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| Italian honeybee worker. |
(For decades, local historian and paranormal investigator
George “Buster” Singleton published a weekly newspaper column called “Somewhere
in Time.” The column below, which was titled “It’s a buzzing time as bees big
business for Alvin Bayles” was originally published in the July 6, 1972 edition
of The Monroe Journal in Monroeville, Ala.)
Alvin Bayles of Locklin Avenue has a strange and unique
hobby. Alvin raises bees. It all started a few years back when he ordered three
pounds of bees from Sears Roebuck & Co. Along with the three pounds of
bees, Alvin ordered a queen bee. The total price was in the amount of $9.95 for
the three pounds of bees and $2.98 for the queen bee. This domestic type of bee
is known as the Hybrid Italian variety. I thought all honeybees were the same
until I talked with Alvin about the bees and their habits.
The honey bee is one of nature’s strangest insects. The
family, or swarm, operates with all the thoroughness and precision of a large
family. The queen bee is ruler over the swarm. Also, she lays the eggs that
hatch the workers. The worker is the bee that goes out and gathers the nectar
from the flowers, bringing it back to the hive, or home. The other workers fan the
honeycone with their wings to keep it cool. The average life of a worker is
from seven to 21 days. While the maximum life of the queen bee is around seven
years.
The queen lays special eggs, from which the drone bee is
hatched. The drone is different from the worker due to the fact that he is
larger in size and does no work. The drone cannot feed himself; he has to be
fed by the worker. At the proper time, when the drone has reached adulthood, it
mates with the queen bee. The queen bee then lays the eggs that the worker
comes from. When the drones have mated with the queen, the worker then kills
all the drones in the swarm. Sometimes there are as many as a hundred drones in
one swarm.
The worker, whose life is so short, rarely or never gets to
the honey that it produces. When the worker’s wings wear out and can no longer
work, it either dies or is killed by the other workers.
A hive of bees will usually produce about 180 pounds of
honey per year, depending on the weather, etc. Alvin states that from the one
hive that he started out with, he now has 30. This would mean that over a
period of one year, he would be able to harvest around 5,400 pounds of honey.
That’s a lot of honey, any way you look a it.
I asked Mrs. Bayles if the bees bothered her when she was
out working the yard. She says the only time the bees notice her is when she
wears perfume or hair spray. She states that this upsets them more than
anything else.
The honey bee and its habits, on occasion, have been
compared to Communism. In both societies, everyone works. When a member becomes
a burden to others, he is destroyed, either by choice or otherwise. The results
are the same, odd though they may be.
[This story also included a photo of Alvin Bayles taken by
Singleton that carried the following caption: Alvin Bayles beside one of his
many bee hives.]
(Singleton, the author
of the 1991 book “Of Foxfire and Phantom Soldiers,” passed away at the age of
79 on July 19, 2007. A longtime
resident of Monroeville, he was born to Vincent William Singleton and Frances
Cornelia Faile Singleton, during a late-night thunderstorm, on Dec. 14, 1927 in
Marengo County, graduated from Sweet Water High School in 1946, served as a
U.S. Marine paratrooper in the Korean War, worked as a riverboat deckhand,
lived for a time among Apache Indians, moved to Monroe County on June 28, 1964
and served as the administrator of the Monroeville National Guard unit from
June 28, 1964 to Dec. 14, 1987. He was promoted from the enlisted ranks
to warrant officer in May 1972. For years, Singleton’s columns, titled “Monroe
County history – Did you know?” and “Somewhere in Time” appeared in The Monroe
Journal, and he wrote a lengthy series of articles about Monroe County that
appeared in Alabama Life magazine. It’s believed that his first column appeared
in the March 25, 1971 edition of The Monroe Journal. He is buried in Pineville
Cemetery in Monroeville. The column above and all of Singleton’s other columns
are available to the public through the microfilm records at the Monroe County
Public Library in Monroeville. Singleton’s columns are presented here each week
for research and scholarship purposes and as part of an effort to keep his work
and memory alive.)
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