The Ketchum keystone. [volume] (Ketchum, Idaho) 1885-1899, 1888-06-09
GEORGIA HONEY BEES.
. Barrelful q Day Each and MAX
ing Their Owners Rich.

After dinner at Mr.. Mitchell's we
were sitting on his front piazza, smok-
ing, and / discovered some bees going
/ in and out of knot in one of the large
oak trees in front of his dwelling. This
| tree is known to be over hundred
years old. learned that several years
ago swarm of bees assembled in that
! tree as their new home, and they have
worked and lived there ever since.
After they had been there for three
years the colony became very large
and strong, and no attempt had ever
been made to rob them of their honey.
At last Mr. Mitchell came to the con-
clusion that the tree must be full of
honey, from seeing large numbers of
flies and bees around the root of the
tree; so he set to work to devise some
means to get the honey without cutting
the tree down. After applying all the
tests known to bee men, he satisfied
himself that the tree was full, and
then decided to tap it like fellow is
tapped for dropsy. So he got him a
faucet and an auger and bored hole
in the tree near the root and then
screwed in the faucet and to his sur
prise and great eight a solid stream of
pure and elegant honey as clear as crys-
tai gushed forth, and the supply seemed
almost inexhaustible. 1t continued to
pour out until he had filled six BARRELS;
and he has drawn each year since that
time from three to four barrels of pure
strained honey from that old oak tree,
and up to this there seems to be no
osr of foi Inv. of %ha %ho
bees are still strong and healthy col
Ony.
The same year that Mr.. Mitchell
tapped the old oak tree there was new
thick growth sprung up all around the
old oak of an unusual appearance,
having smooth bark and thick, waxy
leaves. One day he pulled off one Of
the leaves and put it in his mouth and
found it to be very sweet, and upon ex-
amining the place from which he had
plucked the leaf he discovered that the
plant was bleeding or emitting from the
wound clear, thick-looking juice,
which, upon taking an examination,
proved to be honey. He then COM
menced to nurse the new volunteer
growth with the tenderest care and at
tention, looking after them daily; and
as the summer advanced the plants
continued to grow, and in the fall he
selected and transplanted 800 of them
in very rich soil, thirty feet apart, and
they grew very rapidly, making a
beautiful display with their straight,
smooth trunks and their thick and
glossy wax-like leaves. Mr.. Mitchell's
idea was that as large money was made
from the sugar maple, by boiling the
juice, he ought to make more from
tree that would run pure honey, and he
was right. When the trees were four
years old in the fall of the year they
were large enough to insert faucets.
So he had three hundred faucets made
to order and screwed them into the
young trees, and the following spring
the result was remarkable Each tree
yielded an average of ten gallons of
the richest golden honey; the following
year each tree yielded an average of
twenty gallons, and now the average
is about a barrel to each tree during
the year, and the grove continues to
grow and flourish and shows no signs
of failing to supply a bountiful yield in
the years to come.
If some of those enterprising artesian
well men who are always prospecting
and boring holes in our county for oil !
could succeed in sinking well from
which solid stream Of old mellow
peach brandy would flow continuously,
then, indeed, old Spalding County
would be a new Mecca, and pilgrimages
would be made from all over this
broad country to the land which flows
with ''peach and honey"
But be that as it may, the uncertain
y of the fruit crop, the corn crop, the
wheat crop, nor the uncertainty Of the
price of cotton, has any terrors for |
Mr.. Mitchell, for so long as these
golden stream of sweetness continue to I
low from these natural fountains. his
is assured Griffin (Ga.)
NeUS.