Page 93 - barefoot-in-the-sand-remembering-the-waning-days-of-the-hopewell-community-(1998)-bruce-c-gragg

Barefoot In The Sand: Remembering the Waning Days of the Hopewell Community (1998) Bruce C. Gragg 89/123

MAKING DO WITH WHAT'S AVAILABLE

After I began to keep my own bees. Several times Jesse Ogburn and I
went down to the old Christie place, where a Mr. Bradley had kept
bees for a long time, to see what we could find. He moved them when
the farming slowed in the area and after he had several hives
destroyed by bears. I would rummage through the area and find various
parts of bee hives to salvage for my own use after a bit of repair or
rebuilding by sometime taking parts of several frames and making one.
When Jesse and I would walk down there and we would spend a while
with a stick moving debris around to maybe find something useful. We
found a lot of parts that could be salvaged and I used them for
several years. I was especially proud of the salvage and rebuilding
job I did. I felt I had really accomplished something useful with
very little expense and experience in this sort of thing. Actually
this began my keeping bees for one of my 4-H projects that lasted for
about 8 years. There were a number of "bee-trees" around our area,
they can survive where domesticated bees cannot as they can fend for
themselves a lot more efficiently. So many of the events I have been
remembering, did not seem so amusing at the time, but as the years
have passed they have taken on a new meaning. Events like bee or wasp
stings, or working in the hot sun with no letup, but I managed to
survive them all. Some of the events may even seem to drift or ramble
a bit, sorta like a long faded memory, however many are as if they
had just happened.

www.LakeCityHistory.com LCH-UUID: B98DC69E-ADC1-4EE7-8817-CA941114D897