July 1964 Popular Electronics Table of Contents Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics. See articles from Popular Electronics, published October 1954 - April 1985. All copyrights are hereby acknowledged.

This Carl and Jerry adventure serves as a warning to be certain of your information source before launching into a potentially dangerous endeavor. The tech-savvy teens are typically more cautious with their experiments, gags, and projects, but this time they took the word of a neighbor regarding research performed by scientists at the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Bee Culture Laboratory in Madison, Wisconsin, without verification. The old saying about a little bit of knowledge being a dangerous thing certainly played out here. I won't give away the ending, but it wasn't hard to figure events would take a turn for the worse at some point. John Frye's other Carl and Jerry technodramas are usually more engaging and are a source for some radio and/or electronics wizardry and/or circuit analysis. I did learn about the Koh-i-Noor diamond here, though. Many more Carl and Jerry stories are linked at the bottom of the page.

Strange Voices

By John T. Frye

Carl and Jerry were sitting on Carl's back stoop enjoying the dew-washed freshness of the summer morning. Carl had Bosco, his dog, clamped firmly between his knees and was wooling the dog's ears affectionately while the animal growled in mock protest at this thoroughly enjoyed rough treatment.

"Hey, there's Mr. Gruber heading this way," Jerry said. "Sure looks as though he has something on his mind."

Carl turned to see his elderly neighbor coming across the back yards at such a lively clip that his cane barely touched the grass. The little man was a favorite with both boys. They admired and respected the way Mr. Gruber refused to bow to his advancing years, maintaining a deep interest in every- thing, and especially scientific progress. Most of all they liked his enthusiasm, the way he became all worked up over a new idea or project.

"Good morning," he greeted them as he sat down on the bottom step and began to fan himself with his ancient battered derby. "I was hoping you two might be up already. You're invited to join me in performing a very interesting and rewarding experiment."

"Good!" Carl exclaimed. "We were just wondering what we could do on a fine day like this. What have you got in mind ?"

"Getting the honey out of a bee tree I've spotted!" Mr. Gruber announced triumphantly. "Yesterday when I was up Eel River fishing for goggle-eye, I noticed lots of bees flying around. I did some investigating, and found them going in and out of a hole in the side of a big old sycamore growing right on the bank of the river. Since the tree is growing between the road and the river, we don't have to ask anyone's permission to chop into it."

"How about the bees' permission?" Jerry asked. "While it has been some time since I was stung, I can remember how it feels with no trouble."

"We'll take care of that," Mr. Gruber said confidently. His blue eyes sparkled happily behind his steel -rimmed glasses as he went on. "Boys, you haven't really lived until you've helped cut a bee tree. It has everything: danger, mounting suspense, and finally a sweet reward. Best of all, it will give us a chance to try a new electronic method of keeping the bees quiet while we scoop out the honey. Just last week I read an article about it, and now we can try it. It seems like fate."

"What is this new electronic method'?" Carl asked cautiously.

"It was discovered by the entomology department of the University of Wisconsin's School of Agriculture along with the U. S. Department of Agriculture's Bee Culture Laboratory in Madison. The work was done by Mr. R. E. Showers, a teacher at the East High School in Green Bay, while holding a National Science Foundation fellowship and working under the supervision of Dr. F. E. Moeller. In fact, Mr. Showers and some of his high school students are still carrying on experiments.

"Anyway, it was discovered that certain audio frequencies have a very profound effect on bees. Frequencies between two hundred and twelve hundred cycles seemed to produce a strong tranquilizing effect, with nine hundred and sixty cycles being the optimum frequency. Going either way from this frequency reduced the effect. When a scout bee you know, the one that comes back to the hive and does an interpretive dance to tell the others where the goodies are - was exposed to nine hundred and sixty cycle audio, lie danced out completely erroneous information as long as the sound was on! Investigators were able to work colonies of bees without being stung and without the protection of veils or smoke, using only the soporific effect of a small code-practice buzzer tuned to nine hundred and sixty cycles and fastened to the side of the hive. Even when the bees had been quieted for as long as a half hour with the audio, they returned to normal almost instantly when the sound was cut off."

