What is that buzzing sound?

by Charles L. Dilworth

I guess I was always fascinated by nearly everything in the natural world. As a young boy, hardly an insect, bird, butterfly or animal was ignored by my inquiring mind. Those were the times before, DDT when the fields were practically alive with butterflies of all shapes, sizes and colors. At night, thousands of little yellow lanterns of the “lightning bugs” blinked at us. We had creatures that most people never see any more. I caught crayfish and tadpoles. I had a tadpole in a goldfish bowl. I watched it slowly lose its tail and grow hind legs, then front legs, becoming a frog. I started a collection of insects, attaching them to a layer of cotton in a small box. I found spiders of all kinds, butterflies, snap beetles, centipedes and bees.

And one time, my penchant for collecting insects got me into hot water.



I was in third grade. The building we were in was really old. In fact, my grandmother went to school there as a young girl. The upper floor of the school was condemned. The walls were constructed of red brick. Mortar was falling from between the bricks, and a swarm of honey bees had gained access to the walls in the upper floor and established a hive there.

My third grade teacher was Miss Coolie. Miss Coolie was probably in her mid-fifties, and she was cranky. She once gave me a spanking because I got stuck on a math problem and, instead of going on to the next problem, I continued to work on it until the time was up. I simply didn't know enough to skip to the next one. But ignorance was never an excuse in Miss Coolie's class.

On this particular day, our class was outside, at recess. It was winter, and it was cold, as it often was in those days. I had walked around the side of the building, out of the wind. I noticed a number of honeybees lying on the ground, next to the wall. Naturally, I picked up a handful of them and put them into the pocket of my coat for my collection.

Sometime later, inside the warm building, some bees were seen flying around the room. The bees I had harvested had merely been dormant, from the cold, and had awakened from their sleep when they were brought into the warm building.

I got lucky this time. No spankings. All I had to do was take my coat outside and shake the bees out of it. Come to think of it, I don’t know why Miss Coolie assumed I had anything to do with this unexpected turn of events. She never did seem to care much for me.


Charles L. Dilworth spent much of his childhood out-of-doors, learning about the woods and the critters who populated them. He lives in Allentown, PA, with his wife of nearly 50 years.