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T was a warm sunny day in early spring. All the snow had disappeared except in the shady ravines on the north sides of the hills. A few weeks earlier I had heard the first glad notes of the robin and the bluebird, and had waited for this day to hear the sound of working bees. I I was traveling alone on a little-frequented road that led around the side of one of the Vermont hills-a road with a border of rank growing hedges -when I paused to listen to a sound of low, sweet music that seemed to come from a clump of near-by willows. The willows were in full bloom, and the yellow pollen-dust was shaken from the catkins at the slightest touch. Here were a dozen or more bees busily at work, making the sound which I had waited to hear for the first time this season. They were all on a single cluster of willows, each one accompanying its labors with music as it passed busily from flower to flower in search of pollen or honey. The sound ceases only for an instant, when the bee rests on a flower, with closed wings, to sip honey, or sometimes to adjust the pellets of pollen on its legs. But while one rests others are in motion, making the sound from the willows continuous. There are few, if any, whose sense of hearing is not pleasingly affected by the sound of bees at work.

To me the sound is something more than sweet music. It is like the baying of hounds to the enthusiast in the chase, for I am a bee-hunter. Hunting wild bees has been my standard recreation for many years, and I find it more fascinating than the use of the

rod or gun, to which, also, in my boyhood, I was much addicted; and more humane, for the wild bees that I find are never robbed of their stores and the bees destroyed or left to perish, as was once the barbarous custom of beehunters. I have a better way, the result of which gave me at one time more than seventy-five swarms of bees, all of them in modern frame hives, and all descended from wild bees or brought directly from the woods. Is not this an entirely justifiable "benevolent assimilation,' whatever may be said of another. But the bees do not see it in that light. They defend their natural homes with reckless bravery, using the fearful weapon that Nature has provided them. They have the intelligence, however, to see when resistance is useless, and submit to the inevitable, probably without a picion that they are to be furnished with a more fashionable house and initiated into the ways of civilized bees.

In describing a fox hunt on one of the old English estates, and referring to the sound of baying hounds, George Eliot says: "Strange that one of the sweetest sounds in nature should be thus associated with the pursuit and death of one of God's creatures." We can hunt the honey bees and listen to one of the "sweetest sounds in Nature" the -the humming of the industrious workers without the disagreeable thought suggested by the quotation. But we need not permit such thoughts to trouble us too much, for the conflict of Nature's forces is a part of Nature herself. The fox pursues and kills, as he is himself pursued and killed.

One of the qualifications of a bee

hunter is the absence of avarice or any excessive ambition which might cause him to neglect the bees for the prospect of a fortune, or distinction in literature, politics or religion. To become an expert bee-hunter does not require a college education or even a diploma to practice any of the professions. Least of all does it require one to be possessed of riches in this world's goods. Indeed, I have known more than one very good bee-hunter who was poor-very poor, and scarcely able to write his name.

The capital stock which is necessary to set up a bee-hunter in business, consists of the implements of the tradea few small pieces of honey-comb with a little honey or sugar syrup, a small box of wood or tin, about 3 x 3 x 4 inches, fitted to enclose another box. To these may be added, as a kind of aristocratic luxury not absolutely necessary, a stout alpine staff to help climb mountains, and to serve the general purpose of a walking stick. A removal cap should be adjusted to the top of the staff so that when set in the ground the bee box may be placed upon it. The catching box is divided into two nearly equal compartments by a sliding partition. The box has a glass bottom. The cover may be a piece of stiff cardboard to lay over the top, or it may be a thin piece of wood. Holding the catching box in the left hand and the lid in the right hand, the bee is gently brushed from the flower into the box and the cover closed over it with a single deft motion of the hand. The box is then inverted and the slide partly drawn, the bee flies up to the glass and is secured by closing the slide. The box is then ready to catch another bee.