"Very interesting!" Jerry commented. "But how do we go about using this information?"

"There's nothing to it!" Mr. Gruber said, getting to his feet. "You fellows have a little transistorized audio amplifier and a transistorized code-practice oscillator already built up. You set the oscillator on nine hundred and sixty cycles and feed it into the amplifier. The amplifier can feed out into a small speaker with which we can direct sound toward the hole in the tree. While the sound puts the bees to sleep, we can chop into the tree and take out the honey. A half-watt of audio should be plenty-the buzzer the entomologists used couldn't have put out more than that."

"What do you think, Carl," Jerry asked, sounding more and more intrigued by the moment.

"I say let's do it," Carl answered, already way ahead of him.

"Time's a wastin'," Mr. Gruber broke in. "You two put the electronic gear we need into your car and drive around back in the alley. I'll get my axe and some dishpans and a dipper from Martha for collecting the honey. Boy oh boy! I can almost taste that fresh honey on hot biscuits right now!"

He departed in a shuttling trot, and Carl and Jerry, grinning affectionately at his retreating figure, started obediently for their basement laboratory. Truth to tell, they also felt tugs of growing excitement. There was something infectious about the enthusiasm of the little man.

Mr. Gruber was waiting for them when they stopped the car behind his garage, and they quickly loaded the pans and the axe into the trunk. Bosco, sensing that something was afoot, had followed them, and now he stood at the corner of the garage with drooping head and tail, looking the very picture of dejection as he saw they were preparing to leave without him. "Hold on!" Mr. Gruber called as Carl started the motor. "Look at that poor 'dog standing there sorrowing because he's being left out of the fun. Can't we take him?"

"O.K.," Carl agreed. "An act such as that canine ham is putting on deserves an Oscar and should be rewarded. Come on, Bosco!"

The animal's head and tail came up in a flash, and he leaped clear over the closed rear door of the car and landed in the seat with Mr. Gruber, shivering with delight at being permitted to go along.

They soon reached the spot where Mr. Gruber had been fishing. The little-traveled road paralleled the river at this point, with only a narrow strip of sloping river bank separating the two. While Bosco frolicked about, sniffing at all sorts of exciting scents, Carl and Jerry, carrying the equipment, followed Mr. Gruber along a path through the low bushes until he reached the base of a big sycamore tree. There was a three-inch hole in the scaly trunk about a dozen feet from the ground, and bees were flying busily in and out.

Jerry connected up the oscillator, speaker, and amplifier while Mr. Gruber stalked about the tree eying it with the intent concentration of a diamond cutter preparing to split the Great Koh-i-Noor. Finally he extended his cane and touched a spot on the trunk about shoulder high and directly beneath the bees' entrance.

"We'll chop here," he said to Carl, who was leaning on the axe handle. "Are you ready with the 'bee -pacifier,' Jer- ?"

For an answer, Jerry threw a switch. A pure, surprisingly loud tone came from the little speaker he held in his hand.

"Point the speaker directly at the hole and stand out of the way of Carl's axe," Mr. Gruber directed. "Okay, Paul Bunyan, lay on the wood!"

Carl spat on his hands in imitation of a professional lumberjack, swung the double-bitted axe back over his shoulder, and sank the blade deep into the green tree-trunk. He never had a chance to chop a second time. A tornado of angry insects boiled from the hole in the trunk and descended like a blanket, sparing no one.

While Carl and Jerry were feeling the stabbing pain of multiple stings, they saw Mr. Gruber snatch off his derby and start flailing wildly with it, and yelps from Bosco revealed that he, too, was being stung. Suddenly Mr. Gruber turned and ran for the river with the speed and nimbleness of a sixteen-year-old, and the boys and the dog were right behind the galvanized little man as he gave a great leap out into the stream and disappeared beneath the surface.

