DISEASES AND ENEMIES
Jesse Ray Owens had this to share with us about enemies of the bees. “I’ve noticed for the last few years, them Japanese hornets have been killing the bees. They’ll go and set in front of the gum and catch [the bees] as they fly out and cut their heads off and eat ’em.
“We had some apple peelings in a bucket out here in the yard last summer, and there was Japanese hornets and honeybees flying around it. The Japanese hornets would catch [the bees] and eat ’em. They’d just fly off with ’em.”
Glen Taylor declared, “These big Japanese hornets will tote your bees off. They brought them things over here to the U.S., as they said, to get rid of the wasps, hornets, and yellow jackets, but they tote our bees off and destroy a lot of bees. They will tear up a yellow jacket’s nest and a wasp’s nest. The stingers are about an inch and a half long on them big old yellow hornets. I used to stand in front of mine and kill the hornets with a board. I got to where I couldn’t hit them, so I got a tennis racket, and I’d knock them down, and then I’d stomp them. I killed a lot of them like that in front of my beehives, catching my bees.
“We lost a lot of bees to them old mites, destroying them, killing them, getting in them. That is what has got rid of so many bees up here. Some of them mites gives the bees a breathing problem, and they suffocate the bees. You have to get Apistan strips for the mites. The strips are put in the combs at certain times to kill the mites.”
George Prater told us more about controlling the mites. “We use Apistan strips to treat them for the mites. The state had been recommending that you treat them twice a year. I had already treated mine this spring. I went to a beekeeping meeting in Clarkesville about a month ago, and they had done some recent research, and they found that they do better to treat them once in August. They used to recommend treating them in April and October. The chemical is impregnated in the plastic, and you hang two of these [strips] in the hive where the eggs are. You leave them in there for six weeks and then take them out. Now, you can’t have these in there when they are making honey. The insecticide will get in the honey.
“In the United States, you just assume that your hives have mites. The Apistan strips will control the mites; they won’t eradicate them. Even if it got rid of all of them, they could get reinfected. There is a lot of concern right now because there are areas of Florida that some of the mites are becoming resistant to this chemical. This is the only chemical in the United States that is approved to treat the bees for the mites. So if we lose that chemical, we are going to be in big trouble.”
According to Glen J. Taylor, foulbrood, a bacterial disease of honeybee larvae, is another disease to watch for in your hives. “We have to put up with the old foulbrood. Foulbrood is a disease that kills the bees. I guess it came from Germany, with all the shipping they did. We treat them with a mixture of Terramycin and powdered sugar. That is what you use to doctor the bees with when you have a foulbrood. Put it in there, and it will kind of treat them; it kind of holds that foulbrood down. All you can do to bees that have foulbrood is pile them up and burn them and hope that they don’t get to the rest of them.”
Howard Prater added, “Foulbrood ruins your beehive. You can walk by it and smell it. It is just decayed in there. I have forgotten now what it was we treated that with. We treated it with Terramycin once a year. It comes in a granulated form and you sprinkle that on the top of the planks and mix it with powdered sugar. It is an antibiotic that has been in use for thirty or forty years. They have not found any kind of resistance to it.”
PLATE 104 George (left) and Howard Prater examining the hive body
George Prater continued, “The mites make the foulbrood problem worse. They have got a thing called parasitic mite syndrome, which when your bees get the mites, it makes them more susceptible to getting foulbrood, and so the two compound each other. The year that all mine died, they had some foulbrood in them too. Foulbrood is extremely infectious. I took all my frames and burned them. I saved the hive bodies by taking a blowtorch and scorching the inside of them. But they say that just about the size of a head of a pin contains about a million spores of the foulbrood. It is extremely contagious. If your neighbor has bees that have foulbrood, then your bees can get it very easily. So you are supposed to treat them with the Terramycin and powdered sugar as a preventative measure twice a year, in the spring and the fall.”
