The profits of bee hunting will depend on the ability of the man to manipulate the bees after taking them from the tree. You must agree with me that in cutting the tree, there is nearly always some of the combs containing honey broken up and covered with dirt, and this honey can never be classed as salable. Therefore, if we hunt bees merely for what honey may be in the tree and leave the bees to perish from starvation and cold, it were far better, from a moral and financial point of view, to let the tree stand.
CHAPTER XI.
CUSTOMS AND OWNERSHIP OF WILD BEES.
There are customs in vogue among sportsmen that have been handed down from generation to generation, that have almost become laws. Indeed, we have heard it said that custom becomes law.
A hunter may wound a deer, follow it for a distance and find that another hunter has shot and killed it. The question might arise as to whom the deer belonged. A bee hunter may find a bee tree and mark it and some other hunter might find it afterwards and cut it. The same question might arise as to whom it legally belonged. If sportsmen were to settle the disputes they would refer back to custom and say the deer belonged to the one first wounding it, providing the wound was of such nature that the one first wounding it would have been pretty sure of getting it, by following on, and they would also decide that the bee belonged to the one who first found and marked it.
A custom that may seem to be founded on justice is pretty apt to be followed by laws that may coincide with the custom. But we must remember there are statute laws relating to the ownership of wild animals and bees, and though we all band together as sportsmen, we cannot abrogate nor set aside these laws already formed.
In my boyhood days, when I would find a bee, I was very slow to tell any one just where it was for fear they might cut it. Was this true sportsmanship? I think not. Some other bee hunter might hunt for that bee a day or more and finding it would have reason to say that I had deceived him and he could hardly be blamed if he cut it. I have been used just this very way more than once, and felt like retaliating by cutting a bee that was found prior by another party. But am glad to say that I never did. Since I became more mature in years I have had more confidence in my fellow sportsmen and now after finding a bee tree the first time I see any one who is likely to look for the bee, he is told its exact location, thus probably saving him much valuable time in not looking for a bee that is found.
As a fitting close to this work it might be well to quote the statute laws relating to the ownership of wild bees.
"Bees while unreclaimed, are by nature wild animals. Those which take up their abode in a tree belong to the owner of the soil, if unreclaimed, but if reclaimed and identified, they belong to the former owner. If a swarm leave a hive they belong to the owner as long as they are in sight and are easily taken; otherwise they become the property of the first occupant. Merely finding a bee on the land of another and marking the tree does not vest the property of the bees in the finder. They do not become private property until they are in a hive."