Homestead gardens christmas trees

Day 1: Casablanca-Meknes-Volubilis-Fes
You will be met on arrival at Casablanca airport or at your hotel and then driven the short distance to Casablanca, Morocco's largest city and the modern, economic capital. here you'll be welcome to enter the impressive Hassan II Mosque, one of the largest in the world and one of only two in the country that allow access to non-Muslims. In the afternoon, you will travel west towards Fes, stopping off at Meknes and Volubilis. Meknes, surrounded by vineyards and rich arable land, is an important, historic, Imperial city of the Sultan Moulay Ismail of the 17th and 18th centuries. Here you can see the mausoleum of Moulay Ismail himself, the Bab Mansour gate with its beautiful zellij mosaics and marble pillars, and the Sahrij Soanni Bassin, a huge reservoir that supplies the city and the Imperial gardens. Next, are the nearby Roman ruins of Volubilis dating from the first century BC and you'll be able to walk through the Triumphal Arch and see many beautifully preserves mosaic floors depicting scenes from the Roman myths. Then onward to Fes, through fertile valleys in the foothills between the Rif and Atlas Mountain ranges. arriving in the early evening to check into your traditional riad in the heart of the ancient, medieval medina where you will stay in B&B overnight.
Day 2: Investigating Fantasic Fes
After a traditional breakfast in your riad, it will be time to explore the cultural capital of Morocco, the ancient medina (old city) of Fes, passing though its narrow, winding alleyways among the hustle and bustle, donkeys and horses, the exotic sights and smells of a working, medieval city; the largest urbanized pedestrian area in the world. Here you can see the delicious fresh fruit piled high, mountains of aromatic spices and intricate. You will visit the famous traditional tanneries and to the Al Qaraouine university which is the oldest in the world. In the afternoon, after a satisfying lunch in an authentic Moroccan restaurant in the heart of the medina, Your journey will continue with a visit of the Jewish quarter, the King's Palace, ceramic factory and the Merenid Tombs, perched on a hillside overlooking the medina and providing a breathtaking panoramic view of the old city. Then you will return to your riad home for the night.
Day 3: Fes - Middle Atlas Mountains - Sahara Desert
Following breakfast, it's off to Ifrane, a charming Alpine-styled, chalet filled town, nestling prettily in the mountains and known as the " Switzerland of Morocco", Catching tantalising glimpses of both the Middle and High Atlas mountains as you yourselves ascend into them, you'll next stop at Azrou, "The Rock" in the local Berber language, a lovely village in the heart of the magnificent cedar forests, the most extensive in the country. Here live the Barbary Apes, actually a type of macaque monkey, who may steal your lunch. As you get nearer to Merzouga, your destination for the night, you will see a gradual change in the landscape as the desert begins to creep in. On we go, through the mountain pass of Tizi Ntalghamt to Midelt and then through the verdant Ziz valley, carved by a river through volcanic rock. There will be plenty of stops for photo opportunities along the route. Passing through quaint Berber mountain villages and then the larger settlements of Erfoud and Rissani you will come to the village of Merzouga during the evening to spend the night in a Kasbah/hotel where dinner and breakfast are provided as well as delicious, hot, sweet, mint tea on your arrival. Very refreshing.
Day 4: A Camel Trek and a Night Camping in the Sahara
First, a sumptuous breakfast and then a chance to visit the village of Khamlia and interact with the Gnawa, the local people who are descended from slaves brought to Morocco from the Sudan. They have a unique lifestyle and they will play their delightful, traditional music for you. Later you'll get the chance to explore Rissani, the original home of the Alaouites who created a dynasty and are still the ruling royal family in Morocco to this day. Rissani is a walled town, or ksar, with numerous high towers and has a large open nomad market. Then you will be driven back to Merzouga, where your camel awaits! An experienced professional guide will take you on an unforgettable ninety minute camel trek through the shifting desert sands and ergs (dunes). After you arrive at your desert camp you will have the opportunity to watch a spectacular sunset over the glittering desert dunes. It's the wonder of camping in the desert tonight, where the stars are so numerous and so bright that you really feel that you could just reach out and touch them. Dinner and overnight in a berber camp.
Day 5: The Gorgeous Gorges of Todra - Ouarzazate
An early start, as you are awoken to experience the splendour of the sun rising over the sand dunes, then you will ride your camel gently back to a hotel for breakfast, during which ride, you cannot fail to notice the shifting and changing of the shadows cast by the dunes, lengthening and shrinking as the day progresses. After breakfast, the journey to Ouarzazate begins with a drive through the 300 metre deep canyon of the Todgha Gorges cut through the easternmost tip of theHigh Atlas Mountains where you can enjoy some hiking around the pretty village of Tinghir. The Tinghir and Todgha gorges are the highest and narrowest in Morocco and, some would say, the most beautiful. The next stop is "Rose City" the Berber town of Kelaat Mgouna, where every year, usually in mid-May (though the times may vary), at rose harvest time, there is a celebration of the Festival of Roses. This provides an opportunity for the local growers to meet up ans sell their wares, most notably rose water which will leave your clothes, body and bed linen smelling sweetly long after it is applied. After this you will travel on to the fertile oasis of Skoura, surrounded by huge groves of palm trees with stunning views of the mighty Atlas mountains. Finally, you'll finish your day with an evening arrival in Ouarzazate where you will enjoy your dinner and stay overnight in an hotel.
Day 6: Rose City - Kasbahs - Marvelous Marrakech
After a hearty breakfast explore the film sets and studios of Ouarzazate, "Africa's Hollywood" whose astonishing scenery and topography have lured some of the world's leading film-makers and directors to make use of the landscape. These are the most famous and largest film studios in all of the African continent. You may visit the studio museum where you can see props and other items of interest from films such as "Gladiator", "The Mummy" and "Indiana Jones" as well as parts of the popular TV series "Game of Thrones". Afterwards, you will visit Ait Ben Haddou Kasbah, the biggest in Morocco. Take a stroll to explore the traditional Moroccan architecture that composes the kasbah, home to the Glaoui people, descendants of one of the last great Berber chieftains, Et Hami El Glaoui who ruled in the 18th century. This central region of the country is vibrant and exciting and surely one of the most romantic areas of Morocco, huddled between fertile, green river valleys with their extensive palmeries and burnished red mud-brick houses, roasting under the blazing Moroccan sun in dazzling colours beneath an azure sky. Then it's time to continue on your journey, through the astounding Tizi n'tichka Pass, over two and a half kilometres above sea-level, along twisting, turning mountain roads dotted with picturesque Berber villages until you reach Marrakech. The tour ends when you are safely deposited at your hotel or riad.

I 24f asked my fiancé 32m to consider therapy. We've been together for 4 years. Usually, we have a great relationship! But, the main thing I've noticed with him over the years, is how he says he will do something and doesn't take action, causing me to become a "nagger" in my opinion. A couple examples. We have my (10f) stepdaughter most holidays. She's a great girl! My fiance was big on presents before I came along, so she's always been materialistic, which is fine by me, seeing as I love gift giving too, I had saved up throughout the year to buy the kids presents, and started buying towards the end of the year, the year before, I had brought her some gifts, seeing as my fiance couldn't afford it at the time, but she didn't end up spending Christmas with us that year, my fiance said she could open them the next year and he "put them away". Now fiancé is making better money, but I still offered to get her present along with our other two children's, I asked him what she would like, but he insisted, even got mad that I kept offering to get her gifts throughout December, and assured me he would get her some, I reminded him weekly and he told me not to worry. Christmas day rolls around, you can guess what happened? I had taken all our younger children's presents to my parents and had hoped he had just hidden them away, but come Christmas morning, there was nothing for her. All of us, his family, the kids were under the tree, and they were looking to me for explanation? He was in the room, on his Xbox, leaving me to rustle something up of money and chocolates to give to her, he said he had looked for her last years presents, but that he couldn't find them. She was grateful for what she got, but I later heard her on the phone with her grandparents, saying her dad never got her anything for Christmas. He told her he'd keep in contact with her every week, yet she messages me most days, asking me to ask her dad to ring, or her mum messages me saying their daughter is waiting for his call, he always gets annoyed when I tell him to ring her because they've asked, but I remind him of what he's told her. He's always putting me in situations where he's told me he'd do something, and if he hasn't, with plenty reasonable time and opportunities to do so, I'm always the one left with the fall out, and tho I defend him to the best of my ability, and ask him how do we fix whatever problems been caused, he always turns it around so he's the biggest victim, over exaggerates his plan to help by using emotionally harmful tactics to me and just all in all makes me feel like I shouldn't have brought it up in the first place. I myself attend therapy, to help with some problems in my relationship that I try to bring forth with him but he shuts down and thinks I'm being mean, I suggested couples counseling or therapy for himself, but he won't acknowledge it and thinks I'm bullying him for being "himself" AITA?

​
When Jamison March, owner of March Mortuaries, put a sign out in front of his business saying that he would be selling honey, people thought it must be a joke.
What kind of mortician would sell honey? Would he sell it next to the caskets in his showroom? Would he offer it graveside at the cemetery? No one knew, but there was much speculation about that little sign.
Those who asked Jamison were in for quite a treat. Jamison told them that he would be selling his honey right here at the mortuary and even gave them a sample so they might tell their friends. What they sampled was supposedly the best honey any of them had ever eaten. They went on and on about the texture and the taste and the strange, exotic flavors within the honey. They said how they couldn't wait for Jamison to sell his honey, and they would be buying as much as they could on the opening day.
Others began to question where he was keeping his bees? They saw no beehives on his property, a two-bedroom apartment above the mortuary. They saw no hives on the mortuary property at all, in fact. They saw no hives in the cemetery or near the crematorium, but still, the honey came.
On the third of March, the first jar of that miraculous concoction appeared in the front room of Jamison's Mortuary. The mortuary was crowded for the next several days, and by Friday, not a jar was left to be purchased. Again, people praised the texture in the taste, as well as the myriad flavors that one would find within that jar. One of the buyers, Burt Lancaster, owned a large honey operation of his own. It is said that when he tasted Jamison honey, he proclaimed that no bee in his field had ever produced anything so sweet. Some would tell you that he burned his beehives that very afternoon, but that's a little more than town gossip.
For that summer back in 1986, no one could get enough of Jamison's honey.
They say Hellen Price used that honey to defeat her arrival, Linda Moore, in that summer's Fourth of July dessert bake-off.
They say Bert Cavill put that honey in his mead and could not make enough of it to satiate the local drunks.
They say Mary Sanders was taken to the hospital over at Oakley when she ate ten jars in a day and was reaching for an eleventh when her stomach ruptured.
But, again, that's all town gossip.
What is fact was the discovery made by Randall Smith, a local tabloid writer, in the fall of eighty-six.
Randall had a reputation for being less of a journalist and more of a mudslinger. If there was a nasty rumor started, Randall could usually be traced back to it. He had grown pretty tired of hearing about Jamison and his amazing honey. Randall was of the opinion that if something was too good to be true, then it likely was. He thought Jamison's honey must have some sort of secret ingredient that got people addicted to it. Maybe it was even a cover for some kind of dope operation that Jamison was running out of the mortuary or the cemetery. Whatever the case, Randall could smell the story, and it would be sweeter than any nectar the old mortician could produce.
So one night, as the moon hung full over Pleasant Rest Cemetery, Randall and his friends, Rooster Mallory and Charles Drainer, took a trip out to the cemetery to have a look around. Someone had reported earlier that week that they had seen some larger-than-normal bees around the cemetery grounds and speculated that these may be the source of Jamison's honey. It was the only lead that Randall had and seemed as good a lead as any. So after a couple of drinks at the Legion hall, the three men piled into Rooster's old Chevy and headed down to do some late-night snooping.
Randall still tells anyone who will listen how the graveyard was as silent as its namesake. The gate was locked, sporting a brand new Academy Security Lock, one of the big, thick gold ones that graced the sheds and fences of discerning security buffs in town. So, the three men had to find a different way in. This was strange since the cemetery had never been locked before. Jamison had always let people come and go as they please, but just recently, the old man has gotten a little cagey about many things. For one, the cemetery was now locked after nightfall. For another, no one was allowed in the basement of the mortuary, not even the man who came to deliver the bodies from the families. For third, no one but his two sons were allowed to work in the mortuary anymore, and both of them were under pain of death should they reveal the secret of Jamison's honey.
The three men had walked around the cemetery fence before they found a spot where the last windstorm had knocked down a thick old pine. It lay on the sharp points around the top, creating a rude bridge over the wall. None of them being particularly spry, they had them all carefully shimmied up the fallen tree and then dropped down into the cemetery, careful not to get stuck on the spikes. They all felt a chill as they stood in the quiet boneyard, and Randall claims that Rooster looked ready to brave the spikes if it meant being out of there.
The wind rattled the skeletal trees on the grounds, and the little flags that had been stuck on some of the graves for Labor Day snapped mischievously and startled them more than once. They had brought flashlights, but the big old traitors' moon that looked down on them was more than enough to keep them from tripping into an open grave or smashing their shins on an ill-placed tombstone. The quiet cemetery was enough to sober even the bravest of them, and it was probably why they heard the shovels before they saw the men.
Crouching behind a particularly large family headstone, Randal saw two men digging in a fresh grave. They were exhuming a body by the light of that pregnant moon, and Randall knew whose it was to boot. He had been to the widow Hadley's funeral that day, and it appeared that whoever these men were, they were taking her from her freshly dug plot. As they watched, the corpse flopped to the surface unceremoniously, followed by March's sons, Hannibal and Gavin. Hannibal hefted the body, leaving his younger brother to fill in the hole as he took it deeper into the cemetery. Gavin went to his work and bent as he was; he didn't notice the three men as they snuck around him and followed his older brother. Hannibal had been a football player, a linebacker for the local high school team in his day. He toted the frail old woman as easily as someone might a sack of grain. As they followed him, the three men weren't sure what they expected to find, but Randall was certain it would be something that would add a macabre twinge to the story he was working on.
They followed Hannibal as he came to a newly built mausoleum, the name across the door reading March. He unlocked the door and unceremoniously tossed the old woman into the crypt. The men hunkered low behind a pair of tombstones, but they needn't have bothered. Hannibal was a big boy, but his night eyes left something to be desired. He no more saw them than he did the place marker that he nearly tripped over on the way back to his brother, and as he stomped off into the cemetery, the three men approached the crypt.
The mortuary was a nice new one. Sunk into the ground a little to protect any caskets placed down there, it would have looked more at home in New Orleans than this Georgia backwater town. To the knowledge of anyone in town, the Marches did not have a family crypt until very recently. The only March buried there would be Jamison's wife since his mother and father were buried up in Macon at their own family plot. Hannibal may not have been the smartest March in town, but it appeared he was smart enough to lock up behind himself. Another one of those big, thick locks that had been found on the front gate greeted them, and the three men were forced to prowl around the mausoleum to see what they could find.
It was Charles who found the little vent in the mausoleum, but it was Randall who saw the horrors that lay inside.
Randall and Rooster had been looking for a window or perhaps another entrance when Charles had come hoofing it back to them to say that he had found a little vent that opened into the crypt. Randall asked him to show them where it was, and the three men found a little opening big enough for a large child to fit inside. Charles and Rooster were pulp wooders and much too big to squeeze into holes. However, Randall had made a career of squeezing into places he was not wanted.
Opting to stick his head in to get a better look, Randall had his friend hold his legs while he shimmied into the vent. Charles and Rooster slid him in as far as they could, and they said his flashlight could be seen through the slats at the top of the mausoleum.
When Randall started screaming and yelling for them to pull him out, it sounded like the devil himself had gotten a hold of him.
When they pulled him out, they said he was white as a sheet and said they had to tell the sheriff immediately.
Whether the brothers were gone when they made their escape or not, they missed them entirely as they beat a retreat back to town.
The sheriff took some convincing to get him out of bed, but when Randall told him what he had seen down in the crypt, he came with three other men and the biggest set of bolt cutters they could find at the station.
Jamison's sons were leaving when the sheriff and his boys pulled up, so they didn't end up needing the bolt cutters after all.
When he laid it out to the two young men that they could either cooperate or sit in the same prison cell that their father was about to occupy, they decided it might be in their best interest to show him what they'd been doing.
When the sheriff asked the boys if they would need suits, the two shook their heads. "The bees are mostly docile," Hannibal told them, and, sure enough, when they cracked the door, not a one came charging out. They descended into the ground, and by the light of the sheriff's flashlight, they saw the horrors below. The bees swarmed the small pile of corpses, taking whatever they used to make the honey back to the hives. The hives covered the walls of the crypt, making a sticky webwork of combs. The corpses down below were fresh, most of them having died very recently, and the bees were taking to them with gusto. The brothers said they came down once or twice a week to harvest the honey and that the vulture bees were taking to the warm Georgia summers quite nicely.
When the sheriff interrogated them, both said this had been their father's idea. He had read about the vulture bees and thought they sounded like an interesting idea. Then when their mother died, he did a little experiment. He had put her in the mortuary basement and procured some vulture bees of his own. The boys had been horrified when he showed them what he'd been up to, but even they had to admit, the honey had been the sweetest they had ever eaten. Something about the readily available nature of the local pollen, mixed with the bee's instinct to collect whatever they got from the corpses, had made for a potent and delicious treat.
"She was the catalyst for all this," Hannibal had said, "those first few jars he handed out to the people for tasting were honey made from mom's body."
He began to cry then, but the sheriff had all the evidence that he needed to proceed.
He arrested Jamison March that very night, but there seemed to be some confusion on what to charge him with. Couldn't really get him for murder because he hadn't killed anybody. Couldn't really get him for fraud because he buried those bodies just like he said he would. In the end, they got him on simple corpse desecration and misdemeanor fraud for not telling the families what he intended to do with the bodies.
He got less than five years in prison, and I hear that the warden let him keep the beehives in the prison garden.
Seems like his talents didn't go to waste even behind bars.
He left town when his time was served, he and his boys. The funeral home has been empty ever since. The police found the beginnings of his beekeeping in the basement. That, and a secondary hive with a swarm of angry vulture bees. Jamieson tried to sell the mortuary, but nobody seemed to want the place with that sort of reputation. It collapsed under a late February snow back in two thousand twelve, and they destroyed the mortuary they found all those bodies in about a year after Jamison went to prison.
And that's the sorted tale of Jamison March, and his bees.
I have no idea what they did with those bees after they turned them out of the March Mausoleum, they likely just turned them loose into an environment that was alien to them.
So, if you should be traveling through the Georgia back roads and see some larger-than-average bees or taste sweeter than average honey, be very suspicious about its origins.

