The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1886-04-24 00:00:00

THE BUSY BEE.

Sitting in the greenhouse of Acton Vicarage,
Suffolk, where the late Bishop of Ripon and the
present Dean of Lichfield were born, and where the
Bishop of Norwich, Earl Grey, and his two brothers,
and many men of light and leading, were pupils, one
of our (the Pall Mall Gazettt) representatives had a
long conversation with the Rev. Arundell Leakey on
the question which he has made his own—namely,
the adoption of beekeeping as a subject under the
new code, lie said that he had the approbation of
Mr. Mundella and the sympathy of Mr. Claughton,
her Majesty's Inspector of Schools, but complained
that what the Government gave with one hand it
withdrew with another for it allowed no child to
take the subject up as a specific one under the Fifth
Standard. All that was now needed, Mr. Leakey
said with enthusiasm, was the removal of a
very small stone, the making it necessarily
a specific subject and allowing it to be
treated as an ordinary one. "But surely 3ou would
not put it in competition with the three R's ?" "No,
nor with needlework, but I would with geography,
for surely it would be bette,2 for a child to know how
by keeping bees a whole year's rent might be obtained
than the position of the Andes." He dilated on the
value to the agricultural labourer of this additional
means of income, saying that it required no capital,
no premises, and hardly any time. Another pecu-
liarity he dwelt on was that bees trespass upon other
people's property with the unique result of improving
it. Mr. Leakey further said that schoolmasters,
from their permanent residence in a place and having
time on their hands after school hours, were pecu-
liarly adapted for beekeeping. The master in Acton
village, for example, had no less than eight hives,
some of which he had patented. Further asked if
he knew of any schools which would take the subject
up if able to do so, he replied that he knew of several,
and he added that, where two hives would pay an
average labourer's rent, he thought in these days,
when everyone was anxious to improve the labourer's
condition, his plan was worth consideration.
In reply to questions from our represerktative as to
wax importeil from abroad, Mr. Leakey gave the fol-
lowing startling figures: From the West Indies, 1183
cwt.; from France, 1905 : from Germany, 2289;
from China, 2414; from Japan. 4404; from Portugal,
6048; and from America, 8163—a total of 32,699
cwt. This, he pointed out, was independent of the
best and most remunerative point, the honey, of which
from America only the purchases amnunted approxi-
mately to £ao,ooo. Absence of bees was, Mr. Leakey
insisted, detrimental to fruit, and their absence was
supplied by wild ones. Bees, he said, find pasture,
not only on clover, butnn all the innumerable garden
and field flowers, from the early snowdrop and prim-
rose to the late violet, while the lovely fruit-tree
blossoms which deck the spring with exquisite white
and crimson wreaths at the same time hold out to the
bees petals en which they may rest as they drink
OePIY the nectar of a thonsand, chalices,