her friend told us that when we had caught our bee we must drop
honey on her back. This would send her to the hive to get her friends to
groom her off, and they would all return with her to see where the honey
came from. This sounded improbable, but we were in no position to
criticize our information.

As to the main points of procedure all our advisers agreed. We were to
put honey in an open box, catch a bee in it, and when she had loaded up
with honey, let her go, watch her flight and locate the direction of her
home. When she returned with friends for more honey, we were to shut
them in, carry the box on in the line of flight, and let them go again.
We were to keep this up until we reached the bee tree. It sounded
simple.

We got our box--two boxes, to be sure of our resources--baited them with
chunks of comb, and took along little window panes for covers. Then we
packed up luncheon and set out for an abandoned pasture in our woods
where we remembered the "yeller-top" grew thick. Our New England fall
mornings are cool, and as we walked up the shady wood road Jonathan
predicted that it would be no use to hunt bees. "They'll be so stiff
they can't crawl. Look at that lizard, now!" He stooped and touched a
little red newt lying among the pebbles of the roadway. The little
fellow seemed dead, but when Jonathan held him in the hollow of his hand
for a few moments he gradually thawed out, began to wriggle, and finally
dropped through between his fingers and scampered under a stone. "See?"
said Jonathan. "We'll have to thaw out every bee just that way."

But I had confidence that the sun would take the place of Jonathan's
hand, and refused to give up my hunt. From the main log-road we turned
off into a path, once a well-trodden way to the old ox pastures, but now
almost overgrown, and pushed on through brier and sweet-fern and
huckleberry and young birch, down across a little brook, and up again to
the "old Sharon lot," a long field framed in big woods and grown up to
sumac and brambles and goldenrod. It was warmer here, in the steady
sunshine, sheltered from the crisp wind by the tree walls around us, and
we began to look about hopefully for bees. At first Jonathan's gloomy
prognostications seemed justified--there was not a bee in sight. A few
wasps were stirring, trailing their long legs as they flew. Then one or
two "yellow jackets" appeared, and some black-and-white hornets. But as
the field grew warmer it grew populo