​
When Jamison March, owner of March Mortuaries, put a sign out in front of his business saying that he would be selling honey, people thought it must be a joke.
What kind of mortician would sell honey? Would he sell it next to the caskets in his showroom? Would he offer it graveside at the cemetery? No one knew, but there was much speculation about that little sign.
Those who asked Jamison were in for quite a treat. Jamison told them that he would be selling his honey right here at the mortuary and even gave them a sample so they might tell their friends. What they sampled was supposedly the best honey any of them had ever eaten. They went on and on about the texture and the taste and the strange, exotic flavors within the honey. They said how they couldn't wait for Jamison to sell his honey, and they would be buying as much as they could on the opening day.
Others began to question where he was keeping his bees? They saw no beehives on his property, a two-bedroom apartment above the mortuary. They saw no hives on the mortuary property at all, in fact. They saw no hives in the cemetery or near the crematorium, but still, the honey came.
On the third of March, the first jar of that miraculous concoction appeared in the front room of Jamison's Mortuary. The mortuary was crowded for the next several days, and by Friday, not a jar was left to be purchased. Again, people praised the texture in the taste, as well as the myriad flavors that one would find within that jar. One of the buyers, Burt Lancaster, owned a large honey operation of his own. It is said that when he tasted Jamison honey, he proclaimed that no bee in his field had ever produced anything so sweet. Some would tell you that he burned his beehives that very afternoon, but that's a little more than town gossip.
For that summer back in 1986, no one could get enough of Jamison's honey.
They say Hellen Price used that honey to defeat her arrival, Linda Moore, in that summer's Fourth of July dessert bake-off.
They say Bert Cavill put that honey in his mead and could not make enough of it to satiate the local drunks.
They say Mary Sanders was taken to the hospital over at Oakley when she ate ten jars in a day and was reaching for an eleventh when her stomach ruptured.
But, again, that's all town gossip.
What is fact was the discovery made by Randall Smith, a local tabloid writer, in the fall of eighty-six.
Randall had a reputation for being less of a journalist and more of a mudslinger. If there was a nasty rumor started, Randall could usually be traced back to it. He had grown pretty tired of hearing about Jamison and his amazing honey. Randall was of the opinion that if something was too good to be true, then it likely was. He thought Jamison's honey must have some sort of secret ingredient that got people addicted to it. Maybe it was even a cover for some kind of dope operation that Jamison was running out of the mortuary or the cemetery. Whatever the case, Randall could smell the story, and it would be sweeter than any nectar the old mortician could produce.
So one night, as the moon hung full over Pleasant Rest Cemetery, Randall and his friends, Rooster Mallory and Charles Drainer, took a trip out to the cemetery to have a look around. Someone had reported earlier that week that they had seen some larger-than-normal bees around the cemetery grounds and speculated that these may be the source of Jamison's honey. It was the only lead that Randall had and seemed as good a lead as any. So after a couple of drinks at the Legion hall, the three men piled into Rooster's old Chevy and headed down to do some late-night snooping.
Randall still tells anyone who will listen how the graveyard was as silent as its namesake. The gate was locked, sporting a brand new Academy Security Lock, one of the big, thick gold ones that graced the sheds and fences of discerning security buffs in town. So, the three men had to find a different way in. This was strange since the cemetery had never been locked before. Jamison had always let people come and go as they please, but just recently, the old man has gotten a little cagey about many things. For one, the cemetery was now locked after nightfall. For another, no one was allowed in the basement of the mortuary, not even the man who came to deliver the bodies from the families. For third, no one but his two sons were allowed to work in the mortuary anymore, and both of them were under pain of death should they reveal the secret of Jamison's honey.
The three men had walked around the cemetery fence before they found a spot where the last windstorm had knocked down a thick old pine. It lay on the sharp points around the top, creating a rude bridge over the wall. None of them being particularly spry, they had them all carefully shimmied up the fallen tree and then dropped down into the cemetery, careful not to get stuck on the spikes. They all felt a chill as they stood in the quiet boneyard, and Randall claims that Rooster looked ready to brave the spikes if it meant being out of there.
The wind rattled the skeletal trees on the grounds, and the little flags that had been stuck on some of the graves for Labor Day snapped mischievously and startled them more than once. They had brought flashlights, but the big old traitors' moon that looked down on them was more than enough to keep them from tripping into an open grave or smashing their shins on an ill-placed tombstone. The quiet cemetery was enough to sober even the bravest of them, and it was probably why they heard the shovels before they saw the men.
Crouching behind a particularly large family headstone, Randal saw two men digging in a fresh grave. They were exhuming a body by the light of that pregnant moon, and Randall knew whose it was to boot. He had been to the widow Hadley's funeral that day, and it appeared that whoever these men were, they were taking her from her freshly dug plot. As they watched, the corpse flopped to the surface unceremoniously, followed by March's sons, Hannibal and Gavin. Hannibal hefted the body, leaving his younger brother to fill in the hole as he took it deeper into the cemetery. Gavin went to his work and bent as he was; he didn't notice the three men as they snuck around him and followed his older brother. Hannibal had been a football player, a linebacker for the local high school team in his day. He toted the frail old woman as easily as someone might a sack of grain. As they followed him, the three men weren't sure what they expected to find, but Randall was certain it would be something that would add a macabre twinge to the story he was working on.
They followed Hannibal as he came to a newly built mausoleum, the name across the door reading March. He unlocked the door and unceremoniously tossed the old woman into the crypt. The men hunkered low behind a pair of tombstones, but they needn't have bothered. Hannibal was a big boy, but his night eyes left something to be desired. He no more saw them than he did the place marker that he nearly tripped over on the way back to his brother, and as he stomped off into the cemetery, the three men approached the crypt.
The mortuary was a nice new one. Sunk into the ground a little to protect any caskets placed down there, it would have looked more at home in New Orleans than this Georgia backwater town. To the knowledge of anyone in town, the Marches did not have a family crypt until very recently. The only March buried there would be Jamison's wife since his mother and father were buried up in Macon at their own family plot. Hannibal may not have been the smartest March in town, but it appeared he was smart enough to lock up behind himself. Another one of those big, thick locks that had been found on the front gate greeted them, and the three men were forced to prowl around the mausoleum to see what they could find.
It was Charles who found the little vent in the mausoleum, but it was Randall who saw the horrors that lay inside.
Randall and Rooster had been looking for a window or perhaps another entrance when Charles had come hoofing it back to them to say that he had found a little vent that opened into the crypt. Randall asked him to show them where it was, and the three men found a little opening big enough for a large child to fit inside. Charles and Rooster were pulp wooders and much too big to squeeze into holes. However, Randall had made a career of squeezing into places he was not wanted.
Opting to stick his head in to get a better look, Randall had his friend hold his legs while he shimmied into the vent. Charles and Rooster slid him in as far as they could, and they said his flashlight could be seen through the slats at the top of the mausoleum.
When Randall started screaming and yelling for them to pull him out, it sounded like the devil himself had gotten a hold of him.
When they pulled him out, they said he was white as a sheet and said they had to tell the sheriff immediately.
Whether the brothers were gone when they made their escape or not, they missed them entirely as they beat a retreat back to town.
The sheriff took some convincing to get him out of bed, but when Randall told him what he had seen down in the crypt, he came with three other men and the biggest set of bolt cutters they could find at the station.
Jamison's sons were leaving when the sheriff and his boys pulled up, so they didn't end up needing the bolt cutters after all.
When he laid it out to the two young men that they could either cooperate or sit in the same prison cell that their father was about to occupy, they decided it might be in their best interest to show him what they'd been doing.
When the sheriff asked the boys if they would need suits, the two shook their heads. "The bees are mostly docile," Hannibal told them, and, sure enough, when they cracked the door, not a one came charging out. They descended into the ground, and by the light of the sheriff's flashlight, they saw the horrors below. The bees swarmed the small pile of corpses, taking whatever they used to make the honey back to the hives. The hives covered the walls of the crypt, making a sticky webwork of combs. The corpses down below were fresh, most of them having died very recently, and the bees were taking to them with gusto. The brothers said they came down once or twice a week to harvest the honey and that the vulture bees were taking to the warm Georgia summers quite nicely.
When the sheriff interrogated them, both said this had been their father's idea. He had read about the vulture bees and thought they sounded like an interesting idea. Then when their mother died, he did a little experiment. He had put her in the mortuary basement and procured some vulture bees of his own. The boys had been horrified when he showed them what he'd been up to, but even they had to admit, the honey had been the sweetest they had ever eaten. Something about the readily available nature of the local pollen, mixed with the bee's instinct to collect whatever they got from the corpses, had made for a potent and delicious treat.
"She was the catalyst for all this," Hannibal had said, "those first few jars he handed out to the people for tasting were honey made from mom's body."
He began to cry then, but the sheriff had all the evidence that he needed to proceed.
He arrested Jamison March that very night, but there seemed to be some confusion on what to charge him with. Couldn't really get him for murder because he hadn't killed anybody. Couldn't really get him for fraud because he buried those bodies just like he said he would. In the end, they got him on simple corpse desecration and misdemeanor fraud for not telling the families what he intended to do with the bodies.
He got less than five years in prison, and I hear that the warden let him keep the beehives in the prison garden.
Seems like his talents didn't go to waste even behind bars.
He left town when his time was served, he and his boys. The funeral home has been empty ever since. The police found the beginnings of his beekeeping in the basement. That, and a secondary hive with a swarm of angry vulture bees. Jamieson tried to sell the mortuary, but nobody seemed to want the place with that sort of reputation. It collapsed under a late February snow back in two thousand twelve, and they destroyed the mortuary they found all those bodies in about a year after Jamison went to prison.
And that's the sorted tale of Jamison March, and his bees.
I have no idea what they did with those bees after they turned them out of the March Mausoleum, they likely just turned them loose into an environment that was alien to them.
So, if you should be traveling through the Georgia back roads and see some larger-than-average bees or taste sweeter than average honey, be very suspicious about its origins.

​
When Jamison March, owner of March Mortuaries, put a sign out in front of his business saying that he would be selling honey, people thought it must be a joke.
What kind of mortician would sell honey? Would he sell it next to the caskets in his showroom? Would he offer it graveside at the cemetery? No one knew, but there was much speculation about that little sign.
Those who asked Jamison were in for quite a treat. Jamison told them that he would be selling his honey right here at the mortuary and even gave them a sample so they might tell their friends. What they sampled was supposedly the best honey any of them had ever eaten. They went on and on about the texture and the taste and the strange, exotic flavors within the honey. They said how they couldn't wait for Jamison to sell his honey, and they would be buying as much as they could on the opening day.
Others began to question where he was keeping his bees? They saw no beehives on his property, a two-bedroom apartment above the mortuary. They saw no hives on the mortuary property at all, in fact. They saw no hives in the cemetery or near the crematorium, but still, the honey came.
On the third of March, the first jar of that miraculous concoction appeared in the front room of Jamison's Mortuary. The mortuary was crowded for the next several days, and by Friday, not a jar was left to be purchased. Again, people praised the texture in the taste, as well as the myriad flavors that one would find within that jar. One of the buyers, Burt Lancaster, owned a large honey operation of his own. It is said that when he tasted Jamison honey, he proclaimed that no bee in his field had ever produced anything so sweet. Some would tell you that he burned his beehives that very afternoon, but that's a little more than town gossip.
For that summer back in 1986, no one could get enough of Jamison's honey.
They say Hellen Price used that honey to defeat her arrival, Linda Moore, in that summer's Fourth of July dessert bake-off.
They say Bert Cavill put that honey in his mead and could not make enough of it to satiate the local drunks.
They say Mary Sanders was taken to the hospital over at Oakley when she ate ten jars in a day and was reaching for an eleventh when her stomach ruptured.
But, again, that's all town gossip.
What is fact was the discovery made by Randall Smith, a local tabloid writer, in the fall of eighty-six.
Randall had a reputation for being less of a journalist and more of a mudslinger. If there was a nasty rumor started, Randall could usually be traced back to it. He had grown pretty tired of hearing about Jamison and his amazing honey. Randall was of the opinion that if something was too good to be true, then it likely was. He thought Jamison's honey must have some sort of secret ingredient that got people addicted to it. Maybe it was even a cover for some kind of dope operation that Jamison was running out of the mortuary or the cemetery. Whatever the case, Randall could smell the story, and it would be sweeter than any nectar the old mortician could produce.
So one night, as the moon hung full over Pleasant Rest Cemetery, Randall and his friends, Rooster Mallory and Charles Drainer, took a trip out to the cemetery to have a look around. Someone had reported earlier that week that they had seen some larger-than-normal bees around the cemetery grounds and speculated that these may be the source of Jamison's honey. It was the only lead that Randall had and seemed as good a lead as any. So after a couple of drinks at the Legion hall, the three men piled into Rooster's old Chevy and headed down to do some late-night snooping.
Randall still tells anyone who will listen how the graveyard was as silent as its namesake. The gate was locked, sporting a brand new Academy Security Lock, one of the big, thick gold ones that graced the sheds and fences of discerning security buffs in town. So, the three men had to find a different way in. This was strange since the cemetery had never been locked before. Jamison had always let people come and go as they please, but just recently, the old man has gotten a little cagey about many things. For one, the cemetery was now locked after nightfall. For another, no one was allowed in the basement of the mortuary, not even the man who came to deliver the bodies from the families. For third, no one but his two sons were allowed to work in the mortuary anymore, and both of them were under pain of death should they reveal the secret of Jamison's honey.
The three men had walked around the cemetery fence before they found a spot where the last windstorm had knocked down a thick old pine. It lay on the sharp points around the top, creating a rude bridge over the wall. None of them being particularly spry, they had them all carefully shimmied up the fallen tree and then dropped down into the cemetery, careful not to get stuck on the spikes. They all felt a chill as they stood in the quiet boneyard, and Randall claims that Rooster looked ready to brave the spikes if it meant being out of there.
The wind rattled the skeletal trees on the grounds, and the little flags that had been stuck on some of the graves for Labor Day snapped mischievously and startled them more than once. They had brought flashlights, but the big old traitors' moon that looked down on them was more than enough to keep them from tripping into an open grave or smashing their shins on an ill-placed tombstone. The quiet cemetery was enough to sober even the bravest of them, and it was probably why they heard the shovels before they saw the men.
Crouching behind a particularly large family headstone, Randal saw two men digging in a fresh grave. They were exhuming a body by the light of that pregnant moon, and Randall knew whose it was to boot. He had been to the widow Hadley's funeral that day, and it appeared that whoever these men were, they were taking her from her freshly dug plot. As they watched, the corpse flopped to the surface unceremoniously, followed by March's sons, Hannibal and Gavin. Hannibal hefted the body, leaving his younger brother to fill in the hole as he took it deeper into the cemetery. Gavin went to his work and bent as he was; he didn't notice the three men as they snuck around him and followed his older brother. Hannibal had been a football player, a linebacker for the local high school team in his day. He toted the frail old woman as easily as someone might a sack of grain. As they followed him, the three men weren't sure what they expected to find, but Randall was certain it would be something that would add a macabre twinge to the story he was working on.
They followed Hannibal as he came to a newly built mausoleum, the name across the door reading March. He unlocked the door and unceremoniously tossed the old woman into the crypt. The men hunkered low behind a pair of tombstones, but they needn't have bothered. Hannibal was a big boy, but his night eyes left something to be desired. He no more saw them than he did the place marker that he nearly tripped over on the way back to his brother, and as he stomped off into the cemetery, the three men approached the crypt.
The mortuary was a nice new one. Sunk into the ground a little to protect any caskets placed down there, it would have looked more at home in New Orleans than this Georgia backwater town. To the knowledge of anyone in town, the Marches did not have a family crypt until very recently. The only March buried there would be Jamison's wife since his mother and father were buried up in Macon at their own family plot. Hannibal may not have been the smartest March in town, but it appeared he was smart enough to lock up behind himself. Another one of those big, thick locks that had been found on the front gate greeted them, and the three men were forced to prowl around the mausoleum to see what they could find.
It was Charles who found the little vent in the mausoleum, but it was Randall who saw the horrors that lay inside.
Randall and Rooster had been looking for a window or perhaps another entrance when Charles had come hoofing it back to them to say that he had found a little vent that opened into the crypt. Randall asked him to show them where it was, and the three men found a little opening big enough for a large child to fit inside. Charles and Rooster were pulp wooders and much too big to squeeze into holes. However, Randall had made a career of squeezing into places he was not wanted.
Opting to stick his head in to get a better look, Randall had his friend hold his legs while he shimmied into the vent. Charles and Rooster slid him in as far as they could, and they said his flashlight could be seen through the slats at the top of the mausoleum.
When Randall started screaming and yelling for them to pull him out, it sounded like the devil himself had gotten a hold of him.
When they pulled him out, they said he was white as a sheet and said they had to tell the sheriff immediately.
Whether the brothers were gone when they made their escape or not, they missed them entirely as they beat a retreat back to town.
The sheriff took some convincing to get him out of bed, but when Randall told him what he had seen down in the crypt, he came with three other men and the biggest set of bolt cutters they could find at the station.
Jamison's sons were leaving when the sheriff and his boys pulled up, so they didn't end up needing the bolt cutters after all.
When he laid it out to the two young men that they could either cooperate or sit in the same prison cell that their father was about to occupy, they decided it might be in their best interest to show him what they'd been doing.
When the sheriff asked the boys if they would need suits, the two shook their heads. "The bees are mostly docile," Hannibal told them, and, sure enough, when they cracked the door, not a one came charging out. They descended into the ground, and by the light of the sheriff's flashlight, they saw the horrors below. The bees swarmed the small pile of corpses, taking whatever they used to make the honey back to the hives. The hives covered the walls of the crypt, making a sticky webwork of combs. The corpses down below were fresh, most of them having died very recently, and the bees were taking to them with gusto. The brothers said they came down once or twice a week to harvest the honey and that the vulture bees were taking to the warm Georgia summers quite nicely.
When the sheriff interrogated them, both said this had been their father's idea. He had read about the vulture bees and thought they sounded like an interesting idea. Then when their mother died, he did a little experiment. He had put her in the mortuary basement and procured some vulture bees of his own. The boys had been horrified when he showed them what he'd been up to, but even they had to admit, the honey had been the sweetest they had ever eaten. Something about the readily available nature of the local pollen, mixed with the bee's instinct to collect whatever they got from the corpses, had made for a potent and delicious treat.
"She was the catalyst for all this," Hannibal had said, "those first few jars he handed out to the people for tasting were honey made from mom's body."
He began to cry then, but the sheriff had all the evidence that he needed to proceed.
He arrested Jamison March that very night, but there seemed to be some confusion on what to charge him with. Couldn't really get him for murder because he hadn't killed anybody. Couldn't really get him for fraud because he buried those bodies just like he said he would. In the end, they got him on simple corpse desecration and misdemeanor fraud for not telling the families what he intended to do with the bodies.
He got less than five years in prison, and I hear that the warden let him keep the beehives in the prison garden.
Seems like his talents didn't go to waste even behind bars.
He left town when his time was served, he and his boys. The funeral home has been empty ever since. The police found the beginnings of his beekeeping in the basement. That, and a secondary hive with a swarm of angry vulture bees. Jamieson tried to sell the mortuary, but nobody seemed to want the place with that sort of reputation. It collapsed under a late February snow back in two thousand twelve, and they destroyed the mortuary they found all those bodies in about a year after Jamison went to prison.
And that's the sorted tale of Jamison March, and his bees.
I have no idea what they did with those bees after they turned them out of the March Mausoleum, they likely just turned them loose into an environment that was alien to them.
So, if you should be traveling through the Georgia back roads and see some larger-than-average bees or taste sweeter than average honey, be very suspicious about its origins.

