He lighted the pot of sulphur and tried to make the smoke go into the bee hole. The sulphur wouldn't go into the bee's hole but the bees did come out. My brother fought the bees off for a time but finally got reckless and took his hatchet and chopped the hole larger, and putting his gloved hand down into the hole, the length of his arm, he dug out the honey and comb and sent pailful after pailful to the ground for me to empty into the wash boiler. We filled the wash boiler. My brother John got so many stings that finally he ceased to bother about them.
Bee stings are like bruises in a football game.
It was my job to melt and strain the honey. We had honey galore at our house for some months after that and the hunk of wax was used around the house for years. After this experience I was red-hot to locate some wild honey bee's nests in the way I had read of in books. I got a wire gauze fly-trap, the kind in which the flies crawl in at the bottom but do not know enough to leave as they entered. I took some honey for bait and went to the fields near the woods and caught a lot of honey bees.