Hot biscuits and sourwood honey!

“Now, that’s real choice eatin’,” said the man known as the Master Beekeeper of the Smokies. “A man ain’t tasted nothin’ lessen he’s put his tongue to sourwood honey. It’s the pure stuff.”

A heap of folks will agree quick as a bee-sting with Wallace Bradley, an old-timer of 82 who set up his first bee-gums here at the turn of the century.

To the epicure, a dish of sourwood honey is like sampling the choicest wines from the vineyards of Europe. And it’s just as hard to come by, for the demand is greater than the supply.

Usually the local demand takes the entire crop at prices above the open market. It practically never appears on the market at all and can only be had by those who journey far for it.

For pure flavor, it’s a prize-winner among the world’s most famous honeys, such as the wild thyme of Greece, the rosemary of southern Europe, and the heather of Scotland.

“Yes sir, it’s a dish fit to set before a king,” said the old man, “but I reckon ain’t none of ’em ever tasted sourwood. Not real sourwood, anyway.”

“There’s honey on the market that’s claimed to be sourwood, but it ain’t. If a man’s ever tasted real sourwood he’ll know the difference. It ain’t as heavy of body and it turns grainy-like before you’ve dipped into it two or three times. It ain’t got the same color, neither. Real sourwood’s medium-light in color and it’s slow to get grainy.”

The old man had been splitting locust rails out by his bee-gums back of the house when we arrived. He laid aside his ax and we got to talking about his bees and sourwood honey.

“This has been a good sourwood year,” he said. “Guess I got about 250 pounds of honey out of my hives. That’s as good as I’ve done in the last ten years.”

“I’ve only got about thirty gums now. That’s enough to tend to, what with everything else I have to do about the place. Time was, though, when I had as many as 110 gums.”

“Bees didn’t swarm none this year. The honey came early and they didn’t have time. It started along in June. The bees got rich on poplar and basswood and dog-hobble–and locust.”

“Then the sourwood started and they didn’t have time to stop for nothin’. They worked like everything right in the rain, just as if it weren’t rainin’. Yes, sir, they worked right in the rain. And I watched em’ in the rain.”

“Yes, the honey came early this year. I had honey in June and the last about two weeks ago. I knowed it was gettin’ late and I got out to see about the bees. I ain’t caught ’em makin’ any honey in about a week now.”

“They’re just as still as they can be. Sort of like they’re plumb tired out. Won’t do a thing but sting you. I was up there among em’ today and they made me set down two or three times. A bee’ll hardly ever sting you if you’re still. Just set still and they’ll usually go away and not bother you.”

The old man paused and looked off toward the hill where his bee-gums trooped along in orderly rows.

“When I moved in here back in the spring of ’98,” he recalled, “I fetched in six gums. Carried ’em in on my back from over the mountain. By fall I had ten gums and kept adding to ’em. Made ’em out of hollow logs, out of basswood, ’cause they don’t season or crack.”

When his bees swarm, he just lets them go. But that means he has to go out and look for them and get them back in the hives.

“Why, I’ve hunted bees all over these mountains,” said the old man. “You’ve got to hunt ’em with stink-bait. You set it out and some of ’em go to work on it. A few minutes later you can see ’em go straight to the tree where they’re holed up.”

“Me and my daddy used to hunt ’em. We’d run ’em two or three miles, a hundred yards at a time. We’d set the bait, move up and set it again. Just kept following a little at a time and after a while we’d get to their tree.”

“Then we’d cut down the tree and put the bees in a tow bag. They’ll sweat and die if you put ’em in a gum and tote ’em back. I don’t never put ’em in a gum. A tow bag is the best thing to use.”

“When they swarm and light on a bush you can just cut the limb and put the limb, bees and all in the bag and tie it at the top and they’ll keep in there two or three days, easy.”

“To get the bees in the bag, you lay your sack on a log or on the ground and prop the mouth of it open with a stick and dip the bees right in–or put the whole limb in.”

“You dip ’em in with a piece of bark or with a wash-pan. It’s easy. Why, a man can learn more from bees. He can learn from ’em as long as he lives.”

Back in the old days, he said, sourwood honey sold at ten cents a pound, if a man was lucky enough to get paid in cash. Now it brings seventy cents a pound and up.

“Years ago I used to tote my honey to Waynesville on my back,” the old man recalled. ” I bought might near all my meat with honey, pound for pound.”

“Hanes Queen used to send his big lard cans up here for me to fill with honey. I guess you knowed Hanes. He run a store and he engaged all the honey I would let him have. Them cans would hold seventy-five and eighty pounds of honey, and I’d fill six or seven of ’em for him.”

The old man was silent for a moment.

“You know,” he said finally, “folks just don’t seem to take an interest in bees like they once did. Why, I know the time when a feller was considered trifling if he didn’t have a dozen or so gums.”

“It’s got so now that everybody wants honey but they don’t want to keep bees. If this keeps up there just won’t be no real sourwood honey. And that’ll be a shame.”

Yes, it will be a shame.

For there’s nothing like hot biscuits and sourwood honey.

As the Master Beekeeper of the Smokies said, it’s real choice eatin’.

—John Parris

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When I was growing up Pap would buy a box filled with quart jars of sourwood honey every year. We loved to mash the honey up with butter on our plate and then slather it on one of Granny’s good biscuits. The jars had the comb in them back then. Us kids chewed it like candy or chewing gum.

Last night’s video: Getting Ready for Winter || Making a Firewood Cart.

Tipper

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