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Honey Gathering John Putnam: We use to hunt bees quite a lot. I'd rather hunt bees than hunt deer. Honestly, I'd get more fun out of it. My father and I lined a swarm of bees. We use to mix up sugar and water, dump it into the comb, ya know, had a cover on this box, slide in here too and you go up… catch the bee and after he quiets down just pull this slide out here so he can get out to the sweet stuff and when he's loaded, take the cover off. And after he gets loaded, well, then he'd come out and he'd whirl and whirl and whirl. You'd do darn well if you could keep watch of him. Finally, he'll sap…go. Well, after he's been a few times he don't do no whirling. He'll come out of the box and shoot right off. That's the way we lined the bees and he and I lined this bee, this swam of bees, for I don't know how many days. We started them on the old settlement there at Broad Brook, went right straight west. Oh boy, we had the wood full of bees. You could hear them all over. We knew we was somewhere near them so we went looking. I spotted them at last in one of them old growth pines. Way up probably 50 – 75… more than that. They were going in and out, in and out, in and out ya know. And we marked the tree. And, well… the fella that use to run the drug store down here, he and his mother run it afterwards, name was Powers and I guess I was living down the street at the time. He kept at me. He says, "I want to go up when you take up that swam of bees". He said, "I want to see it done". Well… I said, "No going now. It's too hot. Better wait till it's cooler weather". Well… finally went along quite a while and one day, one Saturday night I guess it was, he says, "Tomorrow morning I'm going to get a horse and buggy and we're going up to your father's and we're going in and take up that swarm of bees". I says, "He'll be mad. Too warm". Well, we got up then. He talked it into him and finally we went over and tackled it. Went up in there, way up in there. We had two 14 qt. galvanized pails and I took an axe, went at that tree and there was just about 4" of shell clear around it. I had it down in no time. It went down…crash! Oh, it was one of those old growth pines too but not too awful big one. As I say, he went up with that axe, we got chop on one side of the tree. Ooh, they stung. Oh, they stung. Boy oh boy, they stung. They was a black bee and by gees, they was ugly. This Powers boy, about my age, he had a pint of liquor or a half-a-pint. I forgot. He told my father, he says, "For God sake, put that into you". My father drank it right down just the same as you'd do with water. If he hadn't, he'd been killed. He'd of died right there. Honest, I saw it saved his life. And one got after Powers and he run down through the woods. Well, I told my father, I said, "Give it up. We'll come in tomorrow perhaps and you're going to have a screen". Well, he had a screen, an old hat, and he put that on. Well, he waited till 3:00 in the afternoon before he done a thing. He couldn't move. Finally he said, "I'm going to tackle it again" and he went up and they stung him some that time but he got in and got the honey running. Just as quick as that honey begins to run… they'll begin to eat. They don't pay no attention to you, not a thing. One might get ornery if you pinch him somewhere. He'd sting you but they won't fight you no more. My father and I went right up and held the pail right there for him to take the honey out. We brought out 2 pails that night filled so full you had all you could do just to get your fingers under the handles. We weighed one of them. It weighed 25 lbs. That was 50 lbs we brought out that day. My father and I went back the next day. We got another pail full and the honey was 3" or 4" deep. He didn't cut out the bottom of the tree he just took out the sides, ya know. It was so hot that honey runned out like water and like I say, that honey was 3" or 4" deep in that tree and there were pounds and pounds of comb that were capped and that was as big around oh gosh, it was probably, might have been 15" across that hole. 8' long of solid comb. We made two trips. We would have gone back and get another load, but we didn't. We worked 7 days on that swarm. When he didn't go, I did and then we'd go together and put all together we worked about 7 days we worked on that swam. He and I hunted one summer and that fall we had 7 swarms of bees in trees that we'd found and never took up a tree. Never took a bee up. Not a one of them, we had 7 swarms. |
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