American Honey Lore

American Honey Lore


In American folklore, young as it is, we find many tales which reflect on honey. H. B. Parks, in "The Lost Honey Mines in Texas", Southwest Review, (1930. 16.) remarks: "The best place and time to hear honey-cave stories is some bee-yard in the chaparral of Southwest Texas, when the extracting crew is resting around the campfire after a hard day's work. From the prevalence and absurdity of the legends, however, it is safe to infer that they are of long standing."

"The tales of bee-caves have much in common with stories about lost mines," Parks continues. . . . The mouths of the caves were supposed to be guarded by huge rattlesnakes, vicious bats, scorpions; occasionally, by ghosts. Usually, as the story goes, some surveyor entered the cave about thirty years ago and reported vast rooms filled with honey in pure white combs. Often a well-driller in the vicinity has passed, they say, through just thirty feet of honey and wax. And someone can always (for a certain consideration and not otherwise) show you the location of the cave.

The Story of Bee Mountain, as described by Parks, is very popular. It was disclosed to two boys by a cowpuncher who was well acquainted with the mountain and who had procured plenty of honey there himself. According to the informant, this mountain was a hollow hill, conical in shape and several thousand feet in height. On one side was an opening; and if the searchers could have used sulphur fumes, sufficiently strong to stupefy the bees, they might have entered the interior of the mountain, where hundreds and thousands of pounds of honey were suspended from the roof. There was also a rumor afloat that some boys had attempted to invade it, but they were frightened away by Cherokee Indians.

Another story, according to Parks, was told by a man who could remember that during his early childhood Indians would come after every wet spring to obtain honey from bees living in colonies, attached to the undersurface of a wide projecting rock at the top of a nearby cliff, some seventy feet above the bed of a river. The Indians reached the honey by splicing together mesquite poles. Then some light Indian would climb the pole and the others would move it from place to place, while the Indian aloft lowered the honeycombs by means of a rope and a grass sack. Once a group of hostile Indians came to gather some honey, and after they had obtained all they desired, turned on the white settlers and killed many of them. Mr. Parks visited Bee Mountain several years ago, and counted some three hundred colonies of bees attached to an overhanging rock. At the base of the bluff were the remains of hundreds of pieces of mesquite poles, formerly parts of ladders used probably by the Indians.

`Bee Cave up Blanco" seems to be famous everywhere except along the Blanco River. An old hunter said that one man in his party had climbed to the mouth of a great cave along the banks of the river. On arriving at the opening, he was completely covered by thousands of bees and he was saved from being stung to death only by his heavy clothing. He was able to drive the bees from his eyes just long enough to obtain a glimpse of the cave, where he beheld a solid wall of white honeycombs. The man later re-turned with a companion, and with the aid of smoke and the light of torches the hunters were enabled to enter this gigantic hive. They were approaching beautiful sheets of honeycombs when a warning note caused them to look to the floor of the cave. Horrified, they discovered that they were standing at the edge of what appeared to be a solid mass of wriggling, twisting rattlesnakes. The hunters, by quick movement, regained the entrance in safety.

Another famous bee cave, Parks continues, is reported to be located very close to the City of San Marcos, in the side of a cliff. The entire rock composing the bluff is full of holes and this is the home, not only of an immense colony of bees, but also of many snakes, rattlesnakes being predominant. According to the story, a group of men tried to open a hole in the side of this bluff. The leader said that he had been assured that there were hundreds of pounds of honey and beeswax in the cave, and he felt certain that this treasure could be obtained with the aid of a patented smoke gun which he possessed. Carrying the famous smoke gun and a lantern, one of the members explored the cave to a depth of several thousands of feet. He returned with the report that enormous amounts of honey and wax were almost at their finger tips. The exploring company tried to enlarge the opening, but as soon as they commenced to pound on the rock, snakes began to issue from every little hole in the face of the bluff, and, while no one was hurt, the sight was so terrible that the men fled and no amount of hidden treasure could induce them to return.

The bee cave in the Davis Mountains is another place that can be "easily" approached. The opening is as large as the doorway of an immense cathedral. With proper protection a person can enter the cave and is at once astonished by the curtainlike sheets of honeycomb which hang from the ceiling. As far as one penetrates into the cave this white honeycomb extends, one sheet right after another. The terrible thing about the cave, however, is super-natural. The first thing that attracts the attention of the explorer is the fact that he is standing in the midst of dozens of human skeletons. If he proceeds, he feels a sudden chill in the atmosphere and something seems to take hold of him in such a way that he cannot move farther inward, although he can see nothing to stop him. If the adventurer does not heed the warning and tries to go still farther, he is crushed by an unknown force and falls dead to the floor. Should his companions attempt to remove the body, they, too, are stricken with death and add to this pile of grim reminders of the force which protects the honey bees of the Davis Mountains. (All these stories are somewhat reminiscent of the legend about the four Greeks, who tried to plunder the grotto of Zeus.)

