Stories

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They yelled for us to stop immediately and come up to their driveway. His father began suiting up in his beekeepers clothing. They warned us to stand very still or we would get stung. I'd never had a bee sting before but had seen the effects on Edward. His eyes would swell shut and his cheeks would puff out like a chipmunks. I didn't want to experience that.

That day my mother made me wear a wool cap that tied under my chin and covered my entire head. As Edward's mother untied my cap to remove it, she again warned me to be perfectly still. I was afraid to even breathe! When my cap was removed, she said, "Your head is covered with honeybees; I can't even see your hair!"

She began to pick the bees off, one by one, as her husband used his "smoker" equipment to break up the mass of bees on my head. Thankfully, the bees had not bothered to land anywhere else on my body. It was amazing, but I never received a single bee sting that day. Edward wasn't so fortunate. He was stung more than once.

My mass of very tight ringlets of thick, curly hair that the bees couldn't penetrate, saved the day for me. Needless to say, Edward and I never agitated those bees again.