Glen Taylor said bears are a common problem. “Sometimes bears come right out there to the hives. I had six hives down here, and they got into them. A fellow comes down here with dogs, and they run [the bear] off, but they never did tree the bear or catch him. I had them bears coming out here, and I had them coming up on the grave hill. They tore up a bunch of hives up there.”
George Prater recalled, “I had a problem with bears last year. I had moved my bees when I had my trouble with the mites and the foul-brood. I moved them down to the other end of my property down there. Then I had a bear start getting into them. It was a very polite bear. It got into them four times and only on the very last time did he actually ruin the hive. Actually, he didn’t even tear up the equipment; he ate all the bees and wax and everything and didn’t even break a single frame. I had moved all my hives back over here except one. We had a bear up here a few weeks ago, but he has not got into my hives. I’ve got an electric fence around it.
“Right now the mites and the foulbrood are the main problems. There are people that will tell you that the wax moth and worms are a problem. But they are only a problem if you have a weak hive. If you have got a hive that the bees are dying off, then there is a moth that will fly in, in the middle of the night, three or four in the morning, and lay eggs; and if the hives are weak, these little worms will hatch out, and there will be too many for the bees to take care of them. They go in there and start burrowing little tunnels around, and they will even eat into the wood. They will just ruin the whole hive and make a complete mess out of it before you know it.
PLATE 105 A view of the damage the wax moth inflicts on a hive
“There is another condition called chalk-brood. I have seen that some. That is another condition that can come up because of the parasitic mites. The eggs will just kind of wither and die. They will look like a little mummy in there. They will be all white. If the hive is very healthy the bees will go ahead and pull those out of there and take them and throw them out of the hive. There is no treatment for it. It is generally not a problem. If the hive is healthy they will take care of it.”
TYPES OF HONEY
Jesse Ray Owens informed us, “I’ve heard of sourwood honey all my life, but I never believed they made a honey with sourwood. I’ve got sourwood [trees] growing right here in the yard, and I’ve watched them for years. I’ve never seen bees work in one yet. I don’t say that they don’t make honey [out of sourwood blossoms]. They could make it in the evening.
“[The color of the honey] depends on what your honey flow is. Most of the time I get light red or real light-colored honey. I have got about a pound of pink honey, but there’s usually just a little of it.”
J. C. Stubblefield said, “The dark honey is just any kind of flower, just anything they get. Some folks says corn tassels is in the light honey. Some of them calls it sourwood honey. Ain’t a thing but corn tassel honey. I ain’t never seen no bees on sourwood.”
Glen Taylor told us, “I generally put a new super on when the sourwood starts blooming. I put new ones on the hive; then the honey is mostly sourwood. The first honey flow that comes on, I generally always take it off and put my supers on to catch the sourwood. Of course, bees get other nectar besides sourwood and put it in the hive. There’s a lot of that sourwood in it. There is bees that is going to go out here on other flowers and bring something in besides sourwood. There ain’t no such thing as pure sourwood. After they get the super filled up, you can check your bees to see how they got the hive body filled up. Then you can put another super on; the third super you put on, you can take off and sling the hone
y out, and then you can put that super back on, and they’ll fill it up again.”
George Prater acknowledged, “You get all different kinds of honey; it just depends on what is blooming. A lot of times they will work on clover; they will work on corn; they will work on sourwood. One time, Daddy took some honey off of the hive that was just as black as it could be. Black as night. We thought they might have gotten it off mountain laurel. We tried eating it—it was bitter. Daddy tried to feed it back to the bees, and they wouldn’t eat it!
“Bees fly as far as they need to get nectar and pollen. They say they will fly up to two or three miles. They are going to go to the closest nectar source, whatever is the closest thing. When things are blooming, they will generally work on whatever is the predominate nectar source at that time and just not mess with anything else. When the sourwood is blooming, that is why you get just sourwood honey at that time.
“A lot of the beekeepers in the mountains will just label anything they’ve got as sourwood. It sells better. What is funny is when you drive down the road the first of June and you see these roadside stands that will have these signs out, ‘new crop of sourwood honey,’ when the sourwood hasn’t even started blooming yet that year. But you tell the honey by the color. Sourwood is the lightest color. A pure, or almost pure, sourwood is going to be almost as clear as water.
