Bob rushed up and dashed water into the entrance; Carl poured in a volume of smoke, but nothing could stop them. There was already an enormous cloud of bees circling over the hive, and the only thing now was to wait till they had clustered. But they did not seem inclined to cluster. The swarm drifted about uncertainly, here and there, now high, now low, and finally began to edge toward the river.
Expecting that they would settle on the willows by the water, the three apiarists followed it anxiously. But it did not settle. It went over the trees, and out above the stream.
“They’re going across! They’re making straight for the woods!” cried Alice. “That queen is lost!”
“No, they’ll surely cluster a little further on,” Bob exclaimed. “I’m going to follow them up. We can’t lose that queen. I’ll bring them back.”
He snatched up a grain sack that they had already been using in collecting swarms, jumped into the boat and rowed himself across the river.
The runaways did not travel very fast, and he could see the swarm gyrating and drifting like a cloud of smoke over the trees. But it moved too fast for him to keep up with it over that rough ground. He kept it in sight for nearly a quarter of a mile, and then it faded like mist into the sky.
It might be that the bees had already selected some hollow tree for their new home, and had gone straight to it without clustering. This sometimes happens, but very rarely; a swarm almost always settles and hangs for some time, probably as a means of getting its force together, ready for the final journey, and Bob felt sure that this swarm would sooner or later settle on a branch.
He kept on, therefore, scrutinizing the trees carefully for a pendant brown bunch. No such thing appeared, and though he stopped and listened at every few rods he did not hear the humming drone that a swarm keeps up for some time after it has settled.
He lost count of distance, stumbling along with his eyes in the air, but he must have gone a mile from the apiary when he was stopped by a savage, guttural grunt, apparently close by. Just ahead of him was a dense clump of willows and alders fringing a small stream, and as he gazed, he thought he saw the dim outline of an animal through the shrubbery, something large and tall like a buck.
Anxious to get a look, Bob edged sideways and parted the willows a little. He was thunderstruck to see a bull moose standing in the shallow water and glaring at him.