THE BEE HUNTER
The BEE HUNTER
By GEORGE HAROLD EDGELL
1949
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
Copyright 1949
By GEORGE HAROLD EDGELL
Printed at UNIVERSITY PRESS, INC.
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U. S. A.
London: Geoffrey Cumberlege
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
THE BEE HUNTER
THIS little treatise is in part the child of frustration, inpart the child of irritation. In a modest way, thewriter has been an author. The first book he ever wrote,an opus of several chapters, was called “The Bee Hunter.”The writer was then eighteen. Submitted, on the advice ofthe late Robert W. Chambers, to his publisher in New York,the young author was surprised to learn that his manuscriptwas rejected. The publisher tactfully pointed out that eventhe English translation of Maurice Maeterlinck’s La Vie desAbeilles had lost money for its publisher.
The manuscript was put away to gather dust. I believeand trust now that it is lost. It was terrible.
So much for the frustration. Now for the irritation.Being an unsung author on the subject and, more important,a successful bee hunter of fifty years’ experience, thewriter has read a certain number of articles on bee hunting.One appears every year or two. Starting with two essaysby John Burroughs, one fact is common to all. They arewritten by men who never possibly could have found a beetree, at least by pursuing the methods they describe. Burroughscame nearest the truth, but even he seems to have[6]got his account from some farmer with more imaginationthan experience. It is time for someone who has huntedbees and found bee trees to write the facts. For bee huntingis rapidly becoming a lost art.
The writer’s interest in the sport began at the age of tenwhen he was initiated by an old Adirondacker who hadsunk to driving his grandfather’s mules in Newport, NewHampshire. George Smith, as I shall call him, was a character,to the youngster as fabulous as Paul Bunyan. Hetook his whiskey neat. He smoked and chewed at the sametime and could spit without removing the pipe from hismouth. His profanity could take the bluing off a gun barrel.Withal, he was one of the kindest and most generousof men and a mighty bee hunter before the Lord, or thedevil if one prefers. He introduced the boy to the simpleequipment necessary for the art, and though through theyears I have improved it slightly, the fundamentals of thefew objects have remained the same.