Fortunately, the water was only about three feet deep, and it was fairly easy to keep submerged simply by squatting down and coming up briefly now and then for air. After a few minutes the bees gave up the attack, and the three men cautiously surfaced and waded on out to a sand bar in the middle of the stream. Bosco was already there, whimpering and pawing at his muzzle which had received the most stings.

That didn't work very well, did it?" Mr. Gruber said sheepishly, glancing out of the corner of his eye at the lumpy, swelling faces of his young friends.

"That's the understatement of the year," Carl agreed, grinning crookedly as he started plucking stings from the back of his hand.

"Don't do that!" Mr. Gruber said. "You're just squeezing venom from the little poison sacks down into the skin punctures. Scrape the stings off with a knife blade as I'm doing. That way they won't amount to much."

"Mr. Gruber," Jerry asked, "are you sure you didn't overlook something in that article about the bee-tranquilizing?"

"See for yourself," Mr. Gruber invited as he removed his derby, shook some water from it, and fished a soggy newspaper clipping from inside the sweatband.

Jerry read the story and then carefully examined the clipping. Suddenly he used his fingernails to separate two layers of paper and peeled them apart until the clipping was twice its former length. He read the continuation of the story, and a smile creased his swollen face.

"Mr. Gruber," he said gently, "I'm afraid you were in such a hurry to try out this bee-quieting business that you forgot one important point. The story goes on to say that the threshold limit for the reaction was 125 db of audio measured at the level of the bee. The figure is confusing since it gives the airborne energy which just serves to disturb the substrate. The actual sound energy we put into the substrate is much less, and it is substrate vibration that causes the reaction. In other words, there was enough energy from that little buzzer the researchers screwed to the side of the hive to quiet the bees perched on the hive or the comb, but to transmit the same amount of vibration to the hive by conduction through the air from a speaker, we would have to exceed the limit of human pain. The experimenters were never able to put out enough audio energy to quiet a bee while in flight."

"If that doesn't beat everything!" Mr. Gruber exclaimed with a crestfallen air. "Now I remember I was interrupted by Martha's wanting me to go to the store while I was reading that article. I folded it and put it into my hat where it stuck together. I never finished reading it and even forgot that there was more to it. Does the story say anything else?"

"There's one other thing. By amputating pairs of legs, the entomologists have found that the fore pair is about eighty-five per cent responsible for carrying the sound stimulus. The remaining fifteen per cent of conduction is about equally divided between the middle and hind pairs. Why are you grinning, Carl?"

"I was just thinking about that business of the sound energy having to be conducted to the bee's body through his legs," Carl said. "We failed because our sound energy didn't pass through the bee's knees. Get it? 'The bee's knees-' "

He was interrupted by handfuls of sand scooped in his direction by both Mr. Gruber and Jerry. Even Bosco barked and tried to nip his ankles as he ran away laughing.

