My first mentor was Arthur Worth. He was keeping his head down in a muddy crater in Flanders with shells and bullets overhead in WW1 when he noticed bees visiting the flowers (poppies?) unconcerned by all the muck, bullets and carnage. It was then that he decided that, if he survived, he would become a beekeeper. He did and he did.  I think he was 93 when he died.

Another mentor was Roy Page F.R.E.S. When he was 93 I climbed with him into his attic to retrieve an observation hive that we moved to his shed and which I stocked with a swarm.  He died in hospital under anaesthetic at the age of 96, having driven himself there to have a tooth out. I can't get my feet under my desk because the space is taken up with boxes of old bee booklets that he hoarded and which his daughter passed on to me. 

In his shed were a 'catenary hive' that was fashionable briefly about half a century ago and also a centrifugal extractor with a horizontal axis, taking up less floor space than the conventional type with a vertical axis.

Chris

 

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