​
When Jamison March, owner of March Mortuaries, put a sign out in front of his business saying that he would be selling honey, people thought it must be a joke.
What kind of mortician would sell honey? Would he sell it next to the caskets in his showroom? Would he offer it graveside at the cemetery? No one knew, but there was much speculation about that little sign.
Those who asked Jamison were in for quite a treat. Jamison told them that he would be selling his honey right here at the mortuary and even gave them a sample so they might tell their friends. What they sampled was supposedly the best honey any of them had ever eaten. They went on and on about the texture and the taste and the strange, exotic flavors within the honey. They said how they couldn't wait for Jamison to sell his honey, and they would be buying as much as they could on the opening day.
Others began to question where he was keeping his bees? They saw no beehives on his property, a two-bedroom apartment above the mortuary. They saw no hives on the mortuary property at all, in fact. They saw no hives in the cemetery or near the crematorium, but still, the honey came.
On the third of March, the first jar of that miraculous concoction appeared in the front room of Jamison's Mortuary. The mortuary was crowded for the next several days, and by Friday, not a jar was left to be purchased. Again, people praised the texture in the taste, as well as the myriad flavors that one would find within that jar. One of the buyers, Burt Lancaster, owned a large honey operation of his own. It is said that when he tasted Jamison honey, he proclaimed that no bee in his field had ever produced anything so sweet. Some would tell you that he burned his beehives that very afternoon, but that's a little more than town gossip.
For that summer back in 1986, no one could get enough of Jamison's honey.
They say Hellen Price used that honey to defeat her arrival, Linda Moore, in that summer's Fourth of July dessert bake-off.
They say Bert Cavill put that honey in his mead and could not make enough of it to satiate the local drunks.
They say Mary Sanders was taken to the hospital over at Oakley when she ate ten jars in a day and was reaching for an eleventh when her stomach ruptured.
But, again, that's all town gossip.
What is fact was the discovery made by Randall Smith, a local tabloid writer, in the fall of eighty-six.
Randall had a reputation for being less of a journalist and more of a mudslinger. If there was a nasty rumor started, Randall could usually be traced back to it. He had grown pretty tired of hearing about Jamison and his amazing honey. Randall was of the opinion that if something was too good to be true, then it likely was. He thought Jamison's honey must have some sort of secret ingredient that got people addicted to it. Maybe it was even a cover for some kind of dope operation that Jamison was running out of the mortuary or the cemetery. Whatever the case, Randall could smell the story, and it would be sweeter than any nectar the old mortician could produce.
So one night, as the moon hung full over Pleasant Rest Cemetery, Randall and his friends, Rooster Mallory and Charles Drainer, took a trip out to the cemetery to have a look around. Someone had reported earlier that week that they had seen some larger-than-normal bees around the cemetery grounds and speculated that these may be the source of Jamison's honey. It was the only lead that Randall had and seemed as good a lead as any. So after a couple of drinks at the Legion hall, the three men piled into Rooster's old Chevy and headed down to do some late-night snooping.
Randall still tells anyone who will listen how the graveyard was as silent as its namesake. The gate was locked, sporting a brand new Academy Security Lock, one of the big, thick gold ones that graced the sheds and fences of discerning security buffs in town. So, the three men had to find a different way in. This was strange since the cemetery had never been locked before. Jamison had always let people come and go as they please, but just recently, the old man has gotten a little cagey about many things. For one, the cemetery was now locked after nightfall. For another, no one was allowed in the basement of the mortuary, not even the man who came to deliver the bodies from the families. For third, no one but his two sons were allowed to work in the mortuary anymore, and both of them were under pain of death should they reveal the secret of Jamison's honey.
The three men had walked around the cemetery fence before they found a spot where the last windstorm had knocked down a thick old pine. It lay on the sharp points around the top, creating a rude bridge over the wall. None of them being particularly spry, they had them all carefully shimmied up the fallen tree and then dropped down into the cemetery, careful not to get stuck on the spikes. They all felt a chill as they stood in the quiet boneyard, and Randall claims that Rooster looked ready to brave the spikes if it meant being out of there.
The wind rattled the skeletal trees on the grounds, and the little flags that had been stuck on some of the graves for Labor Day snapped mischievously and startled them more than once. They had brought flashlights, but the big old traitors' moon that looked down on them was more than enough to keep them from tripping into an open grave or smashing their shins on an ill-placed tombstone. The quiet cemetery was enough to sober even the bravest of them, and it was probably why they heard the shovels before they saw the men.
Crouching behind a particularly large family headstone, Randal saw two men digging in a fresh grave. They were exhuming a body by the light of that pregnant moon, and Randall knew whose it was to boot. He had been to the widow Hadley's funeral that day, and it appeared that whoever these men were, they were taking her from her freshly dug plot. As they watched, the corpse flopped to the surface unceremoniously, followed by March's sons, Hannibal and Gavin. Hannibal hefted the body, leaving his younger brother to fill in the hole as he took it deeper into the cemetery. Gavin went to his work and bent as he was; he didn't notice the three men as they snuck around him and followed his older brother. Hannibal had been a football player, a linebacker for the local high school team in his day. He toted the frail old woman as easily as someone might a sack of grain. As they followed him, the three men weren't sure what they expected to find, but Randall was certain it would be something that would add a macabre twinge to the story he was working on.
They followed Hannibal as he came to a newly built mausoleum, the name across the door reading March. He unlocked the door and unceremoniously tossed the old woman into the crypt. The men hunkered low behind a pair of tombstones, but they needn't have bothered. Hannibal was a big boy, but his night eyes left something to be desired. He no more saw them than he did the place marker that he nearly tripped over on the way back to his brother, and as he stomped off into the cemetery, the three men approached the crypt.
The mortuary was a nice new one. Sunk into the ground a little to protect any caskets placed down there, it would have looked more at home in New Orleans than this Georgia backwater town. To the knowledge of anyone in town, the Marches did not have a family crypt until very recently. The only March buried there would be Jamison's wife since his mother and father were buried up in Macon at their own family plot. Hannibal may not have been the smartest March in town, but it appeared he was smart enough to lock up behind himself. Another one of those big, thick locks that had been found on the front gate greeted them, and the three men were forced to prowl around the mausoleum to see what they could find.
It was Charles who found the little vent in the mausoleum, but it was Randall who saw the horrors that lay inside.
Randall and Rooster had been looking for a window or perhaps another entrance when Charles had come hoofing it back to them to say that he had found a little vent that opened into the crypt. Randall asked him to show them where it was, and the three men found a little opening big enough for a large child to fit inside. Charles and Rooster were pulp wooders and much too big to squeeze into holes. However, Randall had made a career of squeezing into places he was not wanted.
Opting to stick his head in to get a better look, Randall had his friend hold his legs while he shimmied into the vent. Charles and Rooster slid him in as far as they could, and they said his flashlight could be seen through the slats at the top of the mausoleum.
When Randall started screaming and yelling for them to pull him out, it sounded like the devil himself had gotten a hold of him.
When they pulled him out, they said he was white as a sheet and said they had to tell the sheriff immediately.
Whether the brothers were gone when they made their escape or not, they missed them entirely as they beat a retreat back to town.
The sheriff took some convincing to get him out of bed, but when Randall told him what he had seen down in the crypt, he came with three other men and the biggest set of bolt cutters they could find at the station.
Jamison's sons were leaving when the sheriff and his boys pulled up, so they didn't end up needing the bolt cutters after all.
When he laid it out to the two young men that they could either cooperate or sit in the same prison cell that their father was about to occupy, they decided it might be in their best interest to show him what they'd been doing.
When the sheriff asked the boys if they would need suits, the two shook their heads. "The bees are mostly docile," Hannibal told them, and, sure enough, when they cracked the door, not a one came charging out. They descended into the ground, and by the light of the sheriff's flashlight, they saw the horrors below. The bees swarmed the small pile of corpses, taking whatever they used to make the honey back to the hives. The hives covered the walls of the crypt, making a sticky webwork of combs. The corpses down below were fresh, most of them having died very recently, and the bees were taking to them with gusto. The brothers said they came down once or twice a week to harvest the honey and that the vulture bees were taking to the warm Georgia summers quite nicely.
When the sheriff interrogated them, both said this had been their father's idea. He had read about the vulture bees and thought they sounded like an interesting idea. Then when their mother died, he did a little experiment. He had put her in the mortuary basement and procured some vulture bees of his own. The boys had been horrified when he showed them what he'd been up to, but even they had to admit, the honey had been the sweetest they had ever eaten. Something about the readily available nature of the local pollen, mixed with the bee's instinct to collect whatever they got from the corpses, had made for a potent and delicious treat.
"She was the catalyst for all this," Hannibal had said, "those first few jars he handed out to the people for tasting were honey made from mom's body."
He began to cry then, but the sheriff had all the evidence that he needed to proceed.
He arrested Jamison March that very night, but there seemed to be some confusion on what to charge him with. Couldn't really get him for murder because he hadn't killed anybody. Couldn't really get him for fraud because he buried those bodies just like he said he would. In the end, they got him on simple corpse desecration and misdemeanor fraud for not telling the families what he intended to do with the bodies.
He got less than five years in prison, and I hear that the warden let him keep the beehives in the prison garden.
Seems like his talents didn't go to waste even behind bars.
He left town when his time was served, he and his boys. The funeral home has been empty ever since. The police found the beginnings of his beekeeping in the basement. That, and a secondary hive with a swarm of angry vulture bees. Jamieson tried to sell the mortuary, but nobody seemed to want the place with that sort of reputation. It collapsed under a late February snow back in two thousand twelve, and they destroyed the mortuary they found all those bodies in about a year after Jamison went to prison.
And that's the sorted tale of Jamison March, and his bees.
I have no idea what they did with those bees after they turned them out of the March Mausoleum, they likely just turned them loose into an environment that was alien to them.
So, if you should be traveling through the Georgia back roads and see some larger-than-average bees or taste sweeter than average honey, be very suspicious about its origins.

​
When Jamison March, owner of March Mortuaries, put a sign out in front of his business saying that he would be selling honey, people thought it must be a joke.
What kind of mortician would sell honey? Would he sell it next to the caskets in his showroom? Would he offer it graveside at the cemetery? No one knew, but there was much speculation about that little sign.
Those who asked Jamison were in for quite a treat. Jamison told them that he would be selling his honey right here at the mortuary and even gave them a sample so they might tell their friends. What they sampled was supposedly the best honey any of them had ever eaten. They went on and on about the texture and the taste and the strange, exotic flavors within the honey. They said how they couldn't wait for Jamison to sell his honey, and they would be buying as much as they could on the opening day.
Others began to question where he was keeping his bees? They saw no beehives on his property, a two-bedroom apartment above the mortuary. They saw no hives on the mortuary property at all, in fact. They saw no hives in the cemetery or near the crematorium, but still, the honey came.
On the third of March, the first jar of that miraculous concoction appeared in the front room of Jamison's Mortuary. The mortuary was crowded for the next several days, and by Friday, not a jar was left to be purchased. Again, people praised the texture in the taste, as well as the myriad flavors that one would find within that jar. One of the buyers, Burt Lancaster, owned a large honey operation of his own. It is said that when he tasted Jamison honey, he proclaimed that no bee in his field had ever produced anything so sweet. Some would tell you that he burned his beehives that very afternoon, but that's a little more than town gossip.
For that summer back in 1986, no one could get enough of Jamison's honey.
They say Hellen Price used that honey to defeat her arrival, Linda Moore, in that summer's Fourth of July dessert bake-off.
They say Bert Cavill put that honey in his mead and could not make enough of it to satiate the local drunks.
They say Mary Sanders was taken to the hospital over at Oakley when she ate ten jars in a day and was reaching for an eleventh when her stomach ruptured.
But, again, that's all town gossip.
What is fact was the discovery made by Randall Smith, a local tabloid writer, in the fall of eighty-six.
Randall had a reputation for being less of a journalist and more of a mudslinger. If there was a nasty rumor started, Randall could usually be traced back to it. He had grown pretty tired of hearing about Jamison and his amazing honey. Randall was of the opinion that if something was too good to be true, then it likely was. He thought Jamison's honey must have some sort of secret ingredient that got people addicted to it. Maybe it was even a cover for some kind of dope operation that Jamison was running out of the mortuary or the cemetery. Whatever the case, Randall could smell the story, and it would be sweeter than any nectar the old mortician could produce.
So one night, as the moon hung full over Pleasant Rest Cemetery, Randall and his friends, Rooster Mallory and Charles Drainer, took a trip out to the cemetery to have a look around. Someone had reported earlier that week that they had seen some larger-than-normal bees around the cemetery grounds and speculated that these may be the source of Jamison's honey. It was the only lead that Randall had and seemed as good a lead as any. So after a couple of drinks at the Legion hall, the three men piled into Rooster's old Chevy and headed down to do some late-night snooping.
Randall still tells anyone who will listen how the graveyard was as silent as its namesake. The gate was locked, sporting a brand new Academy Security Lock, one of the big, thick gold ones that graced the sheds and fences of discerning security buffs in town. So, the three men had to find a different way in. This was strange since the cemetery had never been locked before. Jamison had always let people come and go as they please, but just recently, the old man has gotten a little cagey about many things. For one, the cemetery was now locked after nightfall. For another, no one was allowed in the basement of the mortuary, not even the man who came to deliver the bodies from the families. For third, no one but his two sons were allowed to work in the mortuary anymore, and both of them were under pain of death should they reveal the secret of Jamison's honey.
The three men had walked around the cemetery fence before they found a spot where the last windstorm had knocked down a thick old pine. It lay on the sharp points around the top, creating a rude bridge over the wall. None of them being particularly spry, they had them all carefully shimmied up the fallen tree and then dropped down into the cemetery, careful not to get stuck on the spikes. They all felt a chill as they stood in the quiet boneyard, and Randall claims that Rooster looked ready to brave the spikes if it meant being out of there.
The wind rattled the skeletal trees on the grounds, and the little flags that had been stuck on some of the graves for Labor Day snapped mischievously and startled them more than once. They had brought flashlights, but the big old traitors' moon that looked down on them was more than enough to keep them from tripping into an open grave or smashing their shins on an ill-placed tombstone. The quiet cemetery was enough to sober even the bravest of them, and it was probably why they heard the shovels before they saw the men.
Crouching behind a particularly large family headstone, Randal saw two men digging in a fresh grave. They were exhuming a body by the light of that pregnant moon, and Randall knew whose it was to boot. He had been to the widow Hadley's funeral that day, and it appeared that whoever these men were, they were taking her from her freshly dug plot. As they watched, the corpse flopped to the surface unceremoniously, followed by March's sons, Hannibal and Gavin. Hannibal hefted the body, leaving his younger brother to fill in the hole as he took it deeper into the cemetery. Gavin went to his work and bent as he was; he didn't notice the three men as they snuck around him and followed his older brother. Hannibal had been a football player, a linebacker for the local high school team in his day. He toted the frail old woman as easily as someone might a sack of grain. As they followed him, the three men weren't sure what they expected to find, but Randall was certain it would be something that would add a macabre twinge to the story he was working on.
They followed Hannibal as he came to a newly built mausoleum, the name across the door reading March. He unlocked the door and unceremoniously tossed the old woman into the crypt. The men hunkered low behind a pair of tombstones, but they needn't have bothered. Hannibal was a big boy, but his night eyes left something to be desired. He no more saw them than he did the place marker that he nearly tripped over on the way back to his brother, and as he stomped off into the cemetery, the three men approached the crypt.
The mortuary was a nice new one. Sunk into the ground a little to protect any caskets placed down there, it would have looked more at home in New Orleans than this Georgia backwater town. To the knowledge of anyone in town, the Marches did not have a family crypt until very recently. The only March buried there would be Jamison's wife since his mother and father were buried up in Macon at their own family plot. Hannibal may not have been the smartest March in town, but it appeared he was smart enough to lock up behind himself. Another one of those big, thick locks that had been found on the front gate greeted them, and the three men were forced to prowl around the mausoleum to see what they could find.
It was Charles who found the little vent in the mausoleum, but it was Randall who saw the horrors that lay inside.
Randall and Rooster had been looking for a window or perhaps another entrance when Charles had come hoofing it back to them to say that he had found a little vent that opened into the crypt. Randall asked him to show them where it was, and the three men found a little opening big enough for a large child to fit inside. Charles and Rooster were pulp wooders and much too big to squeeze into holes. However, Randall had made a career of squeezing into places he was not wanted.
Opting to stick his head in to get a better look, Randall had his friend hold his legs while he shimmied into the vent. Charles and Rooster slid him in as far as they could, and they said his flashlight could be seen through the slats at the top of the mausoleum.
When Randall started screaming and yelling for them to pull him out, it sounded like the devil himself had gotten a hold of him.
When they pulled him out, they said he was white as a sheet and said they had to tell the sheriff immediately.
Whether the brothers were gone when they made their escape or not, they missed them entirely as they beat a retreat back to town.
The sheriff took some convincing to get him out of bed, but when Randall told him what he had seen down in the crypt, he came with three other men and the biggest set of bolt cutters they could find at the station.
Jamison's sons were leaving when the sheriff and his boys pulled up, so they didn't end up needing the bolt cutters after all.
When he laid it out to the two young men that they could either cooperate or sit in the same prison cell that their father was about to occupy, they decided it might be in their best interest to show him what they'd been doing.
When the sheriff asked the boys if they would need suits, the two shook their heads. "The bees are mostly docile," Hannibal told them, and, sure enough, when they cracked the door, not a one came charging out. They descended into the ground, and by the light of the sheriff's flashlight, they saw the horrors below. The bees swarmed the small pile of corpses, taking whatever they used to make the honey back to the hives. The hives covered the walls of the crypt, making a sticky webwork of combs. The corpses down below were fresh, most of them having died very recently, and the bees were taking to them with gusto. The brothers said they came down once or twice a week to harvest the honey and that the vulture bees were taking to the warm Georgia summers quite nicely.
When the sheriff interrogated them, both said this had been their father's idea. He had read about the vulture bees and thought they sounded like an interesting idea. Then when their mother died, he did a little experiment. He had put her in the mortuary basement and procured some vulture bees of his own. The boys had been horrified when he showed them what he'd been up to, but even they had to admit, the honey had been the sweetest they had ever eaten. Something about the readily available nature of the local pollen, mixed with the bee's instinct to collect whatever they got from the corpses, had made for a potent and delicious treat.
"She was the catalyst for all this," Hannibal had said, "those first few jars he handed out to the people for tasting were honey made from mom's body."
He began to cry then, but the sheriff had all the evidence that he needed to proceed.
He arrested Jamison March that very night, but there seemed to be some confusion on what to charge him with. Couldn't really get him for murder because he hadn't killed anybody. Couldn't really get him for fraud because he buried those bodies just like he said he would. In the end, they got him on simple corpse desecration and misdemeanor fraud for not telling the families what he intended to do with the bodies.
He got less than five years in prison, and I hear that the warden let him keep the beehives in the prison garden.
Seems like his talents didn't go to waste even behind bars.
He left town when his time was served, he and his boys. The funeral home has been empty ever since. The police found the beginnings of his beekeeping in the basement. That, and a secondary hive with a swarm of angry vulture bees. Jamieson tried to sell the mortuary, but nobody seemed to want the place with that sort of reputation. It collapsed under a late February snow back in two thousand twelve, and they destroyed the mortuary they found all those bodies in about a year after Jamison went to prison.
And that's the sorted tale of Jamison March, and his bees.
I have no idea what they did with those bees after they turned them out of the March Mausoleum, they likely just turned them loose into an environment that was alien to them.
So, if you should be traveling through the Georgia back roads and see some larger-than-average bees or taste sweeter than average honey, be very suspicious about its origins.

