There had been honey for supper, and afterward, before the cozy fire in her room, Grandma was telling Bobby and Alice and Pink about how the bees live in little wooden houses called hives and make the honey from a fluid taken from the heart of the flowers.
“But I knew of some bees once that did not live in a hive but in a hollow tree.” Grandma reached for her work basket and drew out her knitting. “While I put the thumb in Bobby’s mitten I’ll tell you about those bees.”
“When I was a little girl,” she began, “not many people kept bees and we could not buy honey at the store, so honey was considered a great treat. The first beehive I ever saw belonged to Mr. Brierly. The Brierly’s lived on the next farm to us, but between them and us, in a little house on Mr. Brierly’s place, lived a family named Henlen. They were very lazy and hunted and fished and worked just enough to get what money they must have. Mr. Brierly had given them a swarm of bees and helped them make a hive for it, and the Brierlys and the Henlens were the only people in our neighborhood who kept bees.
Early in the summer one of Mr. Brierly’s hives swarmed
“Then early in the summer one of Mr. Brierly’s hives swarmed. That is, a swarm of bees left the old hive and wanted to set up in a hive of its own. Usually when a young swarm left the old hive Mr. Brierly gave them a new hive and they settled down contentedly and went to making honey. But this swarm flew away and lighted in a hollow tree on the edge of our woods.
“Mr. Brierly did not find them for several days. Then he told Father he would just leave them where they were, if Father did not care, and when he took the honey he would divide with us. Father told him he was welcome to leave the bees as long as he wanted to and to keep the honey. But Mr. Brierly said Father must take half of the honey or he would not leave the bees. So Father agreed and Mr. Brierly left the bees.
“Every morning when Charlie and I took the cows to pasture we would skip across the field to take a long look at the bee tree. We would watch the bees as they flew in and out the hole in the side of the tree and wondered how much honey they had made and talked about how good it would taste on hot biscuits.
“So all summer the bees worked away, and one day in the fall Mr. Brierly sent Father word that he would be over that week to take the honey. A few mornings later when I came in sight of the bee tree I stopped in amazement. The bee tree was gone! Instead of standing straight and tall like a soldier on guard, it lay flat on the ground. Chips of wood were scattered all around. The bee tree had been cut down.
“I started for home as fast as I could go to tell Father. He wasn’t at the barn, and I went to the house. Back of the house, under a sugar tree, the girls were washing and Charlie was carrying water for them. As I came up Aggie was scolding because one of the washtubs was missing. When I told them about the bee tree they were as excited as I was. Charlie ran to the wheat field where Father was ploughing to tell him, and we girls went in to find Mother.
“Belle declared that whoever stole the honey must have taken the tub to carry it away in. And since the honey was on our land and we knew it was ready to take away and the tub was ours, it would look to Mr. Brierly as if we had had something to do with it. Aggie laughed at her and said, ‘The very idea of anyone thinking we would steal!’ But Mother looked serious.
“Father came right to the house, got on a horse, and rode over to Mr. Brierly’s. Mr. Brierly came back with him, and they examined the fallen bee tree carefully. It had been chopped down. Mr. Brierly said he thought we would have heard the blows down at the house. Father replied coldly that we had heard nothing and knew nothing about it until I had taken the cows to pasture, and wouldn’t have known then if I had not run across to look at the bees. He told him about our tub being gone, too. Aggie said it wasn’t at all necessary to tell that, but Belle said Father was too honest to keep anything back.
“Father imagined that Mr. Brierly thought we knew something about the disappearance of the honey. Of course Father resented this, so the Brierlys and we ceased to be friendly. Mrs. Brierly and Mother had always helped each other to quilt and make apple butter and had exchanged recipes and loaned patterns back and forth, but all this stopped now.
“School started, and Tom and Annie Brierly did not wait for Charlie and me as they had always done. If they had not gone to school before we came along, they waited until we had passed by before they started.
“Charlie and I worried a great deal about the coldness between the two families and the unhappiness it was causing. We were always making plans to discover who took the honey and so clear things up.
“One day when Charlie was eating his dinner at school he noticed that Flora May Henlen had something on her bread that looked like honey. He told me to watch her, and the next day at noon I took my dinner and sat down near Flora May to eat it. Sure enough, it was honey she had on her bread. But then I remembered that they had bees and she had a right to have honey. Still I watched Flora May for several days, and she always had honey on her bread.
“‘Did your bees make lots of honey this year, Flora May?’ I asked her one day.
“‘Oh, yes,’ she answered, ‘every few days the boys bring in a pan of honey.’
“That evening Charlie made an excuse to stop a while with one of the Henlen boys, and in the orchard back of the house he saw their bee hive lying on the ground among some rubbish and rotting leaves.
“We told our discovery at home, and my brother Truman said the Henlens had had no bees at all for months. They had been starved or frozen out the winter before.
“The next morning Father stopped Asa and Longford Henlen as they were passing our house on the way home from mill and told them he knew they had taken the honey. At first they denied all knowledge of the honey, but when they found that in some way Father had found out about it they were scared and admitted that they had chopped down the tree and, finding more honey than they had expected, had taken our tub to carry it away in.
“Mr. Brierly and Father decided that if the boys would work out the pay for the honey and promise not to steal any more they would not tell anyone.
“Mr. Brierly apologized to Father, and Mrs. Brierly and Mother kissed the next time they met, and Tom and Annie began waiting for Charlie and me again, so that everything was all right once more.
“Get the apples, Bobby, please, and tomorrow night, if you say your prayers and go right to sleep tonight, I’ll tell you about—well, it’s an awfully good story I have for tomorrow night.”