When the first settlers came to Michigan they had to live pretty much off the land. Such commodities as sugar was not readily available and what could be purchased in a store was most often of the unrefined brown variety. The Indians had taught them how to boil maple sap down into sugar but this was a long a tedious undertaking. Another source of sweeteners to satisfy their sweet tooth was honey. Not to many hives existed on farms so when a bee tree was located it was considered a real find . The law of finders keepers was usually followed no matter who owned the land . The finder had first nibs on the tree. Later at about the turn of the century or shortly there after things started to change so that it was said to be trespassing to cut a tree on a neighbors property.
John Viebrock was the local bee man having several hives that he tended . He was always on the lookout for a bee tree. If a swarm of bees started traveling he would watch them and follow to lead him to their tree. Sometimes a tree would be found that had an old established hive in it and it would be full of honey. At about the time that I was in the first grade. Mr. Viebrock came over saying that he had located such a tree. He wanted my dad to go with him to cut it. The tree was located in a fence row between to different properties. My dad hesitated about going at first but finally consented , and of course yours truly tagged along to see the fun as a six year old would do. I was sworn to secrecy as there were children from both property owners attending the same school that I did.
They collected all the paraphernalia necessary to do the job , An ax, saw, tubs to collect the honey and of course the smoke billows to stupefy the bees. The trees was a large white oak nearly three feet in diameter. The first job was to use the smoke billows to pump smoke into the entrance hole that the bees used to stupefy the bees. Then a cut was made at the point that was figured to be the bottom of the hollow trunk. Another was made about two feet above the first. The cuts were only deep enough to reach the hallow center, then an ax split out the section between the two cuts. Through this window in the side of the tree they had easy access to the honey inside. This particular tree produced a large quantify of honey, more than a washtub full. The window block of wood was then replaced in its original positions that it was hard to tell from a distance that the tree had ever been disturbed.
In taste sampling the honey my dad had picked up a small cone and unnoticed a bee was on the underside which got a little revenge on my dads lip. It swelled up to an unbelievable size. He stayed out of sight of the neighbors until the swelling had gone down.
I had one other experience in collecting wild honey . It happened shortly after we moved into the olds house on this place. The bees had found a hole in the siding of the house and had set housekeeping there . It was at the height of the ceiling of the first floor and was between the ceiling joists. We had watched them for most of the summers they were coming and going. We wondered just how big a swarm of bees that had moved in the house with us, and how much honey they stored there. Philip was just a baby at the time and Etta often put him in his buggy and set him outdoors while she worked in the garden. One time we came out to find that the bees had started to congregate in preparation for swarming. They had chose his buggy to start their devotions before taking off. We rescued him before a disaster occurred. It was after this that we decided that the bees had to go. A neighbor John Seifert volunteered to do the job for us. We did not have proper equipment so we made do with what we had. A pair of heavy gloves and an old window curtain . The gloves left a gap around each wrist . The curtain fitted over a wide brimmed hat that covered the face but left the neck exposed. He crawled up the ladder and removed the siding on the house and then took off the sheeting boards between the ceiling and the upper floor. The exposed joists being ten inches high and placed sixteen inches apart had made an ideal place for the bees to store their honey. Mr. Seifert slowly and methodically removed a couple of dishpans of honey before he came down the ladder . Reaching the ground he asked me to remove the stingers that the bees had left in both wrist and his neck. There were more than a dozen stingers in each wrist and I counted over thirty five on the back of his neck. The man had never flinched once with all of those stings. I don't know how he did it. I worried about him as he lived alone, if he started to react to the stings he would be in a lot of trouble. I made an eleven o'clock visit to him to make sure that he was all right.
The den trees suitable for bees to use have slowly disappeared and a disease has broken out in both the wild hives as well as those of bee keepers. Many years have past since I have seen or heard a swarm of bees traveling to look for a new abode. Maybe this is another thing of the past that may never be experienced by future generations.
I have never had to much experience in the making of maple syrup or sugar. A couple of things does come to mind. When attending the Spoonville School the yard was full of sugar maple trees that were in there prime at that time. In the spring when the sap was running we would reach up and break off a twig and watch the sap run. If the weather was cold enough an icicle would form. at the next recess we would have a sweet frozen treat waiting for us. I tapped a couple of tree when I was a teenager and my mother boiled the sap down so that we had some syrup for pancakes, but it seemed like a lot of work to get a little syrup. When our children were little we tapped a tree on the place here just to show them how it was done and to give them a little idea of what our forefathers had to do to get there sugar. Those who still tap trees and boil down the sap earn everything they get out of it.