​
When Jamison March, owner of March Mortuaries, put a sign out in front of his business saying that he would be selling honey, people thought it must be a joke.
What kind of mortician would sell honey? Would he sell it next to the caskets in his showroom? Would he offer it graveside at the cemetery? No one knew, but there was much speculation about that little sign.
Those who asked Jamison were in for quite a treat. Jamison told them that he would be selling his honey right here at the mortuary and even gave them a sample so they might tell their friends. What they sampled was supposedly the best honey any of them had ever eaten. They went on and on about the texture and the taste and the strange, exotic flavors within the honey. They said how they couldn't wait for Jamison to sell his honey, and they would be buying as much as they could on the opening day.
Others began to question where he was keeping his bees? They saw no beehives on his property, a two-bedroom apartment above the mortuary. They saw no hives on the mortuary property at all, in fact. They saw no hives in the cemetery or near the crematorium, but still, the honey came.
On the third of March, the first jar of that miraculous concoction appeared in the front room of Jamison's Mortuary. The mortuary was crowded for the next several days, and by Friday, not a jar was left to be purchased. Again, people praised the texture in the taste, as well as the myriad flavors that one would find within that jar. One of the buyers, Burt Lancaster, owned a large honey operation of his own. It is said that when he tasted Jamison honey, he proclaimed that no bee in his field had ever produced anything so sweet. Some would tell you that he burned his beehives that very afternoon, but that's a little more than town gossip.
For that summer back in 1986, no one could get enough of Jamison's honey.
They say Hellen Price used that honey to defeat her arrival, Linda Moore, in that summer's Fourth of July dessert bake-off.
They say Bert Cavill put that honey in his mead and could not make enough of it to satiate the local drunks.
They say Mary Sanders was taken to the hospital over at Oakley when she ate ten jars in a day and was reaching for an eleventh when her stomach ruptured.
But, again, that's all town gossip.
What is fact was the discovery made by Randall Smith, a local tabloid writer, in the fall of eighty-six.
Randall had a reputation for being less of a journalist and more of a mudslinger. If there was a nasty rumor started, Randall could usually be traced back to it. He had grown pretty tired of hearing about Jamison and his amazing honey. Randall was of the opinion that if something was too good to be true, then it likely was. He thought Jamison's honey must have some sort of secret ingredient that got people addicted to it. Maybe it was even a cover for some kind of dope operation that Jamison was running out of the mortuary or the cemetery. Whatever the case, Randall could smell the story, and it would be sweeter than any nectar the old mortician could produce.
So one night, as the moon hung full over Pleasant Rest Cemetery, Randall and his friends, Rooster Mallory and Charles Drainer, took a trip out to the cemetery to have a look around. Someone had reported earlier that week that they had seen some larger-than-normal bees around the cemetery grounds and speculated that these may be the source of Jamison's honey. It was the only lead that Randall had and seemed as good a lead as any. So after a couple of drinks at the Legion hall, the three men piled into Rooster's old Chevy and headed down to do some late-night snooping.
Randall still tells anyone who will listen how the graveyard was as silent as its namesake. The gate was locked, sporting a brand new Academy Security Lock, one of the big, thick gold ones that graced the sheds and fences of discerning security buffs in town. So, the three men had to find a different way in. This was strange since the cemetery had never been locked before. Jamison had always let people come and go as they please, but just recently, the old man has gotten a little cagey about many things. For one, the cemetery was now locked after nightfall. For another, no one was allowed in the basement of the mortuary, not even the man who came to deliver the bodies from the families. For third, no one but his two sons were allowed to work in the mortuary anymore, and both of them were under pain of death should they reveal the secret of Jamison's honey.
The three men had walked around the cemetery fence before they found a spot where the last windstorm had knocked down a thick old pine. It lay on the sharp points around the top, creating a rude bridge over the wall. None of them being particularly spry, they had them all carefully shimmied up the fallen tree and then dropped down into the cemetery, careful not to get stuck on the spikes. They all felt a chill as they stood in the quiet boneyard, and Randall claims that Rooster looked ready to brave the spikes if it meant being out of there.
The wind rattled the skeletal trees on the grounds, and the little flags that had been stuck on some of the graves for Labor Day snapped mischievously and startled them more than once. They had brought flashlights, but the big old traitors' moon that looked down on them was more than enough to keep them from tripping into an open grave or smashing their shins on an ill-placed tombstone. The quiet cemetery was enough to sober even the bravest of them, and it was probably why they heard the shovels before they saw the men.
Crouching behind a particularly large family headstone, Randal saw two men digging in a fresh grave. They were exhuming a body by the light of that pregnant moon, and Randall knew whose it was to boot. He had been to the widow Hadley's funeral that day, and it appeared that whoever these men were, they were taking her from her freshly dug plot. As they watched, the corpse flopped to the surface unceremoniously, followed by March's sons, Hannibal and Gavin. Hannibal hefted the body, leaving his younger brother to fill in the hole as he took it deeper into the cemetery. Gavin went to his work and bent as he was; he didn't notice the three men as they snuck around him and followed his older brother. Hannibal had been a football player, a linebacker for the local high school team in his day. He toted the frail old woman as easily as someone might a sack of grain. As they followed him, the three men weren't sure what they expected to find, but Randall was certain it would be something that would add a macabre twinge to the story he was working on.
They followed Hannibal as he came to a newly built mausoleum, the name across the door reading March. He unlocked the door and unceremoniously tossed the old woman into the crypt. The men hunkered low behind a pair of tombstones, but they needn't have bothered. Hannibal was a big boy, but his night eyes left something to be desired. He no more saw them than he did the place marker that he nearly tripped over on the way back to his brother, and as he stomped off into the cemetery, the three men approached the crypt.
The mortuary was a nice new one. Sunk into the ground a little to protect any caskets placed down there, it would have looked more at home in New Orleans than this Georgia backwater town. To the knowledge of anyone in town, the Marches did not have a family crypt until very recently. The only March buried there would be Jamison's wife since his mother and father were buried up in Macon at their own family plot. Hannibal may not have been the smartest March in town, but it appeared he was smart enough to lock up behind himself. Another one of those big, thick locks that had been found on the front gate greeted them, and the three men were forced to prowl around the mausoleum to see what they could find.
It was Charles who found the little vent in the mausoleum, but it was Randall who saw the horrors that lay inside.
Randall and Rooster had been looking for a window or perhaps another entrance when Charles had come hoofing it back to them to say that he had found a little vent that opened into the crypt. Randall asked him to show them where it was, and the three men found a little opening big enough for a large child to fit inside. Charles and Rooster were pulp wooders and much too big to squeeze into holes. However, Randall had made a career of squeezing into places he was not wanted.
Opting to stick his head in to get a better look, Randall had his friend hold his legs while he shimmied into the vent. Charles and Rooster slid him in as far as they could, and they said his flashlight could be seen through the slats at the top of the mausoleum.
When Randall started screaming and yelling for them to pull him out, it sounded like the devil himself had gotten a hold of him.
When they pulled him out, they said he was white as a sheet and said they had to tell the sheriff immediately.
Whether the brothers were gone when they made their escape or not, they missed them entirely as they beat a retreat back to town.
The sheriff took some convincing to get him out of bed, but when Randall told him what he had seen down in the crypt, he came with three other men and the biggest set of bolt cutters they could find at the station.
Jamison's sons were leaving when the sheriff and his boys pulled up, so they didn't end up needing the bolt cutters after all.
When he laid it out to the two young men that they could either cooperate or sit in the same prison cell that their father was about to occupy, they decided it might be in their best interest to show him what they'd been doing.
When the sheriff asked the boys if they would need suits, the two shook their heads. "The bees are mostly docile," Hannibal told them, and, sure enough, when they cracked the door, not a one came charging out. They descended into the ground, and by the light of the sheriff's flashlight, they saw the horrors below. The bees swarmed the small pile of corpses, taking whatever they used to make the honey back to the hives. The hives covered the walls of the crypt, making a sticky webwork of combs. The corpses down below were fresh, most of them having died very recently, and the bees were taking to them with gusto. The brothers said they came down once or twice a week to harvest the honey and that the vulture bees were taking to the warm Georgia summers quite nicely.
When the sheriff interrogated them, both said this had been their father's idea. He had read about the vulture bees and thought they sounded like an interesting idea. Then when their mother died, he did a little experiment. He had put her in the mortuary basement and procured some vulture bees of his own. The boys had been horrified when he showed them what he'd been up to, but even they had to admit, the honey had been the sweetest they had ever eaten. Something about the readily available nature of the local pollen, mixed with the bee's instinct to collect whatever they got from the corpses, had made for a potent and delicious treat.
"She was the catalyst for all this," Hannibal had said, "those first few jars he handed out to the people for tasting were honey made from mom's body."
He began to cry then, but the sheriff had all the evidence that he needed to proceed.
He arrested Jamison March that very night, but there seemed to be some confusion on what to charge him with. Couldn't really get him for murder because he hadn't killed anybody. Couldn't really get him for fraud because he buried those bodies just like he said he would. In the end, they got him on simple corpse desecration and misdemeanor fraud for not telling the families what he intended to do with the bodies.
He got less than five years in prison, and I hear that the warden let him keep the beehives in the prison garden.
Seems like his talents didn't go to waste even behind bars.
He left town when his time was served, he and his boys. The funeral home has been empty ever since. The police found the beginnings of his beekeeping in the basement. That, and a secondary hive with a swarm of angry vulture bees. Jamieson tried to sell the mortuary, but nobody seemed to want the place with that sort of reputation. It collapsed under a late February snow back in two thousand twelve, and they destroyed the mortuary they found all those bodies in about a year after Jamison went to prison.
And that's the sorted tale of Jamison March, and his bees.
I have no idea what they did with those bees after they turned them out of the March Mausoleum, they likely just turned them loose into an environment that was alien to them.
So, if you should be traveling through the Georgia back roads and see some larger-than-average bees or taste sweeter than average honey, be very suspicious about its origins.

​
When Jamison March, owner of March Mortuaries, put a sign out in front of his business saying that he would be selling honey, people thought it must be a joke.
What kind of mortician would sell honey? Would he sell it next to the caskets in his showroom? Would he offer it graveside at the cemetery? No one knew, but there was much speculation about that little sign.
Those who asked Jamison were in for quite a treat. Jamison told them that he would be selling his honey right here at the mortuary and even gave them a sample so they might tell their friends. What they sampled was supposedly the best honey any of them had ever eaten. They went on and on about the texture and the taste and the strange, exotic flavors within the honey. They said how they couldn't wait for Jamison to sell his honey, and they would be buying as much as they could on the opening day.
Others began to question where he was keeping his bees? They saw no beehives on his property, a two-bedroom apartment above the mortuary. They saw no hives on the mortuary property at all, in fact. They saw no hives in the cemetery or near the crematorium, but still, the honey came.
On the third of March, the first jar of that miraculous concoction appeared in the front room of Jamison's Mortuary. The mortuary was crowded for the next several days, and by Friday, not a jar was left to be purchased. Again, people praised the texture in the taste, as well as the myriad flavors that one would find within that jar. One of the buyers, Burt Lancaster, owned a large honey operation of his own. It is said that when he tasted Jamison honey, he proclaimed that no bee in his field had ever produced anything so sweet. Some would tell you that he burned his beehives that very afternoon, but that's a little more than town gossip.
For that summer back in 1986, no one could get enough of Jamison's honey.
They say Hellen Price used that honey to defeat her arrival, Linda Moore, in that summer's Fourth of July dessert bake-off.
They say Bert Cavill put that honey in his mead and could not make enough of it to satiate the local drunks.
They say Mary Sanders was taken to the hospital over at Oakley when she ate ten jars in a day and was reaching for an eleventh when her stomach ruptured.
But, again, that's all town gossip.
What is fact was the discovery made by Randall Smith, a local tabloid writer, in the fall of eighty-six.
Randall had a reputation for being less of a journalist and more of a mudslinger. If there was a nasty rumor started, Randall could usually be traced back to it. He had grown pretty tired of hearing about Jamison and his amazing honey. Randall was of the opinion that if something was too good to be true, then it likely was. He thought Jamison's honey must have some sort of secret ingredient that got people addicted to it. Maybe it was even a cover for some kind of dope operation that Jamison was running out of the mortuary or the cemetery. Whatever the case, Randall could smell the story, and it would be sweeter than any nectar the old mortician could produce.
So one night, as the moon hung full over Pleasant Rest Cemetery, Randall and his friends, Rooster Mallory and Charles Drainer, took a trip out to the cemetery to have a look around. Someone had reported earlier that week that they had seen some larger-than-normal bees around the cemetery grounds and speculated that these may be the source of Jamison's honey. It was the only lead that Randall had and seemed as good a lead as any. So after a couple of drinks at the Legion hall, the three men piled into Rooster's old Chevy and headed down to do some late-night snooping.
Randall still tells anyone who will listen how the graveyard was as silent as its namesake. The gate was locked, sporting a brand new Academy Security Lock, one of the big, thick gold ones that graced the sheds and fences of discerning security buffs in town. So, the three men had to find a different way in. This was strange since the cemetery had never been locked before. Jamison had always let people come and go as they please, but just recently, the old man has gotten a little cagey about many things. For one, the cemetery was now locked after nightfall. For another, no one was allowed in the basement of the mortuary, not even the man who came to deliver the bodies from the families. For third, no one but his two sons were allowed to work in the mortuary anymore, and both of them were under pain of death should they reveal the secret of Jamison's honey.
The three men had walked around the cemetery fence before they found a spot where the last windstorm had knocked down a thick old pine. It lay on the sharp points around the top, creating a rude bridge over the wall. None of them being particularly spry, they had them all carefully shimmied up the fallen tree and then dropped down into the cemetery, careful not to get stuck on the spikes. They all felt a chill as they stood in the quiet boneyard, and Randall claims that Rooster looked ready to brave the spikes if it meant being out of there.
The wind rattled the skeletal trees on the grounds, and the little flags that had been stuck on some of the graves for Labor Day snapped mischievously and startled them more than once. They had brought flashlights, but the big old traitors' moon that looked down on them was more than enough to keep them from tripping into an open grave or smashing their shins on an ill-placed tombstone. The quiet cemetery was enough to sober even the bravest of them, and it was probably why they heard the shovels before they saw the men.
Crouching behind a particularly large family headstone, Randal saw two men digging in a fresh grave. They were exhuming a body by the light of that pregnant moon, and Randall knew whose it was to boot. He had been to the widow Hadley's funeral that day, and it appeared that whoever these men were, they were taking her from her freshly dug plot. As they watched, the corpse flopped to the surface unceremoniously, followed by March's sons, Hannibal and Gavin. Hannibal hefted the body, leaving his younger brother to fill in the hole as he took it deeper into the cemetery. Gavin went to his work and bent as he was; he didn't notice the three men as they snuck around him and followed his older brother. Hannibal had been a football player, a linebacker for the local high school team in his day. He toted the frail old woman as easily as someone might a sack of grain. As they followed him, the three men weren't sure what they expected to find, but Randall was certain it would be something that would add a macabre twinge to the story he was working on.
They followed Hannibal as he came to a newly built mausoleum, the name across the door reading March. He unlocked the door and unceremoniously tossed the old woman into the crypt. The men hunkered low behind a pair of tombstones, but they needn't have bothered. Hannibal was a big boy, but his night eyes left something to be desired. He no more saw them than he did the place marker that he nearly tripped over on the way back to his brother, and as he stomped off into the cemetery, the three men approached the crypt.
The mortuary was a nice new one. Sunk into the ground a little to protect any caskets placed down there, it would have looked more at home in New Orleans than this Georgia backwater town. To the knowledge of anyone in town, the Marches did not have a family crypt until very recently. The only March buried there would be Jamison's wife since his mother and father were buried up in Macon at their own family plot. Hannibal may not have been the smartest March in town, but it appeared he was smart enough to lock up behind himself. Another one of those big, thick locks that had been found on the front gate greeted them, and the three men were forced to prowl around the mausoleum to see what they could find.
It was Charles who found the little vent in the mausoleum, but it was Randall who saw the horrors that lay inside.
Randall and Rooster had been looking for a window or perhaps another entrance when Charles had come hoofing it back to them to say that he had found a little vent that opened into the crypt. Randall asked him to show them where it was, and the three men found a little opening big enough for a large child to fit inside. Charles and Rooster were pulp wooders and much too big to squeeze into holes. However, Randall had made a career of squeezing into places he was not wanted.
Opting to stick his head in to get a better look, Randall had his friend hold his legs while he shimmied into the vent. Charles and Rooster slid him in as far as they could, and they said his flashlight could be seen through the slats at the top of the mausoleum.
When Randall started screaming and yelling for them to pull him out, it sounded like the devil himself had gotten a hold of him.
When they pulled him out, they said he was white as a sheet and said they had to tell the sheriff immediately.
Whether the brothers were gone when they made their escape or not, they missed them entirely as they beat a retreat back to town.
The sheriff took some convincing to get him out of bed, but when Randall told him what he had seen down in the crypt, he came with three other men and the biggest set of bolt cutters they could find at the station.
Jamison's sons were leaving when the sheriff and his boys pulled up, so they didn't end up needing the bolt cutters after all.
When he laid it out to the two young men that they could either cooperate or sit in the same prison cell that their father was about to occupy, they decided it might be in their best interest to show him what they'd been doing.
When the sheriff asked the boys if they would need suits, the two shook their heads. "The bees are mostly docile," Hannibal told them, and, sure enough, when they cracked the door, not a one came charging out. They descended into the ground, and by the light of the sheriff's flashlight, they saw the horrors below. The bees swarmed the small pile of corpses, taking whatever they used to make the honey back to the hives. The hives covered the walls of the crypt, making a sticky webwork of combs. The corpses down below were fresh, most of them having died very recently, and the bees were taking to them with gusto. The brothers said they came down once or twice a week to harvest the honey and that the vulture bees were taking to the warm Georgia summers quite nicely.
When the sheriff interrogated them, both said this had been their father's idea. He had read about the vulture bees and thought they sounded like an interesting idea. Then when their mother died, he did a little experiment. He had put her in the mortuary basement and procured some vulture bees of his own. The boys had been horrified when he showed them what he'd been up to, but even they had to admit, the honey had been the sweetest they had ever eaten. Something about the readily available nature of the local pollen, mixed with the bee's instinct to collect whatever they got from the corpses, had made for a potent and delicious treat.
"She was the catalyst for all this," Hannibal had said, "those first few jars he handed out to the people for tasting were honey made from mom's body."
He began to cry then, but the sheriff had all the evidence that he needed to proceed.
He arrested Jamison March that very night, but there seemed to be some confusion on what to charge him with. Couldn't really get him for murder because he hadn't killed anybody. Couldn't really get him for fraud because he buried those bodies just like he said he would. In the end, they got him on simple corpse desecration and misdemeanor fraud for not telling the families what he intended to do with the bodies.
He got less than five years in prison, and I hear that the warden let him keep the beehives in the prison garden.
Seems like his talents didn't go to waste even behind bars.
He left town when his time was served, he and his boys. The funeral home has been empty ever since. The police found the beginnings of his beekeeping in the basement. That, and a secondary hive with a swarm of angry vulture bees. Jamieson tried to sell the mortuary, but nobody seemed to want the place with that sort of reputation. It collapsed under a late February snow back in two thousand twelve, and they destroyed the mortuary they found all those bodies in about a year after Jamison went to prison.
And that's the sorted tale of Jamison March, and his bees.
I have no idea what they did with those bees after they turned them out of the March Mausoleum, they likely just turned them loose into an environment that was alien to them.
So, if you should be traveling through the Georgia back roads and see some larger-than-average bees or taste sweeter than average honey, be very suspicious about its origins.

