F. S. FRANKLIN
(Chairman of the Norfolk Bee-
Keepers' Association)
Last week listeners were introduced to the fascinating and profitable hobby of bee-keeping, and today F. S. Franklin , Chairman of the Norfolk Bee-Keepers' Association, is to take listeners a stage further.
Though in the days of skeps, when the bees were destroyed before the honey was taken, nearly everyone kept bees for honey, ' mead ', and beeswax, it is only in the last fifty years that bee-keeping has become a matter not of chance but of certainty, given favourable weather.
Mr. Franklin will discuss ' single-walled' and ' double-walled' hives, initial outlay, wintering, the incubation and fostering of the young, swarming, and so forth.
He will describe the joy of taking your first honey, discuss the yield and how it is extracted from the combs by machinery and never touched by hand, and finally show what a valuable food honey is and the number of purposes to which it may be put.
The most surprising thing of all perhaps is to learn that from May to August not more than fifteen minutes' attention need be given in a week to each hive of bees, and that during the winter months they require little attention at all.