Hillbilly Honeybees And Babies Don’t Mix

All some people know about Honeybees is that they produce honey. Which you can buy at any grocery store. It reminds me of the story told about one youngster who went to spend some time with his grandparents on their farm for the first time. When he stared at his grandmother milking the cow, he asked, “Which one of those do you get chocolate milk from”.

This article is not written to explain the production of honey, but we do need to give a short general description of where and how honey gets to your kitchen table. Unlike the chocolate milk blurb above, honey comes in over 300 flavors here in the U.S. and that without being flavored after the fact. Bees do not secrete honey, they gather the nectar from various blossoms and store it. The blossoms from which it is gathered dictates the flavor of the honey. And most flavors are simply named the source name. Clover is perhaps the most popular flavor because it is easiest to come by. Commercial apiaries who produce clover honey simply sow fields of clover and let the bees create the honey.

(Joel and friend circa year of the bees.)

But, once upon a time, commercial (store-bought) honey was virtually unheard of and when it was available it was not in flavors, simply honey. During the depression years in the deep south, money was extremely scarce. Those people who were enterprising and eager to furnish their families with as much food and variety as possible, raised farm crops for food, their own animals for meat, and even kept bees for honey. This supplemented their home made jams, jellies, preserves and sorghum syrup.

Now, we are ready to begin our story of the day. I was somewhere near 3 years old. This day was perhaps the first day that I have a vivid memory of. There were three older brothers in our family that I have no remembrance of where they were on that day. But I can distinctly recall that my parents were working in a field of sweet potatoes which we were raising for food. And I presume my older brothers were in some other area of the farm working our regular row crops. Then there was my brother just older than I, about 6 years old I imagine, and my sister around 9 or 10. We were at the field with our parents but since Ted and I were too small to work, our sister Audrey, was given charge of baby sitting with us at the end of the field where stood a large persimmon tree and the persimmons were ripe. Persimmons, if not fully ripe and soft, are extremely sour and tart and will bring a frown to anyone’s face and tears to small child. But we were eating the soft and mushy ones which were delicious. I soon had my hands and face fully smeared with sweet ripe persimmons and my brother and sister had their share on themselves. But seeing this, my mother instructed my sister to take us to the house and clean us up.

The field we were at was perhaps 400 yards from our house with a trail that led through a wooded area and then a cleared space before reaching our side yard. We had 8 hives of honeybees right against the wooded area, not over 30 yards from our home. The trail passed within 15 yards of the first one. But honey bees almost never attack or sting anyone unless they are accidentally pressed against something or when they feel their hives are threatened or endangered. But as we entered the clearing at the edge of the woods, suddenly we were surrounded by honey bees. We began to slap at and fight the bees and they began to fight back. I don’t know how many stings either of us got but it was a lot, I can assure you. We were screaming, yelling and fighting bees. Our parents had heard the first of our screams, covered the length of the trail in record time and scurried us all to the house and away from the bees.

I seemed to have gotten more stings than any with my head, neck and arms literally covered with them. We were all puzzled as to why the bees had attacked us but when the crisis was over, my mother and father determined that it was the odor of the persimmons which had attracted them and they came to investigate. They probably would not have stung either of us even one time had we calmly walked through their area without attacking them. This also explained why I was the biggest attraction to them and why I was stung most.

So the moral of this story is, don’t go around beehives with ripe persimmons smeared all over you.