One would have expected them under such
circumstances to have gone straight home, as there were but few
branches intervening, but they did not; they labored up through the
trees and attained an altitude above the woods as if they had miles to
travel, and thus baffled me for hours. Bees will always do this.
They are acquainted with the woods only from the top side, and from the
air above they recognize home only by land-marks here, and in every
instance they rise aloft to take their bearings. Think how familiar to
them the topography of the forest summits must be-an umbrageous sea or
plain where every mask and point is known.
Another curious fact is that generally you will get track of a bee-tree
sooner when you are half a mile from it than when you are only a few
yards. Bees, like us human insects, have little faith in the near at
hand; they expect to make their fortune in a distant field, they are
lured by the remote and the difficult, and hence overlook the flower
and the sweet at their very door. On several occasions I have
unwittingly set my box within a few paces of a bee-tree and waited long
for bees without getting them, when, on removing to a distant field or
opening in the woods I have got a clew at once.
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