one-third, and water two-thirds, boiled for fifteen minutes and then cooled, seems to be as tempting to bees as real honey. If one keeps it so long that it begins to ferment, no matter. Bees’ taste is not nice in such matters. Bees will cheerfully work the fermented juice of a rotten pear. As a refinement, it is well to provide oneself with a tiny bottle of the oil of anise. If used sparingly, this will attract bees, and the faint odor on a bee’s feet will attract others. When I say sparingly, I mean more than the word ordinarily implies. The cork of the anise bottle rubbed on the comb and the comb then licked with the tongue will provide anise enough for one’s purpose. More will make the bees quite drunk, they will refuse to suck but buzz around looking for the anise and eventually retire to the flowers to sober up, and you will lose your line. To fill the comb, a common eye dropper is very handy though not absolutely necessary. It is handy, too, to have a stand made of an upright piece of wood such as a four-foot section of a rake handle with a flat board nailed on top and the lower end sharpened so it can easily be thrust in the ground, but a stand can always be improvised using a young spruce cut off at the top or a few stones pilfered from a stone wall. It is also handy to have another small box with a lid, not a bee box, in which to carry small objects. The paraphernalia is therefore very simple, and a good bee hunter can get along if necessary with less. George Smith and I once started a line using an empty 32 calibre cartridge box and a bit of comb stolen dangerously from a nest of paper wasps. Finally it would be well to have a cloth bag or knapsack in which the smaller articles may be carried, leaving the hands free.
We are now ready to start but should consider the season. There is no point in going bee hunting if one can find no bees. Bees begin to work as soon as spring gets warm and continue until severe frost. This can be proved by examining any hive on any warm day, but what the bees are working on is another question. They are hard to find except during some definite honey flow such as the white clover season or the milkweed or the goldenrod. Especially the last two are favourable. On the bee box I have used for a good many years, I have scribbled the dates of the findings of fifty-six bee trees. Eighty per cent are in July or September. Only occasionally does one occur in June or August and practically never in October. July and September mean milkweed and goldenrod to the bee hunter.
Let us assume that it is a warm day in mid-July and the milkweed is in bloom. We find a patch and find it teeming with honey bees. Incidentally the first step should be to learn what a honey bee looks like. He resembles a refined and streamlined horsefly and is totally unlike the fuzzy bumble bee that so many mistakenly regard as honey bees. One’s first task is to catch a bee. This is done by bringing the box up sharply under him with the lid open as he sits on the edge of a bloom and slapping the lid home as he tumbles into the box. It is not so hard as it sounds, especially if the bee is on a high bloom of milkweed or goldenrod. It is essential that the bee be caught. During the midst of a good honey flow a bee will never voluntarily abandon the flowers and go to a comb, no matter with what aromatic lure you may have anointed it. Forget for all time the accounts of writers who drench a handkerchief with anise and throw it over a bush near a stand with loaded comb. No bee would come near it. During a starvation period when flowers are scarce, especially after the autumnal frosts, a bee will light on the comb if he finds it. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, however, the bees will be somewhere else and no bee will find the comb. There have been exceptions as I shall show, but the only sensible procedure is to hunt bees during a honey flow when they are easy to find, and introduce them into the box by violence.
Having caught the bee in the outer compartment and verifying the fact that he is there by looking in the window, the next step is to close the window, darken the outer compartment, open the slide to admit him to the rear and open the rear window. Seeing the light, the bee will promptly go in there, seeking escape. Then one can close the rear compartment and open the front so as to catch another bee. One can start a line with one bee, but the chance of success is greater if one has a dozen, and during a good honey flow, if the tree is not too far away, these can be caught in ten minutes.
Provided with a dozen bees one is ready to start the line. Fill one of the pieces of comb with syrup. Thrust in the stand if you have one. Open the window into the outer compartment and the door between and admit three or four bees to the part with the comb. They will come if you open the window in front and darken the rear. Then put the box down gently, darken the whole box, put your hat over it and leave it still for three or four minutes. Meanwhile, fill the other comb. After three or four minutes, place the box on the stand and gently open the lid. If conditions are right, the bees will have found the syrup and taken a load in the darkness. Sometimes one or two will not have finished loading and will sit quietly until they are stuffed to capacity. If they are loaded, they will fly comparatively slowly as they take off to return to the hive. When they have left, repeat the whole process and let out more bees until all have gone. You are now in the stage of starting to establish the line.
Where most of the nature fakers fall down conspicuously is in describing how to establish a “bee line” giving the exact direction of the bee tree. Actually, when a bee leaves for the first time he is both suspicious and anxious to establish the position of the stand. He leaves in slowly expanding spirals and figure eights. The hunter rolls round on his back trying to follow the convolutions of the bee flight in the air. Usually it ends by the bee flying between the eye and the sun and thus being lost to view. If the hunter can establish when the bee leaves for the first time, whether the tree is more north than south or more east than west, he is doing well. It is not until a bee has come and gone eight or ten times that he becomes familiar with the stand, loses his suspicions, and, on taking off, goes in approximately the direction of the tree thus at last creating a “bee line.”