“I believe you are supposed to label it ‘sourwood’ or ‘wildflower.’ And it is supposed to be over a certain percentage of whatever you name as the dominant pollen source or nectar source; it should be over a third that.
“I sent some in [to the state to be analyzed]; Robert Mitcham sent some in for me about ten years ago. I sent a sample of my sourwood, and I had a sample of my wildflower. And my wildflower had enough sourwood in it that I could legally, by state law, label it sourwood.”
THE FINISHED PRODUCT
“I usually get about three dollars a jar for my honey—that is a big pint. I usually get about five dollars for a quart. It depends on the honey,” said Glen J. Taylor. “That sourwood honey is higher than wildflower honey. There are a lot of people who like the wildflower. There are a lot of them who think the clear honey is the best. There are a lot of them that like the dark honey because they get better medicine out of the dark honey than they do out of the light honey. A lot of them take dark honey and take apple cider, lemon juice, and vinegar to make them some arthritis medicine.”
Jesse Ray Owens recalled, “We used to sell honey, but I just about give it away now. We used to sell it in a eight-to ten-pound lard bucket for a dollar—that was about ten pounds of honey. I’ve quit selling it now that the cost of it is so high. I’ve just about quit the beekeeping business, but I always enjoyed it.”
J. C. Stubblefield added, “We would get anywhere from fifty pounds to two hundred pounds in one season. We sold the biggest part of it. We sold it just to individuals around that wanted honey. They’d come and get it, or if they didn’t come, I’d take it to them. We sold to one lady over on Lake Rabun. We would carry a whole fifty-pound lard can full of honey to her for ten cents a pound. Now, that was way back about fifty years ago. There ain’t no bees around much now.”
George Prater told us about current prices for honey. “Mainly, right now, I’ve just been selling my honey up at my office. I used to wholesale some out to stores. But the last few years [1994–1999], I haven’t had enough to where I needed to worry about that. You see, some years you don’t even get any honey. The weather is a big thing. This year has been the best honey crop we have had in over ten years. I usually get a fair amount of dark honey in June. Last year it rained just about the whole month of June, and I didn’t get any. But I got a pretty decent sourwood flow. This year has been an exceptional sourwood flow. Honey brings about forty-five dollars a case now.
“Honey will granulate over time. Honey is a liquid form of sugar, and eventually almost all honey will turn to solid sugar. It is called granulation. Generally, you will see it in the bottom of jars, crystals at the bottom.
“Sourwood honey is supposed to be the slowest honey to granulate of any of them that is made. We have sourwood honey that we have had for several years that has never granulated. A lot of the other honeys—clover, orange blossom, and others—will granulate in a month or two. A lot of beekeepers say on their label, at the bottom: to reliquefy place in a pan of hot water and heat slowly.
“A lot of the big beekeepers, when they extract the honey, they will put it in a big pot and heat it. They will warm it up. It makes it easier to go through all of their equipment. They pump it into big fifty-five-gallon drums. Heating it is supposed to help keep it from granulating as quick. But I think it takes away from the honey to do that.”
BEE STORIES
Howard Prater shared the following account with us. “Way back some time ago, I wouldn’t call anybody’s name, but there was a man in this county that, the way he kept bees, in the spring he’d feed them sugar water, and it makes the prettiest white comb you have ever seen. He would feed them a lot of sugar water and take that comb out and wouldn’t extract it or nothing. He would cut it up in combs and put it in his jars. Then he would go down to Cornelia and buy five gallons of strained honey from South Georgia, pour that in it, and then label it ‘Sourwood Mountain Honey’! Somebody reported him to the state, or they came up and inspected him, and they couldn’t find any reason to prosecute the boy because he kept his bees on Sourwood Mountain! They ruled that it was perfectly legal.”
