Rev. A.J. Ogden

It seems to me a shame that the average honey bee has to fly 5,000 miles to make one pound of honey, according to the experts. But what is even sadder is that after all that labor, some man comes along and steals all his honey. When growing up in extreme poverty, two friends of mine had a swell idea for me to make a few extra nickels. Monkey Brown and Moon Davis were my friends with the plan. Monkey said that we three boys could go rob that bee tree, the one down by the big creek. Moon Davis said he knew all about this business and would teach me! He lied to me because he wanted me to do the actual work and take the stings. He really had no experience.

Moon got an old bed sheet for each of us that covered our whole body, made a hood out of it to cover our head and cut some holes for our eyes, etc. He said you go first to the hollow hole in the tree so you can learn the business. Just run your arm up in that hole; don’t be afraid and the bees will not sting you. What a joke that was! The bees began to sting me; they hit Moon and Monkey causing them to run away. They left me, screaming to the top of their voices. I dropped my honey bucket, stumbled and fell in a sink hole trying to flee. By the time I got going I was stinging from head to foot. They got under my clothes and stung me all over.

My mother saw all three of us screaming and came running with a lamp full of coal oil (the only medicine we had). She poured it on me all over. But when she first saw all three of us in white sheets, running and screaming, she was afraid and almost ran home. You see, she thought we were ghosts in white array. Monkey Brown and Moon Davis went home where they lay very sick several days. I lay ill and almost dead for days and everything I ate came up. Only the Lord knows how high my fever rose! My eyes were so swollen I could not see, and many sores came to replace the bee stings. How foolish I had been. By God’s grace I survived never to bother a bee again!