Few teenagers about fifty years ago had access to wheels, particularly in the countryside, and there was no television. We had to develop and plan our own entertainment. In the summertime, with no school, this led to many interesting ideas and events.
On weekends, we would often search the mountains for ginseng and wild bees. Brothers, cousins (there were lots of Lillys in southern West Virginia), and friends would gather on a summer Sunday afternoon at a chosen site by the Bluestone River. We would observe the wild bees as they came to drink from wet sand near the river. After drinking, they would return to their bee tree, at times as much as a half-mile away, usually up the side of a mountain. We tried to establish the direction of their flight. First, one member of our group would visually track the bees a certain distance, then another member would trace the next leg of the bees’ journey. Others would point out the direction of the bees still further away until a “bee line” was established.
After searching, sometimes for hours, we would locate their wild home. It was generally in an old hollow tree, and sometimes the opening to the hollow was as much as 20 feet from the ground. We considered it a victory to see the bees moving in and out of this opening. There were many days when we never found their home.
It was customary that whoever found the bee tree would lay claim to the tree by carving their initials in the bark, regardless of the land owner. There was consternation, after spending hours of hard work on a hot afternoon, to find other initials on the tree.
The fun was in the finding, not the follow-up. At a later date, the tree was cut down with a cross-cut saw, and it came crashing down the mountainside with all the bees inside. Naturally, the bees were very angry and would be looking to sting anything that moved.
Requirements for this task included heavy clothing, a veil over the head, heavy elbow-length gloves and heavy socks tied over the pant legs. Axes would be used to gain access to the honey and bees.
Success meant convincing the bees to move into a commercial hive that we brought with us and lots of honey. The bees were calmed and herded into their new home with the aid of a smoker (a bellows attached to a cannister with burning bluejean material inside). A few days later, the commercial hive was carried down the mountain after dark and taken home.
There are three kinds of individuals in a bee colony: the drone, (male, which develops from an unfertilized egg), the workers, which are unfertile females, and the queen which has the same origin as the workers but develops into a queen as a result of the workers feeding her a special diet known as royal jelly. In the wintertime, when food becomes scarce, the workers may kill most of the drones and carry them out of the hive.
When a new queen is produced by the hive, she arises on her first maiden flight straight up in the air from the hive. She is followed by a drone and fertilized high in the air. The sperm from fertilization lasts the lifetime of the queen. The fortunate drone loses his life.
In early spring, we would often place old surplus honey outdoors for the bees to use. In a few minuted a single bee would discover that honey, and after a half an hour, there would be hundreds of bees carrying honey to the hive. When that first bee returned to its hive, it was able to convey to the others the location of the honey source. The angle of the sun to the source is transmitted to the other bees in a dance that shows the direction of the source of food. The distance is shown by the speed of the wiggles the scouting bee makes.
The flavor and color of the honey depends on the species of plant the bees are working at a given time. They tend to work on a single species until it flowers out. Buckwheat and black locust yield dark, strong honey. My favorte is a mild and light colored honey from sourwood, a small tree, member of the heath family, which is found in acid-soil country of the southern Appalachians.
Bees have been and still are the most important pollinators of many crop and fruit trees. The late Ray Shade of Siam, a few miles north of Attica on Route 4, had me promise to take care of his wild bees in a 40 acre woods that he gave to Heidelberg. He grew red clover for seed, and the area near the woods where the bee trees were located was always the most productive.
It now appears that all wild bees have died, and many commercial beekeepers have quit. Lucius Stucky of Seneca County Road 16 near Bloomville had 30 hives for the 1996 season, and he harvested 3,200 pounds of honey. He has to chemically treat his bees twice a year for two species of mites. One is microscopic and internal, the other larger and external. Either one can destroy a colony. As a result, the cost of beekeeping has risen and the novice can no longer compete. New stock has to be certified disease free.
As a way to offset the increased cost, many if not most bee keepers lease their bees to farmers such as those with peach orchards during the flower season. Without pollination there would be no crop. Bumblebees and other insects are pollinators, but all of these are not as important as the single species of honey bees.
-- Percy