The cave up the Nueces is thought to be located in the face of a cliff some thousand feet in height. During the spring season, to one standing on the top of the bluff, the bees going and coming from the mouth of the cave resemble a great stream of smoke; and the hum of their wings is so loud that the roar can be heard for miles. According to the story, thirty years ago a surveyor discovered a second entrance and, making a torch of his coat, went into the cave, protected by the smoke of the burning garment. He passed through room after room filled with long white sheets of purest guajillo honey, and estimated that the cave contained several million pounds. Some of the combs were at least fifty feet from top to bottom. Before the surveyor had time to make the proper preparations to remove the honey, he fell sick and died. Just before his death, he called a doctor and gave him a map showing the entrance to the bee cave. A story was current in San Antonio some five or six years ago that this map was on sale for $500. A second version is that a ranchman living near this canyon had a well drained for water. Some fifty feet down, the drill-bit entered a cavity, and when a sand bucket was substituted for the rock-bit, honey and beeswax were brought up in great quantities. The cavity was thirty feet from top to bottom.

Another story, Parks relates, is that of an old beekeeper and former cowboy, "Jones," who said that up the Nueces canyon the whole wall was filled with bees. With a companion, he planned to take advantage of the bees, and to become rich by selling honey. "Jones" and his friend bought a blacksmith's bellows and made a machine, which they mounted on a sled, for blowing sulphur fumes. A honey extractor was placed on another sled. The men then bought two colonies of bees and several burros. When the cave-bees had finished gathering the spring crop of honey, "Jones" and a curious caravan set out for the canyon. At the mouth of the canyon, the party made camp. The next day they pushed the smoke engine as far as the first bee cave, fired it up, and pumped the fumes into the skeleton rock that guarded the honey. After a hard day's work, the bees in this cave were all killed. That night, two colonies of bees in hives were placed in front of the cave. The next day these hive-bees worked overtime, stealing the honey from the cave. In the evening, "Jones" and his companion, as the story goes, extracted three hundred pounds of honey which they had secured with the aid of these two colonies. Elated by the success of the scheme, they sent for more colonies. By the use of the smoke-machine and by moving from cave to cave, the men were soon keeping a regular line of burros busy carrying honey to the city and returning with empty cans. The bees worked so hard that the colonies had to be replaced every two weeks. Unfortunately winter put an end to this performance.

Honey caves have been the object of many expeditions, Parks concludes. Such quests for hidden sweets were often broached by country-boys, generally without definite plan or reliable information, except that someone had told of a bee cave somewhere, and they were determined to get the honey. The stories that have appeared in the papers are among the most marvelous pieces of misinformation ever read. It is to be said in defense of the credulity of these seekers after the rumored treasure houses that there are holes in the rocks, and crevices in the bluffs, where honey bees have lived for years and each year a certain amount of honey and wax is secured from such locations.

John Taylor Allen alludes to the affluence of honey in the State of Texas: "The wonderful tales told of honey and the honey bee may seem exaggerated but no tale can exaggerate the abundance of honey that was to be found right here in Texas in the early days. What sweet, happy days we had cutting bee trees and eating the rich wild honey spread over' our buttered biscuits, . . . We had a bountiful supply the whole year around—combed honey, strained honey and candied honey."

Wild bee cave tales are very much in vogue in Texas. Dr. Phillips of Cornell related a story about a man who, some years ago, came North from Texas with a most impressive story connected with huge accumulations of honey—which our man firmly believed—and who used all his efforts to interest prominent bee-keepers in the promotion of a scheme. Everybody realized how silly his project was but luckily no one told him. Finally they brought him to the meeting of the National Beekeepers' Association in Indianapolis, where, during the evening banquet, after he had told his tale, a company was organized, with a $2,000,000 capital for the promotion of his project. Dr. Phillips was elected. Secretary of the Company at some astounding salary. A well-known beekeeper was chosen as the "Chief Dronekiller" at a yearly salary of $ 20,000, an important position because the worker bees are very irritable during the period when they kill the drones. All the details were attended to: how to remove the honey and wax by elaborate machinery, and how to transport the honey through glass-lined pipes to San Antonio. It was the wildest hoax. All attending the banquet were holding their sides from laughter without the victim discovering that they were having a grand time at his expense. At the end of the evening it fell to Dr. Phillips' lot to perform a most perplexing and painful duty, that of telling the victim that the entire scheme was only a huge joke.