Carl Everest Killion was born September 2nd 1899 in a log cabin several miles from the community of Diamond, Indiana. He became interested in bees and covered bridges at an early age recalling his first taste of honey at age six and weathering a severe thunderstorm
under the protection of a newly built covered bridge. He was reared through the great depression and due to the times was unable to obtain a high school education. His father sustained their family employed in the coal mines, where Carl himself would later work.

Carl's 1966 book "The Covered Bridge" relayed some of the key events of his child hood and how he came to have a fondness for covered bridges and bees. Carl's father not enamored with bees and was not agreeable to spend hard earned dollars for beekeeping adventures. Carl's work allowed him access to wooden apple crates which he scavenged and formed into bee frames and boxes, but finding wild bee swarms proved much harder. His first set of bees came from a bee tree that he and his friends were able to acquire and by season's end Carl had established fifteen hives. His family later moved to Paris, Illinois, where he continued
his interest in bees and beekeeping. He became a founding member of the state's beekeeping society and later the state's apiary inspector and bee expert. He met and married Elizabeth Hayes and began a family, but unable to make an adequate living at that time with just beekeeping he stayed with mining until 1935 when a mine accident caused him to re-think mine labor.

His interest in bees began with observation of local beekeepers and their efforts in capturing wild bees and continued throughout the years discussing, collaborating, teaching and legislating with beekeeping colleagues. A 1951 summary of his own beekeeping experiences are found in this book, "Honey in the Comb", originally self-published by Killion and Son's
Apiaries. He was a close friend of Charles Dadant.

Carl passed away June 1st 1979.