JOY RIDING WITH BEES 
89 
the window and watched the show. At last I 
crawled out and dashed to the house, where I donned 
a veil, gloves, and bloomers and armed myself with 
a smoker. Taking the horse’s place between the 
shafts, I ignominously pulled the buggy back to the 
bee yard and left it there till the next morning. Then 
I retreated to the house and crawled into bed. 
My father came in with an offer to bathe my neck 
with alcohol, which I gratefully accepted. While 
doing this, he scraped thirty-three stings from a space 
two inches square on the back of my neck. I had 
other stings, too, but that was the region where the 
forces of the enemy had concentrated. 
But lest the casual reader get an erroneous im¬ 
pression from this or any subsequent incident de¬ 
scribed, and think that such experiences are of com¬ 
mon occurrence, I must explain that this was a most 
unusual adventure and not typical of the usual pleas¬ 
ant, unexciting life of a beekeeper. In conversation 
there is a tendency to emphasize the exceptional. 
So in writing, I have not dwelt on the thousands of 
uneventful interviews with my bees which form in 
my memory a background full of serenity. 
However, at the time of my “joy ride,” I forgot 
the background and was only conscious of the viru¬ 
lent effect of many bee-stings. 
