FIFTY YEARS AMONG THE BEES 23 



I traveled two years for the music house of Koot & Cady, 

 making a specialty of introducing the teaching of singing in 

 public schools. In 1872 I went to Cincinnati, where. I spent 

 six months helping to get up the first of May musical festi- 

 vals under the direction of Theodore Thomas. At the close of 

 the festival I began work for the Mason & Hamlin Organ Co. 

 at their Chicago house. 



FIKST BEES. 



To go back. July 5, 1861 — I was in Chicago at the time 

 ^a swarm of bees passing over Marengo took in their line of 

 march the house where my wife was. She was a woman of 

 remarkable energy and executive ability, generally accomplish- 

 ing whatever she undertook, and she undertook to stop that 

 swarm. Whether the water and dirt she threw among them 

 had any effect on the bees I do not know, but I know she got 

 the bees, hiving them in a full-sized sugar-barrel. 



In her eagerness to have the bees properly housed — or 

 barreled — she could not wait the slow motion of the bees, but 

 taking them up by double handfuls she threw them where she 

 wanted them to go. In so doing she received five or six stings 

 on her hands, which swelled up and were so painful as to make 

 it a sick-abed affair. This was a matter much to be regretted, 

 for ever after a sting was much the same as a case of erysip- 

 elas, preventing her from having anything whatever to do with 

 handling bees except in a case of extremity. 



Previous to that time I had not been interested to any great 

 extent in bees. When a small boy I had captured a bumble- 

 bees' nest and put it in a little box, but I do not recall that 

 there was a remarkable drop in the price of honey oi\ account 

 of there being thrown upon the market a large amount of honey 

 produced by those bumblebees. 



BEE PALACE. 



When I was a little older I remember helping my step- 

 father carry home, one night, a colony of bees in a box hive 

 (movable-comb hives were not yet invented), the colony being 

 intended to stock a "bee palace." This bee palace was a rather 

 imposing structure. I think it cost ten dollars. It was large 



