My dad never did anything by halves.
When he died a few years ago, I kept telling people that there wasn’t one flavor of ice cream he hadn’t tasted, no interest he hadn’t explored. He raised hunting dogs, had a huge vegetable garden, raised game birds, hunted and cooked. Along the way, our barn had been home to turkeys, ducks, chickens, goats, sheep, rabbits, horses and honeybees.
Well, he kept the bees out behind the barn, first one hive, then a second. As with all of his interests, when he got into beekeeping, he got into beekeeping. He had all the gear, knew all the beekeepers in the area, attended workshops, read all the books, subscribed to the magazines. The honeybees added a new dimension to our yard.
It was fun to see them in our flowers, studiously gathering pollen and nectar, then making a beeline, literally, back to their hive. My dad taught me not to be afraid of the bees. We’d stand near the hive, and he’d explain to me what the bees were up to. As far as tending the bees, there wasn’t much I could do, he was the one with the gear. I was recruited when it was time to process the honey. My job was helping him strain the honey into the jars.
When you get honey out of the hive, it is in wooden frames. We cut the honey out of the frames – think of cutting a painting from a picture frame. The chunks of honey and wax went into this big, rectangular steel vat that Dad had found. What the shiny vat’s original use might have been, my mother and I have often wondered, but it did sit nicely over two burners on the stove.
The honey chunks would slowly melt, the wax rising to the top, the honey below it. When cool, we’d take the wax off and reheat the honey just a little to make it flow nicely, then strain it through cheesecloth, funneling it into clean jars.
From pollen gathering to jarred honey, my father saw the whole process as magical. “See how the bees have capped the honey?” He would admire the fine work of the bees. When the honey was in the jars, he would hold it up to the light and say, “Look at that color! Just look at it!” Always he was amazed at the warm brown color, shining through the honey in the light from our kitchen window.
What can I say? My father had a temper. Blame it on his genes, his four brothers, his status as a Marine vet. Didn’t matter. Whenever he was involved in a project and something went wrong, he was likely to let loose a blast of creative curses. We all scattered well in advance.
Now, Dad and I had the honey down to a system. I was willing to do my part since the danger of a verbal explosion was minimal. Under those circumstances, I loved being included by my father in his projects. He was sharing with me the miracles of a world he treasured. Something I viewed as well worth the risk of his temper.
One fine summer day, he and I were processing the honey. My mother was judiciously at the next-door neighbor’s, and my brother and sister were off somewhere.
He used a dipper to fill the funnel with the warm honey. I would tell him when the jar was full and the funnel needed to be lifted, then I would switch jars. Simple enough.
How it happened I couldn’t say. I’ve blanked it out. I do have a fundamental memory that IT WASN’T MY FAULT! Maybe he was holding the steel vat instead of using his dipper. I don’t recall. All I know is that something slipped and honey was dripping down the table, off the chairs, onto the floor, down my father’s legs.
“Go to the barn and get the wool scraps your mother threw out to soak this up,” he directed. He was either doing really well to control himself, or he’d just given over to the disaster at hand. Still, I took no chances and bolted for the barn, even though I was pretty sure those scraps were long gone. I took my time looking around, took a breath and went back to ask him where they might be as I hadn’t been able to locate them. Amazingly, he wasn’t as upset as I expected. All the same, when he told me to go back and look around some more, I darted to where my mother was sitting on the lawn with the neighbor.
She quickly got the picture said her goodbyes, and we headed home. No doubt she was contemplating the months to follow of finding honey where it shouldn’t be, the woodwork, the legs of the tables and chairs. When we got to the backdoor, she told Dad that the wool scraps had gone to the dump already.
“That’s all right,” he said, “I’m pretty much cleaned up here.” And he was! We finished up processing the honey that was left. I don’t remember much else. No doubt I was happy to be released from duty when we were done. And though I’m sure Dad cleaned up the mess as best he could, I suspect all winter my mother was cleaning sticky spots he’d missed.
Years later, I was a beekeeper, with hives in the same spot behind the barn that my dad, now gone, had his. When I had taken my first bounty of honey from my bees, my mother and I stared at what they had accomplished over the summer. It was a bumper harvest.
“All that beautiful honey!” said my mother in awe.
Standing there gazing down into the brimming full frames, I swear I heard my father say, “Look at it! Just look at it!” Or maybe it was me.
Mary Gagnon lives in Auburn, where she is a school teacher. Her two hives are on Court Street.
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