3-7-10...The Bee Tree
Do you know about robbing a bee tree? If you do then you probably know there is no good way to do it and the best way is not to attempt it at all. But of course I Was in on the attempt once. Once was sure enough.
I was just newly married, only 19 years old. Me and my husband at the time were visiting with his sister and her husband only a couple of years older.
Now the usual thing was to go very early in the morning or late in the evening in the early fall. Mornings they were not very active or. Evenings in the fall they were in the hive and not as prone to attack. You wanted to catch them all there and not flying in and out. You were supposed to be able then to 'chase' them all off. Yeaw, right!!! Who ever made up those rules had a few screws loose.
We were all sitting there visiting, it was mid evening(first mistake) and some nut decided that we wanted some fresh honey. It was late summer. Second mistake. Off we went.
We all wore big wide brimmed straw hats with a scarf tied around them and under the chin. We were covered on every bit of skin and I was already sweating profusely. We had all the standard equipment. A stick with a coal oil soaked rag on it to be lit for 'smoking the bees' and keeping them away from us. Now the bee keepers today wouldn't go near a bee tree dressed like we were. I guess they must be more allergic to bee stings now than we were then. Well it's a thought!
My sister-in-law and her husband knew where the bee tree was but that's about all they knew. We could hear the droning of the bees way before we got there and I was getting a little bit weary and wanting to chicken out. I was hot and I didn't relish getting stung by a darn bee. Of course you could never call me chicken and get by with it so I just kept my mouth shut and proceeded on.
When we got close enough to see the tree it looked like smoke coming out of a spot way up on the tree which we discovered later was bees.
Now you were supposed to get up in the tree and stick your smoke stick up to the hole and scare the bees out and they are supposed to fly off leaving the hole clear for removing the hive. This is where our stupidity caught up with us.
It was a big old tree and none of us wanted to climb it so we decided to cut the darn thing down to make it easier. Good Grief!!
The men used a cross cut saw that was in the truck already and it didn't really take long to fall the tree. That they did know how to do. The bees had remained calm until that tree hit the ground. The bees flew away but they didn't stay long and they were mad. The men were busy robbing the tree and us women were supposed to keep the smoke going to keep the bees away. They didn't go far and when I heard them coming back it sounded like a chain saw. I looked up and by golly I took off running. To heck with this. I knew they rest were running just as hard behind me. The men had honey all over them and had the bucket with part of the hive. The bees followed us. We got a bunch of stings and most of them were in our backsides. Them suckers stung right through my thick blue jeans. We got to the truck a whole bunch faster that we had gotten to the bee tree and we scrambled in. One of the men put the bucket in the back of the truck. That was not a good idea because those mad bees followed us right on up the road. When we got back to the house, which was a couple of miles, we were afraid to get out of the truck. We sat in that dang hot truck with the windows rolled up, and it was a hot day, until way after dark with those darn mad bees sitting on that bucket of honey. They finally flew away a few at a time and we were free. We all had a bath in a wash tub one at a time because the men had honey all over them and we had picked it up from them while sitting in the truck.
That was my first and last robbing of the bee tree. I can say I did it and we probably got about ½ pint of honey for our trouble. Man was that stuff good though.