If conditions are right, of your dozen bees four or five will return for a second load. Again if conditions are right, in an hour or two these will communicate in some mysterious way with other workers in the hive that there is free lunch obtainable and the number of bees on the line will increase. Especially if the tree is near and the flowers not too profuse, this will happen quickly. At best I have had a hundred or more bees running my line half an hour after the first bee left. At times, and this is a common occurrence, no bee will come back at all. Sometimes the original bees will go back and forth but bring no companions. Often the bees will refuse to suck at all but will return on release to the flowers. When that happens, you had best pack up and go home and wait for more propitious conditions.
Why bees will load sometimes and not others, fifty years of experience has left unrevealed. In general, bees run better at the beginning and end of a honey flow when the flowers are not too profuse and too plentiful. Certainly if you are fortunate enough to catch a bee after heavy frosts, yet on a warm day, you will probably establish a roaring line in a short time. Why, however, sometimes bees will load eagerly and sometimes ignore the comb is a mystery. No changes in the thickness of the syrup, no substitution of true honey for the sugar, no aromatic oils like anise applied to the comb will cause bees to suck if they do not choose. They will often suck eagerly in the midst of the heaviest goldenrod season and refuse to suck at other times when flowers are scarce. Nothing is more frustrating than to catch box after box of bees and find them unwilling to load. In such case there is nothing to do but wait a week and try again. The most important quality for a successful bee hunter is patience.
Let us assume, however, that conditions are favourable this July morning. About ten minutes after the release of the first bee, a bee comes back. This is one of the most exciting moments in the hunt. An experienced hunter recognizes the sound of a honey bee instantly, but for the last five minutes he has jumped at the sound of every doodle bug that has flown by the stand. The behaviour of the returning bee is very different from that of the departing one. He dashes in circles round the stand, darts away again across the field until you think he will not return, whizzes back to circle the stand again and finally, in narrowing circles, poises above the comb like a helicopter, his buzz still shrilling. One waits with bated breath. The buzz ceases. The bee has come to rest and is loading. The line is started.
Soon others arrive, and the first comer departs. Once more you try and take his line but once more he fools you as he leaves in widening circles. However, one has got the general direction and can take a position to see better. More information comes as each bee leaves. In an hour’s time the comb may have twenty bees on it at once and the arrivals and departures are frequent. Now the bees have begun to be accustomed to the stand and frequently jump off and fly straight so that in a good light the eye can follow one for fifty or a hundred yards. Thus you establish your “bee line.” It is never exact, however. No two bees have exactly the same idea as to the best way home. If, for example, there is a large tree in the direction of the hive and perhaps a hundred yards from the stand, one bee may bypass it to the right, another to the left, and a third may lift and go over it. One is constantly revising one’s decision as to the true line.
By now we are ready to time a bee and see how long he is gone. This will give one a fair estimate of the distance from the stand to the tree. A bee takes between one and two minutes to load and as much time to unload. He may also have to crawl some distance in the tree to reach the place to deposit his load. He flies at about the speed of a human sprinter, say a quarter of a mile a minute. If he is gone eight minutes, the tree is not too far away. If he is gone twelve minutes, the hunter has a long job ahead. If he is gone four minutes, the tree is very close. The longest I remember having a bee absent and still being able to run a line and find the tree was fifteen minutes. The shortest was two and one-half minutes, and then the tree was actually in sight of the stand, though I did not know it at the time. Twenty minutes is hopeless. No bee will bring others back at that distance, and it is better to abandon the stand, move a mile or more in the direction the bee has taken, catch more bees, and repeat the whole process nearer the tree.
In order to time a bee it is necessary to be able to identify an individual. George Smith used to do this by extracting some seed or pollen from the bud of a small mossy plant and sprinkling a little of the green dust on the back of a bee. At best it was an uncertain process as the dust was liable to be blown off before the bee’s return, and even if not, was hard to see. I have evolved a simpler and better system. To our equipment as already described, let us add a small bottle of water, a tiny camel’s hair brush, and a piece of blue carpenter’s chalk. With the blade of a penknife, scrape some dust from the chalk onto the back of a smooth stone or the blade of a hand axe if you carry one. Incidentally a small scout’s axe is a handy thing to have for clearing brush, making stands, marking the bee tree when you have found it, and blazing a trail from it if it is deep in the woods and should be hard to find again. On the chalk dust, with the brush, drop a few drops of water and stir till the water is coloured blue. Then with the wet brush dab the rear of a loading bee. This must be done deftly and gently. Bees do not like to be painted. A good hunter can guess which bee is apt to be unreasonably phlegmatic and, especially if one is loading from a half empty cell, with the shoulders buried and his tail raised, he can be painted without disturbing him. Once daubed, the new decoration does not annoy him in the least and is not noticed by his fellows. When wet, the spot shows only slightly, but by the time the bee returns, the chalk dust will be dry and will stand out like a beacon so vivid that it can be spotted even before the bee alights. We now have an identifiable bee and can time him.
