HILLTOP —  Beekeeper Jack Canada remembers when the bees of West Virginia were wilder.

“All bees back then came from the woods,” says the 78-year-old Wyoming County native. “They were pretty mean, just defended themselves a lot more. You expected to get stung two or three times when you’d take their honey. They have bees bred up now to where they are very gentle.

“Bees is a lot different now than they was back then.”  

Jack has tended bees since childhood, using knowledge passed down through his family. Now, at his 32-acre farm on Keel Road, near Oak Hill, he continues the family beekeeping tradition and also helps share that knowledge with his neighbors in the Fayette-Raleigh area.

Before the days when bees were available from a catalog, Jack and his father, Cecil, used to hunt bees in the woods.

“You find them drinking water and watch the direction they are flying,” he says.

Working together, he and his father would follow the bees from their water source to the tree where they lived. Then they would cut down a section of the tree, split it open, and move some honey and eggs into a bee box. The next day, they had a hive of bees to bring home.

“When I was a kid, we didn’t have no equipment. We’d roll up a rag and light it and blow the smoke on them when we worked them.

“My dad’s first bees were homemade boxes. We didn’t have frames. He’d take a butcher’s knife and just cut down into the top of the beehive and get a dishpan of honey and put the lid back on the box.

“Some people just left them in the hollow log and put a lid on top.”

Jack’s people came from Wyoming County, in the area of what is now Twin Falls State Park. They lived on a farm outside of Maben, a small coal camp, raising livestock and growing vegetables for family consumption. They rarely, if ever, sold their produce for profit. Zettie, Jack’s mother, canned — a lot.

Jack did his part by helping his father rob the bees of their honey each year, after he accidentally proved his skills as a beekeeper.

“My mother came in one day and said there was a swarm of bees down in the maple tree and not to go down there. When she turned her head, I got a bee box and beehive and put them in it.

“Dad come home from work and she told him they were in the maple tree and I said how I had climbed up and cut the limb off and lowered it down into the box with a rope.

“I didn’t get a busting, but I guess I should have,” he says, laughing. He was in the sixth grade at the time.

Jack says in those days, keeping bees was common.

“About all the old people back then had one or two beehives around,” he says. “A lot of times they didn’t have money to get sugar, so they used honey for a sweetener.”

Jack says he can entice a swarm of bees to land on a bush close by a bee box by beating on a kettle.

“You beat on a kettle with a hammer inside of it and slap it backwards and forwards,” he explains. “A queen makes a little squealing noise when she’s calling bees. If you beat on the kettle fast and loud enough, they can’t hear her calling.

“That’s my theory,” he says. “I’ve never read it in a book or nothing.”

Jack says when his ears were better, he could hear the queen’s call.

“It’s a very weak little tiny squeal,” he says. “Like an ‘Eeee, eeee.’ I can’t hear her anymore, but I could hear her when I had good ears once she went into the beehive calling.”

“There’s no doubt in my mind that he knows as much about bees as anyone in the country,” says John Breneman Jr., who sells beekeeping equipment to his fellow Fayette County farmers. Canada delivered a swarm of bees to the Brenemans — an active and well-known local farming family — almost 30 years ago. It wasn’t the first or the last time he got someone started in beekeeping.

“I just love my bees,” says Canada. “I like to work them. I’ve went over to people’s houses and helped them put up swarms and helped them rob them and just all parts of it I’ve helped people out that have asked me to.”

Jack and his wife, Frances, tend to 12 beehives. Already this year, they have produced 179 quarts of honey, which they give away and sell out of their home. They keep four quarts for themselves and always sell out of the rest.

The Canadas keep a little honey bear sitting on their table at all times, just as much a staple as salt and pepper.

Neither their business nor their farm has a name, and honey sales happen by word of mouth. Many of their customers are prescribed the local honey by their doctors for allergy problems.

In addition to a hayfield and garden, the Canada farm has an orchard with apple, peach, pear, plum, and cherry trees.

“(My honey) is mostly clover, poplar, fruit tree blooms and wildflowers,” says Jack. “And they work the daylights out of anybody’s garden — melons and corn, about anything in the garden they work.”

Though he advises everyone to wear a full bee suit, he himself only wears a mask and gloves when he works with bees. He says he’s only been stung once in the past several years.

“You can’t be scared of them,” he says. “Bees is just like a biting dog. I don’t know why, but they definitely know who’s scared of them.”

Jack says he encourages anyone who is curious about beekeeping to try it out, not only because it’s a fun hobby, but also because of the vital role bees play in the food chain.

“Without bees in our garden, we wouldn’t have no garden. It’s got to be pollinated,” he says. “Without bees in the woods, we won’t have no squirrels or deer. Without some type of bee there won’t be no food.

“They are a necessity. They are as important to us and all the wild animals and farm animals as water is. Without either, we won’t last long.”

Recently, local farmers established the Fayette County Beekeeper’s Association. For more information, call John Breneman Jr. at 304-894-6064 or Brian Sparks of the WVU Extension Service at 304-574-4253.

— E-mail: cmoore@register-herald.com