In this way you may catch as many bees as you want. When you have enough in the catching box, it is telescoped over the inner box containing the comb and honey, the slide drawn and the glass covered. The bees will then-generally in a few seconds-go down on the combs and begin to suck the honey. The outer box is then carefully removed, leaving the bees free to

fly as soon as they have loaded with honey. The first bee caught may be set to work in the box at once without waiting for others, which is often a better way. If the honey or syrup is not too thick, the bee will take about all it can carry in two or three minutes. You would then expect to see it fly directly away with its new-found treasure, but it does not. It first makes you a witness of the intelligence that lies in its small body, or, perhaps, in the gray matter of its little particle of brain. It rises from the box, hovering over it and observing it from all sides intently. After it is apparently satisfied that the miniature hive contains no other bees or no rightful owners to defend it, it begins to examine the location so as to be able to return for more when it has added its load to the stores at home. It flies away a few feet, and, turning, comes back, flying over or near the box. This is sometimes repeated several times. Then it rises higher and flies in circles, generally bearing off toward its home. Pausing for an instant to take a final observation, it suddenly strikes away in a direct line.

If you have been able to keep your eye upon it through all these motions, you will know the general direction to its home. The phrase, "a bee-line," is sometimes used as a synonym for a perfectly straight line-the shortest distance between two points-but practically the bees are not so particular about mathematical accuracy in this matter as they are in the construction of their combs. The homeward bee-lines from the same station will frequently vary enough so that the outside lines will be fifty rods apart at a distance of one mile. When there is no obstruction in the way, as a sharp hill, to cause them to veer, the principal middle line will be found to lead very near to the hive or the tree which is the home of the hunted bees.

Should the swarm to which the bee that we have just sent home belongs be near by, and the weather favorable, it may return for another load in six or eight minutes. Its home may be two

adapted to their wants, with an entrance not too large and not too small, leading into the interior.

Bees show a wonderful knowledge of the woods and good judgment in choosing a place for a home. They select a hollow in a tree about the size that the expert bee-culturist provides for them in the artificial hive, a space large enough to contain the broodcomb and all necessary stores for winter and for rearing the young hees that will take the place of the old ones in the spring, and not so large that the warmth of their bodies will not keep the interior of the house above the freezing point in the coldest winter weather. The exceptions to this rule do not often occur, but, as in our affairs of state, the leadership seems to be sometimes intrusted to the wrong ones, and the whole community suffers-as when a swarm of bees makes its home on the under side of a limb or in a bush, where it cannot possibly survive the winter. There is not, however, in this climate, more than one swarm in a hundred that chooses a wild home in the forest without taking into consideration its adaptability for winter quarters. I have seen only one full swarm of wild bees that had settled down in a place where sure destruction from exposure to the weather awaited them. It was an average-sized swarm in the number of bees; they had made about a large pailful of comb and honey, with the comb attached to the shrubby limbs of an apple tree.

Upon What Flowers to Find Bees and

at What Time of the Day or Year When a new colony of bees has selected and moved into a home in the hollow of a forest tree, its first business is to put the house in order. Every particle of dust or dirt is removed from the top and sides of the apartment. It is more thoroughly cleaned than we could clean it with a brush and duster. The honey which they store in this place, if undisturbed, is just as clean. as any found in a hive.

Honey-bees leave the hive to search. for honey or pollen early in the spring. A few days generally occur, warm enough to allow them to venture out with safety, before they can find any flowers to reward their search. So eager is the bee at this time to begin the labors of the season that it will make a feint of gathering the fresh sawdust about the mills or the woodpile, attempting with some success to load it upon its legs, as it does the pollen of the flowers. The sawdust, if packed in the cells of the honey comb like the pollen, for which the bee has searched in vain, would be useless as a substitute for pollen. It is therefore probable that the bee is only playing at work. At this time, also, it is seen at work on the ends of fresh cut logs or new chips, from which it gets a taste of sap to help out its bill of fare for the day and to economize the home store.

Toward the close of the maple-sugar season, and before there are any flowers, bees are often seen feeding upon the sap. Crawling down on the inside of the bucket and sipping the cold sweet, they often become benumbed, fall into the cold sap, and are drowned. But in this locality the little workers have never long to wait after they are able to fly in the Spring before the pollen and honey-yielding flowers begin to appear. I have frequently seen them entering the hive heavily laden with bee-bread (pollen) before the snow has entirely disappeared.

The long pendant catkins of the alders. appear the last days of March or in the early part of April, and in some seasons bear an abundant supply of pollen dust. The flowers of the alder are among the first, if not the first, that the bees visit, but these flowers do not last many days, and there are seasons in which the bees get nothing from them because there are no days warm enough for gathering honey or pollen while they are in blossom. The black alder (holly), which bears the red berries in the Fall, is also visited by the bees, when in blossom late in the sea