​
When Jamison March, owner of March Mortuaries, put a sign out in front of his business saying that he would be selling honey, people thought it must be a joke.
What kind of mortician would sell honey? Would he sell it next to the caskets in his showroom? Would he offer it graveside at the cemetery? No one knew, but there was much speculation about that little sign.
Those who asked Jamison were in for quite a treat. Jamison told them that he would be selling his honey right here at the mortuary and even gave them a sample so they might tell their friends. What they sampled was supposedly the best honey any of them had ever eaten. They went on and on about the texture and the taste and the strange, exotic flavors within the honey. They said how they couldn't wait for Jamison to sell his honey, and they would be buying as much as they could on the opening day.
Others began to question where he was keeping his bees? They saw no beehives on his property, a two-bedroom apartment above the mortuary. They saw no hives on the mortuary property at all, in fact. They saw no hives in the cemetery or near the crematorium, but still, the honey came.
On the third of March, the first jar of that miraculous concoction appeared in the front room of Jamison's Mortuary. The mortuary was crowded for the next several days, and by Friday, not a jar was left to be purchased. Again, people praised the texture in the taste, as well as the myriad flavors that one would find within that jar. One of the buyers, Burt Lancaster, owned a large honey operation of his own. It is said that when he tasted Jamison honey, he proclaimed that no bee in his field had ever produced anything so sweet. Some would tell you that he burned his beehives that very afternoon, but that's a little more than town gossip.
For that summer back in 1986, no one could get enough of Jamison's honey.
They say Hellen Price used that honey to defeat her arrival, Linda Moore, in that summer's Fourth of July dessert bake-off.
They say Bert Cavill put that honey in his mead and could not make enough of it to satiate the local drunks.
They say Mary Sanders was taken to the hospital over at Oakley when she ate ten jars in a day and was reaching for an eleventh when her stomach ruptured.
But, again, that's all town gossip.
What is fact was the discovery made by Randall Smith, a local tabloid writer, in the fall of eighty-six.
Randall had a reputation for being less of a journalist and more of a mudslinger. If there was a nasty rumor started, Randall could usually be traced back to it. He had grown pretty tired of hearing about Jamison and his amazing honey. Randall was of the opinion that if something was too good to be true, then it likely was. He thought Jamison's honey must have some sort of secret ingredient that got people addicted to it. Maybe it was even a cover for some kind of dope operation that Jamison was running out of the mortuary or the cemetery. Whatever the case, Randall could smell the story, and it would be sweeter than any nectar the old mortician could produce.
So one night, as the moon hung full over Pleasant Rest Cemetery, Randall and his friends, Rooster Mallory and Charles Drainer, took a trip out to the cemetery to have a look around. Someone had reported earlier that week that they had seen some larger-than-normal bees around the cemetery grounds and speculated that these may be the source of Jamison's honey. It was the only lead that Randall had and seemed as good a lead as any. So after a couple of drinks at the Legion hall, the three men piled into Rooster's old Chevy and headed down to do some late-night snooping.
Randall still tells anyone who will listen how the graveyard was as silent as its namesake. The gate was locked, sporting a brand new Academy Security Lock, one of the big, thick gold ones that graced the sheds and fences of discerning security buffs in town. So, the three men had to find a different way in. This was strange since the cemetery had never been locked before. Jamison had always let people come and go as they please, but just recently, the old man has gotten a little cagey about many things. For one, the cemetery was now locked after nightfall. For another, no one was allowed in the basement of the mortuary, not even the man who came to deliver the bodies from the families. For third, no one but his two sons were allowed to work in the mortuary anymore, and both of them were under pain of death should they reveal the secret of Jamison's honey.
The three men had walked around the cemetery fence before they found a spot where the last windstorm had knocked down a thick old pine. It lay on the sharp points around the top, creating a rude bridge over the wall. None of them being particularly spry, they had them all carefully shimmied up the fallen tree and then dropped down into the cemetery, careful not to get stuck on the spikes. They all felt a chill as they stood in the quiet boneyard, and Randall claims that Rooster looked ready to brave the spikes if it meant being out of there.
The wind rattled the skeletal trees on the grounds, and the little flags that had been stuck on some of the graves for Labor Day snapped mischievously and startled them more than once. They had brought flashlights, but the big old traitors' moon that looked down on them was more than enough to keep them from tripping into an open grave or smashing their shins on an ill-placed tombstone. The quiet cemetery was enough to sober even the bravest of them, and it was probably why they heard the shovels before they saw the men.
Crouching behind a particularly large family headstone, Randal saw two men digging in a fresh grave. They were exhuming a body by the light of that pregnant moon, and Randall knew whose it was to boot. He had been to the widow Hadley's funeral that day, and it appeared that whoever these men were, they were taking her from her freshly dug plot. As they watched, the corpse flopped to the surface unceremoniously, followed by March's sons, Hannibal and Gavin. Hannibal hefted the body, leaving his younger brother to fill in the hole as he took it deeper into the cemetery. Gavin went to his work and bent as he was; he didn't notice the three men as they snuck around him and followed his older brother. Hannibal had been a football player, a linebacker for the local high school team in his day. He toted the frail old woman as easily as someone might a sack of grain. As they followed him, the three men weren't sure what they expected to find, but Randall was certain it would be something that would add a macabre twinge to the story he was working on.
They followed Hannibal as he came to a newly built mausoleum, the name across the door reading March. He unlocked the door and unceremoniously tossed the old woman into the crypt. The men hunkered low behind a pair of tombstones, but they needn't have bothered. Hannibal was a big boy, but his night eyes left something to be desired. He no more saw them than he did the place marker that he nearly tripped over on the way back to his brother, and as he stomped off into the cemetery, the three men approached the crypt.
The mortuary was a nice new one. Sunk into the ground a little to protect any caskets placed down there, it would have looked more at home in New Orleans than this Georgia backwater town. To the knowledge of anyone in town, the Marches did not have a family crypt until very recently. The only March buried there would be Jamison's wife since his mother and father were buried up in Macon at their own family plot. Hannibal may not have been the smartest March in town, but it appeared he was smart enough to lock up behind himself. Another one of those big, thick locks that had been found on the front gate greeted them, and the three men were forced to prowl around the mausoleum to see what they could find.
It was Charles who found the little vent in the mausoleum, but it was Randall who saw the horrors that lay inside.
Randall and Rooster had been looking for a window or perhaps another entrance when Charles had come hoofing it back to them to say that he had found a little vent that opened into the crypt. Randall asked him to show them where it was, and the three men found a little opening big enough for a large child to fit inside. Charles and Rooster were pulp wooders and much too big to squeeze into holes. However, Randall had made a career of squeezing into places he was not wanted.
Opting to stick his head in to get a better look, Randall had his friend hold his legs while he shimmied into the vent. Charles and Rooster slid him in as far as they could, and they said his flashlight could be seen through the slats at the top of the mausoleum.
When Randall started screaming and yelling for them to pull him out, it sounded like the devil himself had gotten a hold of him.
When they pulled him out, they said he was white as a sheet and said they had to tell the sheriff immediately.
Whether the brothers were gone when they made their escape or not, they missed them entirely as they beat a retreat back to town.
The sheriff took some convincing to get him out of bed, but when Randall told him what he had seen down in the crypt, he came with three other men and the biggest set of bolt cutters they could find at the station.
Jamison's sons were leaving when the sheriff and his boys pulled up, so they didn't end up needing the bolt cutters after all.
When he laid it out to the two young men that they could either cooperate or sit in the same prison cell that their father was about to occupy, they decided it might be in their best interest to show him what they'd been doing.
When the sheriff asked the boys if they would need suits, the two shook their heads. "The bees are mostly docile," Hannibal told them, and, sure enough, when they cracked the door, not a one came charging out. They descended into the ground, and by the light of the sheriff's flashlight, they saw the horrors below. The bees swarmed the small pile of corpses, taking whatever they used to make the honey back to the hives. The hives covered the walls of the crypt, making a sticky webwork of combs. The corpses down below were fresh, most of them having died very recently, and the bees were taking to them with gusto. The brothers said they came down once or twice a week to harvest the honey and that the vulture bees were taking to the warm Georgia summers quite nicely.
When the sheriff interrogated them, both said this had been their father's idea. He had read about the vulture bees and thought they sounded like an interesting idea. Then when their mother died, he did a little experiment. He had put her in the mortuary basement and procured some vulture bees of his own. The boys had been horrified when he showed them what he'd been up to, but even they had to admit, the honey had been the sweetest they had ever eaten. Something about the readily available nature of the local pollen, mixed with the bee's instinct to collect whatever they got from the corpses, had made for a potent and delicious treat.
"She was the catalyst for all this," Hannibal had said, "those first few jars he handed out to the people for tasting were honey made from mom's body."
He began to cry then, but the sheriff had all the evidence that he needed to proceed.
He arrested Jamison March that very night, but there seemed to be some confusion on what to charge him with. Couldn't really get him for murder because he hadn't killed anybody. Couldn't really get him for fraud because he buried those bodies just like he said he would. In the end, they got him on simple corpse desecration and misdemeanor fraud for not telling the families what he intended to do with the bodies.
He got less than five years in prison, and I hear that the warden let him keep the beehives in the prison garden.
Seems like his talents didn't go to waste even behind bars.
He left town when his time was served, he and his boys. The funeral home has been empty ever since. The police found the beginnings of his beekeeping in the basement. That, and a secondary hive with a swarm of angry vulture bees. Jamieson tried to sell the mortuary, but nobody seemed to want the place with that sort of reputation. It collapsed under a late February snow back in two thousand twelve, and they destroyed the mortuary they found all those bodies in about a year after Jamison went to prison.
And that's the sorted tale of Jamison March, and his bees.
I have no idea what they did with those bees after they turned them out of the March Mausoleum, they likely just turned them loose into an environment that was alien to them.
So, if you should be traveling through the Georgia back roads and see some larger-than-average bees or taste sweeter than average honey, be very suspicious about its origins.

