I have always stated just how much I loved growing up a farm boy and living out in the country. I have felt that John Denver’s song “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” was my theme song. Now that spring has arrived and the climate is much warmer I have seen, flying around me a reminder that all on the farm is not kinda laid back. I have seen a couple of bees. Need I say more? 
When you work around old out buildings and especially barns, you are going to run into your share of this insect. In the barns are bumblebees and they can be huge in size or small yet can pack a mighty sting. I know this as I have run into both kinds personally. If you do not find the bees, you will run into a wasp nest and they not only sting hard but also will sting repeatedly where at least a bee can only sting you one time as they lose their stinger. Either way just is in no way a pleasant event in my view of country life.
As the summers passed and each summer, I would get stung once or often I eventually became allergic to the stings. I swell and these days it is important to keep a bottle of Benadryl and a trip to the ER for a shot. Therefore, it is a topic I feel could be left out of farm life and a good memory. These days I try very hard to search them out before I step into a mess of them (oh by the way if available make a poultce out of cigarette tobacco and place it over the sting. It will draw the venom .Fact!) It is said that bees and wasps can tell if you fear them and they will attack you. I know my dad was never bothered by them and he wasn’t worried about them as he would kill them with some gasoline as he could get that close to them without them attacking where if it was me they came after me before I ever entered the barn.
Over the years I have learned and been taught lessons about this painful foe. In addition,I seem to be able to side step them. However when they are placed right where you must go just what can be done. When I was about ten to twelve years of age a man from Moscow named Al Kappas, ask dad if he could place some of his honeybee hives on our farm so they could pollenate our crops and make honey in the process. Al was a really nice person, dad liked him, and the idea of helping pollenate the crops seemed to register with dad as a good idea. Now dad owned two hundred acres and that is a lot of room to set up beehives but dad decided that it would be easier for Al if he were to place them under the pine trees right along the road. This was so Al could stop his car and get to the bees quickly. So Mr. Kappas placed three hives under the trees but right beside the field and a gate to another field.
To begin with there was really no notice that a honeybee was on our farm. That was until dad sent me over to the first field to cut the hay with a mowing machine. A tractor has a steady hum to it and the mowing machine has a steady clacking sound. Together I learned that day that the two sounds were not to the honey bees liking. To mow I started by mowing around the entire field. All was good and I was just getting settled in to the job when I neared the hives and out of what seemed like nowhere I was attacked and stung several times before I could get the tractor on down the field and abandoned the job. I went to the house, found dad, showed, and told him about the attack. So he walks over to the tractor, climbs on, goes up, and mows a good amount of hay near the bees. Did they bother him? No, they sure did not.
After he cleared a section away from them, he brought the tractor back to me and told me they could sense I was afraid of them and that was the reason I got stung. After the explanation, I still was not very happy about the whole thing. I ask dad if he could get Al to move them elsewhere and dad said it seemed they were all settled in there now. Folks I did not see it that way at all. I sure was not settled in. In the fall, Mr. Kappas took the homey from the hives and he paid dad for letting him put his hives there with two quarts of pure honey and one even had some of the comb in it and that is good stuff to put it mildly. So that fall and winter and summer, I was ok with their location. I kept a mental not as to where the hives were and that was just where I was not going to be.
Over the next couple of years, the bees went about their business and we went about ours. I just gave them more distance. In addition, each fall we were paid in some of the best honey I have ever tasted. I need to explain that when the beekeeper takes the honey from the hives the bees are very upset about being robbed and it really does not take anything to stir them up and put them on the attack mode. The following spring Al placed more hives beside the others and now there were seven hives all in a row. The way I saw it looked to me was that was murder’s row.
Since we farmed where we rotated our crops on a five-year rotation, it was time to plant corn in the field on the other side of the gate. I decided to not even try to go through the gate but instead I went up to the other side of the field and cut a new entry into the field. The only issue would be to run machinery on the corner of the field where the hives were. However, as I would have to do some work near that gate all remained calm. So I went through planting and growing season without a problem and began to become complacent with the bees.
That was until it was time to pick the corn. Since it was in the fall of the year and the bees had just had their honey robbed they returned to not liking me. So confident was I that I drove a load of corn through the gate and just as I went through it, I was swarmed. I put the tractor into high gear and as we went as fast as I could make it go and ears of corn bouncing off the wagon I was chewing myself out for forgetting. I needed to pick the corn near the gate(and did it after dark.) and remembered that bees stay away from smoke so I would light a cigarette every time I passed that corner. Here was probably the only time smoking was good for my health. The only good thing about that year was since more hives we were paid in four quarts of honey. I sure felt that I earned my share of the honey for sure.
Rick Houser grew up on a farm near Moscow in Clermont County and loves to share stories about his youth and other topics. If you are interested in reading more of his stories they can be found in his books ‘There are Places to Remember” and’ Memories ARE from the Heart.” He may be reached at houser734@yahoo.com or mail to P.O. Box 213 Bethel, Ohio 45106.