CHAPTER XX
BEE-HUNTING
The mere mention of these words always brings to us memories of high hills, wound about by picturesque roads, bordered by rail fences, from the corners of which the goldenrod still flung its banners to the breeze, though September and, mayhap, frosts had come. Beyond the fences were knolly pastures, cropped close except where the mullein, the thistle and the immortelle vaunted their immunity from the attacks of grazing herds; and still beyond were upland meadows, green with second-crop clover; and crowning all were forests beginning to glow with autumnal hues. Forth into such roads, pastures, meadows and woodlands were we wont to fare of a sunny morning, to hunt bees with our father, whose woodcraft was not the empty accomplishment of the man of this generation, but was attained on those same hills of western New York when he was a pioneer boy, and the deer and the wolves roamed those forests, and the beavers built their dams in the valley.
Our equipment for hunting was a bottle of diluted honey; a box with a sliding glass cover, containing pieces of empty comb; and a sharp stake, four feet high, topped with a cross-piece on which to set the
211
