Last week I mentioned canning with honey. We were beekeepers for years. One night after we returned from a family wedding my husband found a swarm of bees out in the pasture. He came home and told us about it. He and his father figured that we needed to capture it.

Grandma and I worked on “bee proof” outfits for the men. You did have to watch out for bee stings when you worked with bees. They fashioned a type of smoker to take with them to calm the bees down. Grandpa put together a box for the swarm once they captured it. Lace curtains turned out to be the perfect head covering to keep bees out. Rubber straps that my husband had from his National Guard uniform kept the pant legs tight to the legs.

They were off.

We watched from across the stream bed. The men worked quickly and carefully to get the swarm. The bee box was sufficient, but it would not work to get the bees situated and making honey.

The next day my husband and I went to the tractor supply store. He knew they had bee supplies. When he talked with one of the men who worked there, he knew nothing about bees. My husband began gathering supplies and built a bee hive right in the store. He then paid for all of the components and we left.

Switching the bees to the new box was not so easy. They had moved into the box from the night before and started their work. Since there were no pieces of wax, they began to build some — every which way mind you.

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That was our first hive. After that, the men were committed. My father-in-law and my husband watched the paper for ads for bee hives. It was not long until they found a bunch of them. They took our son with them as they went to look at the hives. My son fell in love with some of the stuffed animals that the seller had. They came home not only with hives, but with a Hooded Merganser Duck and an owl. My son still has them in his house.

The next summer we extracted our first honey. We cut up the pieces of wax and let the honey melt out of them. It was a long and sticky project. When the honey was out of the wax, I deposited it outside the back door. The bees immediately began hauling it back to the hive so I had to be careful when I opened the door.

As I worked in the kitchen of my trailer, I spotted my daughter climbing up by the hive that we were working on. The bees were all around her. I went out and grabbed her, then brought her inside so as not to get stung.

We got a lot of honey off of that one hive. I had jars filling up my counter top. If you have ever lived in a trailer you know you do not have much space. In the process, one of them got knocked off the counter and broke. What a mess! It was so sticky. The floor had little lines in it and the honey got into them. I worked for days to get rid of the sticky mess. Not to mention that I lost some of my hard work.

When the men came in for supper that night, they noticed the sticky floor. I explained how it got that way. They commiserated with me about the lost honey.

By the next year we had an extractor. We borrowed one from a friend who also kept bees. That worked so much better. It was a treat to extract honey that way.

A few years later we saw an extractor advertised in “The Guide.” My mother-in-law and I went to buy it. Now, we had our own machine.

My son read everything he could find about bees and how to take care of them. He began working with the bees when he was quite young. He was good at it too. I found him a knife to open the little parts of the honey comb. He fed his bees to get them started. I remember keeping some honey just for that purpose.

I loved having my own honey. I baked with it. If you used it in cookies, they got soft and chewy. If you used it on oatmeal it was really good. It was also wonderful on homemade bread. It was during the year when sugar was scarce that I thought of using it in my canning. I adjusted the sweetness by putting only half as much honey as I would have put sugar. It gave the canned items a different taste, but it was oh so good.

Honey was also good for my allergies. The pollen that the bees used was in there and that helped with my immunity to pollen. Honey does not spoil. It may solidify, but that does not spoil it. You just add some heat and it becomes liquid again.

For many years my son sold his own honey at his store. A new law that was passed prohibited that. Now he purchases what he sells. The government has to have their hand in everywhere, even when it is detrimental to the producer.

Beekeepers always leave a hive of honey for the swarm. That is what gets them through the winter. When my son’s in-law’s asked what he wanted for Christmas one year he told them he wanted a swarm of bees to replace some that died out. That surprised them, but they told him to order what he wanted. He also wanted a queen excluder to keep the bees in the bottom part of the hive.

I am not sure if my son has bees at this point or not, but we really enjoyed the years of beekeeping. We all learned a lot about the bee and how the colony worked. It is truly fascinating.

Ann Swanson writes from her home in Russell, Pa. Contact at hickoryheights1@verizon.net.