Carl & Jerry, by John T. Frye Carl and Jerry Frye were fictional characters in a series of short stories that were published in Popular Electronics magazine from the late 1950s to the early 1970s. The stories were written by John T. Frye, who used the pseudonym "John T. Carroll," and they followed the adventures of two teenage boys, Carl Anderson and Jerry Bishop, who were interested in electronics and amateur radio. In each story, Carl and Jerry would encounter a problem or challenge related to electronics, and they would use their knowledge and ingenuity to solve it. The stories were notable for their accurate descriptions of electronic circuits and devices, and they were popular with both amateur radio enthusiasts and young people interested in science and technology. The Carl and Jerry stories were also notable for their emphasis on safety and responsible behavior when working with electronics. Each story included a cautionary note reminding readers to follow proper procedures and safety guidelines when handling electronic equipment. Although the Carl and Jerry stories were fictional, they were based on the experiences of the author and his own sons, who were also interested in electronics and amateur radio. The stories continue to be popular among amateur radio enthusiasts and electronics hobbyists, and they are considered an important part of the history of electronics and technology education. I have posted 81 of them as of October 2025. p.s. You might also want to check out my "Calvin & Phineas" story(ies), a modern day teenager adventure written in the spirit of "Carl & Jerry."
The Hot Hot - March 1964 The Girl Detector -  January 1964 First Case - June 1961 The Bee's Knees - July 1964 A Rough Night - January 1961 Wrecked by a Wagon Train - February 1962 Gold Is Where You Find It - April 1956 Little "Bug" with Big Ears - January 1959 Lie Detector Tells All - November 1955 The Educated Nursing Bottle - April 1964 Going Up - March 1955 Electrical Shock - September 1955 A Low Blow - March 1961 The Black Beast - May 1960 Vox Electronik, September 1958 Pi in the Sky and Big Twist, February 1964 The Bell Bull Session, December 1961 Cow-Cow Boogie, August 1958 TV Picture, June 1955 Electronic Trap, March 1956 Geniuses at Work, June 1956 Eeeeelectricity!, November 1956 Anchors Aweigh, July 1956 Bosco Has His Day, August 1956 The Hand of Selene, November 1960 Feedback, May 1956 Abetting or Not?, October 1956 Electronic Beach Buggy, September 1956 Extra Sensory Perception, December 1956 Trapped in a Chimney, January 1956 Command Performance, November 1958 Treachery of Judas, July 1961 The Sucker, May 1963 Stereotaped New Year, January 1963 The Snow Machine, December 1960 Extracurricular Education, July 1963 Slow Motion for Quick Action, April 1963 Sonar Sleuthing, August 1963 TV Antennas, August 1955 Succoring a Soroban, March 1963 "All's Fair --", September 1963 Operation Worm Warming, May 1961 Improvising - February 1960	ROTC Riot - April 1962 Togetherness - June 1964 Blackmailing a Blonde - October 1961 Strange Voices - April 1957 "Holes" to the Rescue - May 1957 Carl and Jerry: A Rough Night - January 1961 The "Meller Smeller" - January 1957 Secret of Round Island - March 1957 The Electronic Bloodhound - November 1964 Great Bank Robbery or "Heroes All" - October 1955 Operation Startled Starling - January 1955 A Light Subject - November 1954 Dog Teaches Boy - February 1959 Too Lucky - August 1961 Joking and Jeopardy - December 1963 Santa's Little Helpers - December 1955 Two Tough Customers - June 1960 Transistor Pocket Radio, TV Receivers and Yagi Antennas, May 1955 Tunnel Stomping, March 1962 The Blubber Banisher, July 1959 The Sparkling Light, May 1962 Pure Research Rewarded, June 1962 A Hot Idea, March 1960 The Hot Dog Case, December 1954 A New Company is Launched, October 1954 Under the Mistletoe, December 1958 Electronic Eraser, August 1962 "BBI", May 1959 Ultrasonic Sound Waves, July 1955 The River Sniffer, July 1962 Ham Radio, April 1955 El Torero Electronico, April 1960 Wired Wireless, January 1962 Electronic Shadow, September 1957 Elementary Induction, June 1963 He Went That-a-Way, March1959 Electronic Detective, February 1958 Aiding an Instinct, December 1962 Two Detectors, February 1955 Tussle with a Tachometer, July 1960 Therry and the Pirates, April 1961 The Crazy Clock Caper, October 1960
Carl & Jerry: Their Complete Adventures is now available. "From 1954 through 1964, Popular Electronics published 119 adventures of Carl Anderson and Jerry Bishop, two teen boys with a passion for electronics and a knack for getting into and out of trouble with haywire lash-ups built in Jerry's basement. Better still, the boys explained how it all worked, and in doing so, launched countless young people into careers in science and technology. Now, for the first time ever, the full run of Carl and Jerry yarns by John T. Frye are available again, in five authorized anthologies that include the full text and all illustrations."