Cherry Rogers recalls her memories of growing up in Brandon …
“Some of my happiest memories are time spent with my dad Jack Mackender and my maternal grandfather Alec Rolph. Dad and grandad were both beekeepers and produced prize winning honey. My Grandad kept his bees on the land behind his house on London Road, stretching the length of the row of cottages from Newell’s sawmill (where Tesco is now) to what was known as ‘Gumbolls Pit’ Rowan Drive has now been built on the land. There was an orchard, a pig sty and a shed with a copper where potato skins were boiled and mixed with meal for chicken feed. There were lots of chickens and nana sold the eggs. Among the various sheds was a building known as the “honey shed”. My dad helped grandad with his bees and took on most of the work as grandad’s health worsened, but dad also had bees which he kept at Lingheath, the Killingworth Farm, which my dad always called the Fox Farm. I never heard anyone else call it that.
Dad also kept a large number of hives on the Elveden Estate where he worked. I remember going out with dad in his first van to collect bees which had swarmed. My Dad scooped them into a box, or shook them into it if they were in a tree, and I sat in the back of the van holding the lids on them. Would I do that now? I might do! I think before he got the van, he balanced the box of bees on his motorbike and transported them balanced on the tank. The van was great, two or three boxes could be moved at once. Dad took the swarms to a new hive and shook the bees on to a piece of sacking spread in front of the hive and the bees just marched in.
When my grandad died in the late fifties, (1958 I think) my Dad became the owner of grandad’s bees. Although he had looked after them for many years by that time, the bees had to be told that grandad had died and that dad was now the new owner. I remember my nana and dad going to each hive, putting a black cloth on the hive and telling the bees of my grandad’s death. They missed a hive and they did die. Coincidence? Probably, but it was the country tradition.
In the spring we put frames in the hives to which we attached a thin sheet of wax, a starter kit for the bees, so we didn’t get odd shaped honeycomb which we couldn’t harvest. When the bees had done their work all summer my dad removed the combs and they were put in an extractor where they were spun until all the honey was in the extractor. It was then passed through muslin into a ripener and from there was put in jars. My Dad used to make fondant candy to feed to the bees in the winter and of course leave them some of the honey they had worked so hard for. We always had a sweetener for puddings and cakes even when sugar was rationed.
I think my happiest memory of my dad was him in a long white apron quietly putting honey into jars while I sat on the steps of the honey shed in the late afternoon listening to the bees and eating a large piece of honeycomb.”