Bee trees and
honey Wild honey bees make their home in hollow trees in the Ozarks
Mountains of Arkansas. You can locate a honey tree by finding where the bees
get water. I never knew exactly what they were doing with the water some say
they drank it other say the use to moisten the nectar that they carry, some
people say they do both. However that may be, they leave the water and go in a
straight line to the bee tree where they live. Thus the phrase make a bee line
for home means go straight home. You pick out the direction they are traveling
and pick out a tree or other object in direct line with their travel than walk
to that sight and watch until you can find them passing overhead and line them
to the nest tree or object then go there and do it all over again until you
find the exact tree where they live. You mark the tree and wait until the
weather turns cold then come to the tree with saw and ax, cut the tree down and
rob the honey. You build a fire under the tree and put stuff that will make a
lot of smoke. This helps control the bees and keeps them from sting you in
great number.
If you want to save the bees for your own you get protective
gear and cut the tree down and find the queen bee an clip her wings so she
cannot fly away. The other bees will form a large ball of bees around the queen
bee and you simply put the whole ball of bees in a toe sack. Cary them home and
transfer the queen bee into the bee hive that you have made with some of the
comb of honey. The bees will stay with the queen bee and start making honey in
your hive.
My uncle Loy Taylor was the kind of person that bees would
almost never sting. He would come home from robbing a bee tree and reach into
the toe sack with his bare hands a come out with a large ball of bees on his
hand and take the free hand and rake the bees into the hive. Why bees do not
sting some people I do not know. There is not honey quite like that from a wild
bee hive in a tree.
