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 more probably the skeleton, of the lion he had slain.

In any given locality, especially in the more wooded and mountainous
districts, the number of swarms that thus assert their independence
forms quite a large per cent. In the Northern States these swarms very
often perish before spring; but in such a country as Florida they seem
to multiply, till bee-trees are very common. In the West, also, wild
honey is often gathered in large quantities. I noticed, not long since,
that some wood-choppers on the west slope of the Coast Range felled a
tree that had several pailfuls in it.

One night on the Potomac a party of us unwittingly made our camp near
the foot of a bee-tree, which next day the winds of heaven blew down,
for our special delectation, at least so we read the sign. Another
time, while sitting by a waterfall in the leafless April woods, I
discovered a swarm in the top of a large hickory. I had the season
before remarked the tree as a likely place for bees, but the screen of
leaves concealed them from me. This time my former presentiment
occurred to me, and, looking sharply, sure enough there were the bees,
going out and in a large, irregular opening. In June a violent tempest
of wind and rain demolished the tree, and the honey was all lost in the
creek into which it fell. I happened along that way two or three days
after the tornado, when I saw a remnant of the swarm, those, doubtless,
that escaped the flood and those that were away when the disaster came,
hanging in a small black mass to a branch high up near where their home
used to be. They looked forlorn enough. If the queen was saved, the
remnant probably sought another tree; otherwise the bees soon died.

I have seen bees desert their hive in the spring when it was infested
with worms, or when the honey was exhausted; at such times the swarm
seems to wander aimlessly, alighting here and