OCTOBER 1, 1914 



709 



fore went down to the liives and removed 

 the inch blocks, hoping that now they 

 would cool down. But they did not, and 

 when I went to them for a thorough exami- 

 nation on the 17th of September I got all 

 that was coming to me, and a little more. 



It happened in this wise : But first let me 

 tell you how I was armored. I wore noth- 

 ing on my head, no hat nor anything of that 

 kind, but I had on an Alexander bee-veil. 

 Tliis I had long before carefully sewed up 

 wherever I thought a bee might find an op- 

 portunity to enter, and I carefully tucked 

 the lower skirt-cloth under my coat. Then 

 I had on heavy summer underwear and a 

 pair of overalls, the legs of which I stuffed 

 into the tops of my shoes. I also wore a 

 pair of long-sleeved bee-gloves, such as one 

 buys of dealers. Thus ar-med, with smoker 

 ablaze and hive-tool in hand, I marched 

 bravely to the front. 



Now, tell me honestly, do you think that 

 the bees had sense enough to let such a for- 

 midably protected foe as me alone? If yo i 

 do, you are ofi the track and have another 

 gaiess coming. I was just the prey these lit- 

 tle amazons were looking and waiting for. 

 Barely had I begun to peel off the oilcloth, 

 after taking off the cover, when they roared 

 out by scores and scores. Smoke was as 

 nothing to them. Even the big healthy vol- 

 umes of puffs that I had funneled into them 

 before touching the hive had not cooled 

 them down a bit. And it was ridiculously 

 useless to give them more, though I tried it. 

 They came out just the same, and wherever 

 they fell down on me, there did they locate. 

 But then, I was a beekeeper, and, moreover, 

 one of four years' standing, and such a 

 one will not be daunted, you know. I 

 thought, if they were absolutely bound to be 

 crazy, why, crazy it was for them. As for 

 me, that made not the shade of a difference 

 to me. The next thing I did was to take off 

 the top super. You see, I just kept on 

 minding my own business. For that matter, 

 however, so were the bees, and the next 

 thing I did was to slap that same super 

 back again without having examined any- 

 thing. There was no chance to examine 

 anything. I was literally covered with bees, 

 every one of them wiggling and wheeling 

 around, with their little sabers deep, deep 

 into the armor of their foe. Oh! I cannot 

 tell you how many there were. They stung 

 through the cloth of my bee-veil into the 

 top of my head and into my neck; their 

 stings went right through my bee-gloves, un- 

 believable as that may seem. About twen- 

 ty or thirty of the little imps got into my 

 bee-veil, though I cannot even to-day see 

 how they could possibly do it. To make 



nuitteis worse, my overalls slipped out of 

 my shoes, and there, just above the ankles, 

 they settled down, a dozen or more to every 

 square inch of surface. A mere matter of 

 heavy cotton socks and thick underwear 

 made not the least bit of difference to the 

 vicious little beasts. I got my medicine all 

 right. 



Having closed the hive, I slowly walked 

 off in a direction away from my house, for I 

 did not want to have the bees go there with 

 me and sting my little children. About a 

 hundred yards from the hives, at a place 

 where there are several trees and a number 

 of bushes, I stopped to do away with my 

 tormentois. I swept them oft' my clothes by 

 handfuls, and tried to kill every on^e. But 

 those that I did not crush got right up 

 again and went at me for the second time. 

 It took me about twenty minutes till I was 

 reasonably clear of the frenzied little 

 things. The dead bees that were on the 

 ground would have measured several quarts, 

 had they been swept up. In places my 

 clothes were literally white from the multi- 

 tude of stings that remained in them. And 

 even as I walked away from this place sev- 

 eral bees kept coming after me, stinging, 

 buzzing, bumping. However, as I went 

 several hundred yards north into a corn- 

 field, and thence in a wide circle to my 

 liouse, I gradually either killed or shook off 

 all of them. 



Now, some may tliink that it was pain 

 that drove me away from the bees. Such, 

 however, was not at all the case. Though I 

 was stung hundreds upon hundreds of times 

 even on my head alone, the pain, owing, I 

 sui^pose, to the fact that I had frequently 

 been stung before, was infinitesimal, and I 

 did not give any attention to it. But I did 

 feel fearful of that which might result 

 from so much poison suddenly injected into 

 my system ; and, p.s the following will show, 

 I made no miscalculation. 



While I was still at the bees, the stings 

 resulted in nothing extraordinai*y or pecul- 

 iar. I felt the stings, it is true, but the 

 pain was hardly noticeable — in fact, infi- 

 nitesimal. But even while retreating from 

 the hives and going to the shrubs mentioned, 

 action of the poison became apparent, I 

 felt a warm, almost hot, glow over the sur- 

 face of my whole body. While brushing off 

 the bees, there among the shrubs, a profuse 

 perspiration began, and it continued until 

 I had completed the roundabout way back 

 to my house. So profuse was the perspira- 

 tion, that, though it was not a warm day, 

 large drops of water streamed down my 

 face and dripped to the ground from chin 

 and nose, and my clothes, even my coat and 



