At 12:28 AM 6/5/96 +0000, you wrote:                                            
>Frank Humphrey wrote:                                                          
>>When I was growing up in East Texas in the early 50s, we had red or crimson   
>>clover mixed in with the grasses in our hay fields.  We kept 8 to 10          
>>colonies of bees in gums...                                                   
>                                                                               
>Frank, what exactly are gums?  Are they those split hollow log hives?  Were    
>they still common in the 50's?  And thanks for making a man of 46 feel like    
>an ignorant youngster :)                                                       
                                                                                
>                                                                               
Hi Stan                                                                         
                                                                                
Sorry to take so long to reply but I drive a truck locally but I had to take    
an out of town run. That come up and couldn't be covered with a road driver.    
                                                                                
The term "Bee Gum" was what they used to call the hives in which honey bees     
were kept.  Bee Gums could be anything from a hollow log nailed back            
together to elaborate boxes.  There was no standard and no movable frames.      
My father used to make his out of 1 x 12 boards 3 ft. Long nailed edge to       
edge (when a 1 x 12 was actually 1" thick and 12" wide).  This created an       
11" x  11" x 36" cavity for the bees.  Inside the top of the box he nailed      
wooden strips to which he laced combs of brood form the colony he was           
robbing.  The entrance was a 1" hole drilled at the top.  Once the brood was    
laced in place, he nailed the top board on and nailed some tin roofing over     
that.  He then set the new gum on top of the old one, which already has the     
top removed to get the brood.  At this point he would drum the bees up into     
the new gum.  Sometimes he had to hurry them along by drilling a hole at the    
bottom and fanning in dense smoke.  Once the colony was in the new gum, the     
bottom board was nailed on the new gum and it was set in place of the old       
one.  The old one was then removed for disassembly and robbing                  
                                                                                
My father did have one colony in a hollow log, mainly because they would not    
leave it.  This colony was about 40' up in and oak tree when we found them      
and what my dad called Spanish bees, very small, and very defensive, black      
bees.  When we cut the tree they attacked and we had to go home to get some     
protection.  Still we got many stings, even my Dad who never seemed to get      
stung.  He found the queen several times and put her in a gum with brood but    
she wouldn't stay,  So finally we nailed the log back together and in the       
dead of night, nailed the entrance closed.  We had to drag that log about       
1/2 mile to a ditch so we could back the pickup in the ditch and roll the       
log in.  Needles to say the bees were not happy when we released them the       
next day at home.                                                               
                                                                                
I know that by today's standards, this was a rather primitive way on            
beekeeping but my dad loved bees and this was his way.  We thought a swarm      
was great because that was increase.  We didn't make as much honey per          
colony but we made what we could use and still had some to give the             
neighbors and some to sell.                                                     
                                                                                
Frank Humphrey                                                                  
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Franklin D. Humphrey Sr.                                                        
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