Excerpt from Southern Bee Culture My memory begins with standing in front of a colony of bees, with a brush-broom in hand; and until I was large enough to take interest in the apiary work, whenever I saw a colony of bees they commanded my attention, and my gratification was not appeased until I had seen the owner and questioned him (or her) concerning the bees; and many times I have been rebuked for continual questioning. At that time we were traveling in an oxwagon over Texas, where I saw much of the bee and honey industry, and my interest in the honey-bee grew deeper, and it is needless to say that driving a sleigh around over the wood while the bee-hunters were finding bee-trees, and cutting them, was the joy of my boyhood days. Whenever bees were robbed in the settlement I was always on hand, ready to take part. I soon became a bee-hunter myself, and all spare moments were spent at this; and many times I have looked up trees on Saturday evenings (for it was a bout all the leisure time I had) so constantly that I would have a crick in my neck and all the following week. Many times I have cut and robbed rich bee-trees, and no one with me to share the pleasure. Besides looking after bees for others we established an old-style box-hive apiary (for it was the best we could do then, for there was no better hive known to us. I took a leading interest in this apiary, and a few times we had a good apiary established. Then they would die back to only a few colonies, and I did all I could to save them. Finally one spring we had only one hive left, and later in the spring I turned it bottom end up and found it a mass of moth. I went down in the pine thicket and sat down beside a tree and took a long cry over the death of the last colony, and then and there I resolved that, if I ever had another start of bees, I would give them even more and better attention. Then I tried to buy another start of bees, but failed. I found many bee-trees, but failed in saving the bees; so for several years we had no bees, and farm life was not what it once was to me; for when we had the apiary I would spend my leisure moments at noon under the shady mulberry-trees where it was located, doing all I knew how to help the bees, and I would watch the little streams of them as they would pour in and out of the hives, and listen at night to their heavy roar. But now this inspiration was a thing of the past, and farm life had lost its greatest charm to me. Several years elapsed, and I looked after bees only for others. Finally a widow lady gave me a colony for giving her bees such good attention. One cold winter night I carried the hive of bees home. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.