Jim McConnell's Autobiography 1877 - 1957Canadian pioneer farmer in Ontario, Saskatchewan and British Columbia |
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28. our oxen and wagons, we had gone together out on the treeless open prairie to wrest from the rugged hand of nature a small part for ourselves and to cultivate it so as to receive a maintenance for ourselves and the families to follow. All this has become a reality now, and it is with sadness that we see the passing of a friend who has shared our earlier adventures and helped us on the way. And now I would like to tell a little about a sideline I began when we first moved to Terrace. The children were very fond of honey, and I decided to get a hive of bees and try and produce some honey for ourselves. I bought an eight-frame hive and bees from Harry Frank, and also a shallow super above. At that time, I knew as much about bees as the bees knew about me. I wanted to learn, but the bees wanted nothing to do with me. About a month later, they showed me what they could do about it. They had filled the eight-frame hive and the shallow super, so decided to swarm. They all bunched on a limb of a pine tree, perhaps ten feet from the ground. I got another hive and climbed the tree to shake them down to the hive. I was wearing an old fashioned silk veil, and the wind blew the veil against my neck. The bees took their chance and gathered on my neck-- stinging me so badly that I was ill for a week after that. However, the result of that stinging was that it innoculated me from the bee poison and afterwards a bee sting never caused a swelling on me. During the summer of 1922, a fire got out of hand and burned hundreds of acres of timber land around Terrace and near our place. In 1923 and for some years after, there was an abundance of fireweed everywhere. From this fireweed and other plants that grew, the bees were able to gather plenty of honey. We always had what we needed at home and some to sell. We enlarged our hives and gave the bees plenty of room to expand and increase before the honey flow began. We also learned how to protect and shelter the hives in the winter. When we moved south in 1938, all the bee equipment went along, and I always had bees enough to supply us with honey and still some to sell, even though the Coast climate is damp and not favourable to bees. When we moved to Kelowna in 1946, we got some good honey from alfalfa and sweet clover. Unfortunately this was where I had my first experience with a foul brood and also lost some of the working bees by poison from the fruit spray. In 1950, Kenny Hewitt gave me permission to move my bees to his farm which was situated one mile south of Armstrong, BC. Up there, there was plenty of volunteer sweet clover which grew along the roadsides also big fields of alfalfa clover. Also there was a heavy growth of dandelions in May, and this always acts as a starter for the bees in Spring. Under these favourable conditions, we were soon rid of brood disease and got plenty of honey of an excellent quality, being flavoured chiefly by the Alfalfa and sweet dover. Kenny Hewitt had enlisted during the war with Germany and Japan and had served in the armed forces overseas. He was stationed in Australia for nearly two years. Returning home after the war, he had bought this 40-acre farm south of Armstrong through the V.L.A. This was early in 1946. The land was heavy clay and hard to work, but excellent for growing fall wheat. The outbuildings were old and falling down, and the old house was badly delapidated. Kenny and his wife, Florence, had taken down the old buildings and the house. They built a new three bedroom house and also a new two story hen house for 500 hen s. They also built a woodshed - and garage for the car and tractor and a large building for hogs. Besides all this, they built an octagon-shaped brooder house that could brood 500 chicks. When I moved the bees up there in 1950, they were well established in their new house and had a selected flock of hens laying in the new hen house and a good number of brood sows and feeder pigs; also a fine bunch of chicks were being raised
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