17 OCTOBER 1947, Page 17

Bee - Masters Every year swarms of bees are lost through sheer

ignorance and neglect by bee-keepers ; and it seems that the losses this season in the South- West have been unusually great. Now there was a time (as a Devonshire rector recalls) when every other estate or farm had its bee-masters whose terms of reference were to look after the local bees, to collect honey for sugar, wax for light or polish, the combs for mead or metheglin. The bee-master, it is true, is extinct ; but in most parishes, or such is my experience, there are one or two persons who are real experts in bee- keeping ; and branches of Bee Associations are widely distributed. The cult increases as the growing of fruit increases ; and more and more fruit-growers borrow hives at the season of the honey flood.