Memories (2)...

This is the second in my stories for my girls.  It's one my youngest especially loves.  It would have been early in 1975.

As long as I can remember, Grandpa always kept bees.  Bee keeping was a pastime that his great uncle enjoyed.  In fact, he liked it so much that his great uncle sold the honey his bees produced in Southern California.

Our bees lived in hives.  The hives where the bees lived were like white boxes and when I was little they were about as tall as I was.  They stood on metal legs and my dad wrapped oily rags around them so that ants and other bugs wouldn't climb inside.  And they were always in a back or bottom corner of our yard.

Each year, Grandpa would put on a big white suit that covered his whole body.  He would put on thick gloves and high boots.  He would put on a straw had with a net to cover his face.  Then he would light a small fire in a smoke can.  Grandpa blew that smoke into the beehive.  Some of the bees came out to get away from the smoke.  The bees that stayed in the hive just fell asleep.

Then Grandpa would take the top off the hive and remove the honeycomb.  With a hot knife he shaved the wax seals off the honeycomb and golden sweet honey started running out.  He put the honeycomb frames into a spinner set in a big drum that had a crank on top and a faucet on bottom.  Then Grandpa would turn the crank as fast as he could, making the honey spin out of the honeycombs and splash on the insides of the drum, then run down into the bottom.

Uncle Eric, Uncle Dean, Uncle Paul and I would put a glass jar under the faucet, then open the faucet to let the honey run out and fill the jar.  And Grandpa made sure to give us bits of honeycomb to chew on.  It was like very sweet gum!

Then Grandpa would put new honeycombs into the hives and let the bees come home.  And they started making more honey right away.

When Uncle Dean was a baby he loved two things.  He loved to watch bugs and animals.  And he loved to hit things with sticks.

You might be able to see where this is going....

One day, when Uncle Dean was just a baby, and we still lived in California, he crawled out to the beehive and sat up on the ground.  He watched the bees fly in and out.  He watched the bees crowd the entrance to the hive and fan cooling air into the hive with their wings.

And then he noticed, on the ground next to him, a stick.

Uncle Dean picked up the stick and started hitting the side of the beehive.  And the bees did not like it one bit!

They flew out of the hive and landed on Uncle Dean.  There he sat, wearing only a cloth diaper, while the bees stung him.  Because he was just a baby he couldn't run away.  He couldn't even think to crawl away because the bee stings hurt him so much.  So he sat there and cried.

When Grandma heard Uncle Dean crying she came running.  She picked up Uncle Dean and brushed the bees off of him.  She carried him into the house and put a paste made of baking soda and water on the stings. This was to draw out the poison.

The baking soda paste worked.  But Uncle Dean had been stung more than 30 times.  His eyes swelled up.  His lips swelled up.  And he was covered with bumps for quite a few days.

But that wasn't the end of his problems with bees!  That's a story for another night...