MY INTRODUCTION TO A HIVE 
15 
wrists and arms. Then, armed with a little bellows 
“smoker,” which emitted dense volumes of smoke, 
he would go down to the hives and snatch off the 
upper store chambers of honey. Sometimes before 
he beat a hasty retreat with his load, an outraged bee 
would have somehow burrowed under the protective 
layers of mosquito netting and the next day the 
rest of the family would derive entertainment from 
the sight of a puffy eye or distorted lip. Some 
years the hives were full of honey; some years not. 
I had never been invited or tempted to join him 
on these marauding expeditions, but perhaps I was 
attracted to my father’s beekeeping proposition by 
the very mystery, to me, of the bee’s life and habits. 
I read Langstroth’s Life of the Honey Bee, that 
classic in beekeeping literature, and then took a 
Short Course in Beekeeping at the Massachusetts 
Agricultural College. The two weeks’ course was 
interesting and practical. At the beginning we ex¬ 
amined bee’s legs, wings, and stings under the micro¬ 
scope in the laboratory and learned the theory of 
the profession from lectures in the classroom. To 
increase our confidence in actual contact with honey 
bees, we were encouraged to hold drones—the sting¬ 
less males—in the palms of our hands! Soon we 
were opening the hives, taking out combs and learn- 
