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Mary Agnes "Aggie" Cooper Diary, 1906
MaryAgnesCooper_1906_036.pdf
Revision as of Jul 22, 2023, 4:16:35 PM, created by 10.0.2.100
{newspaper clipping?}
Srong. No news travels in the Don Valley like news of a bee tree. But it does not travel often in January. In a few minutes the big tree was down. It was a shelf - four inchs of a rim of wood and the rest hollow. When the tree came down it broke near the top, right at the bees' quarters. They came out in thousands. One of the club members with a speedily-ontrived mask made of a bag and wire boldly advanced, and with gloves on his hands filled one of the big pails with the finest pure clover comb honey in a few seconds. As much and more honey was smashed on the ground among the snow and cedar twigs. A length of the trunk a yar long broke off above where the honey was found. This was rolled out, another pailful was taken from it. and as this was being done someone with a camera snapped the incident.
A third pail was partly filled. Not less than a hundred pounds of honey was in the tree. It was of the finest quality. The bees were large specimens of the Italian variety. Some people imagine that the bees of the bee trees of the bush are wild bees-on the contrary they are in nearly every case the regular domesticated Italian bee that had swarmed off from some farmer's hives.
The disgrace that had come to the club ten days ago by allowing Chris Stong, the coon hunter from the Humber, to despoil a bee tree in their own valley had been repaired once again had these simple folk of the Don Valley over a hundred pounds of honey was taken out of a bee tree in the third week of January, when the temperature was above 60 degrees. and when the river was running a great flood thru the flats. The bee tree touched the flood with its tops when it came down.
Among those who assisted in thus fore-stalling Chris Stong in robbing a Don Val-ley bee tree were Archie Bruce. Walter