​
When Jamison March, owner of March Mortuaries, put a sign out in front of his business saying that he would be selling honey, people thought it must be a joke.
What kind of mortician would sell honey? Would he sell it next to the caskets in his showroom? Would he offer it graveside at the cemetery? No one knew, but there was much speculation about that little sign.
Those who asked Jamison were in for quite a treat. Jamison told them that he would be selling his honey right here at the mortuary and even gave them a sample so they might tell their friends. What they sampled was supposedly the best honey any of them had ever eaten. They went on and on about the texture and the taste and the strange, exotic flavors within the honey. They said how they couldn't wait for Jamison to sell his honey, and they would be buying as much as they could on the opening day.
Others began to question where he was keeping his bees? They saw no beehives on his property, a two-bedroom apartment above the mortuary. They saw no hives on the mortuary property at all, in fact. They saw no hives in the cemetery or near the crematorium, but still, the honey came.
On the third of March, the first jar of that miraculous concoction appeared in the front room of Jamison's Mortuary. The mortuary was crowded for the next several days, and by Friday, not a jar was left to be purchased. Again, people praised the texture in the taste, as well as the myriad flavors that one would find within that jar. One of the buyers, Burt Lancaster, owned a large honey operation of his own. It is said that when he tasted Jamison honey, he proclaimed that no bee in his field had ever produced anything so sweet. Some would tell you that he burned his beehives that very afternoon, but that's a little more than town gossip.
For that summer back in 1986, no one could get enough of Jamison's honey.
They say Hellen Price used that honey to defeat her arrival, Linda Moore, in that summer's Fourth of July dessert bake-off.
They say Bert Cavill put that honey in his mead and could not make enough of it to satiate the local drunks.
They say Mary Sanders was taken to the hospital over at Oakley when she ate ten jars in a day and was reaching for an eleventh when her stomach ruptured.
But, again, that's all town gossip.
What is fact was the discovery made by Randall Smith, a local tabloid writer, in the fall of eighty-six.
Randall had a reputation for being less of a journalist and more of a mudslinger. If there was a nasty rumor started, Randall could usually be traced back to it. He had grown pretty tired of hearing about Jamison and his amazing honey. Randall was of the opinion that if something was too good to be true, then it likely was. He thought Jamison's honey must have some sort of secret ingredient that got people addicted to it. Maybe it was even a cover for some kind of dope operation that Jamison was running out of the mortuary or the cemetery. Whatever the case, Randall could smell the story, and it would be sweeter than any nectar the old mortician could produce.
So one night, as the moon hung full over Pleasant Rest Cemetery, Randall and his friends, Rooster Mallory and Charles Drainer, took a trip out to the cemetery to have a look around. Someone had reported earlier that week that they had seen some larger-than-normal bees around the cemetery grounds and speculated that these may be the source of Jamison's honey. It was the only lead that Randall had and seemed as good a lead as any. So after a couple of drinks at the Legion hall, the three men piled into Rooster's old Chevy and headed down to do some late-night snooping.
Randall still tells anyone who will listen how the graveyard was as silent as its namesake. The gate was locked, sporting a brand new Academy Security Lock, one of the big, thick gold ones that graced the sheds and fences of discerning security buffs in town. So, the three men had to find a different way in. This was strange since the cemetery had never been locked before. Jamison had always let people come and go as they please, but just recently, the old man has gotten a little cagey about many things. For one, the cemetery was now locked after nightfall. For another, no one was allowed in the basement of the mortuary, not even the man who came to deliver the bodies from the families. For third, no one but his two sons were allowed to work in the mortuary anymore, and both of them were under pain of death should they reveal the secret of Jamison's honey.
The three men had walked around the cemetery fence before they found a spot where the last windstorm had knocked down a thick old pine. It lay on the sharp points around the top, creating a rude bridge over the wall. None of them being particularly spry, they had them all carefully shimmied up the fallen tree and then dropped down into the cemetery, careful not to get stuck on the spikes. They all felt a chill as they stood in the quiet boneyard, and Randall claims that Rooster looked ready to brave the spikes if it meant being out of there.
The wind rattled the skeletal trees on the grounds, and the little flags that had been stuck on some of the graves for Labor Day snapped mischievously and startled them more than once. They had brought flashlights, but the big old traitors' moon that looked down on them was more than enough to keep them from tripping into an open grave or smashing their shins on an ill-placed tombstone. The quiet cemetery was enough to sober even the bravest of them, and it was probably why they heard the shovels before they saw the men.
Crouching behind a particularly large family headstone, Randal saw two men digging in a fresh grave. They were exhuming a body by the light of that pregnant moon, and Randall knew whose it was to boot. He had been to the widow Hadley's funeral that day, and it appeared that whoever these men were, they were taking her from her freshly dug plot. As they watched, the corpse flopped to the surface unceremoniously, followed by March's sons, Hannibal and Gavin. Hannibal hefted the body, leaving his younger brother to fill in the hole as he took it deeper into the cemetery. Gavin went to his work and bent as he was; he didn't notice the three men as they snuck around him and followed his older brother. Hannibal had been a football player, a linebacker for the local high school team in his day. He toted the frail old woman as easily as someone might a sack of grain. As they followed him, the three men weren't sure what they expected to find, but Randall was certain it would be something that would add a macabre twinge to the story he was working on.
They followed Hannibal as he came to a newly built mausoleum, the name across the door reading March. He unlocked the door and unceremoniously tossed the old woman into the crypt. The men hunkered low behind a pair of tombstones, but they needn't have bothered. Hannibal was a big boy, but his night eyes left something to be desired. He no more saw them than he did the place marker that he nearly tripped over on the way back to his brother, and as he stomped off into the cemetery, the three men approached the crypt.
The mortuary was a nice new one. Sunk into the ground a little to protect any caskets placed down there, it would have looked more at home in New Orleans than this Georgia backwater town. To the knowledge of anyone in town, the Marches did not have a family crypt until very recently. The only March buried there would be Jamison's wife since his mother and father were buried up in Macon at their own family plot. Hannibal may not have been the smartest March in town, but it appeared he was smart enough to lock up behind himself. Another one of those big, thick locks that had been found on the front gate greeted them, and the three men were forced to prowl around the mausoleum to see what they could find.
It was Charles who found the little vent in the mausoleum, but it was Randall who saw the horrors that lay inside.
Randall and Rooster had been looking for a window or perhaps another entrance when Charles had come hoofing it back to them to say that he had found a little vent that opened into the crypt. Randall asked him to show them where it was, and the three men found a little opening big enough for a large child to fit inside. Charles and Rooster were pulp wooders and much too big to squeeze into holes. However, Randall had made a career of squeezing into places he was not wanted.
Opting to stick his head in to get a better look, Randall had his friend hold his legs while he shimmied into the vent. Charles and Rooster slid him in as far as they could, and they said his flashlight could be seen through the slats at the top of the mausoleum.
When Randall started screaming and yelling for them to pull him out, it sounded like the devil himself had gotten a hold of him.
When they pulled him out, they said he was white as a sheet and said they had to tell the sheriff immediately.
Whether the brothers were gone when they made their escape or not, they missed them entirely as they beat a retreat back to town.
The sheriff took some convincing to get him out of bed, but when Randall told him what he had seen down in the crypt, he came with three other men and the biggest set of bolt cutters they could find at the station.
Jamison's sons were leaving when the sheriff and his boys pulled up, so they didn't end up needing the bolt cutters after all.
When he laid it out to the two young men that they could either cooperate or sit in the same prison cell that their father was about to occupy, they decided it might be in their best interest to show him what they'd been doing.
When the sheriff asked the boys if they would need suits, the two shook their heads. "The bees are mostly docile," Hannibal told them, and, sure enough, when they cracked the door, not a one came charging out. They descended into the ground, and by the light of the sheriff's flashlight, they saw the horrors below. The bees swarmed the small pile of corpses, taking whatever they used to make the honey back to the hives. The hives covered the walls of the crypt, making a sticky webwork of combs. The corpses down below were fresh, most of them having died very recently, and the bees were taking to them with gusto. The brothers said they came down once or twice a week to harvest the honey and that the vulture bees were taking to the warm Georgia summers quite nicely.
When the sheriff interrogated them, both said this had been their father's idea. He had read about the vulture bees and thought they sounded like an interesting idea. Then when their mother died, he did a little experiment. He had put her in the mortuary basement and procured some vulture bees of his own. The boys had been horrified when he showed them what he'd been up to, but even they had to admit, the honey had been the sweetest they had ever eaten. Something about the readily available nature of the local pollen, mixed with the bee's instinct to collect whatever they got from the corpses, had made for a potent and delicious treat.
"She was the catalyst for all this," Hannibal had said, "those first few jars he handed out to the people for tasting were honey made from mom's body."
He began to cry then, but the sheriff had all the evidence that he needed to proceed.
He arrested Jamison March that very night, but there seemed to be some confusion on what to charge him with. Couldn't really get him for murder because he hadn't killed anybody. Couldn't really get him for fraud because he buried those bodies just like he said he would. In the end, they got him on simple corpse desecration and misdemeanor fraud for not telling the families what he intended to do with the bodies.
He got less than five years in prison, and I hear that the warden let him keep the beehives in the prison garden.
Seems like his talents didn't go to waste even behind bars.
He left town when his time was served, he and his boys. The funeral home has been empty ever since. The police found the beginnings of his beekeeping in the basement. That, and a secondary hive with a swarm of angry vulture bees. Jamieson tried to sell the mortuary, but nobody seemed to want the place with that sort of reputation. It collapsed under a late February snow back in two thousand twelve, and they destroyed the mortuary they found all those bodies in about a year after Jamison went to prison.
And that's the sorted tale of Jamison March, and his bees.
I have no idea what they did with those bees after they turned them out of the March Mausoleum, they likely just turned them loose into an environment that was alien to them.
So, if you should be traveling through the Georgia back roads and see some larger-than-average bees or taste sweeter than average honey, be very suspicious about its origins.

​
When Jamison March, owner of March Mortuaries, put a sign out in front of his business saying that he would be selling honey, people thought it must be a joke.
What kind of mortician would sell honey? Would he sell it next to the caskets in his showroom? Would he offer it graveside at the cemetery? No one knew, but there was much speculation about that little sign.
Those who asked Jamison were in for quite a treat. Jamison told them that he would be selling his honey right here at the mortuary and even gave them a sample so they might tell their friends. What they sampled was supposedly the best honey any of them had ever eaten. They went on and on about the texture and the taste and the strange, exotic flavors within the honey. They said how they couldn't wait for Jamison to sell his honey, and they would be buying as much as they could on the opening day.
Others began to question where he was keeping his bees? They saw no beehives on his property, a two-bedroom apartment above the mortuary. They saw no hives on the mortuary property at all, in fact. They saw no hives in the cemetery or near the crematorium, but still, the honey came.
On the third of March, the first jar of that miraculous concoction appeared in the front room of Jamison's Mortuary. The mortuary was crowded for the next several days, and by Friday, not a jar was left to be purchased. Again, people praised the texture in the taste, as well as the myriad flavors that one would find within that jar. One of the buyers, Burt Lancaster, owned a large honey operation of his own. It is said that when he tasted Jamison honey, he proclaimed that no bee in his field had ever produced anything so sweet. Some would tell you that he burned his beehives that very afternoon, but that's a little more than town gossip.
For that summer back in 1986, no one could get enough of Jamison's honey.
They say Hellen Price used that honey to defeat her arrival, Linda Moore, in that summer's Fourth of July dessert bake-off.
They say Bert Cavill put that honey in his mead and could not make enough of it to satiate the local drunks.
They say Mary Sanders was taken to the hospital over at Oakley when she ate ten jars in a day and was reaching for an eleventh when her stomach ruptured.
But, again, that's all town gossip.
What is fact was the discovery made by Randall Smith, a local tabloid writer, in the fall of eighty-six.
Randall had a reputation for being less of a journalist and more of a mudslinger. If there was a nasty rumor started, Randall could usually be traced back to it. He had grown pretty tired of hearing about Jamison and his amazing honey. Randall was of the opinion that if something was too good to be true, then it likely was. He thought Jamison's honey must have some sort of secret ingredient that got people addicted to it. Maybe it was even a cover for some kind of dope operation that Jamison was running out of the mortuary or the cemetery. Whatever the case, Randall could smell the story, and it would be sweeter than any nectar the old mortician could produce.
So one night, as the moon hung full over Pleasant Rest Cemetery, Randall and his friends, Rooster Mallory and Charles Drainer, took a trip out to the cemetery to have a look around. Someone had reported earlier that week that they had seen some larger-than-normal bees around the cemetery grounds and speculated that these may be the source of Jamison's honey. It was the only lead that Randall had and seemed as good a lead as any. So after a couple of drinks at the Legion hall, the three men piled into Rooster's old Chevy and headed down to do some late-night snooping.
Randall still tells anyone who will listen how the graveyard was as silent as its namesake. The gate was locked, sporting a brand new Academy Security Lock, one of the big, thick gold ones that graced the sheds and fences of discerning security buffs in town. So, the three men had to find a different way in. This was strange since the cemetery had never been locked before. Jamison had always let people come and go as they please, but just recently, the old man has gotten a little cagey about many things. For one, the cemetery was now locked after nightfall. For another, no one was allowed in the basement of the mortuary, not even the man who came to deliver the bodies from the families. For third, no one but his two sons were allowed to work in the mortuary anymore, and both of them were under pain of death should they reveal the secret of Jamison's honey.
The three men had walked around the cemetery fence before they found a spot where the last windstorm had knocked down a thick old pine. It lay on the sharp points around the top, creating a rude bridge over the wall. None of them being particularly spry, they had them all carefully shimmied up the fallen tree and then dropped down into the cemetery, careful not to get stuck on the spikes. They all felt a chill as they stood in the quiet boneyard, and Randall claims that Rooster looked ready to brave the spikes if it meant being out of there.
The wind rattled the skeletal trees on the grounds, and the little flags that had been stuck on some of the graves for Labor Day snapped mischievously and startled them more than once. They had brought flashlights, but the big old traitors' moon that looked down on them was more than enough to keep them from tripping into an open grave or smashing their shins on an ill-placed tombstone. The quiet cemetery was enough to sober even the bravest of them, and it was probably why they heard the shovels before they saw the men.
Crouching behind a particularly large family headstone, Randal saw two men digging in a fresh grave. They were exhuming a body by the light of that pregnant moon, and Randall knew whose it was to boot. He had been to the widow Hadley's funeral that day, and it appeared that whoever these men were, they were taking her from her freshly dug plot. As they watched, the corpse flopped to the surface unceremoniously, followed by March's sons, Hannibal and Gavin. Hannibal hefted the body, leaving his younger brother to fill in the hole as he took it deeper into the cemetery. Gavin went to his work and bent as he was; he didn't notice the three men as they snuck around him and followed his older brother. Hannibal had been a football player, a linebacker for the local high school team in his day. He toted the frail old woman as easily as someone might a sack of grain. As they followed him, the three men weren't sure what they expected to find, but Randall was certain it would be something that would add a macabre twinge to the story he was working on.
They followed Hannibal as he came to a newly built mausoleum, the name across the door reading March. He unlocked the door and unceremoniously tossed the old woman into the crypt. The men hunkered low behind a pair of tombstones, but they needn't have bothered. Hannibal was a big boy, but his night eyes left something to be desired. He no more saw them than he did the place marker that he nearly tripped over on the way back to his brother, and as he stomped off into the cemetery, the three men approached the crypt.
The mortuary was a nice new one. Sunk into the ground a little to protect any caskets placed down there, it would have looked more at home in New Orleans than this Georgia backwater town. To the knowledge of anyone in town, the Marches did not have a family crypt until very recently. The only March buried there would be Jamison's wife since his mother and father were buried up in Macon at their own family plot. Hannibal may not have been the smartest March in town, but it appeared he was smart enough to lock up behind himself. Another one of those big, thick locks that had been found on the front gate greeted them, and the three men were forced to prowl around the mausoleum to see what they could find.
It was Charles who found the little vent in the mausoleum, but it was Randall who saw the horrors that lay inside.
Randall and Rooster had been looking for a window or perhaps another entrance when Charles had come hoofing it back to them to say that he had found a little vent that opened into the crypt. Randall asked him to show them where it was, and the three men found a little opening big enough for a large child to fit inside. Charles and Rooster were pulp wooders and much too big to squeeze into holes. However, Randall had made a career of squeezing into places he was not wanted.
Opting to stick his head in to get a better look, Randall had his friend hold his legs while he shimmied into the vent. Charles and Rooster slid him in as far as they could, and they said his flashlight could be seen through the slats at the top of the mausoleum.
When Randall started screaming and yelling for them to pull him out, it sounded like the devil himself had gotten a hold of him.
When they pulled him out, they said he was white as a sheet and said they had to tell the sheriff immediately.
Whether the brothers were gone when they made their escape or not, they missed them entirely as they beat a retreat back to town.
The sheriff took some convincing to get him out of bed, but when Randall told him what he had seen down in the crypt, he came with three other men and the biggest set of bolt cutters they could find at the station.
Jamison's sons were leaving when the sheriff and his boys pulled up, so they didn't end up needing the bolt cutters after all.
When he laid it out to the two young men that they could either cooperate or sit in the same prison cell that their father was about to occupy, they decided it might be in their best interest to show him what they'd been doing.
When the sheriff asked the boys if they would need suits, the two shook their heads. "The bees are mostly docile," Hannibal told them, and, sure enough, when they cracked the door, not a one came charging out. They descended into the ground, and by the light of the sheriff's flashlight, they saw the horrors below. The bees swarmed the small pile of corpses, taking whatever they used to make the honey back to the hives. The hives covered the walls of the crypt, making a sticky webwork of combs. The corpses down below were fresh, most of them having died very recently, and the bees were taking to them with gusto. The brothers said they came down once or twice a week to harvest the honey and that the vulture bees were taking to the warm Georgia summers quite nicely.
When the sheriff interrogated them, both said this had been their father's idea. He had read about the vulture bees and thought they sounded like an interesting idea. Then when their mother died, he did a little experiment. He had put her in the mortuary basement and procured some vulture bees of his own. The boys had been horrified when he showed them what he'd been up to, but even they had to admit, the honey had been the sweetest they had ever eaten. Something about the readily available nature of the local pollen, mixed with the bee's instinct to collect whatever they got from the corpses, had made for a potent and delicious treat.
"She was the catalyst for all this," Hannibal had said, "those first few jars he handed out to the people for tasting were honey made from mom's body."
He began to cry then, but the sheriff had all the evidence that he needed to proceed.
He arrested Jamison March that very night, but there seemed to be some confusion on what to charge him with. Couldn't really get him for murder because he hadn't killed anybody. Couldn't really get him for fraud because he buried those bodies just like he said he would. In the end, they got him on simple corpse desecration and misdemeanor fraud for not telling the families what he intended to do with the bodies.
He got less than five years in prison, and I hear that the warden let him keep the beehives in the prison garden.
Seems like his talents didn't go to waste even behind bars.
He left town when his time was served, he and his boys. The funeral home has been empty ever since. The police found the beginnings of his beekeeping in the basement. That, and a secondary hive with a swarm of angry vulture bees. Jamieson tried to sell the mortuary, but nobody seemed to want the place with that sort of reputation. It collapsed under a late February snow back in two thousand twelve, and they destroyed the mortuary they found all those bodies in about a year after Jamison went to prison.
And that's the sorted tale of Jamison March, and his bees.
I have no idea what they did with those bees after they turned them out of the March Mausoleum, they likely just turned them loose into an environment that was alien to them.
So, if you should be traveling through the Georgia back roads and see some larger-than-average bees or taste sweeter than average honey, be very suspicious about its origins.

