Honey bee tree, the end of the "beeline"

A pivotal part of the book The Ruin is a cliff dwelling found in the quest of finding a bee tree. The character Cliff is challenged by following the "beelines" the path the honeybees take from their nectar source in the fields back to their hive or in this case their colony in a hollow tree. His interest in the tree colonies is not so much to destroy the trees to take the honey, but to be on hand to capture swarms of bees when they multiply in the spring. As a boy working in the wide open fields on the farm in Colorado, I would occasionally become aware of an approaching high pitched buzzing sound that grew louder and louder and became a black boil of circling bees 20 or 30 feet in diameter flying 10 or 15 feet above the ground. I could run beneath them at about the same speed until I ran out of breath. My uncle Edwin who had advice on anything I could ask him, suggested I bang on a bucket or throw dirt up into them or smoke. I tried all those things except the smoke. Where do you get hold of smoke that fast? None of those things worked. Years later I thought about the source. It was the same guy who suggested I could catch a bird by sprinkling salt on its tail. Go figure.

But then he also taught me to study bees working a clover bush and then following their flight pattern when they left that bush. They flew up into the air, circled a time or two and then flew in the direction of home. If several bees flew the same direction you went that direction and listened. If you could hear bees above, and on a sultry day when flowers were in full bloom, you could, you followed that direction. I found trees that way. I don't remember how many now, but that's the way I began to build my first small apiary. When the swarm first emerged from the tree they hung from the tree for a few hours before they flew. Once they flew I never found a way to make them stop. I sometimes found them after they did stop, usually high in a tree top, or some other inaccessible place. It was an interesting and challenging way to wile away a Sunday afternoon.

Respectfully submitted.

Kenneth Fenter