Lessie Conner told us, “Minyard [her husband] used to keep bees, and we had the honey, but he got stung so much, he can’t fool with them anymore. [I have helped him collect the honey,] but I turned over a dishpan full of honey one time, and he didn’t ask me to help him anymore. I don’t know how many stands of bees he did have. He went out there to rob some of ’em, and he said, ‘Lessie, go out there and hold that pan for me.’
“I said, I ain’t gonna do it. They’ll sting me.’
“He said, ‘I’ll guarantee you, they won’t sting you.’
“He just kept on begging me and kept on begging me. I said, ‘All right, I’ll go,’ and I said, ‘The first sting I get, I’ll throw that pan down and I’ll leave there.’
“And he said, Okay. You can throw her down the first sting you get.’
“So I went on out there, and he had that pan just level with the prettiest white honey you’ve ever seen. And one dabbed me right there, and about that time another one took me there, and whup, it went and down the hill I went!
“He didn’t quarrel. I don’t think he liked it, but he didn’t quarrel for he knowed I’d do it. Minyard had on a net and all.”
Minyard continued the story. “The bees was awful calm. It was on the hillside and hard to set a dishpan down with just nobody to help you a’tall, and me a-cuttin’ it out of the top of the gum and putting in the pan, you see. I told her not to fight at ’em—if one got around her not to fight at ’em—and they wouldn’t bother her.”
Lessie concluded the story by saying, “Well, I didn’t fight at ’em. I couldn’t fight at ’em with my hands full of the dishpan!”
Howard Prater told us about the flight of the bee. “One time I had robbed some bees and taken some honey off, and my boys was just sitting there; we were sitting at the table for supper. They got to asking me questions about bees, and I just give them a little history about it, the makeup of a hive. You got the female bee, she is the working bee, and they can sting. The drones are the male bees, and they don’t sting. Then they have got the queen. The queen has to mate with one of the drones before she can lay eggs. And the drones, in the fall of the year, the queen bees take the drones out of their hive and cut their wings off and throw them overboard because they don’t feed those drones through the wintertime, and they haven’t helped make the honey. So they get rid of them. But the flight of the bee, that new queen comes out, and she is going to mate with the drone. She goes up, she flies up—as far as she can go up—and the drone that is strong eno
ugh to stay with her mates, and he dies. I was telling the boys the story and Lois, my wife, had never heard this story. She said, Ah, shut up telling those boys all that stuff.’ The next day the magazine section of the Atlanta paper had the same thing in it. So I had proof that I wasn’t lying to them!”
George Prater said, “I had a hive one time that had gone queenless, and I had taken a frame of brood from one of my other hives and stuck in there for them to raise another queen. I went in and looked a few weeks later, and I found the queen. So I knew that the queen was there, but there were no fresh eggs. So I went back about a week later and looked in again—still no fresh eggs. I got to thinking, well maybe the queen hasn’t mated. So I went over to one of the other hives and grabbed a drone and took it over there and threw it in the front entrance, and he went running right in there. I looked in the next week and there was plenty of eggs in there! I doubt that that made any difference! Drones can go from hive to hive. The bees will let them do that. But in the fall they will run them off and not let them in.
“From what I’ve been told, there are no wild honeybees anymore. I lost some bees this year when they swarmed. But they tell me that because of the mites, that those bees that swarm won’t live over one year in the wild.”
TECHNOLOGY AND TOOLS
“He wanted t’ be self-sustaining and do his own things as much as he could …”
It is almost impossible to comprehend the hardships our parents and grandparents faced in the early part of the 1900s. The tools and technology available for use were limited by what could be made and what had been invented. In order to survive, people had to be skilled woodworkers, toolmakers, farmers, hunters, and doctors. When some task needed to be accomplished, they had to rely on their own ingenuity and make do with what they had. When a tool broke, they couldn’t run to the store to buy a new one. Creating a tool was a time-consuming task because they were made by hand, either in a blacksmith shop or at home. They were simple in construction, and the majority were operated by animal or human power.
Foxfire 11: Wild Plant Uses, Gardening, Wit, Wisdom, Recipes, Beekeeping, Toolmaking, Fishing, and More Affairs of Plain Living Page 21