​
When Jamison March, owner of March Mortuaries, put a sign out in front of his business saying that he would be selling honey, people thought it must be a joke.
What kind of mortician would sell honey? Would he sell it next to the caskets in his showroom? Would he offer it graveside at the cemetery? No one knew, but there was much speculation about that little sign.
Those who asked Jamison were in for quite a treat. Jamison told them that he would be selling his honey right here at the mortuary and even gave them a sample so they might tell their friends. What they sampled was supposedly the best honey any of them had ever eaten. They went on and on about the texture and the taste and the strange, exotic flavors within the honey. They said how they couldn't wait for Jamison to sell his honey, and they would be buying as much as they could on the opening day.
Others began to question where he was keeping his bees? They saw no beehives on his property, a two-bedroom apartment above the mortuary. They saw no hives on the mortuary property at all, in fact. They saw no hives in the cemetery or near the crematorium, but still, the honey came.
On the third of March, the first jar of that miraculous concoction appeared in the front room of Jamison's Mortuary. The mortuary was crowded for the next several days, and by Friday, not a jar was left to be purchased. Again, people praised the texture in the taste, as well as the myriad flavors that one would find within that jar. One of the buyers, Burt Lancaster, owned a large honey operation of his own. It is said that when he tasted Jamison honey, he proclaimed that no bee in his field had ever produced anything so sweet. Some would tell you that he burned his beehives that very afternoon, but that's a little more than town gossip.
For that summer back in 1986, no one could get enough of Jamison's honey.
They say Hellen Price used that honey to defeat her arrival, Linda Moore, in that summer's Fourth of July dessert bake-off.
They say Bert Cavill put that honey in his mead and could not make enough of it to satiate the local drunks.
They say Mary Sanders was taken to the hospital over at Oakley when she ate ten jars in a day and was reaching for an eleventh when her stomach ruptured.
But, again, that's all town gossip.
What is fact was the discovery made by Randall Smith, a local tabloid writer, in the fall of eighty-six.
Randall had a reputation for being less of a journalist and more of a mudslinger. If there was a nasty rumor started, Randall could usually be traced back to it. He had grown pretty tired of hearing about Jamison and his amazing honey. Randall was of the opinion that if something was too good to be true, then it likely was. He thought Jamison's honey must have some sort of secret ingredient that got people addicted to it. Maybe it was even a cover for some kind of dope operation that Jamison was running out of the mortuary or the cemetery. Whatever the case, Randall could smell the story, and it would be sweeter than any nectar the old mortician could produce.
So one night, as the moon hung full over Pleasant Rest Cemetery, Randall and his friends, Rooster Mallory and Charles Drainer, took a trip out to the cemetery to have a look around. Someone had reported earlier that week that they had seen some larger-than-normal bees around the cemetery grounds and speculated that these may be the source of Jamison's honey. It was the only lead that Randall had and seemed as good a lead as any. So after a couple of drinks at the Legion hall, the three men piled into Rooster's old Chevy and headed down to do some late-night snooping.
Randall still tells anyone who will listen how the graveyard was as silent as its namesake. The gate was locked, sporting a brand new Academy Security Lock, one of the big, thick gold ones that graced the sheds and fences of discerning security buffs in town. So, the three men had to find a different way in. This was strange since the cemetery had never been locked before. Jamison had always let people come and go as they please, but just recently, the old man has gotten a little cagey about many things. For one, the cemetery was now locked after nightfall. For another, no one was allowed in the basement of the mortuary, not even the man who came to deliver the bodies from the families. For third, no one but his two sons were allowed to work in the mortuary anymore, and both of them were under pain of death should they reveal the secret of Jamison's honey.
The three men had walked around the cemetery fence before they found a spot where the last windstorm had knocked down a thick old pine. It lay on the sharp points around the top, creating a rude bridge over the wall. None of them being particularly spry, they had them all carefully shimmied up the fallen tree and then dropped down into the cemetery, careful not to get stuck on the spikes. They all felt a chill as they stood in the quiet boneyard, and Randall claims that Rooster looked ready to brave the spikes if it meant being out of there.
The wind rattled the skeletal trees on the grounds, and the little flags that had been stuck on some of the graves for Labor Day snapped mischievously and startled them more than once. They had brought flashlights, but the big old traitors' moon that looked down on them was more than enough to keep them from tripping into an open grave or smashing their shins on an ill-placed tombstone. The quiet cemetery was enough to sober even the bravest of them, and it was probably why they heard the shovels before they saw the men.
Crouching behind a particularly large family headstone, Randal saw two men digging in a fresh grave. They were exhuming a body by the light of that pregnant moon, and Randall knew whose it was to boot. He had been to the widow Hadley's funeral that day, and it appeared that whoever these men were, they were taking her from her freshly dug plot. As they watched, the corpse flopped to the surface unceremoniously, followed by March's sons, Hannibal and Gavin. Hannibal hefted the body, leaving his younger brother to fill in the hole as he took it deeper into the cemetery. Gavin went to his work and bent as he was; he didn't notice the three men as they snuck around him and followed his older brother. Hannibal had been a football player, a linebacker for the local high school team in his day. He toted the frail old woman as easily as someone might a sack of grain. As they followed him, the three men weren't sure what they expected to find, but Randall was certain it would be something that would add a macabre twinge to the story he was working on.
They followed Hannibal as he came to a newly built mausoleum, the name across the door reading March. He unlocked the door and unceremoniously tossed the old woman into the crypt. The men hunkered low behind a pair of tombstones, but they needn't have bothered. Hannibal was a big boy, but his night eyes left something to be desired. He no more saw them than he did the place marker that he nearly tripped over on the way back to his brother, and as he stomped off into the cemetery, the three men approached the crypt.
The mortuary was a nice new one. Sunk into the ground a little to protect any caskets placed down there, it would have looked more at home in New Orleans than this Georgia backwater town. To the knowledge of anyone in town, the Marches did not have a family crypt until very recently. The only March buried there would be Jamison's wife since his mother and father were buried up in Macon at their own family plot. Hannibal may not have been the smartest March in town, but it appeared he was smart enough to lock up behind himself. Another one of those big, thick locks that had been found on the front gate greeted them, and the three men were forced to prowl around the mausoleum to see what they could find.
It was Charles who found the little vent in the mausoleum, but it was Randall who saw the horrors that lay inside.
Randall and Rooster had been looking for a window or perhaps another entrance when Charles had come hoofing it back to them to say that he had found a little vent that opened into the crypt. Randall asked him to show them where it was, and the three men found a little opening big enough for a large child to fit inside. Charles and Rooster were pulp wooders and much too big to squeeze into holes. However, Randall had made a career of squeezing into places he was not wanted.
Opting to stick his head in to get a better look, Randall had his friend hold his legs while he shimmied into the vent. Charles and Rooster slid him in as far as they could, and they said his flashlight could be seen through the slats at the top of the mausoleum.
When Randall started screaming and yelling for them to pull him out, it sounded like the devil himself had gotten a hold of him.
When they pulled him out, they said he was white as a sheet and said they had to tell the sheriff immediately.
Whether the brothers were gone when they made their escape or not, they missed them entirely as they beat a retreat back to town.
The sheriff took some convincing to get him out of bed, but when Randall told him what he had seen down in the crypt, he came with three other men and the biggest set of bolt cutters they could find at the station.
Jamison's sons were leaving when the sheriff and his boys pulled up, so they didn't end up needing the bolt cutters after all.
When he laid it out to the two young men that they could either cooperate or sit in the same prison cell that their father was about to occupy, they decided it might be in their best interest to show him what they'd been doing.
When the sheriff asked the boys if they would need suits, the two shook their heads. "The bees are mostly docile," Hannibal told them, and, sure enough, when they cracked the door, not a one came charging out. They descended into the ground, and by the light of the sheriff's flashlight, they saw the horrors below. The bees swarmed the small pile of corpses, taking whatever they used to make the honey back to the hives. The hives covered the walls of the crypt, making a sticky webwork of combs. The corpses down below were fresh, most of them having died very recently, and the bees were taking to them with gusto. The brothers said they came down once or twice a week to harvest the honey and that the vulture bees were taking to the warm Georgia summers quite nicely.
When the sheriff interrogated them, both said this had been their father's idea. He had read about the vulture bees and thought they sounded like an interesting idea. Then when their mother died, he did a little experiment. He had put her in the mortuary basement and procured some vulture bees of his own. The boys had been horrified when he showed them what he'd been up to, but even they had to admit, the honey had been the sweetest they had ever eaten. Something about the readily available nature of the local pollen, mixed with the bee's instinct to collect whatever they got from the corpses, had made for a potent and delicious treat.
"She was the catalyst for all this," Hannibal had said, "those first few jars he handed out to the people for tasting were honey made from mom's body."
He began to cry then, but the sheriff had all the evidence that he needed to proceed.
He arrested Jamison March that very night, but there seemed to be some confusion on what to charge him with. Couldn't really get him for murder because he hadn't killed anybody. Couldn't really get him for fraud because he buried those bodies just like he said he would. In the end, they got him on simple corpse desecration and misdemeanor fraud for not telling the families what he intended to do with the bodies.
He got less than five years in prison, and I hear that the warden let him keep the beehives in the prison garden.
Seems like his talents didn't go to waste even behind bars.
He left town when his time was served, he and his boys. The funeral home has been empty ever since. The police found the beginnings of his beekeeping in the basement. That, and a secondary hive with a swarm of angry vulture bees. Jamieson tried to sell the mortuary, but nobody seemed to want the place with that sort of reputation. It collapsed under a late February snow back in two thousand twelve, and they destroyed the mortuary they found all those bodies in about a year after Jamison went to prison.
And that's the sorted tale of Jamison March, and his bees.
I have no idea what they did with those bees after they turned them out of the March Mausoleum, they likely just turned them loose into an environment that was alien to them.
So, if you should be traveling through the Georgia back roads and see some larger-than-average bees or taste sweeter than average honey, be very suspicious about its origins.

​
When Jamison March, owner of March Mortuaries, put a sign out in front of his business saying that he would be selling honey, people thought it must be a joke.
What kind of mortician would sell honey? Would he sell it next to the caskets in his showroom? Would he offer it graveside at the cemetery? No one knew, but there was much speculation about that little sign.
Those who asked Jamison were in for quite a treat. Jamison told them that he would be selling his honey right here at the mortuary and even gave them a sample so they might tell their friends. What they sampled was supposedly the best honey any of them had ever eaten. They went on and on about the texture and the taste and the strange, exotic flavors within the honey. They said how they couldn't wait for Jamison to sell his honey, and they would be buying as much as they could on the opening day.
Others began to question where he was keeping his bees? They saw no beehives on his property, a two-bedroom apartment above the mortuary. They saw no hives on the mortuary property at all, in fact. They saw no hives in the cemetery or near the crematorium, but still, the honey came.
On the third of March, the first jar of that miraculous concoction appeared in the front room of Jamison's Mortuary. The mortuary was crowded for the next several days, and by Friday, not a jar was left to be purchased. Again, people praised the texture in the taste, as well as the myriad flavors that one would find within that jar. One of the buyers, Burt Lancaster, owned a large honey operation of his own. It is said that when he tasted Jamison honey, he proclaimed that no bee in his field had ever produced anything so sweet. Some would tell you that he burned his beehives that very afternoon, but that's a little more than town gossip.
For that summer back in 1986, no one could get enough of Jamison's honey.
They say Hellen Price used that honey to defeat her arrival, Linda Moore, in that summer's Fourth of July dessert bake-off.
They say Bert Cavill put that honey in his mead and could not make enough of it to satiate the local drunks.
They say Mary Sanders was taken to the hospital over at Oakley when she ate ten jars in a day and was reaching for an eleventh when her stomach ruptured.
But, again, that's all town gossip.
What is fact was the discovery made by Randall Smith, a local tabloid writer, in the fall of eighty-six.
Randall had a reputation for being less of a journalist and more of a mudslinger. If there was a nasty rumor started, Randall could usually be traced back to it. He had grown pretty tired of hearing about Jamison and his amazing honey. Randall was of the opinion that if something was too good to be true, then it likely was. He thought Jamison's honey must have some sort of secret ingredient that got people addicted to it. Maybe it was even a cover for some kind of dope operation that Jamison was running out of the mortuary or the cemetery. Whatever the case, Randall could smell the story, and it would be sweeter than any nectar the old mortician could produce.
So one night, as the moon hung full over Pleasant Rest Cemetery, Randall and his friends, Rooster Mallory and Charles Drainer, took a trip out to the cemetery to have a look around. Someone had reported earlier that week that they had seen some larger-than-normal bees around the cemetery grounds and speculated that these may be the source of Jamison's honey. It was the only lead that Randall had and seemed as good a lead as any. So after a couple of drinks at the Legion hall, the three men piled into Rooster's old Chevy and headed down to do some late-night snooping.
Randall still tells anyone who will listen how the graveyard was as silent as its namesake. The gate was locked, sporting a brand new Academy Security Lock, one of the big, thick gold ones that graced the sheds and fences of discerning security buffs in town. So, the three men had to find a different way in. This was strange since the cemetery had never been locked before. Jamison had always let people come and go as they please, but just recently, the old man has gotten a little cagey about many things. For one, the cemetery was now locked after nightfall. For another, no one was allowed in the basement of the mortuary, not even the man who came to deliver the bodies from the families. For third, no one but his two sons were allowed to work in the mortuary anymore, and both of them were under pain of death should they reveal the secret of Jamison's honey.
The three men had walked around the cemetery fence before they found a spot where the last windstorm had knocked down a thick old pine. It lay on the sharp points around the top, creating a rude bridge over the wall. None of them being particularly spry, they had them all carefully shimmied up the fallen tree and then dropped down into the cemetery, careful not to get stuck on the spikes. They all felt a chill as they stood in the quiet boneyard, and Randall claims that Rooster looked ready to brave the spikes if it meant being out of there.
The wind rattled the skeletal trees on the grounds, and the little flags that had been stuck on some of the graves for Labor Day snapped mischievously and startled them more than once. They had brought flashlights, but the big old traitors' moon that looked down on them was more than enough to keep them from tripping into an open grave or smashing their shins on an ill-placed tombstone. The quiet cemetery was enough to sober even the bravest of them, and it was probably why they heard the shovels before they saw the men.
Crouching behind a particularly large family headstone, Randal saw two men digging in a fresh grave. They were exhuming a body by the light of that pregnant moon, and Randall knew whose it was to boot. He had been to the widow Hadley's funeral that day, and it appeared that whoever these men were, they were taking her from her freshly dug plot. As they watched, the corpse flopped to the surface unceremoniously, followed by March's sons, Hannibal and Gavin. Hannibal hefted the body, leaving his younger brother to fill in the hole as he took it deeper into the cemetery. Gavin went to his work and bent as he was; he didn't notice the three men as they snuck around him and followed his older brother. Hannibal had been a football player, a linebacker for the local high school team in his day. He toted the frail old woman as easily as someone might a sack of grain. As they followed him, the three men weren't sure what they expected to find, but Randall was certain it would be something that would add a macabre twinge to the story he was working on.
They followed Hannibal as he came to a newly built mausoleum, the name across the door reading March. He unlocked the door and unceremoniously tossed the old woman into the crypt. The men hunkered low behind a pair of tombstones, but they needn't have bothered. Hannibal was a big boy, but his night eyes left something to be desired. He no more saw them than he did the place marker that he nearly tripped over on the way back to his brother, and as he stomped off into the cemetery, the three men approached the crypt.
The mortuary was a nice new one. Sunk into the ground a little to protect any caskets placed down there, it would have looked more at home in New Orleans than this Georgia backwater town. To the knowledge of anyone in town, the Marches did not have a family crypt until very recently. The only March buried there would be Jamison's wife since his mother and father were buried up in Macon at their own family plot. Hannibal may not have been the smartest March in town, but it appeared he was smart enough to lock up behind himself. Another one of those big, thick locks that had been found on the front gate greeted them, and the three men were forced to prowl around the mausoleum to see what they could find.
It was Charles who found the little vent in the mausoleum, but it was Randall who saw the horrors that lay inside.
Randall and Rooster had been looking for a window or perhaps another entrance when Charles had come hoofing it back to them to say that he had found a little vent that opened into the crypt. Randall asked him to show them where it was, and the three men found a little opening big enough for a large child to fit inside. Charles and Rooster were pulp wooders and much too big to squeeze into holes. However, Randall had made a career of squeezing into places he was not wanted.
Opting to stick his head in to get a better look, Randall had his friend hold his legs while he shimmied into the vent. Charles and Rooster slid him in as far as they could, and they said his flashlight could be seen through the slats at the top of the mausoleum.
When Randall started screaming and yelling for them to pull him out, it sounded like the devil himself had gotten a hold of him.
When they pulled him out, they said he was white as a sheet and said they had to tell the sheriff immediately.
Whether the brothers were gone when they made their escape or not, they missed them entirely as they beat a retreat back to town.
The sheriff took some convincing to get him out of bed, but when Randall told him what he had seen down in the crypt, he came with three other men and the biggest set of bolt cutters they could find at the station.
Jamison's sons were leaving when the sheriff and his boys pulled up, so they didn't end up needing the bolt cutters after all.
When he laid it out to the two young men that they could either cooperate or sit in the same prison cell that their father was about to occupy, they decided it might be in their best interest to show him what they'd been doing.
When the sheriff asked the boys if they would need suits, the two shook their heads. "The bees are mostly docile," Hannibal told them, and, sure enough, when they cracked the door, not a one came charging out. They descended into the ground, and by the light of the sheriff's flashlight, they saw the horrors below. The bees swarmed the small pile of corpses, taking whatever they used to make the honey back to the hives. The hives covered the walls of the crypt, making a sticky webwork of combs. The corpses down below were fresh, most of them having died very recently, and the bees were taking to them with gusto. The brothers said they came down once or twice a week to harvest the honey and that the vulture bees were taking to the warm Georgia summers quite nicely.
When the sheriff interrogated them, both said this had been their father's idea. He had read about the vulture bees and thought they sounded like an interesting idea. Then when their mother died, he did a little experiment. He had put her in the mortuary basement and procured some vulture bees of his own. The boys had been horrified when he showed them what he'd been up to, but even they had to admit, the honey had been the sweetest they had ever eaten. Something about the readily available nature of the local pollen, mixed with the bee's instinct to collect whatever they got from the corpses, had made for a potent and delicious treat.
"She was the catalyst for all this," Hannibal had said, "those first few jars he handed out to the people for tasting were honey made from mom's body."
He began to cry then, but the sheriff had all the evidence that he needed to proceed.
He arrested Jamison March that very night, but there seemed to be some confusion on what to charge him with. Couldn't really get him for murder because he hadn't killed anybody. Couldn't really get him for fraud because he buried those bodies just like he said he would. In the end, they got him on simple corpse desecration and misdemeanor fraud for not telling the families what he intended to do with the bodies.
He got less than five years in prison, and I hear that the warden let him keep the beehives in the prison garden.
Seems like his talents didn't go to waste even behind bars.
He left town when his time was served, he and his boys. The funeral home has been empty ever since. The police found the beginnings of his beekeeping in the basement. That, and a secondary hive with a swarm of angry vulture bees. Jamieson tried to sell the mortuary, but nobody seemed to want the place with that sort of reputation. It collapsed under a late February snow back in two thousand twelve, and they destroyed the mortuary they found all those bodies in about a year after Jamison went to prison.
And that's the sorted tale of Jamison March, and his bees.
I have no idea what they did with those bees after they turned them out of the March Mausoleum, they likely just turned them loose into an environment that was alien to them.
So, if you should be traveling through the Georgia back roads and see some larger-than-average bees or taste sweeter than average honey, be very suspicious about its origins.

