ANNE LESTER AND DADDY LOWE, BEEKEEPERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3415, 29 August 1919, Page 9

ANNE LESTER AND DADDY LOWE, BEEKEEPERS.

(By Grace Allen.)

"Dear Robert, —Nations may rise or fall, but the world shall have honey. Daddy Lowe and I have seen to that—we and the bees. We have extracted. And wouldn't you, over there, making the world safe for democracy and honey-eating, like to hear all about it? I thought so, it will make such a cheery contrast to mud and cooties. Do, by the way, tell me if the writers have been justified in putting so much emphasis on these two features of the war; they have gradually come to be the whole background of my mental pictures. Always, in my mind's eye, you are in the mud. though you haven't made much reference to it yourself. But though I picture an entire army fighting cooties, I admit that you, my dignified brother, remain an ever dignified exception. Perhaps you better not, even though accuracy might require it, disillusion me—let me keep my sisterly pride, "Well, to get to the extracting job. First of all, it really is a job. We talked about it a lot as June closed and July came, and at last Daddy Lowe said, 'Now.' So on Tuesday of last week, the second Tuesday in July, we put on the bee-escapes and otherwise made ready. Bee-escapes, Captain Brother, are clever contraptions designed to let unsuspecting bees pass down, out of their treasure vaults into the nursery, and not let them back. The intention is to have Ihe honey that the keebeeper is going to take as free from bees as possible at the critical moment of taking. The next morning we took it off, 'we' meaning Daddy Lowe. I hovered around, of course, all eyes and 'Oh's,' but the only practical thing I did was to open the screen door of the honey-shed when he came rolling in the -wheel-barrows of honey. "After it was all in, piled on one side of the room, the performance started. Mrs Lowe came down to see the. start, as she has always done, they say. She didn't stay long this time, but just her being there for a little while seemed to sort of consecrate the place. She sat in the little rocker that stays there all the time, to entice her out occasionally, looking around and blessing things with her look. I gave her a sample of the new honey, and she said it was the best they had ever had. Mr Lowe laughed and said she had been saying that for 25 years, but she insisted this really was the best. I don't know how she could tell — she eats about as much lately as a disembodied spirit. But Mr Lowe swung round, as he always does,, to back her up most gallantly. She was undoubtedly right, he told her, this really was fine honey, and anyway the last of anything was always the best —good honey or happy years or almost anything. And she said it over after him, with such a gentle smile, 'Yes, the last is the best.' " Here Anne Lester laid down her pen and looked out of the window. Her own wise young instinct had told her to make her

letters only chatty and cheery, never depressing, even before wise older people began advising it. But she was frankly worried these days, and Mrs Lowe's tone and look haunted her.. She sat perfectly still a long time, then with a little sigh started again. "I don't mind admitting to you that the extracting of honey isn't quite so much to my taste as the yard work with the bees themselves. It is much more tiring, and it's more like work in every way. The other gets to be like work, too, when there is really a lot to do, and you must keep going, hive after hive, in a business-like way. But even then, it has a certain charm and fascination that holds mo steadily to it. I hereby give you warning that after you como home I shall continue to keep bees. Which means, of course, that I don't want to go back to the city, and I don't, though I don't expect you to give up your work at tho bank and become a farmer for my sake, like Theodore. That's the difference between brothers and Theodores ! Anyway, I couldn't be happy if I gave up tho work you enjoy so I could have one I enjoy. But I shall want to move as far out as seems reasonable for you to com mute, where we can have a little place with country things around —great stretches of green, and climbing roses on the fences, and cinnamon vines and honeysuckle. I want some hollyhocks, too, and lilacs in tho dooryard blooming, . and things like that. Yes, and .fruit trees and grapevines and strawberries and mint and an asparagus bed and things like that. Then I'll have my white-painted hives on green grass, under the fruit trees, with hollyhocks and roses all around; and when you come home, tired and hot and soulsick, from your noisy city with its shut-in old bank, I'll give you cold clinky tea with mint in it, and quietness and beauty, and let you. listen to the humming of my bees. And after a bit you'll feel as though something lovely had touched you, with a blessing in its hand. "I seem to have run off my subject again. I really like a subject that is easy to run off from, like a road with leafy lanes and cool pebbly creeks leading off. It's easy enough to come back. "Here, then, is how you extract honey. First you take a big comb, all sealed over, or mostly so, so as to be sure it is 'ripe,' then you rest the. end with gentle emphasis on an upturned nail that rests on a wooden arm that rests across a big empty can that rests on a coarse strainer-iik© wire that rests on another empty can. Have you the whole restful picture? Next you take your uncapping knite, which has been heating in a pan of hot water on the stove near which you are standing, and neatly slice the cappings off tho honey, first one side then tho other. The aforementioned upturned nail steadies the comb while you cut. The cappings drop into the empty can, while the honey still in them runs on down through the wire into the lower part. Then you put this drippy, uncapped comb into your extractor, which is another big empty can, about as high as your waist; at least, it would be emptv if it didn't have various things in it —baskets made of stout wire and something else, tin, maybe, or something galvanised, and parts that fit into eaph other and turn. There's a handle — it's on the outside, —and. when you have a comb of honey in each of theso baskets and turn this handle fast enough, out whirls the honey. "Do you remember about centrifugal force, Robert? I do. We had it at school. There were twins, centrifugal and centripetal. The books said one of them kept the earth from flying off into space, and the other kept it from being drawn into the sun and burned up. I. knew which was which for a while, but it was hard to keep them separate long at a time. Now I know, again, and will never have any more trouble with the twins. Centripetal force doesn't help us a bit in extracting, it's the other does the work. It doesn't do it all, though. Somebody's got to turn tho handle. "Well, after the honey- is thus centrifugally extracted, the combs are returned to the bees. You have to be careful to put them back on the hives towards evening, or the bees, smelling the fresh honey, get excited and lawless and start robbing one another's hives. Isn't it a pity bees and nations do that kind of thing? "Later the honey is strained and put into barrels or big cans or little cans or bottles. We're doing a lot of that work now, and putting on labels. Mr Lowe ordered some new labels last week, and I told him he ought to make them read. 'Anne Lester and Laddy Lowe. Beekeepers.' To-day he tells me he did ! I don't know whether he's joking or not, but I do know the 'Daddy Lowe' part would make a hit around here, for that's what so many people call him. "Now you know all about extracting—maybe ! Anyway, you know enough to see that • I'll need an extracting room at that little country place we're going to have when you come home. Yojj can't tell, I may get to be such a big producer that I'll have a power extractor. Yes, they do have such things. Isn't it wonderful? We never knew, and most people never guess what a big business honey production ie. The only trouble, though, with my having a power outfit is that I'd have to have somebody around to run the machinery. "I wish you could see how quietly the level sunlight lies along the hills. The world is utterly peaceful here, utterly lovely. Some day it will be so over there. Then you'll come back and tell me how you helped make it so, while we drink that iced and minted tea by the hollyhocks in my own beeyard.—Lovingly, •■ "Anne." —Gleanings