Once the trees were down, one of the most difficult parts of clearing the land was logging those felled trees, so this became one of the earliest and most common type of 'bee'. All the settlers living within a radius of fifteen or twenty miles were invited, and always brought their own oxen and implements with them. Sometimes a "butler" or "boss" was placed in charge to give the necessary directions, and after underbrushing the piece of land, the workers began the task of 'logging'.
Usually the trees were cut down in such a way that they would fall naturally in heaps, and when several large piles were made, the oxcart was brought out and the men with handspikes loaded the logs onto the carts until they were about eight feet high. The long pieces were kept for building, but all underbrush and branches were burned (also called "branding") and the charred remains and any rotten wood was gathered by three or four men with a yoke of oxen dragging a single chain between them.
In The Farmers Sun, August 4, 1898; Walter Riddell, an early settler near Cobourg, Ontario; describes a day in the branding-field: "With a blazing sun overhead and ashes heated like unto a fiery funace underneath, the men looked like a lot of chimney- sweeps after a day at branding." And in the same issue under The Reminiscences of Mrs. Jones: "Women still living recall the noisy shouting at the oxen as the men laboured all day at this work, and the preparation of meals "for thirty blackened men" at the close of the bee".
In new settlements throughout July, often the whole countryside would be illuminated by the burning of log heaps. Sometimes in small communities, rather than take the time to cut up larger pieces of wood for burning, a large mound was made and smaller burning logs (called "niggars", egads!) were placed about every twenty or thirty feet until the logs were burned through. In Pioneer Life in Zorra, written by W.A. MacKay in 1899 (Pages 167-8), one settler from Zorra Township, Oxford County, sent back word to his friends in Scotland that he had one hundred "niggers" working for him; whereupon "the whole parish was agog with excitement over the Zorra man's wonderful wealth in controlling the services of no less than one hundred negroes".
"when potash brings a good price, and the land to be cleared has those sorts of timber growing on it the most proper for the purpose, the ashes will often pay for clearing the land. If not preserved at all, land can be hired to be chopped, logged, burned, and fenced at from 45s. to 52s. per acre"
Colonel Strickland (Strickland Volume 1, page 97-98) held such a lime-burning in 1826 at his farm in Douro Township, Peterborough County, and wrote that about one hundred bushels of lime were obtained, sufficient for all purposes for a house thirty-six feet by twenty-four feet.
The free use of liquor at logging bees was characteristic and it was customary to provide whisky for the men in the proportion of one gallon to each yoke of oxen; though other hosts put no such limits. To add a bit of competition to the event, sometimes the men were divided into groups, called "gangs" and given an equal amount of trees to fell, log and "brand". Whisky played a large role in keeping up the spirits, but also led to to many fights, and things could get out of control:
Parody of Events at Logging
In our town, in our town.
There was a man in our town,
He made a logging bee ;
And he bought lots of whisky,
To make the loggers frisky-
To make the loggers frisky,
At his logging bee.
The Devil sat on a log heap,
A log heap, a log heap-
A red-hot burning log heap-
A-grinning at the bee ;
And there was lots of swearing,
Of boasting and of daring,
Of fighting and of tearing,
At that logging bee."