​
When Jamison March, owner of March Mortuaries, put a sign out in front of his business saying that he would be selling honey, people thought it must be a joke.
What kind of mortician would sell honey? Would he sell it next to the caskets in his showroom? Would he offer it graveside at the cemetery? No one knew, but there was much speculation about that little sign.
Those who asked Jamison were in for quite a treat. Jamison told them that he would be selling his honey right here at the mortuary and even gave them a sample so they might tell their friends. What they sampled was supposedly the best honey any of them had ever eaten. They went on and on about the texture and the taste and the strange, exotic flavors within the honey. They said how they couldn't wait for Jamison to sell his honey, and they would be buying as much as they could on the opening day.
Others began to question where he was keeping his bees? They saw no beehives on his property, a two-bedroom apartment above the mortuary. They saw no hives on the mortuary property at all, in fact. They saw no hives in the cemetery or near the crematorium, but still, the honey came.
On the third of March, the first jar of that miraculous concoction appeared in the front room of Jamison's Mortuary. The mortuary was crowded for the next several days, and by Friday, not a jar was left to be purchased. Again, people praised the texture in the taste, as well as the myriad flavors that one would find within that jar. One of the buyers, Burt Lancaster, owned a large honey operation of his own. It is said that when he tasted Jamison honey, he proclaimed that no bee in his field had ever produced anything so sweet. Some would tell you that he burned his beehives that very afternoon, but that's a little more than town gossip.
For that summer back in 1986, no one could get enough of Jamison's honey.
They say Hellen Price used that honey to defeat her arrival, Linda Moore, in that summer's Fourth of July dessert bake-off.
They say Bert Cavill put that honey in his mead and could not make enough of it to satiate the local drunks.
They say Mary Sanders was taken to the hospital over at Oakley when she ate ten jars in a day and was reaching for an eleventh when her stomach ruptured.
But, again, that's all town gossip.
What is fact was the discovery made by Randall Smith, a local tabloid writer, in the fall of eighty-six.
Randall had a reputation for being less of a journalist and more of a mudslinger. If there was a nasty rumor started, Randall could usually be traced back to it. He had grown pretty tired of hearing about Jamison and his amazing honey. Randall was of the opinion that if something was too good to be true, then it likely was. He thought Jamison's honey must have some sort of secret ingredient that got people addicted to it. Maybe it was even a cover for some kind of dope operation that Jamison was running out of the mortuary or the cemetery. Whatever the case, Randall could smell the story, and it would be sweeter than any nectar the old mortician could produce.
So one night, as the moon hung full over Pleasant Rest Cemetery, Randall and his friends, Rooster Mallory and Charles Drainer, took a trip out to the cemetery to have a look around. Someone had reported earlier that week that they had seen some larger-than-normal bees around the cemetery grounds and speculated that these may be the source of Jamison's honey. It was the only lead that Randall had and seemed as good a lead as any. So after a couple of drinks at the Legion hall, the three men piled into Rooster's old Chevy and headed down to do some late-night snooping.
Randall still tells anyone who will listen how the graveyard was as silent as its namesake. The gate was locked, sporting a brand new Academy Security Lock, one of the big, thick gold ones that graced the sheds and fences of discerning security buffs in town. So, the three men had to find a different way in. This was strange since the cemetery had never been locked before. Jamison had always let people come and go as they please, but just recently, the old man has gotten a little cagey about many things. For one, the cemetery was now locked after nightfall. For another, no one was allowed in the basement of the mortuary, not even the man who came to deliver the bodies from the families. For third, no one but his two sons were allowed to work in the mortuary anymore, and both of them were under pain of death should they reveal the secret of Jamison's honey.
The three men had walked around the cemetery fence before they found a spot where the last windstorm had knocked down a thick old pine. It lay on the sharp points around the top, creating a rude bridge over the wall. None of them being particularly spry, they had them all carefully shimmied up the fallen tree and then dropped down into the cemetery, careful not to get stuck on the spikes. They all felt a chill as they stood in the quiet boneyard, and Randall claims that Rooster looked ready to brave the spikes if it meant being out of there.
The wind rattled the skeletal trees on the grounds, and the little flags that had been stuck on some of the graves for Labor Day snapped mischievously and startled them more than once. They had brought flashlights, but the big old traitors' moon that looked down on them was more than enough to keep them from tripping into an open grave or smashing their shins on an ill-placed tombstone. The quiet cemetery was enough to sober even the bravest of them, and it was probably why they heard the shovels before they saw the men.
Crouching behind a particularly large family headstone, Randal saw two men digging in a fresh grave. They were exhuming a body by the light of that pregnant moon, and Randall knew whose it was to boot. He had been to the widow Hadley's funeral that day, and it appeared that whoever these men were, they were taking her from her freshly dug plot. As they watched, the corpse flopped to the surface unceremoniously, followed by March's sons, Hannibal and Gavin. Hannibal hefted the body, leaving his younger brother to fill in the hole as he took it deeper into the cemetery. Gavin went to his work and bent as he was; he didn't notice the three men as they snuck around him and followed his older brother. Hannibal had been a football player, a linebacker for the local high school team in his day. He toted the frail old woman as easily as someone might a sack of grain. As they followed him, the three men weren't sure what they expected to find, but Randall was certain it would be something that would add a macabre twinge to the story he was working on.
They followed Hannibal as he came to a newly built mausoleum, the name across the door reading March. He unlocked the door and unceremoniously tossed the old woman into the crypt. The men hunkered low behind a pair of tombstones, but they needn't have bothered. Hannibal was a big boy, but his night eyes left something to be desired. He no more saw them than he did the place marker that he nearly tripped over on the way back to his brother, and as he stomped off into the cemetery, the three men approached the crypt.
The mortuary was a nice new one. Sunk into the ground a little to protect any caskets placed down there, it would have looked more at home in New Orleans than this Georgia backwater town. To the knowledge of anyone in town, the Marches did not have a family crypt until very recently. The only March buried there would be Jamison's wife since his mother and father were buried up in Macon at their own family plot. Hannibal may not have been the smartest March in town, but it appeared he was smart enough to lock up behind himself. Another one of those big, thick locks that had been found on the front gate greeted them, and the three men were forced to prowl around the mausoleum to see what they could find.
It was Charles who found the little vent in the mausoleum, but it was Randall who saw the horrors that lay inside.
Randall and Rooster had been looking for a window or perhaps another entrance when Charles had come hoofing it back to them to say that he had found a little vent that opened into the crypt. Randall asked him to show them where it was, and the three men found a little opening big enough for a large child to fit inside. Charles and Rooster were pulp wooders and much too big to squeeze into holes. However, Randall had made a career of squeezing into places he was not wanted.
Opting to stick his head in to get a better look, Randall had his friend hold his legs while he shimmied into the vent. Charles and Rooster slid him in as far as they could, and they said his flashlight could be seen through the slats at the top of the mausoleum.
When Randall started screaming and yelling for them to pull him out, it sounded like the devil himself had gotten a hold of him.
When they pulled him out, they said he was white as a sheet and said they had to tell the sheriff immediately.
Whether the brothers were gone when they made their escape or not, they missed them entirely as they beat a retreat back to town.
The sheriff took some convincing to get him out of bed, but when Randall told him what he had seen down in the crypt, he came with three other men and the biggest set of bolt cutters they could find at the station.
Jamison's sons were leaving when the sheriff and his boys pulled up, so they didn't end up needing the bolt cutters after all.
When he laid it out to the two young men that they could either cooperate or sit in the same prison cell that their father was about to occupy, they decided it might be in their best interest to show him what they'd been doing.
When the sheriff asked the boys if they would need suits, the two shook their heads. "The bees are mostly docile," Hannibal told them, and, sure enough, when they cracked the door, not a one came charging out. They descended into the ground, and by the light of the sheriff's flashlight, they saw the horrors below. The bees swarmed the small pile of corpses, taking whatever they used to make the honey back to the hives. The hives covered the walls of the crypt, making a sticky webwork of combs. The corpses down below were fresh, most of them having died very recently, and the bees were taking to them with gusto. The brothers said they came down once or twice a week to harvest the honey and that the vulture bees were taking to the warm Georgia summers quite nicely.
When the sheriff interrogated them, both said this had been their father's idea. He had read about the vulture bees and thought they sounded like an interesting idea. Then when their mother died, he did a little experiment. He had put her in the mortuary basement and procured some vulture bees of his own. The boys had been horrified when he showed them what he'd been up to, but even they had to admit, the honey had been the sweetest they had ever eaten. Something about the readily available nature of the local pollen, mixed with the bee's instinct to collect whatever they got from the corpses, had made for a potent and delicious treat.
"She was the catalyst for all this," Hannibal had said, "those first few jars he handed out to the people for tasting were honey made from mom's body."
He began to cry then, but the sheriff had all the evidence that he needed to proceed.
He arrested Jamison March that very night, but there seemed to be some confusion on what to charge him with. Couldn't really get him for murder because he hadn't killed anybody. Couldn't really get him for fraud because he buried those bodies just like he said he would. In the end, they got him on simple corpse desecration and misdemeanor fraud for not telling the families what he intended to do with the bodies.
He got less than five years in prison, and I hear that the warden let him keep the beehives in the prison garden.
Seems like his talents didn't go to waste even behind bars.
He left town when his time was served, he and his boys. The funeral home has been empty ever since. The police found the beginnings of his beekeeping in the basement. That, and a secondary hive with a swarm of angry vulture bees. Jamieson tried to sell the mortuary, but nobody seemed to want the place with that sort of reputation. It collapsed under a late February snow back in two thousand twelve, and they destroyed the mortuary they found all those bodies in about a year after Jamison went to prison.
And that's the sorted tale of Jamison March, and his bees.
I have no idea what they did with those bees after they turned them out of the March Mausoleum, they likely just turned them loose into an environment that was alien to them.
So, if you should be traveling through the Georgia back roads and see some larger-than-average bees or taste sweeter than average honey, be very suspicious about its origins.

water - mermaid shelbi - the deep sea of sirens - jellyfish princess - lionfish legacy - nautical fins - seahorse carriage
fire - the dragon’s fire opal - flaming sparkles - burning gold - flame of the dragon - phoenix embrace
nature - lovely sakuras - forest dragon - floral feathers
ice - winter butterfly - snowy stalactites - ice guardian - coldest winter
light - sunny starfish - neon dragonfly - sun goddess - heaven’s etoile - darkness slayer
dark - force of evil - shadow fox - spirit of crystal ball - nightmare - the twisted - mystical midnight - toxicities within - venomous viper - fallen dove’s lace wings - midnight dragon
galaxy - technebula - interstellar mist - comet burst - astral observatory - cybernova ocean
earth - sun shimmer - delicate crimson - orange moonlight - golden eye - wild child - tropical butterfish - fashioned gold - metallic waves - glow butterfly - raven flutter - bloodmoon - gold dreams - snow owl - dragon keeper - rareparrot
sailor scout - mini fire guardian - mini water guardian - mini electric guardian - mini love guardian - venus love guardian - masquerade hero - jupiter electric guardian - chibi moon - moon serenity guardian
bakery - mini lacey apron wings - mini rainbow candy wings - rainbow candy wings - triple cupcake decadence - gourmet chef wings - macaron cookies - lacey apron wings
more elements - mini mecha pack - large love wings - large mecha pack - pink unicorn - rainbow unicorn - large pink unicorn - large rainbow unicorn - large cotton candy unicorn
valentines - heart chocolate donuts - social love butterfly - valentines cake wings - chocolate truffle love - teddy 4 my valentine cookies - roses are red valentines - 14 karat gold infinity chain
lucky - treasure hunter - legend of the harp fairy - bad luck wings - rainbow shamrock butterfly wings - chroma dreams - fly through a rainbow - shooting stars - i wish for a unicorn - wish of good luck - gold keeper
halloween - pumpkin spice scented candle - undertaker’s hands - kawaii spookeye - spirit of halloween wings - toxicity - vampire’s graveyard - night of the full moon - dragon teeth - black widow - baby spider - frakenfairy - a witch’s best friend - jack-o-lantern - haunted - terror of the deep - rainy graveyard lurker - vampires bride - dragon blaze - arachnophobia spiderleg wings - extreme terror of the deep
fall wings - autumn fairy - scarf wings - fall fairy - gobble gobble wings - harvest fairy - gooey s’mores - pumpkin spice sparkluccino
christmas - mini hot cocoa - mini gingerbread wings - mini figure skater - cozy flannel bow wings - candy cane sugar wings - medium hot cocoa - stylish tree fashion - figure skater - special wrapped presents - enchanting christmas - large antler lights - large enchanting christmas - winter wings 2020
NOTE: i am looking for all these wings, but since i have a limited amount of diamonds and am looking for some more so than others, even if you do have a pair of wings im looking for, i may not buy them immediately and i will get back to u once im ready to purchase them!!

Hello BMW Reddit community,
I hope this message finds you all well. I am currently in the market for a car to get me through my last year of school, and I am considering a 2014 BMW 328xi. However, I am aware that BMWs can be expensive to maintain and that there have been some reported issues with the engine and Timing chain on these models.
My dad had a 2013 BMW and the engine blew probably because of the timing chain, and I don't want to fall into a 5-10k repair rabbit hole. However, I am wondering if the 2014 model is a better option and if it would be a solid choice to get me through my final year of school. AWD is also nice as I am in New England. I am starting to commute more (50 miles to school, 15 miles to work, 50-60 miles to MMA gym) so I want something that will make me feel more secure and something I can count on.
Should I scrap the BMW idea and shoot for like a 2016-20 civic/Subaru that's pretty out of the wrapper for a similar price? I know it will be biased cause the sub haha, but any input/wisdom/opinion will help.
Mom and sister say civics and dad say BMWs lol
I would appreciate any insights or experiences you have had with this specific model or BMWs in general. Thank you in advance for your help and advice!
Considering: 2014 BMW 328XI with 17,000 miles for $22,400 US(All fees included) Has the premium package and honestly looks out of the wrapper. Comes from a reputable/trustworthy dealer we work with previously.
I previously owned a 2007 BMW 328xi, which was my first car, and the maintenance was high but I honestly beat the crap out of it. Sold that for a 2005 Honda Civic with 82k miles and it just lit up like a Christmas tree. Getting tired of dealing with car issues so looking to try.
​
Sorry for the drawn-out post. Thank you in advance,
Ney

I love math and am masters student in pure math. Would love to have other people to talk about math with. I also love music in particular metal and experimental music. I dream to make music one day. Just want someone to talk about math and art with and idk say weird things and feel less lonely together. Also love hugs and cuddles and cute things and food. And carpets and dark aesthetic idk. We can also play minecraft or chess or something. The world is such a awful space lets hide in a bed near a christmas tree and hug, idk. I love bitter food. Feel free to send a message.

Hello Autos Reddit community,
I hope this message finds you all well. I am currently in the market for a car to get me through my last year of school, and I am considering a 2014 BMW 328xi. However, I am aware that BMWs can be expensive to maintain and that there have been some reported issues with the engine and Timing chain on these models.
My dad had a 2013 BMW and the engine blew probably because of the timing chain, and I don't want to fall into a 5-10k repair rabbit hole. However, I am wondering if the 2014 model is a better option and if it would be a solid choice to get me through my final year of school. AWD is also nice as I am in New England. I am starting to commute more (50 miles to school, 15 miles to work, 50-60 miles to MMA gym) so I want something that will make me feel more secure and something I can count on.
Should I scrap the BMW idea and shoot for like a 2016-20 civic/Subaru that's pretty out of the wrapper for a similar price? I know it will be biased cause the sub haha, but any input/wisdom/opinion will help.
Mom and sister say civics and dad say BMWs lol
I would appreciate any insights or experiences you have had with this specific model or BMWs in general. Thank you in advance for your help and advice!
Considering: 2014 BMW 328XI with 17,000 miles for $22,400 US(All fees included) Has the premium package and honestly looks out of the wrapper. Comes from a reputable/trustworthy dealer we work with previously.
I previously owned a 2007 BMW 328xi, which was my first car, and the maintenance was high but I honestly beat the crap out of it. Sold that for a 2005 Honda Civic with 82k miles and it just lit up like a Christmas tree. Getting tired of dealing with car issues so looking to try.
​
Sorry for the drawn-out post. Thank you in advance,
Ney

Hello WCSIB Reddit community,
I hope this message finds you all well. I am currently in the market for a car to get me through my last year of school, and I am considering a 2014 BMW 328xi. However, I am aware that BMWs can be expensive to maintain and that there have been some reported issues with the engine and Timing chain on these models.
My dad had a 2013 BMW and the engine blew probably because of the timing chain, and I don't want to fall into a 5-10k repair rabbit hole. However, I am wondering if the 2014 model is a better option and if it would be a solid choice to get me through my final year of school. AWD is also nice as I am in New England. I am starting to commute more (50 miles to school, 15 miles to work, 50-60 miles to MMA gym) so I want something that will make me feel more secure and something I can count on.
Should I scrap the BMW idea and shoot for like a 2016-20 civic/Subaru that's pretty out of the wrapper for a similar price? I know it will be biased cause the sub haha, but any input/wisdom/opinion will help.
Mom and sister say civics and dad say BMWs lol
I would appreciate any insights or experiences you have had with this specific model or BMWs in general. Thank you in advance for your help and advice!
Considering: 2014 BMW 328XI with 17,000 miles for $22,400 US(All fees included) Has the premium package and honestly looks out of the wrapper. Comes from a reputable/trustworthy dealer we work with previously.
I previously owned a 2007 BMW 328xi, which was my first car, and the maintenance was high but I honestly beat the crap out of it. Sold that for a 2005 Honda Civic with 82k miles and it just lit up like a Christmas tree. Getting tired of dealing with car issues so looking to try.
​
Sorry for the drawn-out post. Thank you in advance,
Ney

Hello Honda Reddit community,
I hope this message finds you all well. I am currently in the market for a car to get me through my last year of school, and I am considering a 2014 BMW 328xi. However, I am aware that BMWs can be expensive to maintain and that there have been some reported issues with the engine and Timing chain on these models.
My dad had a 2013 BMW and the engine blew probably because of the timing chain, and I don't want to fall into a 5-10k repair rabbit hole. However, I am wondering if the 2014 model is a better option and if it would be a solid choice to get me through my final year of school. AWD is also nice as I am in New England. I am starting to commute more (50 miles to school, 15 miles to work, 50-60 miles to MMA gym) so I want something that will make me feel more secure and something I can count on.
Should I scrap the BMW idea and shoot for like a 2016-20 civic/Subaru that's pretty out of the wrapper for a similar price? I know it will be biased cause the sub haha, but any input/wisdom/opinion will help.
Mom and sister say civics and dad say BMWs lol
I would appreciate any insights or experiences you have had with this specific model or BMWs in general. Thank you in advance for your help and advice!
Considering: 2014 BMW 328XI with 17,000 miles for $22,400 US(All fees included) Has the premium package and honestly looks out of the wrapper. Comes from a reputable/trustworthy dealer we work with previously.
I previously owned a 2007 BMW 328xi, which was my first car, and the maintenance was high but I honestly beat the crap out of it. Sold that for a 2005 Honda Civic with 82k miles and it just lit up like a Christmas tree. Getting tired of dealing with car issues so looking to try.
​
Sorry for the drawn-out post. Thank you in advance,
Ney

Hello MA Reddit community,
I hope this message finds you all well. I am currently in the market for a car to get me through my last year of school, and I am considering a 2014 BMW 328xi. However, I am aware that BMWs can be expensive to maintain and that there have been some reported issues with the engine and Timing chain on these models.
My dad had a 2013 BMW and the engine blew probably because of the timing chain, and I don't want to fall into a 5-10k repair rabbit hole. However, I am wondering if the 2014 model is a better option and if it would be a solid choice to get me through my final year of school. AWD is also nice as I am in New England. I am starting to commute more (50 miles to school, 15 miles to work, 50-60 miles to MMA gym) so I want something that will make me feel more secure and something I can count on.
Should I scrap the BMW idea and shoot for like a 2016-20 civic/Subaru that's pretty out of the wrapper for a similar price? I know it will be biased cause the sub haha, but any input/wisdom/opinion will help.
Mom and sister say civics and dad say BMWs lol
I would appreciate any insights or experiences you have had with this specific model or BMWs in general. Thank you in advance for your help and advice!
Considering: 2014 BMW 328XI with 17,000 miles for $22,400 US(All fees included) Has the premium package and honestly looks out of the wrapper. Comes from a reputable/trustworthy dealer we work with previously.
I previously owned a 2007 BMW 328xi, which was my first car, and the maintenance was high but I honestly beat the crap out of it. Sold that for a 2005 Honda Civic with 82k miles and it just lit up like a Christmas tree. Getting tired of dealing with car issues so looking to try.
​
Sorry for the drawn-out post. Thank you in advance,
Ney