and for some cause I began throwing stones at them; but I failed to get a safe distance from them, and the bees filled my head full, stinging me, You bet mother came out and took me to the house and combed the bees from my hair. The next vivid recollection I have of bees was in 1874. Father had eight or ten bee hives, one or two of which I claimed as mine. Some of the colonies had become crammed and were lying out at night very much. I was going to school at the time. The bees were located at the side of what is known in this section of country as a smoke or meat house. It was at one edge of the apple orchard, and there was a young apple tree near the bees, with a very thick foliage of leaves. One morning before I started to school I was looking at the bees, and I said to father, "I bet the first swarm of bees that comes off will settle on that apple-tree," and, sure enough, a swarm came off and settled on that tree, and father made some prophetic remarks about what I had predicted. I was only 13 years old then. My father died that fall, on the 21st day of September, 1874. The real beginning of my bee-keeping was in 1880, when I adopted the American frame 12x11. I afterwards, in 1883, adopted the Langstroth simplicity frame which I still am using, and I bought my first Italian queen from Dr. J. P. Brown, of Augusta, Ga., getting her in August of that year. I paid $2.so for her. I afterward bought three untested queens from him. I bought an imported queen from A. I. Root in 1886, paying $6.00 for her. I bought 19 untested queens from W. S. Cauthen, of Pleasant Hill, S. C., in 1886 and 1887, all of which proved to be good. My best record year was in 1888, when I secured 2,780 lbs. from 40 colonies. The best colony gave me 133 lbs. of extracted honey. In the fall of that year I took a crate of section honey to our County Fair at Chester, S. C., and put it on exhibition. Some other parties had already placed theirs, but when I arrived mine was so much superior to. theirs that they removed theirs by the second day. My yearly average was about 35 lbs., two-thirds extracted and one-third comb honey. That was about what I secured for a ten-year average. It seems to be somewhat less now. To show the propensity of the native bees to swarm more than the Italians, in 1888 or 1889 I had 25 pure Italian and 15 black and hybrid colonies. Two of the Italian colonies swarmed, and thirteen of the fifteen black hybrid colonies swarmed; and I think the other two would have swarmed if I had not taken combs of brood from them. Four thousand pounds of extracted is the most honey I have ever taken in one year. In 1896 I secured that from 95 colonies. I have had two apiaries for the last 16 years, one located on Turkey Creek, Chester Co., at my old home. My home apiary is here at Catawba, York Co., where I have resided for the last 16 years. There was some linden, or basswood, on Fishing Creek, but only a few dozen trees in reach of the bees--just enough to create a little excitement among the bees when it was in bloom; but the bees would lack it up in 20or 30 minutes every morning. The basswood usually bloomed from June 20 to 30. There may be a few trees of it there yet.