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The Swarm: Burroughs

Burroughs gives us a fascinating description of the swarming of bees: - "I always feel that I have missed some good fortune if I am away from home when my bees swarm. What a delightful summer sound it is! how they come pouring out of their hives, twenty or thirty thousand bees each striving to get out first: it is as when the dam gives way and lets the waters loose; it is a flood of bees which breaks upward into the air and becomes a maze of whirling black lines to The Swarm the eye and a soft chorus of myriad musical sounds to the ear. "This way and that they drift, now contracting, now expanding, rising, sinking, growing thick about some branch or bush, then dispersing and massing at some other point, till finally they begin to alight in earnest, when in a few moments the whole swarm is collected upon the branch, forming a bunch perhaps as large as a two-gallon measure." All the pleasures of the chase may be experienced in pursuing a swarm of runaway bees; and whether the game is bagged or not, the hunter's hands are clean of useless slaughter, and his blood set in as active motion as though the quarry had run on four legs.

Burroughs tells us of such an experience. The issuing swarm had been properly hived, - "But something offended them, or else the tree in the woods - perhaps some royal old maple or birch holding its head high above all others, with snug, spacious, irregular chambers and galleries - had too many attractions; for they were presently discovered filling the air over the garden and whirling excitedly around. Gradually they began to drift over the street; a moment more, and they had become separated from the other bees, and, drawing together in a more compact mass or cloud, away they went, a humming, flying vortex of bees, the queen in the centre, and the swarm revolving around her as a pivot, - over meadows, across creeks and swamps, straight for the heart of the mountain, about a mile distant, - slow at first, so that the youth who gave chase kept up with them, but increasing their speed till only a foxhound could have kept them in sight. I saw their pursuer laboring up the side of the mountain, saw his white shirtsleeves gleam as he entered the woods; but he returned a few hours afterward without any clew as to the particular . tree in which they had taken refuge out of the ten thousand that covered the side of the mountain."

There came forth one hot July noontime another of Mr. Burroughs's swarms that proceeded to make off. "The house was situated on a steep hillside. Behind it, the ground rose for a hundred rods or so, at an angle of nearly forty-five degrees, and the prospect of having to chase them up this hill, if chase them we should, promised a good trial of wind at least; for it soon became evident that their course lay in this direction. Determined to have a hand, or rather a foot, in the chase, I threw off my coat and hurried on, before the swarm was yet fairly organized and under way. "The route soon led me into a field of standing rye, every spear of which held its head above my own. Plunging recklessly forward, my course marked to those watching from below by the agitated and wriggling grain, I emerged from the miniature forest just in time to see the runaways disappearing over the top of the hill, some fifty rods in advance of me. Lining them as well as I could, I soon reached the hill-top, my breath utterly gone and the perspiration streaming from every pore of my skin. On the other side the country opened deep and wide. A large valley swept around to the north, heavily wooded at its head and on its sides. It became evident at once that the bees had made good their escape, and that whether they had stopped on one side of the valley or the other, or had indeed cleared the opposite mountain and gone into some unknown forest beyond, was entirely problematical. I turned back, therefore, thinking of the honey-laden tree that some of these forests would hold before the falling of the leaf."

One more engaging story Burroughs must tell us of runaway bees: The Swarm "I heard of a youth in the neighborhood more lucky than myself on a like occasion. It seems that he had got well in advance of the swarm, whose route lay over a hill, as in my case, and as he neared the summit, hat in hand, the bees had just come up and were all about him. Presently he noticed them hovering about his straw hat and alighting on his arm; and in almost as brief a time as it takes to relate it, the whole swarm had followed the queen into his hat. Being near a stone wall, he coolly deposited his prize upon it, quickly disengaged himself from the accommodating bees, and returned for a hive. The explanation of this singular circumstance no doubt is, that the queen, unused to such long and heavy flights, was obliged to alight from very exhaustion. It is not very unusual for swarms to be thus found in remote fields, collected upon a bush or branch of a tree."

Who among us but can sympathize with Mr. Burroughs when he exclaims : - " I love to see a swarm go off - if it is not mine; and if mine must go, I want to be on hand to see the fun."

The first hive-bees brought to America had the New World all to themselves for a long time.

There were no rivals in the vast flowery plains but the wild bees that eat but do not store up honey and the "burly dozing humble-bee," that both eats and saves, albeit in small quantities, the joyous nectar of the blossoms. The honey-bee under these favorable circumstances prospered and increased amazingly until the forests of the United States were well supplied with "bee-trees," to the delectation alike of the Red Man and the bear, both of whom were quick to appreciate the value of the remarkable sweet supplied by the "white man's fly."

The fondness of the bear for honey has been noted from early times, and many amusing stories have been told of its efforts to appropriate the contents of the bee-trees, the following being credited to Demetrius, a Muscovite ambassador at Rome: - "A man searching in the woods for honey slipped down into a great hollow tree, where he found himself up to his breast in a lake of honey. "He stuck fast there two days, making the lonely woods resound in vain with his cries for help. Finally, when he had abandoned hope, a large bear appeared upon the scene, bent upon the same business that had taken the man there. Bruin smelled the honey, that had been stirred up by the struggles of the prisoner, and straightway climbed the tree and let himself down backward into the hollow. The man, whose wits had been sharpened by adversity, caught him about the loins and made as vigorous an outcry as he could. Up clambered Bruin in a panic, not knowing what thing had hold of him. The man clung fast, and the bear tugged, until by main force he had pulled himself and his captor out of the tree; then the man let go and Bruin took to the woods with all speed, leaving his smeared companion to his own congratulations."

The lake of honey into which the man fell recalls the stories one reads of lakes of honey sometimes found in India. Where the heat is excessive, the combs melt, and no doubt it sometimes happens that combs built in hollow trees are unable to bear the tropic sun at its fiercest and melt down, when the honey flows from the tree to the ground beneath.

In the Hindu "Harsa-Carita" we read in a description of the hot season of its "raining beeswax in the woods from the bee-hives full of melting honey, as if they were covered with sweat."

And again we are told of a sacred grove, parched and waterless in the hot season, that it was "all astir with the The Swarm swarms of bees flying out of the masses of honey-comb as they were licked by the monkeys and bears."