Let us suppose he takes seven or eight minutes a trip to the tree and back. One should time him two or three times to be accurate and not be disturbed if the time varies a little. We now have a bee line and some idea of the distance of the tree.
Now it is time to move. One might ask why, knowing the direction and the approximate distance, one does not immediately hunt for the tree. The answer is that there are ten thousand trees in the woods and only one the bee tree. One can never be sure of the exact line or, with any exactitude, the distance. Sometimes when one has narrowed the problem to an area of a hundred yards square, it is hard to find the tree. So once more the bee box is placed on the stand, a loaded comb dropped into the front compartment and the lid left open. The spare comb should be hidden carefully. Great ire on the part of the bees. They again become suspicious and do not want to enter the box. As more arrive, the air is filled with a disgusted humming. In time the temptation is too great and one after another a bee drops down to the comb. When ten or a dozen have done so, snap down the lid of the box and drive them into the rear compartment as before. They are reluctant to go, but a puff of cigarette smoke blown through a crack in the lid will send them scurrying to the rear in search of purer air. Close the slide, reopen the box, place it on the stand and catch another lot. Catch all you can. Then pull up the stand, gather up your paraphernalia and move three or four hundred yards down the line. Then set up the stand and release the bees in batches of eight or ten.
This is another critical moment. Will the bees stand moving? If you have mistaken the line and moved off it too far to the left or right, the bees may not come back, and you will have to return to the first stand and start over again. The same is true if the swarm is weak or the flowers too tempting. The time seems interminable. I have a theory, which I cannot prove, that on the first move the bees return to the first stand before investigating the possibilities of the second. Conditions are right on this day, however, and after a time we hear the welcome hum of the first returning bee, quickly followed by a second and a third. The bees will stand moving. Success seems assured.
Theoretically it is. All one has to do is to continue to move the bees until the tree is reached or passed, in which case the line reverses and proves that the tree is between the last and the next to the last stands. If it were as simple as that, bee hunting would not be the art and the fun that it is. In the first place, in order to reestablish a line, the stand should be set up in a clearing. We have now reached the woods and possibly no clearings are available. Released in the woods, a bee circles up into the trees and disappears. Sometimes it is hard to tell whether he goes forward or back. The moves have to be shorter. Often if one moves beyond the tree, the bees will not come back, and you have lost your line. Above all, the lining must be straight. If you meet a swamp, you must go through it. If you meet a cliff, you must go up it. If you meet a pond, you must go round it and set up at just the right point on the opposite side. All this takes time. You must be prepared to spend two or three days before finding the tree. Meanwhile, as the tree draws near, the bees tumble out in greater numbers until literally there are hundreds buzzing about and going back and forth, and one has to refill the comb frequently.
This brings up another point: the danger of being stung. The newcomer is apt to be terrified as the bees buzz round his head while the hunter is tending the stand. The answer I can give categorically. There is absolutely no danger whatever of being stung while running a line. The bees are entirely friendly. They will fight among themselves if two swarms are involved. They will fight a hornet if he has accidentally found the comb. The hunter who is supplying them with free syrup they would not think of molesting. The only possibility of getting stung is some careless accident. I was once stung when a friendly bee had lighted on my khaki shirt and, not noticing him, I put my arm down and squeezed him against my side. Naturally, he let drive at my ribs. The fault was mine, not his. One can even imprison a bee in one’s cupped hands and he will crawl round and try to find his way out, but if you do not squeeze him, he will not think of stinging you. I once was lining a swarm in the middle of the goldenrod honey flow when a terrific hailstorm came up and leveled all the flowers. The next day the bees were desperate. Their bee pasture was gone and they were mad for syrup. I soon had what seemed to be half the hive around me. They came not in hundreds, but in thousands. Even to an old hunter it was a little terrifying, but absolutely harmless. One had to exercise caution. Feeling a curious tickling on the left side of my breast, I discovered that some two dozen bees had found the anise bottle in my shirt pocket and had gone in to investigate. It was quite a job to get the anise bottle out and persuade the bees to come too, but I did it without accident. The only danger to the amateur is that he lose his head and try to slap a bee that he thinks is dangerously near his face. If he does, he may be stung. He ought to be. It is worth repeating because to the newcomer it seems incredible. There is absolutely no danger of being stung while running a bee line.