ALAN - Central West NSW

I was born in Emmaville and grew up on a family property called Binghi, near Torrington in NSW. I became interested in beekeeping when I was around nine years old. My father was a beekeeper as well as a sheep farmer, and I used to help him rob the bees and extract the honey. Bee stings never worried me. I found bees to be fascinating little creatures, in that they could produce honey and wax and gather pollen from a flower and assist nature at the same time.

My brother Lance and I were beekeeping from 1960 to 1967, and I was a seasonal shearer in the district. I joined PMG (now Telstra) in 1967 and found that with my travelling all over NSW I did not have enough spare time to keep bees. As a result, Lance took over my share of the beekeeping.

It wasn’t until 1978 when a swarm of bees landed in my backyard in Dubbo that I got interested in bees again. In 1990 I purchased 40 hives from a local hobbyist beekeeper and in 2000 I took a redundancy from Telstra, and have been extending hives ever since. I have two truckloads of hives and am keen to settle with three hundred hives (if my wife will let me). At my age you don’t need any more than that to keep you occupied.

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