Ever so often a fellow stumbles into calamities worse than he could ever imagine. Consider mythological Actaeon. He and his dogs were hunting when he spied Artemis bathing in a stream. Red-blooded god Actaeon froze, staring at that stark-naked, gorgeous babe.
Suddenly, Artemis spotted him, and residing higher on Mount Olympus than he, batted her eyes, clapped her hands, turned him into a deer, and his hounds made hash of him.
Honeybees got me in a fix about as bad as Acteon’s. When I farmed in the Mississippi Delta, I sold honey to finance my fishing addiction. A friend asked me to teach his son Ken the apiculture trade, but I knew the boy would never keep bees: He was too normal. Whenever I removed a hive’s lid and the bees’ hum shifted upward an octave, his hair stood on end.
“This is Louise Crenshaw,” a voice growled over the telephone one day. “Come git this swarm outta my peach tree.”
“Yessum,” I said. Nobody disobeyed Miss Louise. Her baleful visage glowed lobster red, and her torso rivaled the Incredible Hulk’s.
When Ken and I arrived, kids thronged the yard, eager to watch a crazy man fool with that huge ball of bees. Recognizing an opportunity to tell them about one of Mother Nature’s marvels — an insect society that gets along far better than human society, I held forth pedagogically.
“Bees swarm when new queens threaten old queens,” I orated. “Two female bees are no more willing to share first place than two female people are, and each makes a high-pitched piping sound until one out-pipes the other. The loser leaves with a bunch of workers who have gorged themselves on honey to start the new hive, and being so full, they can’t sting. So, never fear swarms.”
They were impressed, although nobody edged closer to the swarm.
“On the off-chance you upset the bees, never make loud noises or sudden movements,” I droned on, as a battalion of bees coated my arms. “And if you get stung, never swat — brush, so you won’t squish venom into the sting.
“Now, when I lower the swarm into this box I brought, Ken, my assistant, will clip the branch. I’ll close the box, and soon the bees will start making honey in their new home.”
Pale as lard, Ken clamped the pruning shears above my hand on the branch supporting the bee swarm. When he exerted pressure, his right and left hands instantly swapped places, swooshing the branch upward. It was like a total eclipse of the sun as a roaring, black cloud of bees went from docile to deadly.
“D-d-don’t move suddenly or shout!” I screamed as I bolted past Ken, swatting instead of brushing. The kids exploded like minnows beset upon by garfishes, and bless his normal self, I never saw Ken again.
“Thirty-one … thirty-two … thirty-three,” Mama counted, daubing alcohol on welts covering my polka-dotted body. Stifling laughter, she said, “Son, sometimes it bees that way.”
Jimmy Reed is an Oxford, Mississippi resident, Ole Miss and Delta State University alumnus, Vietnam Era Army Veteran, former Mississippi Delta cotton farmer and ginner, author, and retired college teacher.
This story is a selection from Jimmy Reed’s latest book, entitled The Jaybird Tales.
Copies, including personalized autographs, can be reserved by notifying the author via email (.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)).
